Eglantine by Catherine Jinks Read Free Book Online

By my faith, I will give him my daughter to wife .
    I was beginning to have a bad feeling about the end of this fairytale.
    ‘What happened to Romeo and Juliet?’ I asked Mum that night. ‘They killed themelves, didn’t they?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because their families were enemies, and they loved each other.’
    ‘Was it based on a true story?’
    ‘No,’ Mum said, and hesitated. ‘At least,’ she added doubtfully, ‘I don’t think so. It was a play. By William Shakespeare.’
    ‘I know that ,’ I replied, and wondered if Eglantine might have killed herself. For love, like Juliet. Was that possible?
    Then Sylvia rang. She wanted to know if she could come around on Friday night, with another investigator, and stay over in Bethan’s bedroom. They wouldn’t be any trouble, she promised. We wouldn’t even know they were there.
    Mum agreed, of course. What else could she do? She was beginning to get desperate.

CHAPTER # six
    The windchimes didn’t work.
    By Friday evening, there was so much writing on the wall that I had begun to lose track of the story. From what I could piece together, I learned that a young prince had been sent to marry Princess Emilie, and everyone in the kingdom was preparing for the nuptials (that means wedding, according to Mum). Emilie wept and prayed, but the king stormed till he foamed at the mouth, for though he loved his daughter, he was also truculent and high of mood . Then Osric arranged a meeting with Emilie. I’m not sure how, because that bit was written over another bit, and impossible to read. But there was a long conversation strewn across the walls which involved Osric and Emilie, and a lot of ‘thee’s and ‘thy’s. For example:
    “Emilie, I think you love me.”
    “And if I do, Osric – what then: is it strange? Have I not heard thy voice growing ever more musical for my hearing, than for other ears? Have I not felt thy questing glance, thy probing words, going deeper into my heart than any other words or glance have ever been? If I do love thee Osric, I cannot help it; – what then?”
    After this, everything was a tangled mess, lines written over lines. I was able to make out His eyes were full of hope and enterprise , My love is not an idle passion and There are retreats where we may hide deep enough away . There was something about a drooping head and yielding mien – something else about a consenting word forever undoing the ties that bind. But I couldn’t get all the words to join together.
    It was annoying, I can tell you. And even more annoying was Sylvia’s reaction, when she arrived with her fellow investigator on Friday night. But before I tell you about that, I should tell you about Friday afternoon. On Friday afternoon, I came home to discover that the copy of Mum’s title deeds had arrived. Mum told me the news as soon as I walked in the door, and handed me a long piece of paper with a coat of arms at the top and a lot of typed words sitting above a series of scribbled-on stamps.
    ‘Prescott-Marsh, of Burrough, Teens and Walgrove,’ I read aloud, ‘is now the proprietor of an Estate in Fee Simple, subject nonetheless to the reservations and conditions, if any, contained in the Grant hereinafter referred to . . .’
    ‘Not that bit,’ Mum interrupted. ‘Down there.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘That stamp. Each stamp is a new owner. You see? This mortgage here was discharged to Ernest George Higgins in March 1894.’
    ‘Higgins!’ I exclaimed.
    ‘He was probably Eglantine’s father. And look – the next owner bought the place in 1907. The year she died.’
    I gasped.
    ‘Ernest Higgins moved out,’ Mum continued, ‘the very year she died.’
    ‘Because she died in his house!’ I declared.
    ‘Not necessarily.’
    ‘But it makes sense, Mum. Why else would you move out of a perfectly good house? Because your daughter died in it, of course!’
    ‘Because someone strangled her in my bedroom,’ Bethan suddenly remarked. He had come