“Sometimes when I can’t sleep I get up and clean my antiques,” said Eugene. “It relaxes me.”
Gilda and Stephen nodded, both now wishing that they could simply retreat from the room and go back to bed.
“See this gun? It’s beautifully carved. Just look at that craftsmanship. It was Bob Furbo who gave me this gun. He taught me everything I know about antique rifles—how to take care of them.”
For a moment Gilda was terrified that Eugene had lost his wits and might actually be planning to use one of the guns, but then she realized that he was getting ready to tell a story.
“My daddy came down to St. Augustine to work on the railroad,” said Eugene. “He and Mama were from up in Louisiana. I didn’t have any deep roots here in St. Augustine like some folks do, you know. We was always ‘them folks from Louisiana.’”
Gilda wondered where Eugene was heading with all of this. He seemed to be in a strangely confessional mood, and while Gilda was usually the first to want to hear intriguing stories, sitting in the darkness with guns on the table made for an uncomfortable discussion.
“I don’t know if I told you this,” Eugene continued, “but one morning, I watched my daddy get on the train at the St. Augustine station, and he never did come back. After that, I was known as ‘that boy whose daddy took off on the train.’
“We didn’t have much money, and Mama never did work. You know what she did for money instead of working?”
Gilda and Stephen both shook their heads. They stared at Eugene, transfixed and disturbed by this tale.
“She sold things. Every cotton-pickin’ thing she and Daddy had brought from Louisiana, Mama sold. Furniture, paintings, silver, jewelry, clothing.” He enumerated the items on his fingers. “Everything.
“Well, there were a handful of things that she did not sell only because I hid them from her. And this—this is one of them.” Eugene handed Gilda a small tintype photograph in an antique silver frame. “That’s my grandma,” he said, pointing. “That was taken when she was young.”
The tiny picture struck Gilda as unusual for its time because Eugene’s grandmother was photographed with her hair long and loose instead of pulled into a severe updo. A faint, inscrutable smile played upon her lips. She looked angelic, with her soft, powdered skin and the romantic waves of her hair.
Then Gilda realized something else about the photograph: She looks like Charlotte, she thought.
“Whenever I looked at this photograph, I felt peaceful,” said Eugene. “I felt almost like my grandma was still with me.
“You see, when I was a boy, I realized that most people were very unreliable. But objects like this photograph—if you knew how to take care of them, you could keep some of them around forever, and they wouldn’t change. I guess maybe that’s when I got interested in antiques.
“As soon as I was old enough, I got a job working in an antiques shop. I loved how some old things could actually become more valuable over time if you took care of’em. And you know—the more I studied the value of antiques, and the more I built my collection by going to all the big auctions and estate sales, the more I got to know some of the oldest families in this community. They became my customers. And do you know, for the first time in my life, I had their respect. They respected me because I knew even more about these objects than they did. They saw that I understood their past and what they wanted to preserve. I guess I always liked that about some of the old-timers: How rooted they were to a single place . . . how well they knew this old city.
“When Mama died, I sold that empty old house of hers and used all my savings to purchase my own shop on Antiques Row in the city.” Eugene paused for a moment, as if watching a movie of his memory amidst the shadows cast on the wall by the lantern light. “And that’s where I met Charlotte. But you probably don’t want to hear about that.”
“Oh, we definitely want to hear about that,” said Gilda, her curiosity now outweighing her discomfort.
Stephen kicked her under the table, obviously wanting to extract himself from the whole conversation.
“I’ll never forget the day I met Charlotte, because when she walked into my shop, she was dressed head to toe in vintage clothes. For a second I actually thought I was seeing a ghost. She almost looked like someone who stepped out of another time in history. Except for her long hair, she looked like one of those flappers from the nineteen twenties during the Gilded Age here in St. Augustine.
