The Aviary (7 page)

“So why did they send
you
down?”

“Well, we knew the headmistress had written the girl’s parents about discipline, and the girl was sure her parents were going to write back saying, ‘Do whatever it takes! Give her a birching if you like!’ ”

“A birching?”

“A whipping,” Daphne said.

“No!”

“Yes. So I … stole her parents’ letter. And got caught. And I was sent home just in time to move with my parents to rainy old Lockhaven, Maine. My father moved his importing business to this town. Says it’s cheaper to keep ships here at the bay than in the larger ports. But, my goodness, weren’t there other places that would have suited just as well? He doesn’t care, of course, because he’s always in Cádiz or Tangier or somewhere that isn’t here.” Daphne sighed. “My mother got me a cat to cheer me up. A little blue one, if you can imagine that! But Mother had its claws taken off so it won’t climb the curtains, and I’m afraid it’s as miserable as I am. Poor thing sits at the window, yearning to break free!”

“You don’t like Lockhaven at all, do you?”

“I didn’t,” Daphne said. “Until now.”

Clara reddened. “Why is that?”

“Because of you, of course,” she said simply. “Why, you’re a complete living mystery.”

Clara felt flustered. “I’m not mysterious at all. Not really.”

“Yes, you are! And I want to know all about you. In
fact, I could kick myself for wasting so much time talking about myself. Have I bored you?”

“Not at all!” Clara said. “You are utterly surprising in every way.” And unlike anyone she’d read about in
Advice for Young Ladies
, she almost added. But a door slammed back in the kitchen. Daphne craned her neck and looked past Clara down the hall. “Is that your mother?” she asked.

“No,” said Clara. “It’s Ruby.” She shook her hands loosely at the wrists and wondered what to do. “Follow me,” she said firmly.

Clara led Daphne into a coat closet that smelled of mothballs and closed the door behind them.

“What are we doing?” Daphne asked, giggling.

Clara felt the floor for a latch, and lifted the trapdoor that led to the boiler room below the house. A faint light glowed from the tiny windows in the basement. “Step down here,” she said. “And be careful. There aren’t handrails.”

The girls crept down into the cement room crowded by the old metal hulk of the boiler, which was now cold and silent.

Clara swept cobwebs aside and led Daphne to a rickety door behind the boiler leading to the outside. A skeleton key had rusted in the lock.

“Let me try,” said Daphne. She jiggled the key and pulled until she felt it grind free. “Here!” she said triumphantly, pushing open the door. The odor of wet grass and
rotten wood spilled into the concrete room. “Our secret passageway!”

Clara saw the leaf-covered back stairs and the gray sky above. “There is a gate on the left that takes you out the side yard into the alley. From there you can go to your house, providing you have a back gate too.”

“Done,” said Daphne. “You weren’t fooling when you said you weren’t to have company.” She looked at Clara hard. “Tell me, are the people here cruel to you?”

Clara’s jaw dropped. “No! I’m very well treated.”

“All right, then,” she said. “Let’s think ahead. You want to meet again, don’t you?”

Clara nodded.

“Then I still have one visit left to come get the casserole,” Daphne said. “But maybe we should save that for when we really need it.”

Daphne was amazing, Clara thought. “Come over through the boiler room,” she said. “But how will I let you know when it’s safe?”

“I can see the upper story of your house from my father’s study, but the curtains on that side of the house are always closed. Why don’t you pull back a curtain when you want me, and I’ll come here as soon as I can.”

“Yes! And I’ll leave the door unlocked for you,” Clara said. “And if you want to leave me a note, you can always slip something under this door. No one ever ventures down here.”

Daphne’s eyes popped open wide, and she gave a little
jump. “I am so excited,” she said. “And next time I come, if I start talking about myself, you poke me and tell me to stop. I want to learn about
you
. Do you hear?”

“I do,” Clara said. She watched Daphne hop up the steps and out of sight, then locked the door behind her. She climbed the steps, shut the trapdoor, and stepped out of the closet only to hear her mother calling her name.

