"Those tags are Audubon's originals," said Marchant. "I'll handle the birds myself--please don't touch them without my permission. Now!" She smiled. "Which ones would you like to see?"
D'Agosta consulted his notebook. He had copied down some bird names from a website that listed all of Audubon's original specimens and their locations. Now he trotted them out. "I'd like to start with the Louisiana Water Thrush."
"Excellent!" The drawer slid in and another was pulled out. "Do you want to examine it on the table or in the drawer?"
"Drawer is fine." D'Agosta pushed a loupe into his eye and studied the bird closely with many grunts and mutterings. It was a ragged-looking thing, the feathers askew or missing, stuffing coming out. D'Agosta made what he hoped was a show of concentration, pausing to jot unintelligible notes.
He straightened. "Thank you. The American Goldfinch is the next on my list."
"Coming right up."
He made another show of examining the bird, squinting at it through the loupe, taking notes, talking to himself.
"I hope you're finding what you're looking for," said Marchant, with a leading tone in her voice.
"Oh, yes. Thank you." This was already getting tiresome, and the smell of mothballs was making him sick.
"Now--" He pretended to consult his notebook. "--I'll look at the Carolina Parrot."
A sudden silence. D'Agosta was surprised to see Marchant's face reddening slightly. "I'm sorry, we don't have that specimen."
He felt an additional wash of annoyance: they didn't even have the specimen he'd come for. "But it's in all the reference books as being here," he said, more crossly than he intended. "In fact, it says you have two of them."
"We don't have them anymore."
"Where are they?" he said, with open exasperation.
There was a long silence. "I'm afraid they disappeared."
"Disappeared? Lost?"
"No, not lost. Stolen. Many years ago, when I was just an assistant. All that remain are a few feathers."
Suddenly D'Agosta was interested. His cop radar went off big-time. He knew, right away, that this wasn't going to be a wild goose chase after all. "Was there an investigation?"
"Yes, but it was perfunctory. It's hard to get the police excited about two stolen birds, even if they are extinct."
"Do you have a copy of the old report?"
"We keep very good files here."
"I'd like to see it."
He found the woman looking at him curiously. "Excuse me, Dr. D'Agosta--but why? The birds have been gone for more than a dozen years."
D'Agosta thought fast. This changed the game. He made a quick decision, dipped into his pocket, and brought out his shield.
"Oh, my." She looked at him, her eyes widening. "You're a policeman. Not an ornithologist."
D'Agosta put it away. "That's right, I'm a lieutenant detective with NYPD homicide. Now be a dear and go get that file."
She nodded, hesitated. "What's it about?"
D'Agosta looked at her and noted a thrill in her eyes, a certain suppressed excitement. "Murder, of course," he said with a smile.
She nodded again, rose. A few minutes later she returned with a slender manila folder. D'Agosta opened it to find the most cursory of police reports, a single scribbled paragraph that told him nothing except that a routine check of the collection revealed the birds were missing. No sign of break-in, nothing else taken, no evidence collected at the scene, no fingerprints dusted, and no suspects named. The only useful thing was the time frame of the crime: it had to have occurred between September 1 and October 1, as the collection was inventoried once a month.
"Do you have logs of all the researchers who used the collections?"
"Yes. But we always check the collection after they leave, to make sure they haven't nicked something."
"Then we can narrow down the time frame even further. Bring me the logs, please."
"Right away." The woman bustled off, the eager clomping of her shoes echoing in the attic space as she descended the stairs.
Within a few minutes she returned, carrying a large buckram volume that she dropped on a central table with a thump. Turning the pages while D'Agosta watched, she finally arrived at the month in question. D'Agosta scanned the page. Three researchers had used the collection that month, the last one on September 22. The name was written in a generous, looping hand:
Matilda V. Jones
18 Agassiz Drive
Cooperstown, NY 27490
A fake name and address if ever there was one, thought D'Agosta. Agassiz Drive my ass. And New York State zip codes all began with a 1.
"Tell me," he asked, "do the researchers have to show you some kind of institutional affiliation, ID, or anything?"
"No, we trust them. Perhaps we shouldn't. But of course we supervise them closely. I just can't imagine how a researcher would manage to steal birds under our very noses!"
I can see a million ways, thought D'Agosta, but he didn't say anything out loud. The attic door was locked with an old-fashioned key, and the bird cabinet itself was a cheap model, with noisy tumblers that an experienced safecracker could defeat. Although, he mused, even that would hardly be necessary--he recalled seeing Marchant plucking a ring of keys off the wall of the reception hall as they set off upstairs. The door to the plantation house was unlocked--he had breezed right in. Anyone could wait until the curator on duty left the front desk on a bathroom break, pluck the keys off the nail, and go straight to the birds. Even worse, he'd been left alone with the unlocked bird cabinet himself when Marchant went to get the register. If the birds had any value they'd all be gone by now, he thought ruefully.
D'Agosta pointed to the name. "Did you meet this researcher?"
"As I said, I was just the assistant then. Mr. Hotchkiss was the curator, and he would have supervised the researcher."
"Where's he now?"
"He passed away a few years ago."
D'Agosta turned his attention back to the page. If Matilda V. Jones was indeed the thief--and he was fairly sure she was--then she was not a particularly sophisticated crook. Aside from the alias, the handwriting in her log entry did not have the appearance of having been disguised. He guessed the actual theft had taken place on or around September 23, the day after she had been shown the exact location of the birds by pretending to be a researcher. She probably stayed at a local inn for convenience. That could be confirmed by checking a hotel register.
"When ornithologists come here for research, where do they usually stay?"
"We recommend the Houma House, over in St. Francisville. It's the only decent place."
D'Agosta nodded.
"Well?" said Marchant. "Any clues?"
"Can you photocopy that page for me?"
"Oh, yes," she said, hefting and carting off the heavy volume, once again leaving D'Agosta alone. As soon as she was gone, he flicked open his cell phone and dialed.
"Pendergast," came the voice.
"Hello, it's Vinnie. Quick one: you ever heard the name Matilda V. Jones?"
There was a sudden silence, and then Pendergast's voice came back as chilly as an Arctic gust. "Where did you get that name, Vincent?"