by Tamara Berry
“The devil you could.”
I snuggle closer and allow myself the luxury of his embrace. Birdie had been right about a lot of things—too many for my comfort, if the truth be told—but this was one thing she got wrong. On the train, she told me that women of our profession are better off living and working alone, relying on no one but ourselves. And in a way, it’s true. In order to become a real success, I’d have to be an island, a rock, a tower of strength capable of standing for centuries despite the battering of the seas.
But that’s not what I want. I’m no Sid Stewart, it’s true, but I’m no Birdie White, either.
I’m Eleanor Wilde, and that’s good enough for me.
* * *
“But I don’t understand.” Sid hovers over me, her expression one of mingled anxiety and awe. “How could you be sure that Jaime wouldn’t die when you pushed him into the ocean?”
“I didn’t push him,” I protest. Now that I’m wrapped up like a mummy and reclining on the couch in—where else?—the gilded salon, I’m feeling much warmer. And much better able to defend myself. “I gave him a small nudge, and I made sure to ask if he could swim first.”
It’s obvious from her look of anxiety that she doesn’t find this comforting.
“Yes, but where did you want him to go? Back to the island? To Barra? What on earth were you thinking?”
As if in response, the small, purring bundle on my lap shifts. I manage to get a hand out from under my blankets and settle Freddie back to sleepy contentment. She hasn’t left my side since Nicholas brought me in here and laid me down, her body heat doing wonders to warm me up, both inside and out.
My pet, my familiar, my connection to the other realm.
With an inward sigh, I realize what I have to do. Commanding Birdie and Winnie to silence—and willing Nicholas to stop laughing at me from across the room—I place my hand to my temple and do what I do best.
“I had a vision, a presentiment. In a flash, I saw what I had to do to bring Harvey Renault to justice. I knew Jaime would be safe as long as my protective cloak was over him.”
“Ohhh,” Sid says, falling to the nearest chair in relief. “I understand. It was a magic thing.”
Sure. Why not? Stranger things have happened this day.
“So Birdie and Harvey were working together all along?” Sid asks. “They killed Father and faked Harvey’s death and tried to make us give up the secret of the gold’s location?”
She looks a lot like I feel: exhausted. Soon after the rest of us took shelter inside the castle, Otis was able to use the radio on Harvey’s boat to get a mayday call out. McGee is on his way with a fleet of strong men, but it’ll take them a few hours to get here. Jaime was bundled off to bed and put under the strict guard of Dr. Fulstead, but I don’t have any such luck. I’m facing what amounts to a firing squad. Everyone is on edge and full of questions.
“I don’t think Birdie was in on your father’s death,” I explain. “Once she realized how far Harvey had taken things, she started to have second thoughts. It was why she was working so hard to feed me information—to force the truth to light as well as find the gold.”
“As if we have any idea where it is,” Ashley says. He’s sitting with one leg crossed elegantly over the other, the slight damp of his hair the only indication that he’s exerted any effort today. “We wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble in the first place if we had.”
Elspeth and Otis share a look that doesn’t escape my notice.
“About the gold,” I say.
Their look transfers itself to me.
“It’s gone.”
As I expect, this news is greeted in an outburst of emotion. Ashley and Sid are outraged, Nicholas curious, and Otis downright perplexed. Only Elspeth regards me with anything approaching understanding.
Holding up my hand, I command the room to silence. “Birdie took it. She found it the first night she was here.”
I beg your pardon?
“It was in the wine cellar all along,” I say. “It was the first place she looked—she was pretending to get a bottle of port at the time. She left that one coin in the box so you’d think she was still looking for it. That gave her time to make arrangements for its transportation without anyone being the wiser. She double-crossed Harvey. She never had any intention of sharing it with him.”
That is a bald-faced lie and you know it.
“By now, it’s long gone.” I sigh as though I, too, feel the pain of such a loss. “I can only imagine that’s why she died the way she did. Harvey was the one who snuck into the castle and poisoned her, of course, but we all know who was really responsible.”
“Gloriana.” Sid and Ashley breathe the name as one.
Take it back, Madame Eleanor. Take it back right now.
“The moment she smuggled those coins off this island, she transferred the curse to herself. In a way, that makes her your savior. She freed you. You’ll never have to worry about the gold or about Gloriana again.”
The only sounds I get from Birdie this time are angry splutters. Which is interesting for a lot of reasons, not the least of which that I didn’t realize ghosts could splutter.
“ ‘Peace, peace! He hath awakened from the dream of life,’ ” Ashley says in a spurt of poetic fervor. Sid isn’t too far behind him, murmuring something about how she always knew she could count on me to save her.
“Technically, it was Birdie who did the saving,” I point out, but to no avail. Sid has already rushed to my side and pulled me to her bosom in a grateful and crushing hug. Now that I know she’s not conspiring to murder us all in the name of the gold, I recognize it as the newfound strength of hers that it has been all along.
