The Aviary (30 page)

The man who stood on the threshold appeared undernourished and wore clothes that were threadbare and patched. His black hair was frosted at the temples, and his face was etched with lines that spoke of years of sorrow and loss. But when he saw Harriet and Clara, his black eyes shimmered and a smile transformed his face.

Frances flew in over his shoulder, lit at Clara’s feet, and whispered teasingly: “Clara, speak up! It’s your father!”

“Father,” she said, hardly believing that this word was now her own.

He bent low and swept her up like a child half her age. “Clara,” he said. “My baby girl.” And then, extending his hand, he said, “Harriet!” And the three of them clung together as one.

Arthur flew over the threshold and led all the birds in a raucous welcome that died down when Clara’s mother began to cry. She traced his face with her fingers, almost as if she expected him to disappear. “It
is
you,” she said. “Nevan!” And then she amended herself. “Elliot.”

The family stayed drawn close with their arms around each other for quite some time. Clara marveled at how familiar this man felt to her, though she had been only with women for all her life. Nobody wanted to interrupt the sweetness of the moment, but when Clara saw Ruby wiping
her eyes on her apron, she gestured for her to come near. “Father,” she said, “this is Ruby.”

Elliot put Clara down and embraced the weeping woman. “I have heard all about you from Frances,” he said. “She says you are a jewel and aptly named.”

At this, Ruby colored so deeply that she did resemble the gem. “I’ve done my best by your family. We’ve all hoped to see you home.”

“And now wouldn’t you like to meet the rest of your family?” Clara asked.

“Yes, please,” her father said.

George, Frances, and the others lined up on the banister from eldest to youngest. George took it upon himself to do the introductions.

“You know how brave Frances and Arthur are,” he said, “but each of us down to the smallest has held you in our hearts. We never gave up on you, Elliot.”

“Thank you, Brother,” he said. “While I was walking from the docks, Frances flew ahead and returned to tell me that you have two men in a birdcage outside.”

“Better them than us!” Frances said, which made Arthur and Peter twitter in agreement.

“We can bring them to justice now,” Elliot said. “That’s something I can do for you.”

“Someone get his rucksack from the porch!” Frances said.

“No, I’ll fetch it,” Elliot said. “It’s much too heavy for these ladies to carry.”

Clara noted her mother’s and Ruby’s wry expressions and almost giggled. What on earth could there be, she wondered, that Ruby and Harriet together were
not
able to bear?

Then they all went to the kitchen, Clara holding her father’s hand and her mother with her arm through his. When they entered the bright room, Elliot sniffed the air.

“Roses!” he said. “You must have a plantation of them outside.”

Ruby tapped him gently. “It’s your mother,” she said, “telling us how happy she is.”

He inhaled the scent again and declared, “Mother, I am happy too.”

“She’ll be even happier after we’ve rid this house of the rats,” said Ruby. “You’ll find them in a cage in the backyard.”

The aviary’s outline was barely visible in the dark. As the group of them approached, Clara holding a lantern high, the men inside stirred and sat up.

Mr. Booth rubbed his spectacles on his shirt and put them on while Jimmy Dooley shielded his eyes against the light.

“Who is it?” asked Booth. “I can’t see a thing.”

When Clara brought the lantern up to illuminate her father’s face, Booth looked away and slumped.

“That’s it,” Elliot told him. “Better to keep your eyes to yourself.”

“Nevan, boy?” Jimmy called out with a tremble in his voice.

“It’s Elliot,” said Clara’s father, “and I am not your boy.” He opened his rucksack, pulled out a gauze drawstring bag, and emptied the contents into his hand. “Harriet, I’d like to show you first.”

Clara’s mother plucked something golden from his palm. “Remarkable,” she said. “Clara, come see!”

Shining in the lamplight was a cuff link with double Gs.

“You remembered correctly, didn’t you?” Clara told him. “And they were still there!”

“I’m lucky,” her father said, “that they didn’t get destroyed. Dooley here has a stash of coins and jewelry that he melts down in a flowerpot furnace. He doesn’t want the gold traced back to the source. I made the mistake of coming across this stash when I was a boy. I’ve still got the stripes on my back from that beating.”

