The Book of Lost Things Read online

  Pia said nothing. For the rest of their walk, both were silent, thinking.

  When they had changed back into everyday clothing and were standing in Max’s kitchen, Max acknowledged, “We did a good job up there.”

  “I make a good partner,” she agreed. She took up from the table the long, rectangular package she had placed there when she arrived that morning and was hurried into the front parlor to dress for her role. Before Max could make his usual objection she held it out to him.

  “I don’t need a partner,” he said anyway.

  “I know.” She grinned. “Open it.”

  He began taking off the heavy brown paper in which it was wrapped, but before he did, he had an announcement to make. With a grin of his own, he told her, “I could, however, use a part-time—only occasional, mind you—assistant.”

  “Really?” she asked, a schoolgirl again in her pleasure. “Really and truly? I was afraid you were the kind of person who made up his mind right away and after that couldn’t change it. But can I really be your assistant?”

  “Sometimes,” Max allowed. “For certain specific occasions. Like today.” He had surprised her, and that was pretty satisfying. “But you can’t tell anyone.”

  “I wouldn’t. I won’t. I promise. Open the package,” she urged.

  When he had the brown paper off, it was his turn to be surprised and hers to be smug. What he unwrapped was a long, rectangular wooden sign with two thick brass hooks on its back by means of which it could hang on a gate. Golden letters had been painted onto its glossy red surface:

  MISTER MAX, SOLUTIONEER

  Out in Thieves Alley, Max and Pia admired the sign for several silent minutes. Then she mounted her bicycle to ride home, but not before reminding him, “Don’t forget, I’m on holiday all the rest of this week if something comes up.”

  Max felt so grateful to her right then, and so pleased with his own problem-solving abilities, that he responded, “I won’t. Thank you for your help today.”

  “You are most welcome, Mister Max,” she called over her shoulder, and pedaled off.

  Max lingered a little longer outside his own gate in the golden light of the May afternoon admiring the sign. It was plain and clear for anyone to see: MISTER MAX, SOLUTIONEER. He had the sign, he had at least two references, he was definitely in business. He was independent. All of those thoughts pleased him, and he reached out to pat the wooden rectangle, just a couple of small tapping pats, for luck. The luck he hoped for was employment, problems to solve. He had completed everything, and no new job awaited him. He had enough money for two weeks, maybe, maybe less. How far would forty-five take him? If he gave up cheese, and milk, could he hold out until another job came along? Assuming, of course, that another job would come along. Max tapped the sign one last time and went through the gate and up into the house, to wait for whatever would happen next.

  The Library Job

  • ACT I •

  What happened next was … nothing happened.

  Max waited for mail, and none arrived.

  He waited for unexpected callers, and none came to his door.

  He waited for lucky accidents, and none occurred.

  Nothing at all, not a thing, happened.

  Of course the sun still rose and set, the business of the world went on. Pale morning mists floated on the silvery lake, then melted into the day like sugar in hot tea. Nights unfolded gently over the city like cool sheets pulled up over a soft bed. Two days, then a third, went quietly by, until it had been more than three weeks since some vessel, but not the Flower of Kashmir, had carried his parents down the river, six days since a postcard, mailed who knew when and they couldn’t tell where, had arrived to tell him nothing, and Mister Max, Solutioneer, had not been offered any work.

  Max read away at The Iliad and studied maps of modern African countries for Grammie, who also expected him to keep himself informed about events current to the city and the world and to be learning about the simplest multicelled life-forms. Ari had dinner with the Baroness and raked first through her memories (which were not many, the subject being a servant) and then through Zenobia’s (which were numerous and unreliable) for clues to the identity of his Martha. He kept up Max’s tutoring work with Euclidean geometry as well as his own university studies. “I’m used to being busy by now. I’ve actually gotten to like it. A lazy life isn’t interesting enough for me, not anymore. Great-Aunt keeps complaining that she doesn’t understand how someone as round and soft and unnoticeable as that little detective can be so good at what he does. So you must have been in costume?”

  Max tried not to worry about his dwindling supply of coins or become impatient with the way Pia would come so chirpily into his kitchen, bringing one of Gabrielle’s scarlet-ribboned boxes. Pia looked at him with such obvious hope of an assignment that he felt more worried.

  “How is your father’s restaurant coming along?”

  “He can’t find the right location. He wants it to be in the old city, because all the other fancy restaurants are in the New Town, so his will be different. He thinks it would be a real draw,” she went on, obviously quoting her father word for word, “if it were on the water. Maybe on the river? So guests could watch the boats or eat outside in summer.”

  “Why not on the lake?” Max asked, happy to have something to think about even if it had nothing to do with him and was in itself not particularly interesting.

  “Only The Water Rat and fishing dories go out on the lake. They aren’t very exciting to watch, or romantic, not like ocean liners. He wants his restaurant to be something special.”

  “Like the pet owners at Hilliard,” Max observed.

  Pia didn’t allow any criticism of her father. “You’ve never even met him. So you don’t know anything,” she snapped. “When do you think you’ll get another job?”

  Max shook his head. He had no idea. He was losing hope.

