The Pirate's Coin

by Marianne Malone

  “Yes?” he said in a dry, quiet voice.

  “We’re looking for Isabelle St. Pierre,” Ruthie said.

  “This way,” the man said. He turned and walked into the house. Ruthie and Jack looked at each other, not at all sure what to expect next, and followed him in.

  The place was quiet, airless and even larger than it appeared from the outside. The man—who they figured was a butler—walked them across the marble floor and through a doorway bracketed by fluted columns, into a large room.

  “Have a seat,” he said. Giving the slightest suggestion of a bow, he shuffled off.

  “It’s like being in one of the rooms,” Ruthie whispered. They sat on a gold silk sofa near the huge fireplace. Over the mantel hung a full-sized portrait of a young woman in a blue satin ball gown. Two crystal chandeliers hung from the high ceiling and velvet curtains framed the windows. Ruthie and Jack could hear each other breathing.

  Ruthie jumped when a clock chimed from somewhere in the house. After some time they heard the sound of footsteps in the hall.

  The butler reappeared and stood to the side as a woman entered the room. She seemed to be even older than the butler and had beautiful silver hair swept into a high bun. Her eyes were clear and although she walked with a cane her posture was excellent. A large jewel-encrusted brooch at her shoulder sparkled in the light from the chandeliers. Somehow they both knew to stand when she came in the room. She spoke first.

  “So, you are looking for Isabelle St. Pierre?” Her voice was markedly strong.

  “That’s right. I’m Jack Tucker and this is—” Jack began, but the woman interrupted them.

  “I know exactly who you are,” she said. “I was wondering when you would show up!”

  13

  HINDSIGHT

  TWO WHOLE HOURS PASSED WHILE Ruthie and Jack talked and listened—mostly listened—to this woman who had lived four years shy of a century. They had sought her out in order to find answers, but it turned out they provided just as many for her.

  “Why are you looking for Miss St. Pierre?” she asked from a velvet-covered wingback chair.

  Is this woman Miss St. Pierre or not? Ruthie wondered. She hadn’t introduced herself. Question assumptions! she remembered.

  Ruthie and Jack exchanged glances, trying to decide who should speak first. Normally Ruthie would have wanted Jack to, but that was always when the circumstance called for a story. Now they needed to get at the truth. Ruthie dove in.

  “We’ve been spending a lot of time studying the Thorne Rooms and the archivist found the name Isabelle St. Pierre in the files. She said she might have worked for Mrs. Thorne.”

  “What kind of studying?” the woman asked, ignoring the topic of the name.

  “We’re trying to figure out where certain objects came from,” Ruthie replied, not wanting to give too much away.

  “It’s important,” Jack added.

  “Why?”

  Jack answered this one. “We found something in the rooms that belongs to someone else.”

  “Why don’t you see that it is returned to the rightful owner?”

  A logical question, Ruthie had to admit. They were at an impasse. Ruthie and Jack didn’t want to bring up the magic until they were certain of the identity of the woman before them. If she was Miss St. Pierre, they could nose around to see what she knew. So Jack asked, “Are you Isabelle St. Pierre?”

  She laughed heartily. It was a surprising sound coming from someone who looked so delicate. “Please forgive my lack of candor. I’m afraid I’m overly cautious. Yes. Yes, I am Isabelle St. Pierre.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss St. Pierre,” Jack responded.

  “Call me Isabelle. My life appears to be formal but I assure you I am not,” she said with warmth now that the first barrier was down. “Now, perhaps you’d like to answer my question—fully.”

  Ruthie started from the beginning. Well, not exactly the beginning, but—without giving any specifics—she told about how their classmate recounted a story about her ancestors and that Ruthie and Jack thought they may have found an item in one of the rooms that belonged to those ancestors. The sharp eyes looking at Ruthie barely blinked.

  “But this item is miniature?” Miss St. Pierre asked, her tone implying she thought otherwise.

  “Not anymore,” Jack answered directly.

  “Ah!” She clapped her hands together. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “So you … know?” Ruthie asked.

