The Lost Treasure Map Deluxe Book Collection (2017 Edition)

by V Bertolaccini

  The Treasure Discovery

  Marple rushed into his seat with a drink as I entered the headquarters of Reality Investigations and sat beside him next to the fireplace, and watched him go through a pile of documents.

  It was incredible! Marple looked more confident than I had ever seen him, and he wanted me there to tell me about his search for the treasure, and I knew he had to have something! He also told me his investigation of the serial killer had progressed and could reach a conclusion soon, and he left that without any further explanation, or anything really, and he was extremely happy how things were going, and that he could solve the unsolvable case.

  Marple studied me, and asked, “Has anything happened at the house at Craigmillar Road?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Have you been there lately?”

  “Nobody has been there since the paranormal scientists found the disturbances at the hospital and moved all their equipment over there!”

  “I want you to take them there again, and investigate it again!”

  I looked up startled wondering what he wanted there, and I considered if they would go there, as we finished our investigations there as far as I was concerned.

  “What for?” I muttered.

  “I have had someone contact them and they agreed to take the exploration association scientists and their equipment there to scan the building …”

  I was left confused, and wondered what would happen, as what was there had reacted to the metal detector and I wondered what it would react to the stuff they had, and I had just about lost all the powers I had after my last confrontation in the hospital shaft, and I did not like it, as I had not found any real use for it, and the powers had only created problems for me as far as I was concerned, as I had no real control of what it could do, and I was not so sure they were even mine as they seemed to do things for something else, which I was not sure I knew what.

  It was incredible as the two paranormal scientists became fascinated with the occurrence at the woman’s house again and they wanted to carry out a proper investigation of what was there, and they had grown tired of their investigation of the cavity and the hospital and I was left confused as to what they had found, or thought they had found, and realized there was little that would be recorded in the history books from the occurrence after all, even though they were still investigating the black sphere in the cavity.

  After all that here was no sign of proof of anything, which the public would accept. Was it a new form haunting, of paranormal? And if so what the hell was happening?

  Even though the site at that region had been the site of a large famous battle, and massacre that could have caused such an occurrence, of which the bodies could well be below the region, I could not grasp what.

  We investigated everything we could, and all the information and history of the region, trying to grasp something, and some clue, and the main regions of the battle that had occurred, and at Battlefield Road, where the tunnel had gone.

  “What’s that?” I asked, seeing Marple play happily with documents, inside an envelope.

  For a few seconds his face held a sad expression and he considered the occurrences and his investigations.

  He finally replied, “The late Dr Barrymore …”

  “He died!” I gasped, and wondered if it really was the end of the investigation for the treasure.

  “Sadly so! I think we should find what he was looking for anyway, as he wanted it very much … His wife can have her share of it if we find it, and he will be remembered for the discovery …”

  “That’s perfect!” I replied, wondering why he was so confident now, after so many people throughout history were unsuccessful.

  “From my questioning of his wife I found Dr Barrymore found the treasure from an accumulation of sources, which surely grasped his imagination with the mentions of the strange magical artifact, which was mentioned like the Holy Grail …”

  I gasped at what he had said and knew he never believed in such magical things, and I considered what he meant.

  “He was obsessed with its magical powers …” he continued. “Which I believed he never really thought existed … He never had the map he gave us examined any further as it was too valuable to him … I did though … And I had it investigated by a friend … Who had it investigated further and managed to reveal faded landscape shapes, before it had faded … From 1568 … Which was why I was at the hospital …”

  “What the treasure was marked there …?” I asked, surprised.

  “I also knew the archaeologists and scientists were investigating there … I believe the person that drew the map was being chased – and being chased by soldiers – and hid it …

  He grabbed his pipe off the table and began smoking.

  “Who could have chased him?” I asked.

  “It was dated 1568! Mary Queen of Scots had a battle there, and I believe it was her valuable jewels. The royal jewels of a famous queen! I think she was visiting someone at the site, and had even taken her jewels there, as perhaps her enemies were after her and the jewels, and she gave them to someone there … To perhaps keep for her … The person must have been a good friend, and perhaps a soldier, and had either been seen taking them or was just chased by the other soldiers there …”

  “So there are incredible valuable and historical jewels hidden somewhere … Do you believe they’re under the hospital?”

  “At first I thought it could be there! There were two marks!”

  “What about all the tunnels and the cavity …”

  “That is something else! It is far more advanced technology, and it was all recently built …”

  “What happened next?”

  “I think someone took the jewels off him! And he could have died! Or at a slightly later time used the map to find them and move them to another safer location nearby … Where he had intended to get them!”

  “Was there another mark on the treasure map?” I gasped, and stared at him intensely.