  Grammie seemed to understand how he felt, but Ari had his mind so full of his own search and his own studies that he didn’t notice Max’s low spirits. He made nightly reports over Grammie’s suppers of his unsuccessful efforts to locate his Martha.

  “I’ve asked Zenobia all the questions I can think of, in all the different ways I can think of, and she isn’t any help at all,” Ari said. “So I decided to look at the servants’ rooms. Just in case. Just on the off chance. Just because … because I can’t think of anything else to do.”

  “Keep thinking,” Grammie advised. “You have to keep thinking about things like this, these stubborn knots of problems. Maybe Alexander the Great could cut the Gordian knot, but the rest of us have to unravel them, patiently, following the string around and around.”

  Max pointed out, “The Gordian knot doesn’t have anything to do with Ari finding his Martha.”

  “You are disagreeable today,” Grammie answered. “More moussaka?”

  Ari ignored them both. His voice was thoughtful, his eyes worried. “I had to go up about fifty stairs, and there wasn’t much light because it’s the back staircase, to get to the attics where the rooms are. There were four bedrooms off in one direction and four off in the other. Each room had only one bed in it, one window, one little table by the bed with a lamp on it, one small dresser, and two hooks on the back of the door …” His voice trailed off. He took a couple of bites, remembering. “I wouldn’t want to live in a room like that,” he said. “Nobody would.”

  Grammie didn’t agree. “There are worse places to live, much worse. The Baroness’s servants have bathrooms, don’t they? Aren’t the rooms warm in winter? Are there windows in the bedrooms?”

  “It looks like I’m not the only quarrelsome one,” said Max, disagreeably.

  They both ignored him.

  “Yes, there’s one bathroom for each wing, and electricity, and each room has a small coal fireplace. It’s just Zenobia and the two Marthas who live there now, but Zenobia is old, and the stairs are steep. You’d think the Baroness …” He fell silent. “There wasn
’t even a bookshelf, Mrs. Nives.”

  “I’m not saying I want to move there,” Grammie told him. “I’m just saying that there are worse.”

  “What difference does that make?” Ari demanded. “If I were the Baron Barthold, and had servants, I’d give them decent rooms, not way up in the attic, and with wardrobes, with bookshelves and bureaus and a table to write on. I had no idea my Martha was being treated like that.”

  “You will be the Baron Barthold,” Grammie pointed out.

  This dismayed Ari. “But I don’t want to be. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m like the rest of them, and I don’t want to live in that castle, with all those things in it. I don’t want to be rich or important. I don’t want any of it. You didn’t think I did, did you?”

  “No, of course not,” Max and Grammie assured him. “No, we never, we know you better than that.”

  Ari went on with his list of horrors. “It’s not just the castle. There are farms and herds of dairy cows and herds of sheep in the hills. There’s the ironworks and the Barthold Bank and the shipping line. The Baroness has to keep track of all the records of expenses and profits, taxes and wages, contracts, production figures, yields … You don’t know how much work it is.”

  Max was having an idea. He couldn’t speak it out loud, but he very badly wanted to. If he’d had some job of his own to be working on, he wouldn’t have had any trouble holding his tongue, but the desire to give Ari advice was clawing its way up into his throat, like a mountain climber approaching the summit, stubborn and determined. Max had to chew fast and swallow hard to block its progress.

  “It’s a lot of work being done by a lot of people, a lot of jobs and not just for the workers, for lawyers and accountants, too,” Ari told them. “And all for one old baroness.” Then his fork stopped halfway between his plate and his mouth, and his eyes lit up again with what Max recognized as hope. “All those records?” His words came faster. “The Baroness must keep account books for the castle, too. So maybe my Martha’s real name is in one of those books!” he cried.

  The mountain climber in Max’s throat loosened his grip and slid back down, out of danger. Oddly, even though it was what he wanted to happen, Max felt a little disappointed, too, as if, like that adventurer, he had lost a chance to stand at the top. He couldn’t even tell Ari that he’d had the same idea.

  That evening, instead of joining in for a game of hearts or a lazy conversation, Ari left as soon as the dishes were washed and put away. “If I do an extra hour of study tonight,” he explained, “then I can get to the castle tomorrow afternoon and start looking through the account books. What if I knew her real name?” he asked, to apologize for rushing off. “I never even knew her name, I never even asked. Can you imagine that? I knew it wasn’t Martha, but I didn’t even bother to ask what it was.” He shook his head slowly, and his cheeks grew red with embarrassment at remembering the kind of young man he had been. He looked at Grammie, at Max. “She deserved better than me.”

  Neither of them knew how to answer that, so they said nothing. They just wished him a good night’s study, a good night’s sleep, good luck with his researches.

  After Ari had left them, Grammie refilled their mugs and said to Max as she sat down again at the table, “I almost never see you alone these days.”

  Something about the way she said that alerted Max.

  “And I don’t want to make you talk about your personal business in front of Ari if you don’t bring it up yourself,” she went on. “But if your supply of coins is running low …?”

  “I’m fine,” Max mumbled. This wasn’t exactly true, but if he ate only bread and jam at home, what with his good dinners here, he could last through another week using Ari’s rent to buy food and leave him ten in his pocket for next week’s painting lesson. Grammie didn’t need to be worrying about him.

