If her work here at the museum required more thought, it would be easier to stop pondering the estate and its secrets. Aside from Elsa working alone in her office now, the fifth floor of the American Museum of Natural History was deserted, even as the floors below buzzed with the Saturday crowd.
She opened another customs box. Inside, poorly wrapped birds were stained with blood. She could use a fingernail buffer to clean that off the feathers. But the beaks and tails broken off in transit, she could not fix. What’s more, they were species the museum already had enough of. These little fellas had no need to die for the sake of science.
A soft knock at the door turned her head.
Mr. Chapman nodded a greeting. “Just wanted to let you knowI’m in my office, so if you hear any noises from that general direction, it’s me and not some rogue patron.”
She offered a small smile. “I didn’t think you worked on Saturdays.” She usually didn’t, either, but her tasks here had piled up while she spent time at Elmhurst.
“The Congress in Ottawa is less than a month away,” he reminded her, referring to the Forty-Second Annual Congress of the American Ornithologists’ Union. “I have two papers to prepare and present, on top of my regular work, which has been accumulating while I finished my eight-hundred-pageBulletin on Ecuador. At least you know you’re not alone up here today. What have you got there?” He entered the office for a closer look.
Elsa showed him the sorry state of the birds she’d unpacked. “Mr. Griscom’s guide on the preparation of birds has obviously had an impact. But people are sending specimens we simply don’t need.”
His mustache drooped in a frown. “Who says we don’t need them?”
She stayed silent, resisting the urge to bite her lip. She’d overstepped with that last remark. She was a research assistant, not a curator, not even an assistant curator. It was her job to take notes, prepare and tag birds, organize the catalog, and assist patrons with whatever research they came here to conduct.
But surely Mr. Chapman would understand where she was coming from. After all, he’d been the one who famously started the Christmas Bird Count, a tradition of counting birds in a kind of census, to replace the long-held custom of shooting birds on Christmas Day. Apparently the Victorians believed that nothing said “Happy birthday, Jesus,” like killing innocent birds. Mr. Chapman was widely credited for saving untold thousands of birds who otherwise would have perished.
She pointed this out to him, but he remained unmoved. “There is a difference between killing for science,” he said, “andkilling for sport with no intention of learning from the birds afterward.”
“Perhaps in the next printing of Mr. Griscom’s guide, we could include a list of birds we already have enough of,” she suggested.
Cupping one elbow in his palm, he propped a fist beneath his chin. “The trouble is, that could change between printings. We may think we have enough African parrots for example, and tell people to stop collecting them. But then, say, the parrot specimens we loan out to other museums or schools don’t come back to us, or at least not in the same good condition. Then we’ll wish we had more, won’t we?” He scooped up a kingfisher, leaving its long bill on the desk. “The skeleton will still be useful for study. Proceed to remove the skin and flesh.”
“Yes, sir.”
As they had already gone over her progress at the Van Tessel estate yesterday, there was nothing more to say. Her boss left, and with a great sigh, Elsa turned to her tray of tools and got busy.
At two o’clock, she wrapped up her work for the day. Before leaving the building, she threaded her way from the elevator through the first-floor Memorial Hall, skirting a statue of one of the museum founders on her way to the Information Bureau. Busts of American pioneers in science seemed to watch her from niches encircling the hall.
A knot of people clustered around the thirty-six-ton meteor brought back from an expedition to Greenland. Gently, Elsa pardoned and excused her way through them, reaching the Information Bureau at last. Greeting the clerk, she purchased a postcard to send to Lauren in Egypt and tucked it into her purse.
“Elsa! How serendipitous. I called the Beresford, and Ivy told me you were here. You’ve made it so easy to find you.”
Bewildered by the sound of her mother’s voice, Elsa turned to find her standing in the hall. The pearls at her neck were aswhite as her gloves. A simple ribbon adorned her hat, because less was more.
“Mother. What are you doing here?” Elsa pushed her glasses up her nose, then patted her cloche into place. She hadn’t been prepared to see her yet. She had only dressed for working alone, not for a social call.
With a tilt of her head, Mother beckoned Elsa away from the sales desk to a quieter section of the marble hall. She stopped between two smaller meteorites on display, the obsidian rocks glinting. “I hate to tell you this, dear, but our dinner plans for this evening have fallen apart. Charles Peterson had something come up and had to postpone. Something about an issue with one of his properties in Florida that he simply had to see to himself. He’s terribly apologetic about it. We’ll reschedule next month after he returns.”
“Oh.” Elsa felt herself relax, then drew herself up again, spine as straight as she could make it. She had forgotten that her parents had invited a man she’d never met to their weekly family dinner, which made the change of plans quite palatable. “That’s all right. I don’t mind. Ivy and I had a double date a few days ago, anyway.”
“Really? Anyone I know?”
“Archer Hamlin and his friend Percy Osborne. You might know the Hamlins. They moved onto Fifth Avenue several years ago. He and Percy took us for dinner at the Ritz.” Elsa chided herself for that last remark. She hadn’t meant to imply there was anything romantic between them. She’d said it only because she knew the Ritz would impress her mother, and she couldn’t resist. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had been impressed with anything Elsa had said or done.
Mother’s eyebrows lifted. “How lovely. His parents’ names are ...?”
“Albert and Gloria,” Elsa supplied.
“Ah, Gloria Hamlin. Yes, I know her. We’re in the Junior League together.”
A train of small children passed by, each one holding to a fabric strap tied to the belt of the child in front of him. The woman holding the first child’s hand appeared to be the captain of a tightly run ship.
“I can still come have dinner with you as usual, though,” Elsa told her mother.
The smile fell. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Our cook is feeling under the weather, so I gave her the night off.”
