Then she’d reached the very last entry, dated the twenty-third of May 1914. The same month as the letter from the library detective saying that the family was under watch. Jack Lyons had written a short list, consisting of only three items: stepladder, rope, note. A tidy check mark was placed next to each one.
Three words, innocent by themselves but thick with meaning together.
She’d never known what happened to her grandfather, only that he’d died suddenly and the family had left the library. Could he have killed himself?
Yet it seemed strange that he’d write a to-do list, so clinical, unemotional.
What had happened back in May 1914 to Laura Lyons and her husband? And what about Pearl’s deathbed utterances about burning books being the reason they had to leave? The past seemed murkier than ever, and Sadie worried over how the events from eighty years ago might reflect on her role of curator today. And not in a good way.
Sitting at the bar at CBGB, letting the music wash over her, she mulled over what she’d learned. Stepladder, rope, note. If her grandfather had indeed killed himself, then Sadie’s own father’s death might have been even harder on Pearl than Sadie had imagined, even if it had been from natural causes. It also explained Pearl’s reluctance to linger on the past.
A young woman with piercings in her nose and a shaved head threw Sadie a smile as she passed by. That was nice, thought Sadie. She was a semi-regular by now, she supposed, and stood out from the other patrons in her tartan shirtwaist dress, circa 1940. Grunge fashion had nothing on her.
She gathered her tote bag and went to the bathroom, waiting in the cramped space for an open stall.
“Who’s the grandma?”
The voice came from one of the stalls, and was answered by another.
“The one at the end of the bar? That’s just some old bird who sits like a stone and pretends to be part of the scene. Pathetic, really. Gus hates it because she takes up space and never orders more than one beer. God help me if I’m like that when I’m old.”
Old? Sadie was only forty-three, she wanted to answer. But maybe they were talking about someone else, not her.
The stall opened, and the woman who’d acknowledged Sadie earlier stood frozen. “Um, hi.”
Sadie turned, blinking back tears, and walked out, back into the noise and mayhem.
* * *
Monday morning, in the basement level of the library, Sadie pushed open the door marked BINDING AND PROCESSING. She could have used up more of her bereavement leave, but she preferred to stay busy, and also didn’t want Claude to swoop in and take her place in her absence.
Inside, the room was set up like a mini-factory, with long tables where various tools were laid out, empty save one man, who rose creakily to his feet as she neared, his gray beard almost white in the bright fluorescent lighting.
“Mr. Babenko.”
He greeted her warmly, as he had long ago when she’d first inquired about the hidden apartment. Mr. Babenko wasn’t used to visitors, and had been delighted at Sadie’s interest in the history of the building, as well as his work in the bindery, showing her how incoming books were measured and fitted with Mylar dust jackets, then run through a paste machine before being sent off to the stacks for shelving. She’d shown the appropriate admiration for the chunky metal oversewing machine that stood, no longer used, in one corner, and they’d been friends ever since.
“What’s going on, young lady?”
Young lady. The cruel remarks by the women at CBGB dissipated into thin air. It all came down to perspective, really.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’ve had something go missing from the Berg Collection.”
“Your curator?”
Of course, Marlene. The news had spread fast. “Right. She took a job in Boston. Chief of collections.”
“Good for her.”
“But this is something else.”
He let out a whistle when she told him about the missing Virginia Woolf diary. “That’s terrible news, just terrible.”
“It certainly is. I have to ask you to keep this between us. Dr. Hooper doesn’t want it leaking out.”
“You have my assurances,” said Mr. Babenko. “Was the diary marked?”
The more valuable books at the New York Public Library were stamped with an identifying mark on page ninety-seven, as a way to prevent thefts. But even Sadie knew that some of the more nefarious bookshop owners were known to buy library books regardless, and would remove the mark by either mutilating that page or using chemicals to fade it. Every library with rare books and maps faced the same quandary: whether to “deface” a book, which made it difficult to sell on the black market, or retain the book’s purity and leave a tempting morsel for thieves.
“The Woolf wasn’t marked, I know that for certain. I want to help find it, if I can, but I’m not sure where to start.”
“For the most part, the people who have access to the books are the most likely suspects. Past thieves who have done the most serious damage to the collection are the same scholars who come to study the books, respected patrons who become so enamored with their own expertise they believe they should be the custodians of the material as well. Or want to sell them for profit.”
Sadie, Claude, and Marlene had always kept a close eye on the Berg’s visitors, who, after all, had to go through a strict approval process before even gaining entry. The intimacy of the room helped in that regard as well. “The librarians’ desks are only a few feet away from the tables where our visitors sit. We’re practically on top of each other.”
“You can’t trust anyone. I remember reading about a case twenty or so years ago, where two Byzantine priests were caught smuggling a rare Dutch atlas out of the Yale library. Turns out they’d taken hundreds of books, not only from Yale, but also from Dartmouth, Harvard, and Notre Dame.”
“What happened to them?”
“They were defrocked and sentenced to a year and a half in prison.”
“A year and half? That’s all?” She must have misheard him.
“That’s all. An absolute shame.”
“Okay, so I’ll be on the lookout for men in robes.” She paused. “On a different note, I have a strange question. Do you remember hearing about anyone who committed suicide in the library, say a really long time ago?”
“Not that I know of. Why do you ask?”
She had to come clean. Well, almost clean. “I discovered a letter that said that the superintendent of the building, the one who lived in the apartment, was a suspected book thief back in 1914. And I think he may have committed suicide.”