Page 66 of The Missing Pages
Madeline smiled. “You mean, has anyone ever wondered if Harry had a paramour of some kind?”
“Yes,” Violet said. “He was, after all, twenty-seven years old at the time of his death. That was by no means too young to be considering settling down back then. And he had to have been quite the catch marriage-wise, I would think. Wealthy. Handsome. Harvard educated.”
“Well, of course, there have been discussions about that in the past. I think every curator who’s ever been in charge of Harry’s collection here at the college has wanted to bring him more to life. But honestly, even after all these years, we know almost nothing about his personal life. There are letters to those in his innermost circle, particularly hisfriends who understood his passion for books, like Luther Livingston and Rosenbach. And we have the letters he sent to President Lowell after his graduation, and to some of his old classmates from time to time. But the rest of the material is pretty scant when it comes to revealing anything about him that’s even remotely on the more personal side.”
“I see,” Violet said.
“So to answer your question, there’s no documentation here suggesting he’d ever been in love, and as far as I know, no one’s found any sort of society column regarding him being seen with or attached to any particular woman.” She shook her head. “A few people over the years have even wondered if he might actually have been gay,” Madeline said with a shrug. “Honestly, we just don’t know. I suppose it’s yet another secret that went down with theTitanic.”
“I just have a sense there’s something we’re all missing,” Violet said.
Madeline squinted. “If you have a hunch and you want to pursue it, Violet, I’ll support you in any way I can.”
“Thanks, but I don’t have any concrete evidence yet. Just a feeling. And I know that means nothing in the academic world.”
“Sometimes it’s those little sparks inside us that ignite the best research. You need something that affects you personally. That will propel you into the unknown, to make you really want to search for the answers. I look forward to seeing whatever you do discover, Violet.”
The thing that Violet kept returning to over and over was the second key on the ribbon in Harry’s desk. Pete said he had no idea what it was for when he used the other key to wind the desk clock. The mystery key was so unique, with the two kissing starlings on its end. Violet had never seen anything quite like it. There was something undeniablyromantic to it. Was it the embrace of the two birds or the faded grosgrain ribbon?
But Violet’s intuition told her there had to be more to it than that. Since the key with the starlings was kept for all these years alongside the one that wound Harry’s desk clock, she strongly suspected that it had to open something truly important to him.
The more she contemplated the key’s purpose, the more certain she became that it was connected to a story that Harry wanted her to unlock somehow.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Violet stopped Madeline a few hours later as she was rolling her paging cart toward the elevator in the tunnel underneath Houghton. An eighteenth-century illustrated volume of Palladian drawings that had just been requested by a visiting scholar rested on top.
“Sure, if you can ask it quickly. We found another book destroyed in the stacks.” Her face showed her distress.
“I’m sorry,” Violet apologized. She knew how agonizing it was for Madeline and her fellow librarians that they hadn’t figured out who the book slasher was yet.
“It’s just a quick question. Do you have any idea what that second key in Harry’s desk might be for? The one attached to the winding key? Pete told me he didn’t think anyone knew.”
“Pete’s right. We don’t know that, even though people here have been speculating about it for years.” She paused. “I mean we do know one thing. Each of the rooms at Lynnewood Hall had its own unique key. So there was a theory that the key had to belong to one of the rooms there, perhaps even to Harry’s study itself.”
“That’s interesting,” Violet said.
“But supposedly that idea was disproven pretty early on. Flora Livingston, the second curator of the Widener Collection, was a friend of Eleanor Widener. When all of the artifacts connected to Harry were firstdonated and Flora was in charge of curating them, she reached out to Eleanor so they could all be documented. And it was Eleanor Widener herself who said that she, too, had absolutely no idea about that key.”
“How strange. I wonder what the starlings are meant to symbolize?” Violet mused out loud. She was pretty certain they were starlings from the flat tail, pointed beak, and distinct triangular wings.
“I’m pretty impressed you realized they were starlings, Violet,” Madeline said with a smile. “I didn’t take you for a budding ornithologist.”
“A friend once told me what made them distinct from other birds.”
“Then I’m sure your friend told you that they can denote many different things, depending on the culture and society. They’re known to represent freedom, spiritual connection, and love, but most often they depict communication.”
“Right. They’re often thought to be messengers,” Violet said, more as a statement than a question.
“Yes, I believe so,” Madeline said. “If only we had a few starlings to show me who this damn book slasher is.”
In the hours after Violet had spoken with Madeline about the key, her mind kept returning to a certain memory with Hugo from the fall of sophomore year. The trees alongside the banks of the Charles River had already lost most of their leaves, but the sunsets had become particularly beautiful as the weather turned colder. Hugo had just finished rowing practice, and she’d met him at the boathouse with two chocolate croissants to share.
They’d stretched out on one of the green areas of the lawn, Hugo’s gym bag supporting their heads, their lips still dusted with powdered sugar and crumbs sprinkled across their chests. Above them in the bright apricot sky, a large formation of birds merged together, twistingand turning, their flight pattern in perfect synchronicity. The birds first flew downward, then upward, soaring and falling, finally ascending to the heavens, repeating the maneuver over and over again. Violet and Hugo felt as if they were watching a cloud created from a hundred beating wings.
“What is that?” Violet asked, amazed.
“I believe it’s called a murmur of birds,” Hugo said.
“A murmur?”