“Well, I quickly found out that she was from one of the old Minorcan families and that she happened to know even more about the things in my shop than I did. She had grown up with beautiful furniture and china all around her. I learned a lot from Charlotte. In fact, a lot of the clothes and furniture still in this house are things that belonged to her.”
I bet that dress I wore to the wedding rehearsal belonged to Charlotte, Gilda thought. Maybe that’s part of the reason I was able to see her ghost!
“Yes, there are many valuable things in this house,” said Eugene, looking at Gilda and Stephen with a strange intensity. “And, as you’ve probably guessed, this house has some secrets.”
Gilda and Stephen sat very still, frozen with anticipation. What is he going to tell us? Gilda wondered.
“You’re family now,” said Eugene, “so I think it’s time that I shared the secret with you.” He looked at them both.
Gilda nodded as if hypnotized. “Yes,” she whispered. “We want to know.”
Eugene nodded. “Good. Then follow me.”
Gilda and Stephen looked at each other, and Stephen shrugged as if to say, Don’t ask me what to do!
Carrying the lantern, Eugene walked into the kitchen. Again, Gilda felt a draft of cold air that seemed to rise up from the floor.
Eugene crouched down and felt with his hand along the floor. “Here—I think this is it.” He carefully lifted the large puzzle piece of wood from the floor and located the secret handle. Then, with a grunt, he pulled open the trapdoor to reveal the dark pit below.
“You don’t seem surprised,” he said, looking at Gilda and Stephen with undisguised suspicion.
“Oh, we’re just speechless,” said Gilda.
“Yeah,” said Stephen. “That is really weird.”
“Follow me down,” said Eugene, “and I’ll show you where a pirate hides his treasure.”
Something about this comment gave Gilda the creeps. She knew it was highly unlikely that Eugene was about to reveal a treasure chest filled with gold coins and jewels. So what is he planning to show us? she wondered. She fought an urge to grab a corner of Stephen’s T-shirt and cling to it like a security blanket as she followed him toward the cistern.
A short ladder leaned against the wall closest to the trapdoor. Eugene climbed down and then crouched below, peering up at them from the darkness, holding his lantern. Gilda and Stephen followed him down into the cistern.
The cistern smelled damp and faintly rusty. Crouching in the claustrophobic space, Gilda felt the clammy air and the rough coquina stones under her bare feet. She thought of her dream of the yellow fever cemetery but tried to push the image from her mind.
Gilda spied a long bench covered in white cloth and an antique jewelry box that looked hand-painted. Was Eugene going to show them something hidden in the jewelry box?
“Now,” said Eugene, “it’s time for these games to end.” His face looked macabre in the lamplight.
“What do you mean?” Gilda whispered.
“You asked about a well, Gilda. And I’m guessing that the appearance of Miss Debbie Castle on my property was not exactly a coincidence. I have reason to believe that you already knew about this cistern.”
“We guessed there might be something here,” said Stephen, “but we weren’t sure.”
“I see,” said Eugene, leaning toward the two of them. “And what else did you think might be down here?”
“We had no idea,” said Gilda. “We were just curious.”
“And we don’t need to know anything,
” said Stephen hastily.
“Did you ever hear the saying, ‘Curiosity killed the cat’?”
Gilda nodded. She felt scared, but also strangely transfixed. She still desperately wanted to know what Eugene was hiding.
“Look,” said Stephen, “we don’t need to know any secrets. We’ll just go back up to bed now.”
“Oh, no,” said Eugene. “Like I said, you’re both family now. And let’s be honest: Now that you know about my hiding place for my most valuable treasure, you’ll want to explore it soon enough. So here.” He handed Gilda a key. “Explore it.”
“What’s this key for?”
“I’m sure you’ll figure that out. Oh, but we’ll need a bit more light first. Let me grab another lantern or a flashlight from the kitchen.”
Eugene swiftly climbed the ladder out of the cistern. As Gilda moved her flashlight around in the darkness, she walked over to the bench and lifted the white cloth.