“Here, Mama,” she called, wiping cobwebs out of her hair. She calmed herself and followed her mother’s voice to the kitchen. If she also heard Mrs. Glendoveer’s voice warning her against this ill-advised adventure, she did not listen. She felt too bright inside.

For days, Ruby and Harriet sat with pen and paper, trying to figure the best way to spend the funds left them by the Glendoveer estate. They circled the house, making notes. Clara held her breath as she watched them descend the steps in the closet that led to the boiler. She was relieved to hear that this part of the house, at least, passed inspection and would require no workmen.

“I’ll tell you what,” Ruby said. “We’re lucky the roof timbers are sound, what with those leaks in the attic. If you ask me, the shingles should be replaced. We’ve got more spells of hard rain coming.”

Clara’s mother agreed. “There’s also glass to replace and doors too swollen to open. We can put our heads together and fix those ourselves.”

“And what about me?” Clara asked. “May I help?”

Her mother put her hands on her hips. “Put your nose in a book. That’s the best thing for you. We’ll get back on firmer footing with your studies when Ruby and I are through with the repairs. In the meantime, we’ll be too busy going in and out, gathering supplies, and raising a racket around here.”

Clara nodded, having no objection to books. But what thrilled her most was seeing Ruby and her mother put on their cloaks. Both at once! That had never happened when Mrs. Glendoveer was here.

“We’ll be going to the bank too, so we won’t be back until well after noon,” Clara’s mother warned as she headed out to the street. “Do not answer the front door.”

“I promise. No front door,” she said, picturing immediately greeting Daphne at the door downstairs—for it was Saturday, and Daphne would be at home. At least Clara prayed she would.

There was a room across the hall from Mrs. Glendoveer’s bedroom with windows that faced Daphne’s house, but it had been locked as long as Clara had lived in the mansion.

“I’ll get the key ring,” she said to herself. She fetched the old round of iron from its nail in the pantry and examined the keys as she made her way upstairs. The three keys used most often were clean and shiny on the stem. The one for the aviary was the most distinctive, its bow carved to suggest outspread wings. The rest were for things Clara imagined were forgotten long ago.

One by one, she tested them in the door, twisting the keys left and right. Some gave promisingly, and then stopped at a half turn. Others merely wiggled stubbornly, seemingly stuck at the shoulders.

Her wrist weary, Clara held up the final key: the one for the aviary. All but certain that this last attempt would be futile, she pushed in the key and turned it to the right. It glided round in a perfect circle, the tumblers clicking with ease.

Clara gasped as the doorknob gave way and the hinges groaned against her push. She adjusted her eyes to the dark and saw that the room was filled with furniture. A built-in seat ran the length of the rear wall. The bank of heavily curtained windows above it must have once offered a cheerful view of the garden. She tiptoed in, then came to a halt and held her breath. A tinny melody was playing, muffled but distinct, and slowed to a stop. Was it “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush”?

Shaken, Clara said out loud, “Why, it’s nothing but a music box. I must have jostled it.”

Finally, she made her way through the furniture to a small west-facing window and pulled back a stiff and rotting drape, allowing a shaft of light to knife the room. She jumped! Two blue eyes gazed from the dark. Clara yanked the curtain now with all her strength and heard the rod clatter to the floor.

At once, everything in the room was revealed: two neat bed frames small enough for elves, a little desk with
attached chalkboard easel, a bureau topped with a stuffed bear, a miniature wooden wagon, and a porcelain doll, staring with large blue glass eyes. Clara took in the scene and was puzzled. This didn’t seem like a room for baby Elliot.

And there was more: a rocking horse made with real hide, a wooden crate piled with alphabet blocks, a white-painted wardrobe with a faded satin ribbon tied on the handle.

She ran her hand over the rocking horse’s back. The desk and easel were much like the ones she used in Mrs. Glendoveer’s room for her lessons. As she crept forward to take a closer look, she could make out chalk marks on the board under the years of dust.