Clara glared at Jimmy Dooley. “George worried that you had been treated cruelly.”

“It’s the only way he knows,” her father said. “The odd thing is, if he’d treated me kindly, or even with indifference, the incident with the cuff links would probably never have imprinted itself on my memory.”

“I suggest we choose not to thank him for that!” said Frances.

“None of this has a thing to do with me,” muttered Mr. Booth. “Call the authorities, I don’t care. But you must release me now.”

Jimmy’s arm shot out and grabbed Mr. Booth’s lapel. He pulled him so quickly that Booth tripped and teetered suspended by his jacket alone. “Now you listen here, you dog! I won’t hang for you. If I go down, so do you.”

“Let go,” said Booth in a strangled voice.

“If I were you, Mr. Dooley, I’d get my side of the story out first,” Clara said. “Before Mr. Booth throws you to the wolves.”

Elliot placed his hand on Clara’s head. “I’d listen to her. She’s obviously a bright girl.”

Jimmy unhanded Booth and let him fall to the ground. “He never treated us fair, Nevan. Never! Why, I kept his secret, and I raised up a baby too.”

“Is that what you call it?” Elliot asked. “Raising me up?”

“Say what you want about me,” said Jimmy Dooley, “but my wife did tend you like a mother. Lily couldn’t have her own babies, you see.” Jimmy studied his shoes for a bit, wiped his eye, and looked up. “Now, I don’t like babies much. By God, I don’t like most
people
! But we thought we could have a good life alone on Razor’s Slip, with a house built for us and money from Booth. A nice setup. But after Lily died, things changed.”

“Things changed for me too,” Elliot said. “Being left alone with you was so frightening, I preferred it when you’d disappear and leave me for days.”

Jimmy ignored him and went on. “Booth left us out
there, forbade me to touch the treasure, and all the while he lives like a king.”

“On our stolen money?” asked Frances.

“I have my own money,” said Booth. “I never touched a copper coin of the Glendoveers’, and that’s the truth!”

“Yes, you do have your own money—
now,
” said Jimmy. “You needed the ransom money because your family cut you off. But after the bloody drownings in the bay, Glendoveer closed up shop, and the Booths swallowed their shame and brought their little black sheep back into the family.”

The stark light of Clara’s lamp exaggerated the crags in Booth’s face and brought out what was most mean and false about him. She wondered if he was as treacherous toward his own flesh and blood as he was to the Glendoveers, or even to Jimmy Dooley.

“How could you destroy a family for gold?” Clara asked Booth. “Don’t you have any family feeling?”

Booth simply scowled, but Jimmy Dooley knelt down and looked into Clara’s eyes.

“He don’t have feelings for anyone but himself. We Dooleys worked for the Booths three generations! Tending their grounds, fixing their carriages. When this man gave me an opportunity to earn some money, I said yes. I’ll ferry your litter to Skull’s Head while you wait for the ransom. So I took some treasure too while I was at it. I wanted to be sure that I got mine!”

At this, Mr. Booth lunged forward and cuffed Jimmy Dooley’s ear. “Imbecile!” he hissed. “You had to steal from them, didn’t you? Took your time doing it too. And then the storm kicked up! You could have moved the little brats to safety and had folding money the rest of your life! Lowlife thief and murderer, that’s what you are!”

Jimmy hit the bars with his fist and began to plead. “I didn’t mean to drown no children! And didn’t I save you, Nevan?
Who saved your life?
”

Clara noted her father’s stony expression and waited for his answer.

“Frances and Arthur Glendoveer saved my life,” he said. “Not you.” Then he turned and spoke tenderly to Clara.

“Little one, I would prefer that you not speak to these men anymore. You all go back to the safety of the house, and I will get the police to clean out the cage.”

“It has never been more in need of a mucking out, that is certain!” said Ruby.

The police did arrive, and Clara watched the lights go on in neighbors’ windows up and down the street. She wondered if Daphne had wakened too with the sound of the siren.

