Catching the Wind(52)

She took several pictures with her iPad, then tested her foot on the stoop. It held. “Now to find out what secrets the Terrells were trying to keep.”

Lucas reached for her arm. “This isn’t safe, Quenby.”

“Of course it’s not safe.” She climbed another step. “Watch for nails on the floor.”

“I mean the roof. It could collapse at any moment.”

She turned back. “You’ve hiked through the Amazon!”

“With a guide. And there were no falling roofs where we went.”

She switched her phone to the flashlight app. The front door was missing its knob, but when she pushed, it swung open. And a bird flew out.

A shriek escaped her mouth before she burst out laughing. Lucas joined her laughter. “Death by kamikaze swallow.”

“You think there are more inside?” she asked, eyeing the door again.

He examined the eaves. “Probably.”

She groaned. “That’s fabulous.”

“It’s not the birds that concern me.”

Quenby took a deep breath, trying to inhale courage. “I’m still going in.”

“You want me to go first?”

“Yes, but I’d kick myself for being a coward.”

He held the door wide for her. “I’ll be right behind you then.”

Dull light sifted through a mud-caked window, settling over the room like the bits of plaster that coated the couch, stone fireplace, and crippled kitchen table. The entire room smelled like mold and animal droppings, and tiny footprints, a hundred constellations of heels and toes, were embedded in the dusty floor around the furnishings. Hers was the only shoe print.

There were two plates on the wooden table. No food remained, but it was as if the occupants had rushed away from the house without even finishing their meal.

Lucas whistled when he stepped into the room, the floor creaking under him. “It’s like time stopped here, decades ago.”

To the right of the main room was a kitchen with a wooden sink, but no oven or refrigerator. No light switch for an electric bulb or pipes for running water. Olivia might have lived here for a season, but she certainly hadn’t lived in luxury. Quenby eyed the chipped plates again, hoping that Brigitte had been the one sharing a meal.

Off the kitchen was a sloped tin roof with a toilet seat. An indoor outhouse of sorts. There were two bedrooms along a narrow corridor, one with a window still intact and the other with the broken window. Springs from a bed remained in one of the rooms and the other had an old cot. There were no wall closets in this house, but there was a small wardrobe in the larger room, the one with the bedsprings.

Quenby opened the wardrobe and found several articles of women’s clothing. And a dozen British magazines from the 1930s—Woman and Woman’s Own—along with several old issues of the American Cosmopolitan.

Instead of a wardrobe in the second room, wooden knobs were screwed into the wall. Quenby crossed her arms, wishing she could climb back up in a tree outside to think.

Why had Olivia moved from a comfortable home to this dilapidated place?

Scratch marks marred the bedroom walls, piles of leaves and debris cluttering the floor. But there was something else, below the middle knob on the wall. She leaned over to see it and realized she was looking at something carved into the wood.

She shone her flashlight on the wall, and her heart leapt when she saw the dual B’s etched together again.

Lucas stepped into the room. “We’ll probably catch some sort of virus just by breathing this trash.”

“That’s what vaccinations are for.” She held up the light to him. “Besides, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s no treasure to be found in here.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain.” Her gaze fell to the floorboards below the initials.

Had Brigitte hidden something underneath her initials? Quenby tapped the board with her toe. It was held in place by a nail, but the rest seemed loose to her.

She knelt beside it. “Think we can pry this off?”

“I thought we were avoiding nails,” he said, though he leaned down next to her.

“Changed my mind.”

“Typical,” he quipped, but she ignored him.

Together they managed to remove the floorboard without injuring themselves. And Quenby’s heart began to race. Inside was another tin. “See?” she whispered. “Treasure.”

Reaching into the crevice, she pulled out the tin, opened the lid. Lucas shone the light from his phone over it.

Inside was a fountain pen with a silver star on the cap. A German Montblanc, like Grammy used to have. Underneath was a small stack of folded paper. Letters. Perhaps a dozen of them. They were letters from Lady Ricker to Olivia, written in English, but on the back of each paper was a letter in German as well, dated by month starting in September 1941. They looked as if they’d been scribbled by a child, each letter signed with a simple B.

Brigitte would have been almost twelve when she was writing these. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to practice her handwriting since she left Germany. Or perhaps she was in a hurry. Either way, it was the confirmation Quenby needed. Brigitte had remained in England, at least after her short stay on Mulberry Lane, and her story was intertwined with Lady Ricker’s.