“And went out of business.”
She led us back to the front parlor and the fire. “Yes, I suppose even he was behind the times. Too bad, in a way. There’s something to be said for what he stood for.” She waved her hand around. “At least we can thank him for all this. He never let it slide.”
“Did he keep any records, do you know? Guest registrations, maybe? Or was all that gone by the time you moved in?”
“Oh no. They’re still here. In fact, they’re almost like part of a museum-in the barn. I guess toward the end, this inn became kind of an obsession for Mr. Alvarez. He couldn’t afford to operate it anymore, but he had enough to pay for certain ‘items of upkeep,’ as his will put it. It’s like a trust fund. We thought it was very odd when we moved in, and Dick-that’s my husband-tried to get us out of it so we could gut the barn and turn it into a health club or something, but apparently we can’t do that. Basically, the barn doesn’t belong to us.”
She laughed and made a self-deprecating gesture. “You’ll have to forgive me. Finances and legal stuff make my head spin. I take care of the cooking, the decorating, and the guests. Dick does the books. Did you want to look at some of that junk?”
“Could we?” I asked, this time far more enthusiastically.
“Oh, absolutely. It’s all in a closed-off storage area. There’s a lot of it, though, and it’s a real mess. The lawyers managing the Alvarez estate didn’t say we had to maintain it-just house it in perpetuity.”
We returned to the front hall, where she handed me my coat and donned one herself before leading me through the rest of the building and out the rear kitchen door.
Willy was still standing outside, but just barely, his toes on the threshold of the barn’s large double doors, which were open just wide enough to allow a single person to slip through. He stepped aside as we joined him, and nodded toward the inside, looking at Donna Robin. “Nice barn.”
She gave a startled glance, as if hoping she’d been invisible, said, “Thanks” barely audibly, and disappeared into the gloom beyond.
Willy shook his head and followed her.
There were windows high above us, so the barn’s interior wasn’t pitch-black, but given the glare outside, it still took us a few moments to adjust, during which Mrs. Robin found the switch to a row of overhead lights.
I saw what Willy had been complimenting. The barn consisted of a wide central feed passage built of broad old planks, lined on either side with rows of horse stalls, all lovingly appointed with brass and wrought iron fixtures. Above us, the roof arched a good thirty feet overhead, with the hay loft tucked along the edges like a deep balcony. The whole place was spotless, obviously not used for its intended purpose, and yet still pungent with the lingering odors of leather, manure, and dry hay. I walked down the length of the floor, admiring the extent of the restoration.
“Mr. Alvarez?” I asked when I reached the far end, encompassing it all with a sweep of my hand.
Donna Robin laughed despite Willy’s proximity. “Once again. He had horses for sleigh rides and hay wagon excursions, but you’d hardly know, it looks so nice.”
“And your husband wanted to convert this?”
She looked slightly embarrassed. “I know. It does seem a shame. But we couldn’t do anything with horses, what with the expense and all, and the space was being wasted otherwise… Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway.”
“The barn’s got a usage restriction on it,” I explained to Willy, “maintained by the old Spaniard’s estate-name was Federico Alvarez.”
He furrowed his brow. “Why? I thought he was dead.”
“He was pretty eccentric,” Mrs. Robin said quietly, walking quickly toward me. “What you want to see is back here.”
She went to a door on the far wall, worked its lock with a key she’d pulled from her pocket, and opened it with some effort.
What faced us resembled the old attic straight out of Little Women-a helter-skelter piling of ancient furniture, dress forms, trunks, moth-eaten stuffed animals, and a few turn-of-the-century kitchen and laundry appliances.
“Jesus Christ,” Willy said.
Donna Robin didn’t take offense. “I know. I’m sorry it’s such a mess. We were never told to do anything with it-just to make sure it stayed put. I did poke around a little when we first moved in. I thought maybe I could bend the rules and bring some of the nicer items into the house. But there really wasn’t anything to work with. It’s old, but it’s also all pretty ordinary.”
She stayed by the door as Willy and I ventured forward, picking our way gingerly through a few narrow, haphazard aisles.
“It seems so strange,” she added, “given the rest of the place is so immaculate. I always wondered why he put such value on this.”
I couldn’t argue with her. It was strange.
“But the records we discussed,” I began. “The registration books…?”
“Oh, they’re here,” she said quickly, adding vaguely, “although I’m not so sure where anymore. They might be in a trunk or suitcase or something. I remember opening a lid or a top and just seeing them there-leather books with ‘Register’ printed in gold on them.”
I could tell she was getting restless, lingering by the opening, her hand still on the latch.
“This is going to take some doing,” Willy said.
I couldn’t disagree. We would need time and more people to even make a dent.
“Okay, Mrs. Robin, I guess we’ll take it from here. We’ll try to be as fast and discreet as we can, but I’m going to have to bring in some help. I hope that’s okay. I’ll make sure there are no police cars.”
She hesitated a moment. “I don’t suppose I could ask what this is all about, in case the guests ask.”
Willy ended as he’d begun. “You got that right,” he said, and sent her on her way.
I found the registers two hours later, not in a trunk or suitcase but in a wooden box labeled “Toys.” There were six of them, one for each year, starting in 1944.
“Eureka,” I said tiredly, holding one of them over my head for the others to see, cold and bored enough by now to barely feel elated.
I was not alone in that. Tom Shanklin and Sammie, who made up our reinforcements, were as covered with dust and cobwebs as Willy and I and made their way to my side like miners at the end of a shift.
I handed them each a book and kept the remaining three for myself. “Let’s see if we can muscle our way into Mrs. Robin’s good graces for some coffee and a warm spot to read this stuff.”
I led the way across to the bed-and-breakfast, making sure Willy brought up the rear, knocked on the kitchen door, and entered. Donna Robin was standing at the sink, running water into a plastic bucket. While the others huddled on the porch waiting, I made my pitch and was granted access to the large wooden table by the stove, complete with coffee all around.
For the next hour, we combed through the old leather books, page by page, often pausing to confer about the nearly illegible handwriting. We were further slowed down by the need to go beyond merely looking for Deschamps’s name and search for anything that might seem unusual.
Tom Shanklin, however, hit exactly what we were after. “Jean Deschamps,” he said quietly. “January sixteenth, 1947. One night only.” He shoved the book over to me. “There’s a note next to it-different handwriting. I can’t make it out.”
I looked at it, Sammie leaving her chair to bend over my shoulder. “It’s not English,” she commented.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Willy got up abruptly and crossed over to the oversized steel fridge, yanking open its door. Mrs. Robin had long since left us.
“Spanish,” I said. “At least I think it is. Close the door, Willy. Who knows what ‘efectos personales en maleta en guardarropa’ means?”