Elliot was forced to go with them to the jailhouse and give his testimony, and, bleary from lack of sleep, Clara lay down on the parlor sofa. Later, she heard her father and mother speaking to each other in low voices.

“Booth,” said Clara’s father, “has lived his whole life in terror of being linked to the crime.”

“As well he should, for the devastation he’s caused.”

“But he claims that he never meant hurt to anyone,” Elliot told her. “He felt his own family had done him an injustice, cutting him off from the Booth money just because they hated his being on the stage. Booth also believed Glendoveer was rising so quickly, he could replenish the ransom money in a season on the road. So he arranged what he termed ‘a harmless kidnapping.’ But the man never foresaw the deaths of the children.”

Clara rose and went to the foyer, where her mother stood with her arms about her father’s neck. “So it’s been for nothing,” her mother said. “All of it.”

And Clara reflected upon that. Everything had been botched—from the original crime to the Great Glendoveer’s spell to recall the children. One error after another had led to years of anguish, subterfuge, and fear.

“But we must not be bitter,” Clara said. “Wouldn’t that make everything worse?”

Her mother released Elliot and gathered Clara into her arms.

“No. We must not be bitter. If happiness has at last arrived on our doorstep, we must be grateful.”

“Where are the birds?” Clara asked.

“In the kitchen,” her mother said. “Ruby brought out the clothes-drying rack so they’d have someplace to perch.”

“They don’t want to go back in the aviary,” Elliot said. “And I can’t say that I blame them.”

“I must go to them,” said Clara. Being grateful was no problem for Clara, but she knew her happiness could not be complete until the birds were also set free.

Clara almost hated to disturb the birds, seeing them perched on the drying rack with their eyes closed, some with their heads tucked beneath their wings. Frances and Arthur must be especially exhausted, she thought, after that long-distance flight.

Frances opened one eye, then two, and shook herself awake. Her rustling wobbled the wooden rack and woke the others, who looked around momentarily as if they had no idea where they were.

“Aww!” Frances said, lifting and dropping her wings. “Never have I been so sore in the shoulders.”

“Skaaaaaawk!” agreed Arthur.

“You two are heroes!”

“My dear Clara,” said Frances, “would you believe I had to rest twice on the way? If not for Arthur encouraging me
with his comical loop-de-loops, I don’t think I’d have made it!”

“If I had to fly on a dangerous errand, I’d proudly choose either one of you to accompany me,” Clara said. “Now tell me: how did it go with Father?”

“Fortunately, the island is small. The only structure there belongs to Dooley. I was surprised—it was no lean-to, but a large cottage, well built and handsome.”

“Booth had it built for him. Was Father inside?”

“He was chopping wood. Quite unfortunate, I thought at the time.”

“Why’s that?” asked Clara.

Frances tilted her head. “Would
you
like to be a talking bird confronting a mesmerized man wielding an ax?”

“Tsip!” cried Helen. And the rest of the birds agreed.

“Frances, tell her about the clapping,” George said.

“Ah, yes!” Frances said. “I managed to light on a nearby bush and recite the incantation to Elliot, but then I could not clap to snap him awake!”

“Goodness,” Clara said. “I never thought about the clapping. So, what then?”

“Arthur hunted around inside the house and found some leather bellows. They were almost too heavy for him to lift—”

“Skaaaaaaaw!” cried Arthur.

“But he managed to get them to the roof of the house. I said my spell again, and he dropped them to the ground below.”

“Did it work?”

“Yes, it made a thunderous noise, though it broke the bellows,” Frances said. “And then you could see a light in Elliot’s eyes. He put down the ax and looked at me. Do you know that when I explained who I was and why we were there, he believed instantly. We got on from the start, didn’t we, Arthur?”

“Did he remember the cuff links right away?”

“Yes. He knew just where they were buried. And there are more valuables where those came from. Elliot told us that when he returned to the island years ago, Dooley found him digging around for treasure and captured him. After that, Dooley contacted Booth, who came back to the island and mesmerized your father into a sort of willing captive. It’s a wonder he didn’t just shoot them both.”