The idea is reinforced when she professes a wish to check on Ferguson and Jaime, eschewing the company of both Nicholas and Otis up the stairs. She opts instead for her brother, the pair of them walking tall and straight out of the room, their auburn heads together as they discuss a future free of Gloriana and all her burdens.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to enlighten us as to how Birdie arranged to remove those coins without anyone on the island knowing about it,” Otis says the moment the pair disappears from view.
“How would I know?” is my easy rejoinder. “Apparently Harvey came and went all the time without anyone being the wiser. I think he used the small inlet near the twins’ cavern. A resourceful medium could do the same.”
Otis shifts so that his good eye is facing me, and then he stares with it. Hard. “You know very well that Birdie never found the real gold.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind,” I say, meeting his stare without a qualm. There’s no doubt in my mind that Otis knows the gold is in this room. Elspeth admitted as much right before I went dashing into the ocean, and he admitted as much right now. This whole time, he was only trying to protect his cousins.
In fact, he’s still doing it right now.
“I’m just a medium,” I say, perfectly innocent. “A conduit. I can only relay what I hear.”
“She must have had Harvey plant that coin in the wine cellar weeks ago for the sake of their ruse,” Otis says. “It was a fake.”
“You think? How interesting.”
“You can’t play the fool with me. I used to carry similar ones myself, but small boys and rude passengers kept stealing them, so I had to replace them with cheap plastic ones.” He takes one looming step closer. “That’s why you were hit over the head on my boat, you know. So Birdie could take it from you without casting suspicion on herself. She couldn’t risk either me or you inspecting the coin too closely and realizing what she was up to.”
“You seem to have a lot of confidence in my intelligence all of a sudden.”
Otis wavers between exploding in a rage and laughing. I sit quietly and pet my kitten, waiting to see which way he ends up leaning.
It’s the latter.
“I can’t decide if I like you or loathe you,” he says between deep, cracking laugh
s.
In the background, Nicholas coughs gently. “That’s part of her charm, I’m afraid. I often feel the same.”
It’s Elspeth’s turn to speak now, which she does kindly and with the maternal air she’s been wearing ever since I returned to Airgead Island with her beloved grandson intact.
“It’s much better for everyone this way,” she says as she tucks the blankets more firmly around my body. She glances up at the paintings adorning the walls, and I have the satisfaction of watching as Nicholas realizes what the rest of us already know.
“It’s here,” he says, releasing a soundless whistle. “It’s been here all along.”
Elspeth nods. “Glenn had the frames made up after his wife died. The kids were such wee things when it happened; he didn’t want them to suffer any more than they had to. This way, the gold will always stay on the island where it belongs.”
“With you as its keeper?” I suggest, accepting her ministrations with gratitude. It’s nice to be fussed over sometimes.
She lifts her head in an assent. “Until my time is through and another is called to my place.”
This seems like an awfully boring fate for the next person hired to tend to the castle, but I don’t remark on it. Hopefully, Elspeth occasionally takes one of the many treasures lying around here to line her own pockets. God knows she’s earned it.
“What Sid and Ashley don’t know won’t hurt them,” Otis adds in a soft voice that matches the one he uses with his cousin. “And since you’ve seen fit to eradicate the curse on their behalf, they’ll never be troubled by it again.”
As if to disprove this optimistic assertion, a crack of thunder sounds in the distance. It has the effect of causing Elspeth to jump, but the rest of us are perfectly at ease.
At least, we are until the lights flicker, sputter, and turn themselves back on.
The brilliance of a gilded room with candles burning and the overhead chandelier glittering with electricity is almost too much. I’m blinded by so much luminous, bedazzled décor, but Nicholas only laughs.
“This is the last time I let you talk me out of an island paradise,” he says. “Next time, we’re going to Malta and scuba diving like normal people.”
The idea of purposefully going into the ocean—even a warm one—causes me to shudder so much it dislodges Freddie from my lap. “Don’t even joke about that. The next time you send me anywhere, it had better be landlocked, or I’m staying home.”
You know, there is a Tudor home in Shropshire that Birdie’s been telling me about, Winnie says. She really does know all the haunted hot spots around here. It might be worth a visit.
“Winnie, no,” I moan.
Her laugh is light and musical and accompanied by Birdie’s low chuckle. Otis and Elspeth look at me as though I’m a few pancakes short of a stack, but Nicholas only heaves a resigned sigh.
“Don’t worry,” I say with a reassuring smile. “I’m sure Birdie will leave just as soon as we lay her body to rest.”
Don’t count on it, dear Ella, comes the easy reply. As it turns out, our work has only just begun.
Can’t get enough of Ellie and her friends,
Both earthly and not?
Be sure to watch for more installments of
The Eleanor Wilde Mystery series
And don’t miss
SÉANCES ARE FOR SUCKERS
And
POTIONS ARE FOR PUSHOVERS
Available now from
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