After all, who else had a full-size Egyptian sailboat found on the Nile in the middle of their great hall? And on more than one occasion she could be found taking afternoon‘tea,’which in truth was some of the whisky distilled at Old Lodge.
I often joined her there, particularly after returning from Egypt and the Sahara on our recent safari.
“And how is Mr. Brodie?”
My answers had been quite inventive and invariably the same:
He was undoubtedly quite busy with an inquiry case.
He had taken on some additional responsibilities with Rory, a young boy orphaned in our previous inquiry.
Or, the counterfeit case we had both worked on had taken a great deal of his time.
And then, it seemed that he was in the midst of trying to find another location for the office, since the building on the Strand had apparently been sold. I had learned this from Munro, his long-time friend who was my aunt’s estate manager.
When I ran out of excuses, I started over again. Not that it fooled my great-aunt.
The truth was that I had no idea how he was, other than the few very brief comments from Munro that I had been able to pry out of him. He was, after all, a Scot—they could be most reserved and reticent, as I knew only too well.
“I have not seen him in some days,” became a frequent response from Munro to my carefully worded comments about this or that in an attempt to learn more about what Brodie was up to.
The truth was there had been a serious falling-out between us during our last inquiry case. It was afterward that I had joined my great-aunt and Lily on their travels. I decided there was aneed for some distance between Brodie and me in order to figure out some things—most particularly, our relationship.
When we returned, over a month earlier, there had been no contact from him, no inquiry regarding our adventure in the Sahara, no note to acknowledge that we had even returned...nothing.
It did seem that the anger and harsh words of that last disagreement had turned to indifference.
Lily was breathless as she caught up with me.
“Maybe there’s word from Mr. Brodie today.”
Having never known her father or any other family, she had grown quite fond of him during our ‘arrangement,’ that now seemed as if it might be in jeopardy.
“I’ll show him what I found,” she added with a sideways glance.
The girl was far too observant and clever.
She now opened her hand to show me the ‘treasure’ she had found rummaging around among the trees, rocks and hidden places, as we trudged back toward the lodge where I hoped a warm fire and a dram of whisky was waiting.
We stopped as we reached the gate the led up the flagstone walk to the Lodge. Her ‘treasure’ was a medallion in the shape of a heart, but badly tarnished. It appeared to be of silver with the design of a thistle and a stag’s head.
“Do ye think it was lost by a smuggler?” she asked excitedly. Smugglers and highwaymen were a favorite topic.
Anything was possible since the Lodge had been standing for more than three hundred years, certainly long enough for a smuggler to have traveled through. And there were all those old stories that my great-aunt had told my sister and me when we were children.
“Oh, my,” my great-aunt said as Lily told her of her discovery and handed her the medallion.
My great-aunt softly smiled then stroked the medallion with her fingers. “It’s called a ‘Luckenbooth,’” she told Lily.
She turned it over in her fingers. “It was given as a token between two lovers upon their betrothal.”
“It will be quite lovely when it’s polished,” she continued, and I could have sworn there was a soft catch in her voice.
She handed it back to Lily. “You have made a marvelous discovery, my dear.”
“Ye might give it to Mr. Brodie, when ye see him,” Lily suggested to me.
That seemed unlikely, considering our last parting.
