Malice (12 page)

And so we survived the Drowner, and Perdita was still standing. No-one knew if the Drowner had claimed any lives—but only Curly had been rescued, found clinging to a buoy halfway out of the bay. He'd have a lot of questions to answer with the police once he was discharged from hospital. His wife, Rose, did not wait for his full recovery to pack her bags and leave. She came for a visit before she left.

‘This is a beautiful old house,' Rose said, ‘it's wonderful to see it full of life again.' She sighed, then went on, ‘A month ago, I overheard my husband talking on the phone and he mentioned your name, and about how the Drowner would lead to Captain Greenlowe's treasure. I wanted to let you know what was going on here but I was afraid of Curly and his new friends. I knew you were in danger. I found your address in his papers and scribbled the note on the old clipping of the last Drowner. I'm sorry, I hoped the clue would be enough.'

I took her hand and squeezed it, ‘Thanks, Rose,' I said. ‘I know you were only trying to help.' My mind was finally at ease now that the countdown had ended.

In the following days, there were more surprises to come. The jigsaw that Repro had so expertly put together revealed another of Perdita's secrets. The puzzle was actually an enlargement of an old photograph of the house in its earlier glory. The building in the middle of the grove looked like some kind of elaborate marble construction, topped with a figure and a plaque. Could it be a grave?

Boges took a photo of the finished puzzle. He enlarged the image on the camera's screen, until we could just make out one of the words …
Perdita.

Harriet gasped. ‘So she didn't run away. The dark version of the story must be true. She's still here.'

A shiver of horror ran through me. I felt sad for what had happened back then, but also strangely relieved that the mystery was finally solved.

The very next day, Harriet spotted the sepia portrait of Perdita in my bedroom. ‘Why have you got a picture of my great grandmother on your wall?' she asked.

‘Your great grandmother? No, that's Perdita Greenlowe, Captain Greenlowe's lost daughter.'

‘But I have exactly the same portrait upstairs in my bedroom. Right down to the pearl earrings.'

When Harriet brought over the portrait of her great grandmother, Blanche Abercrombie, and we placed it next to the photograph of Perdita Greenlowe, we could both see …
it was the same young woman!
Harriet and I looked at each other. ‘Look, I brought this, too. I found it just the other day as I was packing up the house.'

Harriet showed me an old wooden jewellery box, containing a brooch and a hair slide, and also a piece of parchment.

When I opened it up, my eyes went wide. ‘Harriet, you're not going to believe this,' I said, ‘but I think this is the title deed transfer showing Perdita Blanche Abercrombie left the Perdita house to her daughter—my grandmother, Ruby!'

‘So if Perdita Greenlowe and Blanche Abercrombie
are
the same person—' I started to say before Harriet threw her arms around me.

‘They
are!
They are! It means we're related. It means we both have family after all—each other!'

Tears sprang to my eyes. ‘So Daniel Abercrombie and Perdita Greenlowe did run away with each other. She must have started to use her middle name, Blanche. They married and had children!'

‘And here we are,' said Harriet, ‘a couple of
generations later. Winter, you don't know what it means to me.'

‘Oh, I do, I do!' I said, hugging her tight.

Cal and Boges stood smiling at us. I burst out laughing and crying all at once.

‘I don't want to interrupt your family reunion,' said Boges with a grin, ‘but this raises a very big question.' I suddenly understood what he meant. ‘Who on earth is buried in the grove?'

Before I could say anything, Ryan burst back inside yelling. ‘Hey, guys! One of those huge cypress trees was uprooted by the cyclone. It's made a clearing almost right to the middle. We can get through now and see the grave!'

The tree had cut a swathe through the tangle of the undergrowth and fallen across the once-white marble tomb, opening a wide crack across the top.

‘Let's take a look inside the tomb. There might be a nameplate on the coffin,' I said. ‘Maybe it's Captain Greenlowe who's buried here. Who's up for having a look inside?'

‘I am,' said Cal stepping forward.

‘No, let me,' said Ryan. Then we all pushed forward to peer through the crack.

‘Huh? There's no coffin!' Harriet cried. ‘I knew it!'