  “Yes.” She looked from Ruthie to Jack and back again. “It’s quite astounding, after all these years, to find someone else who knows! We have a lot to talk about.” She rang a small silver bell on the table next to her.

  “Did you really know Mrs. Thorne?” Ruthie asked.

  “Yes, I knew Narcissa very well, even though she was quite a bit older than me. I came to work for her when I was about seventeen years old. My parents thought I needed something constructive to do.”

  “Didn’t you have to go to school?” Jack wondered.

  “I was a senior in high school. This was in the 1930s and girls like me—wealthy girls—often didn’t go to college; we went to finishing school, where we had music lessons, learned proper etiquette and, if we were lucky, studied a foreign language. I wanted none of it.”

  “What did you want?” Ruthie asked.

  “I wanted adventure, something out of the ordinary. I didn’t want my life to be laid out in front of me, predictably and acceptably.” Ruthie nodded, understanding Isabelle’s wish for more in life. “I’m sure I was a handful. My parents thought Narcissa would be a good influence on me. So I became an apprentice in her studio.”

  “That must have been amazing!” Ruthie imagined this woman in front of her as she might have looked: only a few years older than Ruthie, wearing clothes from long ago, working side by side in the studio with Mrs. Thorne’s artisans, watching and learning as they crafted every perfect piece.

  The butler appeared in the doorway.

  “Lemonade?” Isabelle offered Ruthie and Jack. They nodded, and without a word the butler left the room. “I’m glad you two are here. It’s awfully quiet in this house, as you can see.”

  “When did you learn about the magic?” Jack prodded.

  “For the first year I knew nothing. You see, I didn’t start out as one of her artisans. I merely helped in the studio, cleaning up, locating materials, offering an extra set of hands. Later she had me do research, and sometimes we would mix and match furniture from one room to another if the period design permitted. I even did some of the smaller needlework jobs. There were dozens of people working for her. The studio was a very lively place.” She closed her eyes. “It was a key. A beautiful key.”

  Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out Duchess Christina’s key. When Isabelle opened her eyes again, she saw it in Jack’s open palm. It flashed its crystalline light.

  “Oh, my! That’s it!” She reached to pick it up but stopped.

  “Go ahead,” Jack coaxed.

  “But I … I’m not sure I should at my age!”

  “You won’t shrink here. We’re too far from the rooms,” Ruthie explained.

  “Really?” she asked with a perplexed look in her eyes that disappeared as soon as she turned her gaze back to the fiery flashes.

  She took it delicately in her hands. Her skin looked like powdery white tissue paper, making the key look all the more powerful in contrast. “I only ever held this key in Mrs. Thorne’s studio, as the rooms were being constructed. I had no idea how the magic worked, only that it made me very, very small.”

  “What happened?” Ruthie urged her on. “When did you discover the magic?”

  “Mr. Pederson, a fine craftsman from Denmark, had the key on his workbench. It was lunchtime and I was supposed to tidy up while the artisans were out. I was alone in the studio except for one other person. I was an inquisitive young lady, so naturally I reached over to pick it up.”

  “And you shrank!” Ruthie
exclaimed.

  “Yes! What a surprise that was! I can still barely believe it happened. You see, the key had arrived with an antique dollhouse from Denmark that Pederson had acquired.”

  “We read about that when we did research in the archives,” Ruthie said.

  Isabelle continued, “Pederson had been told that there was a legend about the key being magic—and that it only worked on girls. But he didn’t believe it. As far as I know, he never did.”

  “We figured out that I could shrink if I was holding Ruthie’s hand,” Jack jumped in.

  “What happened next?” Ruthie asked.

  “I dropped the key and was big again, in seconds. It seems like it was just yesterday.” She was quiet for a moment.

  “You said there was one other person in the studio at the time,” Ruthie said, trying to visualize the scene.

  “Yes, there was.”

  “Who was it?” Jack asked.

  “It was an elderly gentleman who had worked for the Thorne family for many years as a chauffeur. Mrs. Thorne was quite fond of him and so was I. She kept him on long after he stopped driving.”