  “I think the person, surely a relative, in fear of his life, took them to the safest place he knew, and marked it on the map, with different writing, in a different style, which faded, and he hid it somewhere near the house you were investigating, with the supposed haunting …”

  “As the place is marked about there?”

  “Correct! Which is why I want your paranormal scientists to investigate there! You’ll need the archeologists ...”

  Chapter 27

  The Killer

  At a lane between two buildings we rested against a wall waiting for the killer, who was predicted to arrive by Marple, and he stood puffing away at his pipe, now tired of it, predicting the killer’s arrival, and I wondered how he knew he would arrive, and at that time, but he would not tell me, and I gasped when I saw someone pass a house window going somewhere, and thought of hiding, but Marple ignored it.

  Although, a few minutes later, he jumped upright, as he spotted something, fully alert, and scrambling movements and panic-stricken curses came from the house we were monitoring, a house across a road at the end of the lane, and in the darkness of the lane we watched a dark figure rush out the building, and enter another lane beside the house, and the police came racing out of their cars and started chasing him.

  As we ran after them, keen to catch and discover the identity of the killer, a man rushed out the house he had been in, shaken and holding a handgun, and saw he was gone and put it away inside.

  I could not believe how accurate Marple had predicted the killer’s attack at the house, and I realized the killer might be getting away, and that we might not get the chance to catch him again, and I watched Marple and the others realize it and run after him, and I ran with them, as more and more police cars came racing in everywhere, with their sirens blaring at full blast.

  The police clearly believed that they were chasing the killer, and I realized where he was heading, and towards a nearby cemetery, and I saw his dark shape in the distance rushing there, as o
ther figures shifted towards him.

  At another street Marple told a policeman getting out a police car that the killer was going to arrive a the other side of the cemetery, and he rushed back in his vehicle, and we rushed up to the vehicle and he let us in the back seat, and it raced away.

  At the other side of the cemetery there were blue lights flashing everywhere and it was lighting the cemetery up, and we looked everywhere for him, and for who had been chasing him, and the vehicles that had arrived there first, and saw that they did not know where he had gone.

  He surely had not entered the cemetery and had taken another route beside it, where nobody would have seen where he had gone, and their faces started to look frantic and worried, and they decided to search all the buildings, and as I followed Marple to a nearby building I suddenly recognized it, and it was the back of the Home Guard building where I was a soldier at, where I had joined up, and I was surprised to spot a light flash on inside, and I realized it was from a torch, and I knew the killer had a torch, and I told Marple.

  It was worse than I had imagined, as I knew we would be confronting him indoors, instead of the police making a quick outside arrest, and I watched Marple get the police, and they all started silently rushing about outside, getting into hiding places, and two were in the cars, contacting the rest of the police.

  I wondered what the motive was, and if it was valuable jewels or he had been doing something else.

  My eyes stayed on the place the light had appeared, searching for him, waiting for him, to take a quick look out, or attempt to attack us or escape, and I realized that the police had entirely surrounded the building and that we had him, and I guessed he never knew where we were.

  When a policeman started going to a door I decided to join him, as I knew the layout of the inside of the building, and as I approached him Marple followed me there, and I considered all the options open to us. I then realized that the policeman had something to unlock the door, and silently opened it up, and we slowly climbed in, and heard him inside a room.

  The policeman removed a handgun, and we waited for the others to appear, and we stood listening to someone inside the room breathing heavily.

  By their reactions I was sure that they did not have a clue what they were dealing with, and that they had not seen the place before. They were in a dark hallway, just outside the room, at night, within the grounds of an army base, and they were chasing a vicious serial killer.

  At the side of my eyes I spotted traces of shoe marks from him, and his shoes were wet, and I traced them going into the room and I stood amazed as the policeman silently pushed open the door and crept in, and my face turned pale as I waited for bullets to go smashing into his body, and I looked in and the other police moved in beside me, and stood beside me with their loaded guns facing inside, into its dark interior.

  I slowly faced the blackness at the corner of the room, where there was someone rolled up in ball in the corner, and we waited for him to do something, as we searched for his gun.

  The policeman that had opened the door stood frozen, holding his gun out at the faintly visible black figure.

  My heart rate exploded, beating faster than I had felt it beat in a long time, and I was still standing doing it when Marple removed his gun and pointed it at him, and turned the light on.

  As seconds passed I watched the figure lifelessly remain there, rolled up in ball in the corner, and I was sure he had done something to himself, and he could be dead.

  I spotted a trail of blood across the floor, in drips, going straight up to him.

  We strolled up, not shining their torches directly at the killer, wondering who the hell it could be, and who could have had the entire police force after him for so long.