  “I don’t think you’ve had any new jobs come in,” Grammie went on.

  Max couldn’t deny that.

  “I have a job for you,” Grammie said then.

  “You do? You do?” This was not at all what Max had expected to hear.

  “It’s not a big job, or an important one, or … Well, it is what it is,” she said. “Now that I see I have your full attention,” she teased.

  A job was not a teasing matter. Max nodded, businesslike.

  “We have a little problem at the library, worth maybe seven—”

  “Fifteen?” Max suggested. Then, at the expression on her face, “Ten?”

  She nodded. “Agreed.”

  Max got right to work. “What’s the problem?”

  “Do you remember that children’s weekly magazine, The Toy Chest? When you were little, you’d make your mother bring you to the library early on Fridays and you’d spend hours poring over it. Even before you could read.”

  “It was all the pictures,” Max explained. “I still remember some of them. There was a hut in—”

  Grammie interrupted. “Our copies of The Toy Chest sometimes disappear. Not all of them, maybe only one every month, but … Magazines are periodicals. Periodicals have to stay in the library. I’ve never seen anyone trying to check one out, and neither has my assistant. So I thought of you. You’re the Solutioneer,” she reminded him. “The library can hire you to solve its problem.”

  Max had thought of a difficulty. “It won’t look bad that I’m your grandson and you’re hiring me?”

  “If my position doesn’t enable me to help out my grandson, what’s the point of having it?” Grammie asked right back. She must have already had the same doubts.

  “All right, but you know, if your grandson can’t charge you the going rate …”

  Grammie laughed, but she didn’t raise her offer. Max decided that if he had to choose between not working at all and earning less, he’d choose the latter. After all, less was more than nothing. “I’ll begin observation tomorrow.”

  Grammie had a request. “Can you be unrecognizable?”

  Early the next morning, a businessman hurried up the steps and through the wide doorway into the library. He wore a dark pin-striped suit and a tall hat. His shirt had a stiff white collar, and a gold watch chain crossed over a black brocade vest. His shoes shone with polishing and he strode across the foyer, crossing in front of the circulation desk before he took off his hat, so occupied with his own affairs that he had to be someone important, perhaps a banker, perhaps a company manager, in need of information. As he strode past, he didn’t even glance at the gray-haired librarian seated at the desk. She looked briefly up at him, then back down at the papers she was studying, then sharply up again, this time with a small smile.

  Max, in the suit his father had worn to play Banker Hermann in The Worldly Way and with a smaller pillow than the one he wore for Inspector Doddle, took a chair by one of the long windows of the reading room, where magazines were spread out on long tables and newspapers hung from racks. He chose the day’s copy of the London Times, which, it being a Friday, had a particularly thick financial section. He opened to news of recent patent applications, and waited.

  The reading room offered newspapers and magazines from all around the English-speaking world, with back issues neatly arranged on clearly labeled shelves. Grammie took pride in her reading room with its comfortable chairs and broad tables, its bright light, and the alcove where children could sit in smaller chairs at smaller tables to read the publications ordered especially for them, Saint Nicholas, The Toy Chest, The Youth’s Companion. Set out on a central table, where it could not be missed, was the framed announcement: PERIODICALS MAY NOT BE REMOVED FROM THE READING ROOM.

  All morning long, Max read articles about money and markets, about home decoration and social events, about conflicts—over territory, over beliefs, over new or old laws, even over education and medicine. It was surprising how much people found to fight about. There were even arguments about books and paintings. He read recipes for roasts and gardening recommendations. He read crime reports and the reports of governme
nt committees. It was sometimes discouraging to learn what was going on all around the world, and it was often dull. Only the sports news and the comic pages could be called amusing.

  While Max was reading, he also studied the people who came and went in the room. They tended to be men and to be looking for something specific, a particular newspaper, a particular magazine article. The few women who sat in the chairs, reading a fashion magazine or a society paper, were clearly filling in an empty hour before it was time for something else, an appointment, a coffee, a lunch, a store to open. Most women wore day dresses and small summer hats; they carried wide straw shopping baskets. One younger woman, who arrived just before lunchtime, wore a dull gray blouse and skirt, which hung around her thin body as if they had been intended for someone plumper, although her pale brown hair was neatly arranged and she seemed perfectly clean. She was carrying three magazines when Max noticed her take a chair at the big table. She sat studying them, one after the other, until the clock tower bell rang twelve, at which sound she rose and darted out of the room. She carried no shopping purse, wore a kerchief around her neck but no hat, and her shoes were clumsy, thick-soled laced boots. After she left, the library closed for lunch, which Max did not eat with Grammie.

  During the afternoon it was city clerks who came in, on business, and then boys and girls, with and without mothers, to find books to read, for school and for pleasure. Not until Max at last got out of his chair to leave the room for the day did he notice the odd assortment of magazines the gray girl had left on the table: The Well-Dressed Woman, a ladies’ fashion magazine filled with picture after picture of the newest styles of skirt and gown and hat, The Toy Chest, and a popular monthly that told the news in photographs, The Rotogravure.