Gilda gasped with surprise: “Stephen—look!”
It wasn’t a bench at all; it was a sealed coffin.
A dried bouquet of lilies rested on top of the coffin—a bridal bouquet. Gilda saw that a rough inscription had been laboriously carved by hand into the top of the casket:To my Charlotte—
I loved you too briefly
Seemed only a day;
I’ll love you forever
For here you will stay.
No more shall you wander
No more shall you roam;
For you’re glued to my heart
And I’m chained to your bones.
Gilda also noticed something soft and white propped against the base of the coffin—a couple of pillows and a blanket. An image flashed in her mind: Eugene tiptoeing downstairs in the middle of the night to rest his head against the coffin.
Stunned and speechless, Gilda turned around just in time to see the ladder swiftly disappear from the cistern before the trapdoor slammed shut over their heads.
40
The key
Hey! Let us out!” Gilda and Stephen pounded on the trapdoor, but the only response was the sound of a latch clicking shut and something that sounded like a heavy piece of furniture being moved.
“He’s weighing down the trapdoor so we can’t get out,” said Stephen.
Stephen examined the boards overhead, looking for a weak spot. Groaning with the effort, he pressed up on the trapdoor with his hands. He tried punching the trapdoor from beneath, but only succeeded in injuring his hand. “Ow!”
“Maybe if we create a big disturbance, Mom will hear us and come downstairs,” Gilda suggested. Both she and Stephen yelled at the top of their lungs: “HELP! HELP! HEEEEEELP! MOM! HELP!”
But nobody came to help them. “I think it’s pretty difficult to hear anything from upstairs,” said Gilda, pausing to catch her breath. It wouldn’t be very hard for Eugene to simply keep Mom out of the kitchen until the wedding, she thought, feeling queasy at the full implications of being trapped underground with a coffin containing a dead body. And who knows what he’s planning to do with us. Her thoughts raced as she struggled to control her urge to break into hysterical tears. More than anything, she wanted to get out of that dark, clammy cistern.
“Wait a minute,” said Stephen. “Do you think he might be playing a big joke on us?” He kicked the coffin. “I mean, it’s Halloween. Maybe that thing is fake. Or empty.”
“It isn’t fake,” said Gilda. “For one thing, Mr. Pook has a terrible sense of humor.”
“Exactly my point,” said Stephen. “Although I suppose carving a bad poem into a coffin is a lot of trouble to go to just to make a joke on Halloween night.”
Gilda shone her flashlight over the top of the casket. Large nails sealed the rough-hewn coffin shut. “He’s the one who did it,” Gilda said. “Eugene killed Charlotte Furbo. That’s why he locked us down here; he knew that we were about to figure it out for ourselves.”
Why didn’t I figure it out sooner? Gilda wondered. Somehow she hadn’t wanted to consider the real possibility that Eugene might be a murderer. True, she found him unlikable, but she also felt sympathy for the little boy who had lost his father at the train station. And she had had fun with him and her mom on the pirate ship, too. Maybe, deep down, part of me hoped that it really would work out—not just for Mom, but for all of us, she thought.
“If Eugene is really a murderer, Gilda, then we’re in deep, deep trouble, because there’s not much incentive for him to keep us alive,” said Stephen. “I mean, if he really did kill this woman and now we have proof, he’s not going to want us around to tell the tale.”
No, Gilda thought. My life cannot end in this dank old cistern, underneath Mr. Pook’s house! There had to be some way out of this mess. “Well,” she said, “what is Mr. Pook going to tell everyone when we don’t show up at the wedding?”
“He could blame it on us. He’ll say we ran away or something. Then maybe they’ll file a missing-person report and look everywhere for us. But by the time they suspect Eugene, he will have had plenty of time to get rid of us—or he could just let us run out of air down here.”
“Sort of like what he did to Charlotte,” Gilda whispered. So that’s what happened, Gilda thought. Eugene killed Charlotte, and then simply told everyone that she ran off to Europe and left him.