  When he turned I was dumbstruck, and even wondered where the real killer had gone, and I recognized the room, and Captain Godfrey’s main office, and realized I had not noticed it because we had entered through the back of the Home Guard office, and at night, where I had not been before, and had been so obsessed with what was happening to recognize it.

  It was Captain Godfrey’s office and it was Captain Godfrey on the floor in the corner, and I realized that it was not the killer, and I realized I had blown it again, and I should not have directed them over to the army base, and realized that he must have been tired after working there late and had gone to sleep in the corner, with an old blanket wrapped about his waist.

  He stared at me in horror and started getting up, and shouted furiously, “You again! You’re fired! I kicked you out the army!”

  All the policemen stopped pointing their guns at him, realizing that it was the wrong person, and I watched him almost fall over, and gasped, as he was holding an injury he had received from something, which he had recently received, and he attempted to grab his gun off the ground below him, and the police all pointed their guns at him, and one grabbed his gun.

  Chapter 28

  The Scan

  What astonished me was after everything that had happened I had not really solved anything of what had happened to me at Craigmillar Road or in the hospital shaft, and what the black sphere was below the hospital, or what the powers I had were, and I could not grasp what would happen next, as every unsolved puzzle and mystery that had happened seemed to emerge at the one time, and Marple, who had forced me into going there, had not answered anything and had denied the existence of anything, and had phoned me and ordered me to carry out his mission.

  I sensed that there was something there in the Craigmillar Road house the minute I reached the door, and it had not been anywhere as powerful as it, even at the hospital, and I was now certain of it, and I sensed that all the exploration association scientists and paranormal scientists that accompanied me there were not saying something, and it was something powerful, and something deep.

  I knew I would have to wait for them to give it to me, and I kept wondering if we were in great danger, and which I had felt chasing the killer, and I allowed the scientists to set up their equipment there again, but this time with the equipment from in the hospital shaft, which had found the tunnel, and would scan below the building, as Marple had insisted, and I gasped at what the metal detector had done, and even started thinking of ways to protect myself from the forces it could generate.

  I eventually relaxed on the bed in my room there, and recalled the case of the killer, and how astonished I was that it was Captain Godfrey, and I was astonished when Marple that morning had told me who he really was.

  Marple had discovered that all the killer’s victims had one thing in common and that they had all fought in the First World War, and he had found out that they had all been in the same army division, and had fought together, and massive amounts of their comrades had been killed, and Marple had traced all the surviving members, and there were only two left.

  Captain Godfrey had been German, and a German soldier before he had moved to Scotland, and he had entirely changed his identity, to hide his past, and other killings in Germany, and Marple had discovered that Godfrey had a brother, who had moved to Scotland too, who had served in the same division, and that he had been killed, which Godfrey had admitted to the police, and he blamed the other soldiers for his death, and believed that they had actually killed him, after their discovery of him being German, but what they never knew was he was his brother.

  The war with Germany had revived what had happened, and he had used his experience and knowledge of how the police worked, and used it to destroy the soldiers.

  The newspapers had the story all over the front pages, with Marple being named as a chief investigator, and the man who had solved the case, and he was receiving numerous calls and new cases, and I realized that he intended to expand the business, and increase the amount of investigators.

  Everything was perfect, except this case, and what was there!

  While I rested on the bed I considered what could happen next and I listened to Oswald and the other scientists consulting with each other and ma
king an agreement, which I missed and tried to work out from what I heard!

  It was incredible as I recalled things they had been saying earlier, and that I had not picked up properly at the time, and realized what they were doing, and that they were even increasing the power of the scan, and I wondered what the hell that would do, as it had been powerful enough in the hospital, and I started seeing the dangers of it again, and thought of going somewhere else, and returning after they had done it, to survive.

  For some reason the scientists seemed not to want me to be involved in their discussion and what was occurring, and I believed it was to do with my earlier worries of what could happen, and I realized Oswald had said something about it to them. So I decided just to use it and stay out their way, in the background, and observe what was going on.

  I could not grasp what would happen, and I did not know what was there, and what was incredible was I realized that they had read my report on the occurrence in the building with the metal detector and what had happened and they had entirely missed what had occurred, and what I had meant, and I could not explain it any further to them what had happened, and they never seemed to think anything had happened, and I realized again that I could not properly explain what was there, as I never knew what was there.

  Marple had once had a great interest in investigating the paranormal, which he never believed in, and consistently explained logical solutions to everything easily, which I and the others investigators normally did, but he was far more experienced and determined, and I realized that I had to find something of that nature to prove something existed.

  The elderly woman, and owner of the house, was glad to see me again, and did everything to welcome us, and not put me off the case, and at her dinner I discussed the case and she told me what had been happening since I left and she told me that the haunting had decreased occurring, especially since we started work at the hospital, and neighbors had also admitted it.