  “What did he do when he saw you shrink?”

  “Funny, I remember that at the time he wasn’t all that shocked. Surprised, yes, but not shocked. He told me he had the kind of upbringing that allowed for belief in magic. We kept the secret, the two of us. Although I often wondered if anyone else might also have discovered the power of the key.”

  The butler returned with a tray of lemonade and cookies and Isabelle stopped talking while he slowly placed everything on the coffee table.

  “Thank you. That will be all,” Isabelle said, and he left them alone again. “Please,” she said, gesturing to the tray.

  Jack reached right for a cookie. “So, Isabelle, why did you say you were wondering when we would show up here?”

  “I’ll explain. My parents’ instincts about Narcissa Thorne were correct: she was a wonderful influence on me. Her dedication to her project impressed me and I wanted to prove myself to her. I showed up for work early and did anything she asked of me. The rooms became an obsession and I knew every inch of each one, down to the tiniest detail.

  “On a recent visit to the rooms I noticed a few items missing—including a globe. I thought perhaps they were out for repair. Then I saw the story in the newspaper about how you two caught the art thief. I read the description of the globe, which the paper reported as belonging to Minerva McVittie. Eighteenth-century globes such as that are very rare. I couldn’t be certain, but I had a hunch. I predicted something would lead you to me. I hoped it would.”

  “Why?” Ruthie asked.

  Isabelle took a deep breath. “I have a confession. Something I’ve never told anyone.”

  Ruthie looked at Jack, wondering what it could possibly be.

  “You see, I was a rather spoiled, impatient young woman, truth be told. My family had so many beautiful objects that they would never miss. I know that it was wrong, but I took various real antiques from my parents’ home and used the key to shrink them. I wanted to impress Mrs. Thorne. I put the globes in the room.” Isabelle paused, her confession sitting in the air for a moment like a puff of smoke. “She praised me for my fine work. I shouldn’t have done it. Feeling guilty every time I see them in the rooms has been my punishment all these years.”

  “So when you read the article you guessed we knew that some objects had been magically shrunk,” Ruthie summed up.

  “Precisely.”

  “Why didn’t you contact us?” Ruthie asked.

  “I thought about it but I could have been wrong about the globe. I didn’t have proof that you knew about the key. Not until you arrived here today.”

  “What about the model of the Mayflower? Did you shrink that?” Jack asked.

  “No. That wasn’t me. But there were several other women in the studio, who—if they’d known what I knew about the key—could have done it.”

  “You said you took various antiques from your family. What else?” Ruthie wanted to know.

  “Just a few books of poetry and a small candlestick. I think that was all. Everyone was so pressed for time and we were all striving to make the rooms as perfect as they could be. No one ever wanted to disappoint Narcissa.”

  “Do you think Mrs. Thorne knew?” Ruthie asked.

  “In hindsight, I think possibly she did. But I don’t know for certain.”

  “I bet she knew,” Jack said. “We read in the archive that Mrs. Thorne said certain antiques had ‘magical qualities.’ She even said some antiques ‘animated’ the rooms!”

  This prompted Ruthie to ask the next important question. “Isabelle, did you ever go back in time?”

  Isabelle looked stunned. “No! What do you mean?”

  As they recounted their adventures, it became clear to the three of them that—with the possible exception of Narcissa Thorne—Ruthie and Jack were very likely the only people who had ever experienced the rooms as portals to the past.

  “I thought that shrinking was the extent of the magic. I never left the interiors of the rooms, many of which were still under construction in the studio. What you’re telling me is far more than I ever imagined! But it explains something that has been a mystery to me all these years; Narcissa was insistent that the rooms have exteriors with doors leading out to them!”

  “That’s right,” Ruthie chimed in. “There are only a few rooms that don’t have doors!”

  Isabelle sat back down with a trace of a smile on her face. “I think you’re right, Jack. I think she knew!” She took a sip of lemonade. “We haven’t really discussed the reason you two came here today. You believe there was something in the rooms that belongs to someone else?”

