“I see. I’m sure it will be a comfort to have this piano, though.” Smoke caught in her throat, and she cleared it. Wary of staying much longer, she let him know she’d be working mostly in the dining hall for now and took her leave.
Wesley’s music followed Elsa to the dining hall. She would wrap and pack the Spix’s macaw into her satchel later, but for now she couldn’t resist keeping it visible. It rested on the table near her while she worked on transcribing notes from another of Linus’s field notebooks into her own neat chart. Because she’d been bringing his notebooks home to work on in the evenings, too, she felt near the end of this stage. Unless more notebooks could be found, there remained just one more to examine.
The rest of the morning passed pleasantly. Jane’s driver, a lean, raven-haired young man named Crawford, didn’t say much as he wrapped each piece of china in newsprint and set them in cardboard boxes. Aside from the near-constant crinkle of paper, his presence didn’t bother her at all.
The breeze rolling in off the river and through the open window smelled faintly metallic, hinting at a coming rain. Pine trees pointed to a polished pewter sky. At some point, the piano music had ended, and Crawford drove the Spalding siblings to the village for lunch. With a contented sigh, Elsa cleared a space at the table and ate the croissant and banana she’d brought with her. The slices of cheese she’d packed, she’d eaten hours ago.
She hadn’t heard a peep out of the library lately, unless she’d been too absorbed to notice, or too distracted by Wesley’s hauntingtunes—or Crawford’s newsprint rattling. She decided to check on Luke and Tom.
At the door to the library, her jaw went slack. “What on earth?”
Barney, who had been blissfully lounging in a patch of sun, greeted her with a friendly lick on her hand, but she was too fascinated by what she saw to do more than notice. A door-sized piece of the wall hung open on hinges, and the glow of a flashlight shone from within.
She moved into the library, stepping between panels of wainscoting that lay on the floor. “Luke? Tom?”
“In here,” Luke called.
She crossed to the door, noticing a small locking mechanism on each side so it could be secured from within or without, and entered the hidden room.
Grinning, Luke pointed the flashlight all around the room. “What do you think? Should we add a secret den when we reconstruct the Van Tessels’ library in our warehouse?”
Tom laughed. “What is this, some kind of Prohibition storeroom or hiding place in case of a raid? It’s in the right spot for smuggling by river.”
Elsa had a hard time picturing the Van Tessels getting caught up in that. She turned to take in the space. With the moving beam of light, shadows shifted over a desk with one wooden chair that took up almost the entire width of the shortest wall. The longer wall was lined with shelves that held books, folders, and papers. Perhaps more notebooks and journals hid among them.
“I have the blueprints of the house,” Luke said, “and this room isn’t indicated. But look at this foundation.” Bending, he tapped the time-blackened bricks. “I’d date this to pre–Civil War.”
Elsa gasped. “The Underground Railroad. Do you think?” Ivy had mentioned that Tarrytown was on the Underground Railroad route.
Luke’s gaze caught hers. “It would make sense. The house wasbuilt in 1850, the year the Fugitive Slave Act passed. If the owners had been anti-slavery folks, this would have been a logical choice for hiding anyone on their way to freedom in Canada, especially with its remote location and proximity to the Hudson.”
A few moments of quiet passed, and Elsa tried to grasp the former life this room may have had. “Linus was born in 1843. I believe his father purchased this property during the last years of the Civil War. So it wasn’t his family that used the room for its original purpose.”
“He used it for something, though,” Tom pointed out. “Right up until he died, it looks like.”
Elsa had to agree. A cable-knit cardigan sweater draped the back of the chair. The desk held a mug, blotter, date book, and even a telephone, all of which were covered in dust. She picked up the receiver, half expecting to hear an operator’s voice on the other end. But the line was dead. Even if it had been a separate line from the main one for the house, the company would have discontinued service when the bills stopped being paid.
Barney ambled inside the room, his claws a quiet clicking on the floor. He sat next to Luke, pressing his entire body against his leg, looking up until Luke scratched between his ears.
“So did Linus repurpose this room as his study because it was already here, or did he intend to keep the activities and files within these walls secret?” Elsa wondered aloud. She picked up a folder and opened it but couldn’t see well enough to make sense of it. Maybe there were more loose pages of field notes inside. She grabbed a few more folders to take with her out into the light.
She sucked in a breath. “Did you feel that?” She looked down, and Luke pointed the flashlight at her feet.
“What is it, a rat?” Tom cried, backing away. “I don’t do rats.”
Barney shifted his attention to Tom, nudging his nose into the man’s palm.
“No, no,” Elsa said. Thunder rolled outside, but she barely registered it. “Just air.” She felt the cool brush of it slipping around her ankles. “It’s coming from under the desk.”
“Do you mind?” Luke handed the flashlight to Elsa, then moved the chair away from the desk. “Tom, give me a hand.”
Together they moved the desk a few yards away from the wall. Elsa shone the light at what they uncovered: another door in the wall, this one no higher than the height of the desk. There was a space of an inch or so between it and the floor.
Taking a knee, Luke opened it, and a rush of dank, cool air swept into the room. Elsa moved to his side, and he accepted the flashlight again, illuminating the darkness within. “Stairs. And I’ll bet you anything they lead to a tunnel that goes to the river.”
“Does it look safe?” Elsa asked, bending to see inside for herself. The steps looked sturdy to her. “Shall we see where it goes for sure?”
“Would you like to?” Wonder laced Luke’s voice, but she didn’t detect disapproval.
