As she gazed at the temporary exhibit that Madeline had curated, she was happy that she was privy to so much behind-the-scenes knowledge of Harry and his library.
Standing at the room’s threshold, just outside the rope barrier, she noticed the scent of tobacco had followed her there. It was undeniable. She put her bag down and lifted her arm to her nose. Had she recently been around someone smoking? Was it she who’d brought this scent into the library?
But her clothes just smelled of detergent. She looked around the room’s perimeter and the rotunda; there wasn’t a single other person in sight who could have carried the smell of burning tobacco with them.
She stood in the center of the doorway, her gaze focused firmly on Harry’s portrait. Years ago her grandma Helen had given her a book about ghosts, and she remembered reading that they supposedly sometimes communicated their presence beside someone by manifesting a certain smell.
Violet had a crazy thought. Was it at all possible that Harry’s ghost was trying to tell her that he was there?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE SMELL OF SMOKE HAD BEEN INTENTIONAL ON MY PART.I knew that if Violet detected the scent of something burning—even if it was only the scent of pipe tobacco—I could capture her attention. There isn’t a book lover in the world who is impervious to the scent of smoke coming from inside a library. I was one step closer to getting through to her.
As a ghost, I’ve learned to be crafty. To use what powers I can harvest from the spiritual world and put them to good measure. There was Oliver, who began working at my library at the mere age of fourteen as a “runner,” going up and down the stairs of the stacks, fetching requested books for eight hours a day. Boys like him were the first “pages” of the library, scrappy lads from the North End of Boston whose Irish families needed them to bring in extra income. For him, I made sure that he discovered a twenty-dollar bill on the floor every year at Christmastime. There was Ella Archibald, who worked as a librarian during the Second World War, and for her, I made sure that the young man who was studying for his masters in literature couldn’t find a book he needed one afternoon so that he was forced to ask the beautiful and intelligent Ella for some help. I felt my old ghostly heart rejoice inside my chest when their eighteen-year-old grandson walked up the steps of the library last year on his college tour.
So today when Violet wondered if the scent that was following her was a sign, that perhaps Harry Elkins Widener might actually be trying to signal to her that he wanted to communicate with her, I rejoiced.
I hovered over her and let the scent of tobacco fill her nostrils, the scent drawing her closer to my portrait.
She was a good girl and hated to break the rules. But I needed her to enter the room. So I did something that caused a little pain to flicker in my heart. I loosened one of the gilded laurel leaves that framed my painting and let it fall to the ground, knowing she would move past the rope to retrieve it.
Laurel leaves, you see, are the symbol of wisdom. Knowledge that is both acquired and intuitive. I wanted Violet to know she possessed both.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The very next morning, Violet pulled the carved leaf from her knapsack and showed it to Madeline.
“I tried to keep it safe,” Violet said as she unwrapped it from a T-shirt. “I didn’t want anything to happen to it.”
Madeline picked it up and examined it. “I’m glad you held on to it.”
“It was the weirdest thing,” Violet added. “Yesterday, I was sitting in the Widener reading room trying to do my homework, and then all of a sudden I smelled smoke. It didn’t smell like the library was on fire or anything,” she clarified. “More like the kind of smoke that comes from a gentleman’s pipe. I looked around, but no one else seemed to smell it.” Violet shook her head. She knew she must sound crazy to Madeline. “I even got up to move and the smell followed me all the way to the Memorial Room.”
“How odd,” Madeline said.
“Then when I got to the rotunda, the scent was even stronger. And as I stepped closer to the Memorial Room, it became even more intense… like I was sitting in a cloud of it.”
“Really?” Madeline sounded confused.
“I was standing at the doorway staring at Harry’s portrait when the leaf just fell off the wall and landed in front of the mantel,” Violet explained.
The decorative leaf lay on the table between them. Madeline lifted it carefully.
“That’s quite a story. I don’t know what to say.” She put the leaf down on the table. “The library staff doesn’t know much about the frieze surrounding Harry’s portrait. It was designed by a firm in London under the guidance of the library’s architect, Horace Trombauer.”
Violet reached with her finger to trace the leaf’s edges, her body softening as she touched it.
“It’s definitely laurel, which in Greek mythology symbolized wisdom,” Madeline elaborated. “And not just the kind you learn from books, but also the kind that comes from the gods. The spiritual realm, you might say.”
“Really?” Violet asked. She was intrigued.
“Yes, and, in fact, the female face that’s carved in the center over Harry’s portrait is supposed to represent Athena, the goddess of wisdom,” Madeline added. “At least that’s what my predecessor told me when I inquired about it,” she said and smiled.
Violet turned her head and glanced over at the painting, and then looked back at the leaf. “It was so strange. Nothing struck it or shook it from the wall or anything like that. There was no sound or reverberation. It just came off and fell all by itself.”
Madeline laughed. “Let me share a little secret with you. Your experience makes me think that I actually wasn’t so crazy all those times I felt like Harry’s ghost might be lurking somewhere in the stacks.
“Maybe Harry was just trying to get your attention.”
