ALSO BY FIONA DAVIS
The Dollhouse
The Address
The Masterpiece
The Chelsea Girls
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Copyright © 2020 by Fiona Davis
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Davis, Fiona, 1966– author.
Title: The Lions of Fifth Avenue: a novel / Fiona Davis.
Description: First edition. | New York: Dutton, [2020] |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019057269 (print) | LCCN 2019057270 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524744618 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781524744625 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3604.A95695 L56 2020 (print) | LCC PS3604.A95695 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057269
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057270
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Fiona Davis
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For librarians everywhere
CHAPTER ONE
New York City, 1913
She had to tell Jack.
He wouldn’t be pleased.
As Laura Lyons returned from running errands, turning over in her head the various reactions her husband might have to her news, she spotted the beggar perched once again on the first tier of the granite steps that led to her home: seven rooms buried deep inside the palatial New York Public Library. This time, the beggar woman’s appearance elicited not pity but a primal fear. It was certainly some kind of ominous sign, one that made Laura’s heart beat faster. A woman on the verge of ruin, alone and without any resources. Unloved.
The beggar’s black mourning gown was more tattered than it had been last week, fraying at the sleeves and hem, and her face shone with summer sweat. Every few days for the past month, she’d taken up a spot off to one side of the grand entryway under one of the towering stone lions, one of which had been named Leo Astor and the other Leo Lenox, after two of the library’s founders, John Jacob Astor and James Lenox. Laura’s children had admired them right off, with Harry claiming Lenox as his pet and Pearl doing the same for Astor, neither caring that the sculptures had initially been mocked in the newspapers as a cross between a dachshund and a rabbit. Only last week, Laura had just barely prevented her son from carving his initials into the sinewy rump of Leo Lenox.
The beggar woman shifted, finding what shade she could. The miserable-looking child who typically filled her lap was missing. Laura wondered where he was.
“Money or food, please, miss. Either will do.”
Laura reached into her shopping basket and pulled out two apples. One of the library’s employees would shoo the beggar away soon enough, and she was glad to have caught her in time, even if the act of offering the poor woman assistance was inspired, at least in part, by a ridiculous, superstitious bargain that existed only in Laura’s mind. As if extending a kindness to someone in need would smooth the conversation ahead.
“Thank you, miss.” The woman tucked the fruit away in her pockets. “God bless.”
Laura hurried up the steps and into Astor Hall, past the dozens of visitors milling about, their voices echoing off the marble steps, the marble floors, the marble walls. Even the decorative bases for the bronze candelabras were made from Carrara stone sliced from the Apuan Alps. The choice kept the building cool on steamy September days like this one, even if in winter it was like walking into an icebox, particularly in the evenings, when the library was closed and the furnaces only lightly fed.
She turned left down the grand South-North Gallery, passing under a series of globed pendants of thick, curved glass that broke up the long lines of the coffered ceiling. About halfway down the hallway, she took a right, then another, before climbing up a narrow set of stairs that led to the mezzanine-level apartment where her family had lived for the past two years.
Their seven private rooms formed a right angle that hugged a corner of one of the library’s two inner courtyards, the bedrooms and Jack’s study along one side, and the kitchen, dining room, and sitting room along the other. The open area that formed the crux of the right angle, and where the stairway emerged, had become the kids’ playroom, where Harry laid out his train tracks in one corner and Pearl parked her doll’s pram under the door of the dumbwaiter. When they first moved in, Jack had had to give them a stern warning when they were caught poking their heads inside the dark shaft, but soon enough the family had settled in and adjusted to their new surroundings.
The director of the library—Jack’s boss—had pointed out during their orientation how the classical architecture of the building followed a progression from hard materials to soft, starting with the stone entrance hall before yielding to the wood paneling of the interior rooms. Laura had done her part to stay true to the continuum, softening the hard floors with a mishmash of Oriental rugs and hanging thick drapes over the giant windows. On the fireplace mantel, she’d framed the newspaper article about their unusual living arrangements, which had been written the year they moved in.
She called out the children’s names as she headed to the kitchen, and the sound of their heavy stomping behind her brought a smile to her face.
“Harry lost another tooth.” Pearl dashed in first, her eyes flashing with glee from scooping the news out from under her brother.
Laura would have thought living in a library would turn them into a couple of bookworms, but Pearl wanted nothing to do with stories unless they involved ghosts or animals. Harry was different, although he preferred not to read himself but rather to be read to, particularly from his worn copy of Maritime Heroes for Boys. Earlier that summer, when Jack quoted a line from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets into Laura’s ear in a silly falsetto while she washed the dishes, Harry had demanded to know what it meant. At his bedtime, Laura had taken down the volume from the bookcase and read some of the poems aloud to him. Harry interrupted to ask questions about the more ribald phrases, which Laura dodged as best she could. Later, when she and Jack were lying next to each other in bed, they laughed quietly about their son’s natural—and thoroughly innocent—ear for the smuttier bits.