“What was the book about?” asked Jack, sitting down on an overturned wooden box. He was really getting into the swing of the story. After all, who could resist another ghost story? Not Jack Jack, that’s for sure!
“It was one that I wrote,” laughed Malone. “About French River. And it so happened to be opened to the page that mentioned Arrowhead beach. I don’t know why, but I got this sudden urge to head down there. There was no logic, and I did not stop to reason out the whys. I just got my coat and left. Even to this day I have no idea why I did it.”
“I’d call it destiny!” said Hannah. “With a capital D!”
“Destiny or not, it’s just luck that I’ve gotten this far,” continued Malone. “The only reason why things started to make sense was because of that journal in the shipwreck. Never in my wildest imagination did I think that I would ever find that journal. But sometimes life just throws a giant curve towards you.”
“What’s this about a journal?” asked Lucy. Looking around the lighthouse, Lucy could not find any more boxes to sit on. Sauntering over to Jack, she reached out and gave him a nice shove. Then she sat down in his place as if nothing had happened, daintily crossing her legs as she waited for Malone to continue.
“The journal is part of a long story, and I think I better start at the beginning,” said Malone, leaning his sledgehammer against the stair rails. He came over to where Lucy was sitting and crouched down next to her. The others followed suit and waited for him to continue. Jack warily eyed Lucy and decided to station himself next to Hannah, hoping that was a safer bet.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE INHERITANCE
“The story of my life actually started a long time before I was ever born. Sounds funny but that’s the truth. It’s about an inheritance that was lost many years ago. A beautiful woman was in the lead role. Her name was Sarah Mackenzie but everyone knew her as Lady Dorchester.”
“Wow,” gushed Emily. “A real-life lady! Almost a queen!”
“Not quite, but anyhow,” laughed Malone. “She lived in Scotland in the early 1800s in a great big castle with her father, the Earl of Loch Moreland. Sarah was an only child, her mother having died young after an outbreak of influenza when Sarah was a mere child. Since the death of his wife the Earl raised his daughter by himself. He spoiled her with love and wealth and he thought she would stay with him always. However, Sarah had other plans.
“When Sarah was a very beautiful girl of 16, William Lyon moved into the nearby village of Loch Moreland. He was a poor noble who had lost his lands and his money in the violent clan wars that continued to plague Scotland for so long. When he saw Sarah, he knew he had to marry her. Whether he was after her money or her love, I never found out, but their engagement infuriated Sarah’s father, the Earl. He believed that William only wanted the Earl’s estate and did not trust him. He forbade Sarah from marrying William but she was a headstrong girl, very much like her father.
“Sarah was torn. With many misgivings, she disobeyed her father and eloped with William, secretly marrying him. The Earl was devastated when he heard the news, and he refused to speak to her after that. He gave her a small amount of money to live on, but cut off all ties with his only daughter. Not long after the marriage, Sarah discovered she was pregnant. But disaster came in the form of famine and plague, and William died four months after the marriage. Believing her father would never take her back, Sarah fled Scotland with some friends, escaping the famine and disease by boarding a ship for Canada.
“I could not find much information on Sarah’s life in Canada but I was able to find some records of her sailing into Halifax, and then moving to PEI a couple of years later with her baby daughter. The next record I found was about her grandson Malcolm, who is my great-grandfather. Here is the story I grew up with, and what made me who I am today!
“Throughout his years growing up with his grandmother Sarah, Malcolm heard stories of a beautiful castle in far away Scotland. Grandma Sarah said that the castle really belonged to her and Malcolm. The people living in it right now were only distant cousins and had no right to own it. Sarah was the real heir now that her father was dead. She had proof: her birth certificate and marriage papers. Sarah insisted that when Malcolm was old enough he should sail back to Scotland and try to reclaim Loch Moreland.
“Malcolm was in his 40s when he finally left for Scotland. Sarah, or Lady Dorchester, had died the winter before, and left Malcolm some money, stipulating that he could only use it for Scotland. Afraid of being robbed on the ship, (Sarah had filled his head with many stories of pirates on the high seas), Malcolm decided not to bring the important papers with him to Scotland. Instead, he hid them somewhere here on the island. If all went well and he was accepted as the rightful heir, Malcolm would sail home and fetch those papers out of their hiding spot.
“The Scotland trip was successful, a distant cousin, unable to deny the family resemblance to portraits hanging at Loch Moreland, was willing to step down in return for a promise of a large payment of money. Malcolm booked passage on the next available ship home to get those papers.”
“What about the journal?” interrupted Emily. “I’m guessing that it was his ship that went down.”