  “Well”—Ruthie reached down for her messenger bag—“it’s not in the rooms now.” She pulled out the ledger and put it on the coffee table for Isabelle to see. At first Isabelle registered no response whatsoever. Then Ruthie opened it to the first page so that Isabelle could read the inscription.

  “Phoebe Monroe, 1840. Where did you find this?” Isabelle asked, her voice suddenly tense and filled with an emotion that Ruthie couldn’t identify.

  “In a cabinet in room A29,” Ruthie answered. “A room from—”

  “South Carolina. Before the Civil War,” Isabelle broke in. Her perfect posture slackened, as if a terrible weight had fallen on her shoulders, and she said, “Now I understand.”

  14

  TIME GONE BY

  ISABELLE DIDN’T SPEAK FOR A long while. She leaned back in her big chair. Ruthie noticed a slight tremor start in this suddenly frail-looking woman. Her breathing had become fast and shallow. The sides of the chair blocked the light and deepened the shadows on her now ashen face.

  “Isabelle,” Ruthie said worriedly, “are you all right?”

  Jack stood up. “I can go get the butler.”

  Isabelle raised a hand and gestured for Jack to sit. “Forgive me. I just need a moment.”

  They anxiously waited. Ruthie hoped they hadn’t brought something into this woman’s life that she might not be able to handle. Ruthie had heard people could actually die from shock.

  Finally Isabelle straightened and looked again at the ledger. “The man in the studio with me the first time I touched the key was named Eugene … Eugene Monroe.”

  “Monroe! Do you know if he was related to Phoebe?” Ruthie asked.

  “Yes. He was Phoebe Monroe’s son. And Mrs. Thorne’s chauffeur.”

  “That’s incredible!” Jack exclaimed.

  “He had told me his mother’s remarkable story, about how she’d been born into slavery,” she explained.

  “And her great-great-great … however many greats-granddaughter is in our class! Kendra Connor—she gave a report about Phoebe and their family business that was stolen by the mob,” Ruthie added.

  “Tell me—did you find … anything else?” Isabelle asked.

  “No. What do you mean?” Ruthie responded.

  �
��I suppose I should back up a little.” Isabelle’s hands steadied and she began. “Eugene Monroe worked for Narcissa for many years. Long before I was even born. He raised a daughter, Eugenia. She’s the one who built the business based on your Phoebe’s recipes. Eugenia wrote them all down.”

  “Eugenia wrote them down?” Ruthie asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” Isabelle answered. “At about the same time that I came to work in the studio, in the late 1930s, some awful men wanted to take over her business, to buy it for a fraction of its real value. When Eugenia turned these men down, they stole the formulas and copied the products. They sold them as their own original goods, saying they invented them first and that she stole them. Someone in Eugenia’s company—they never learned who—had been selling the formulas to the crooks in secret.”

  “Why did you ask us if we found anything else?” Jack interrupted.

  “There were two documents, a will and a letter,” Isabelle stated. “You didn’t find them in the South Carolina room?”

  “No,” Jack answered. “Why were they important?”

  “The mobsters took Eugenia to court and those documents were to provide proof that Eugenia had willed the formulas to her family many years before and that Phoebe had invented the formulas. What a shame you didn’t find them.”

  “But why were these things in the rooms at all?” Jack asked.

  “Eugene Monroe asked me to use the key to shrink these two items and hide them—temporarily—until the trial began because the mobsters had attempted to steal them from Eugenia. I put them in the cabinet, certain that no one would find them.…” Isabelle struggled to keep her composure. “But Narcissa had been preparing the rooms to go on tour. That’s when the key went missing. Eugene and I looked everywhere. And without the key, we couldn’t bring the objects back to their original size for the trial. She lost the case and was forbidden from using her own formulas.”

  Ruthie felt Jack’s foot tap hers and she knew he was thinking the same thing: Why didn’t they just, take the shrunken objects out and away from the rooms? Isabelle looked away; this time a furrow formed in her brow. Eventually she continued, “I remember leaving them folded into a book—I don’t remember the title—that was meant for the South Carolina room.”