She knelt down, blew the slate clean, and saw:

Who was Helen? She saw in her mind’s eye
HELEN
engraved on a plaque in the Glendoveer crypt.

Immediately, Clara wondered what Daphne would make of all this. Daphne! Well, as the curtains had fallen down entirely, Daphne would be sure to notice the change.

I won’t lock the door
, Clara decided. This way she could easily slip in and out to signal Daphne whenever she needed to. Also, with both the grown-ups gone, Clara could meet Daphne outside instead of braving the underground boiler room.

Clara passed the hall clock and noted with joy that it was only ten o’clock. She went to the kitchen, opened the back door a crack, sat on a stool, and waited, her heart in her throat.
Please be watching, Daphne. Please
. When she finally heard the creak of the side yard gate, she felt she might forget to breathe. She bolted from her stool and ran onto the grass as Daphne rounded the corner.

“You’ve come!” she shouted.

Before Daphne could call back, however, the birds in the aviary erupted in screams. Clara turned her head and saw that every bird had massed to one side of the cage like iron filings pulled to a magnet. The birds bobbed their heads in unison as if throbbing to the same heartbeat, their eyes fixed on Clara.

“Awwk awwk skwaaaaaaaaaaahhh!”

“Hush!” said Clara. “All of you!”

“Elliot!” cried the mynah.

Clara grabbed Daphne by the hand and dragged her inside.

“Elliot!
Statim!
”

Kicking the door shut behind her, Clara met Daphne’s eyes, which were round as teacups. The room was silent.

“They’ve stopped,” said Daphne. “What ghastly birds. Do they shriek at everyone like that?”

“Only me,” said Clara.

“What were they shouting? Did one of them say ‘Elliot’?”

Clara tried to explain that the birds hadn’t always spoken. Something had recently set them off. “I do know
that Elliot was the baby taken from Mrs. Glendoveer many years ago.”

“How curious,” said Daphne. “A stolen baby? Stolen by whom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, doesn’t that rattle you?” Daphne asked.

“Oh, Daphne,” breathed Clara, “that is not all. I’ve found more mysteries. We’ve got hours to poke around too.”

“Please, then. Lead on!”

Clara showed Daphne up the stairs to the bedroom and pushed open the door. “I’d never been in here before today,” she said. “It has always been locked.”

Daphne stepped inside and gazed around. She leaned over and opened a bureau drawer. “Whose are these?” she asked, pulling out a stack of handkerchiefs.

Clara took one of them and held it up to the light. A white monogram was stitched in the corner. “F.G.,” said Clara. “Why, I can’t think who these might belong to.”

“To a Glendoveer, I’d suppose,” said Daphne.

“But the initials aren’t familiar. And look over here. The chalkboard—there’s a Helen mentioned. I’ve never heard of her, but that name
was
in the Glendoveer crypt. Where are these people now?”

“Hmmm.” Daphne scratched her head. “You know, Clara, this is quite fascinating, but you must catch me up. The only information that I’m certain about is in the obituary for Mrs. Glendoveer. Everything else I’ve heard is chatter and hearsay.”

Clara lowered her chin and gave Daphne a look. “What hearsay?”

Daphne’s mouth hung open for a moment as if she realized she’d made a mistake. “Just talk. As I said, I know nothing, actually.”

Clara felt odd. It didn’t seem right that Daphne had heard tales of the Glendoveers while she herself lived here in ignorance. “Is it bad, what they say?” she asked.

Daphne swallowed and shook her curls. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “There are such a lot of silly people in Lockhaven, don’t you know that?”

“No,” Clara said frankly. “I don’t.”

Daphne put her fist to her forehead and gave it a little smack. “Stupid me. I didn’t come here to bring ugliness from the outside. I want to be part of
your
world. It’s a deliverance to me.…”

“That is well and good,” replied Clara, her voice rising, “but I am thoroughly sick of being in the center of this so-called world where no one tells me
anything
!” She was breathing hard now, and shaking.