“I just want to say one thing,” said Stephen, placing his hands on Gilda’s shoulders. “Thank you so much for the best Halloween I’ve ever had.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who locked us in here!” Gilda knew that Stephen’s sarcastic comment was partly an attempt to disguise his own rising panic at their plight, but her temper flared nevertheless.
“But it was your idea to go down and investigate the cistern in the middle of the night. If I hadn’t listened to you, I’d still be sleeping soundly in my bed.”
“Then maybe you should blame your own lack of judgment instead of blaming your little sister,” Gilda snapped. “And besides, you’re forgetting about Mom! If we hadn’t come down here, we never would have known that she’s about to marry a killer!” The thought nauseated Gilda. Will our whole family end up down here trapped in the cistern together?!
“Believe me, Gilda, the thought crossed my mind. But it’s not as if we can do anything to stop Mom while we’re stuck down here!” Sighing, Stephen crouched on the floor and leaned his back against the rough stone wall. “Look—I’m sorry I blamed you; this isn’t your fault. We shouldn’t waste oxygen with all this arguing, anyway.”
“How much oxygen do you think we have down here?” With the trapdoor closed, the air already felt heavy and stale.
“I have no idea.”
“Can’t you estimate? I mean, you’re the mathematician and engineer.”
“But not a biologist. I’d just be guessing.”
“Maybe we should both try breathing with one nostril.”
“It’s a shame nobody else is around to hear these last little witticisms, Gilda.”
“Okay, we’re two smart people, Stephen. We have to literally think outside the box and find a way out of here. Like—maybe there’s some kind of machine you could make with wood if we broke apart that coffin. Maybe we could force our way out!”
“First of all, we don’t have any tools down here to pry open a coffin. Second of all, ARE YOU CRAZY? I don’t exactly want to spend whatever time I have left down here smelling some corpse that’s been down here for who-knows-how-long!”
“At least I’m trying to come up with a solution.” Gilda ran her fingers over the rough stones. Send me an idea, send me an idea. . . .
“I’ve got it!” said Gilda.
“What?”
“Debbie Castle! She knows about the cistern. And thanks to me, she and her mother were invited to the wedding. So when the two of us don’t show up for the ceremony, she’ll suspect something. At least she’ll know where to look! Otherwise it could take years to figure out that we’re down here.”
“Good point,” said Stephen, a more posit
ive note entering his voice. “But let’s just hope she’d actually think of looking here soon enough. I mean, if Eugene comes up with some convincing lie, she won’t be very likely to just take off from the wedding ceremony, break into his kitchen, and start pulling open the trapdoor without his permission.”
Gilda realized she had been turning the key Eugene had given her over and over in her sweaty hand. “I wonder what this key is for?”
“There’s no keyhole on the trapdoor; I already checked.”
Gilda shone her flashlight on the jewelry box that had been on top of the coffin and saw a keyhole in front. Does he keep some of Charlotte’s most valuable jewelry in here? she wondered as she fit the key into the keyhole and opened the box.
Inside, she discovered something that lifted her spirits, even if it did nothing to solve her immediate problem.
The box contained a small, leather-bound diary and some yellowed stationery. “Look, Stephen! I found Charlotte’s diary!”
“How does that help us?”
“I guess it doesn’t.” Nevertheless, Gilda felt excited to read the journal despite the dire circumstances in which she found herself. She flipped through Charlotte’s diary entries, skimming writings about dances, favorite dresses, tea parties, and artistic displays she wanted to create for Charlotte’s Attic. She read entries about the repeated engagement proposals and gifts from a “handsome” but “awkward” older gentleman named Mr. Eugene Pook. Maybe now I’ll finally understand who the woman in white really was, Gilda thought as she pored over the entries.
41
Charlotte’s Diary
Dear Diary:
Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy Page 17