Instead of a coffin there was a small, brick-lined room.

‘Maybe he dug out a family vault?' I wondered. ‘Help me move this marble slab.' We pushed the smaller half of the cracked marble lid out of the way, and looked more closely at the small chamber. As we watched, one of the bricks moved. Then it fell out. A trickle of water started behind it as more and more bricks crumbled. The falling tree had done more than just break the lid of the marble tomb, it had undermined the retaining wall of the underground room. Now the banked-up water was pouring out, but instead of filling the room, the water was disappearing like an underground river.

‘That must be stormwater,' Boges said. ‘The grove must act as a huge drain.'

‘I hate to think of all that water just going to waste,' said Harriet sadly.

‘I don't get it, what's the point of this underground room?' Cal asked.

‘It would have been a perfect place to hide a smuggler's booty,' I said. ‘Who'd look under a tomb?'

‘But he already had the cellar at the end of the secret passageway to hide goods in. This is weird.'

‘Well, he went to a lot of trouble to hide it,' I said.

‘And we know Perdita Greenlowe wasn't buried here in 1926,' said Harriet, ‘because she married my great grandfather, Daniel Abercrombie.'

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when we drove Harriet back to her house later that day. ‘What's that noise?' I asked.

‘That sounds like water,' said Harriet. ‘The culvert under the road must be overflowing.'

Boges stopped the truck and we climbed out. An amazing sight met our eyes. Close to Abercrombie House, where the dried-out gully had been, a gushing river now flowed past the house, carrying swirling branches and leaves along with it as it raced past the fence line, towards the cliff.

Harriet stared in disbelief. ‘The river! It's started to run again!'

My mind jumped, linking two events—the sudden flood under the fake tomb and the restored watercourse. Captain Greenlowe's curse on Abercrombie House suddenly made sense to me!

‘Harriet! That's what the room under the tomb was for! Captain Greenlowe deliberately bricked up the watercourse so that it couldn't flow to Abercrombie House!'

Harriet blinked. ‘That's why our river dried up?'

‘Yes,' I said, nodding vigorously.

‘He must have done that right after Perdita ran away with Daniel Abercrombie,' Ryan said, ‘to destroy the Abercrombie family's property and punish the man who'd won his daughter's heart.'

‘But the river is running again. His curse is broken!' Harriet broke into a crazy dance. ‘I don't have to sell the farm!'

I felt Cal slip an arm around my waist. ‘After all these years, you two have brought the families together again.'

Finally, I had not only my friends but family too, my very own estate and nothing more to fear. Although I couldn't help but wonder if Oriana de la Force and Dragan might have survived the Drowner and been washed ashore somewhere. I forced myself to put her out of my mind once and for all.

It took a while to tell Cal everything that
had happened and at first he was really angry with me for not having kept him in the loop. ‘You
promised
,' he said.

‘Cal, sometimes promises have to be broken. You needed to be at flight school, and we needed to figure out the mysteries here. Please try to understand.'

Eventually he calmed down. ‘OK, OK,' he said, ‘you're forgiven.' Then he grinned. ‘You guys did do a pretty fantastic job. Between us, I think we could just about take on the world!'

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Text copyright © Gabrielle Lord, 2012.
Cover design and internal graphics by Nicole Stofberg.
Cover copyright © Scholastic Australia, 2012
Cover logo designed by Natalie Winter.

Cover photography: boy and girl by Nicholas Verso and Bill Bachman © 2011 Circa Media and Movie Network Channels; path along cliff © istockphoto.com/Isaac Koval; storm approaching © istockphoto.com/Brian Pamphilon; storm surf © istockphoto.com/Andreas Arnold; wave © istockphoto.com/Tolga Tezcan; house on cliff © istockphoto.com/Greg Bethmann.

Internal photography and illustration: newspaper clipping background on page 173 © istockphoto.com/spxChrome; title deed background on page 143 © istockphoto.com/Valerie Loiseleux; large crack in tomb in epilogue © istockphoto.com/Dan Eckert.

This electronic edition published by Scholastic Australia Pty Limited in 2012.
E-PUB/MOBI eISBN 978 192198 973 5

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