“I’m just getting to that,” growled Malone. “My great-grandfather Malcolm was an avid journal writer. I found several volumes of his journals in an old trunk after my mother died. But I was missing the last one. Of course, it was the one that went down with the ship. I think when Malcolm realized the ship was going down, he knew he had to protect his most prized possession … the journal. With any luck, he thought the ship might wash up on some reefs and never even go down.”
“What did he do?” asked Jack. He was nudging Lucy with his elbow, trying to regain his rightful spot on the box. Brave boy. Lucy slapped his head. So much for that.
Malone continued. “Malcolm knew ships usually have secret water-tight compartments and the one he was on was no exception. He hoped his journal would eventually be found.”
Hannah frowned. “But the ship went down not far from shore in 1851. Its remains finally got pulled in to shore this spring. And then you found the journal, hidden in the wreck. What are the odds that would ever happen? Talk about luck.”
“Luck requires lots of hard work, young lady,” Malone grumped. “I had an inkling about the journal’s existence. I made it my life’s work to find it. Some people call it an obsession. But I never gave up. I think I’ve visited every ship wreck ever to wash ashore in PEI, dived down and explored even more, and got permission to examine thousands of artifacts. But I never really thought I would ever succeed. It just goes to show you that sometimes in life you need some dumb luck.”
“But why did it take you so long to figure out that the papers were hidden in North Rustico? You found the journal in April. It’s now almost August! The journal must have had all the answers.” asked Jack.
Malone scratched his head. “That’s the thing. It didn’t. It was only one more piece of the puzzle. Before he left Scotland for home, Malcolm wrote a letter to his daughter Hilda, telling her of his successful claim. I now have that letter, thanks to Simpson. In the letter he hinted that his ‘journal held an important name, one that would make them rich.’ The owner of this name lay hidden in Yankee Hill Cemetery. And that was it.”
“Silas Malone,” said Lucy.
“Yup, one and the same,” agreed Malone.
“And is this the same Hilda that Mr. Simpson was talking about at dinner?” asked Emily. “The miserable woman who he said was waiting for her prince charming? She had a box filled with letters, and those are what Mr. Simpson gave you, right? He said they made you very happy.”
“Yeah, Hilda became quite a character in her old age and developed a none-too-savoury reputation,” replied Malone. “Unfulfilled dreams made her very miserable. Much to everyone’s surprise, all her mumblings about her belonging to an aristocratic family were dead on. She spent her life waiting for proof of her claim to be supporte
d. But to continue with my story...
“Malcolm wanted Hilda to try and decipher this riddle when he got home. They were always playing around at pretend treasure hunts when Hilda was growing up. But without the journal, Hilda had no name to look for, right? So the treasure hunt came to a sudden end.”
Sighing, Malone admitted his defeat. “And I never realized the significance of the journal until I had that letter in which he explained what the name was all about. Isn’t it ironic that both poor Hilda and I were missing an important part of Malcolm’s puzzle?”
“I don’t get it!” Emily was getting really frustrated. “Why would he do something like that? Why didn’t he just tell Hilda straight out where everything was? Instead, he made this whole thing so complicated!”
“I forgot to mention that Malcolm was a bit eccentric,” laughed Malone. “My great-grandfather loved riddles, puzzles, mysteries and treasure hunts. Don’t forget, he grew up during the heyday of pirate tales, buccaneers, treasure and adventure. Before he sailed for Scotland, he worked out a real treasure hunt of his own, with his inheritance as the prize. The day before he left he buried a locket at an old cemetery. It was his final clue for Hilda.”
“In Yankee Hill Cemetery,” clapped Jack. “And he buried it under the headstone of Silas Malone. That’s where he put the map directions, longitude and latitude numbers that we found. In the locket.”
Malone took the locket out of his coat pocket and handed it to Jack. Inside was a painting of a beautiful woman and a gentleman on the other. “That’s Lady Dorchester and her husband William,” whispered Malone, as he stared down at the locket. “Malcolm inherited that from Lady Dorchester, or Sarah. I was startled by that darned owl when I opened up the locket. I guess the scrap of paper with those numbers fell out at that moment and I never noticed it.
“Emily told me it had numbers written on it, in Malcolm’s handwriting. I didn’t know what those numbers meant at first. But when Emily said that her sister figured they were map directions, I realized those numbers zeroed in on this lighthouse. Did you know that Hilda actually operated this lighthouse until 1965, inheriting the position from Malcolm? When the lighthouse became automated, she moved to French River. Imagine! Great-grandfather Malcolm hid those papers here, right under Hilda’s nose. And she died without ever knowing about it.”
“So poor Hilda knew of the inheritance, but could never prove it because she couldn’t figure out the clues her father left her,” finished Hannah. “She didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle.”
“And that’s why she was always grumpy,” added Emily.
Malone nodded in agreement. “I guess I was a bit grumpy too. I was so close to solving Malcolm’s puzzle, but I hit a dead end. I saw the name of Silas in the journal, but I didn’t know why it was important until I got that letter from Simpson.
“But what makes you think you can inherit the estate after all these years?” asked Hannah. “There still must be cousins and half-cousins and quarter-cousins that will fight you for it.”
“I’ve been following all news that has anything to do with the ownership of the estate. Remember, I’m an historian. It’s my business to keep track of things like this, especially when they are in my interest. A few years ago the last relative living in Castle Loch Moreland died without leaving an heir. Right away I filed my claim. My case has been in the courts since then. And now I have the proof! Thanks to Emily”
All eyes turned to Emily.
“I found the papers,” she said, proudly puffing out her chest. “The wallpaper in the kitchen just behind the old stove was peeling and you know me and paper. I love tearing things apart. So when I saw the paper here, I just grabbed and pulled. Underneath was a small door. Mr. Malone pried it off and voila! The papers were inside. I screamed when I saw them – they were covered in cobwebs! Yuck!”
“So you weren’t screaming because you were being kidnapped?” asked Lucy.
“Get real!” Emily waved off that suggestion. “That only happens on TV.”
“By the way, we asked you this already, but are you related in any way to the Silas Malone we found in Yankee Hill cemetery?” asked Jack.
“No, ummm, actually….” Malone stuttered and then cleared his throat. “In a way I guess I pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. My name’s not Malone but Mackenzie. Didn’t want to use my real name, in case of complications, or things….”
The super sleuths exchanged surprised looks.
“So the Malone in the cemetery was just a plain old coincidence?” asked Emily.
“Well, in a way,” replied Bill Mackenzie. “I knew about Yankee Hill from a long while back and that tombstone always bothered me from the first time I found it. You know, the way it was positioned. Way back in 1978, when I was researching some of PEI’s more obscure graveyards, I uncovered it and made a note of the name. Just one of those trivial facts I keep remembering. I used his name as my cover.”
“So if you can prove your claim now that you have the papers, you will become the new Lord of Loch Moreland,” reasoned Hannah. “Wow. We’ll know someone of royal blood. Cool!”
“And you’ll be rich too,” said Jack. “And can afford to give us a nice reward for helping you find the final clues.”
Mackenzie laughed. “I’m not sure about the money. A lot of it has gone towards taxes and maintaining the castle. You know, it’s expensive to keep it from falling apart. I might end up quite poor. But at least the estate is now back where it belongs; with a direct descendant of Lady Dorchester. Me! And if any of you kids decide to fly over to Scotland, I’ll let you hang out at the castle for free!”
Suddenly Emily jumped to her feet and loudly proclaimed “I’m hungry!”
“What else is new?” muttered her sister. “I guess we should be heading back. Mom and Dad will be worried sick –”
“Not to mention KILL US!” And with that said Emily dragged her sister and friends to the pickup, impatiently tapping her tiny foot and urging the others into quicker, Emily-like action. “What are you waiting for … summer to end?”
Hannah laughed. Summer was still stretching ahead of them, and with the mystery solved, a well-earned break was not such a bad idea after all, she thought. Nodding to the others, the kids filed into Mackenzie’s pickup and headed home. Tomorrow’s forecast was promising mega waves!
Acknowledgements
Many thanks go out to everyone. First and foremost, to my daughters Kira and Emmalyn, who were the inspirations for Mosquitoes of Summer. Their zany antics, as well as those of my husband Daniel, and parrot Mr. Bean, had to be immortalized in print. I’ve been told that memory tends to go after the age of 40, so I had no choice but to write it all down. Little did they suspect that their escapades would become publicized. Their equally quirky friend, Jenevra Wetmore, along with her wonderful parents Tom and Heidi, and sister Ada, make up the crucial Vermont element in the novel. Thank you for deciding to talk to us on the beach. To my parents, Zoltan and Margit, for always believing in me and desperately waiting for that first book. Thank you also to my sister Catherine, brother-in-law Patrick, and niece and nephew Andrea and Max. Thank you to Stephanie Cur for being the first to read the initial chapters when I was still doubtful. Your positive reaction meant full-speed ahead. And finally a thank you to my colleagues at LTM High School: Kim White, who took my supermodel photo for the back cover, and Alison Hurst, a no-nonsense proofreader (back cover). Because of your enthusiastic input, your names have now been immortalized in print!
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