The Billionaire’s Curse Read online

  Alisha looked at Gerald blankly. “Do I know you?”

  “From the museum,” Gerald said. “We were outside Professor McElderry’s office when you and your father arrived the other day.”

  Alisha looked each of them up and down, paying special attention to Ruby’s runners. Ruby pressed her lips together, fighting the urge to say something.

  “No,” Alisha said at last. “I think I would have remembered if I’d seen you before.”

  “Oh,” Gerald said, deflated. “What brings you to Glastonbury?”

  Alisha let out a practiced sigh. “Some tiresome party that Father has been invited to. And I have to attend, apparently.”

  Ruby could contain herself no longer. “Oh, how terribly, terribly boring for you!”

  Alisha spared Ruby a look of disdain. “Lovely to chat,” she said. “But I have things to do. So, ta ta.” She went to walk away, then paused. “Oh, by the way,” she said to Ruby, laying a hand on her arm. “There are some lovely shoe shops back in there. Might pay to check them out, yes?” Then in a haze of jasmine scent, Alisha strode up the street like it was a catwalk.

  “That little—” Ruby was incensed.

  “Never mind,” Gerald said. “Must be the major’s party she’s going to. Maybe her father’s tied up in all this after all.”

  Sam glanced at his sister. He couldn’t resist. “So, you gonna check out the shoe shops?”

  “And why don’t you go stick—”

  Gerald stepped between them.

  “There’s a bookshop. Let’s take a look.”

  A bell tinkled as they opened the front door. Then they were hit with the thick odor of decaying paper.

  Gerald gagged as they went inside. “Get the feeling this place has been here for a while?”

  The shop was a maze of tall bookshelves stuffed to overflowing. Books were piled everywhere: on the floor, on windowsills, on each step of a narrow staircase that disappeared up the back wall.

  Ruby stepped carefully over a ragged bundle of magazines tied with twine. “Makes McElderry’s office look like a library, doesn’t it?” she said.

  At the back of the shop, the counter and cash register were covered in rolls of paper.

  Perched on a stool behind the counter sat a round man with a face like an enormous walnut.

  “Hello, Gerald,” came a gravelly voice. “Fancy a peppermint?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Mr. Hoskins!” Gerald said. “What are you doing here?” It was the first time he had seen the man since his great-aunt’s funeral.

  Hoskins shrugged. “Tryin’ to make an honest living, sunshine. People aren’t buying books like they used to.”

  Ruby glanced around the shop. “Can people find any books in here?” she asked.

  “Of course they can,” Hoskins said tersely. “May not be the book they was looking for, but they can find all sorts of good stuff if they take the time.”

  “Mr. Hoskins, this is my friend Ruby and her brother, Sam,” Gerald said. “They’re staying with me at Avonleigh.”

  Hoskins gave the Valentine twins a suspicious glare. “Yes, I heard you’d moved in. Is my sister takin’ good care of yer?”

  Ruby stared at the man. “Mrs. Rutherford is your sister?” she asked. “But she seems so—”

  “Bossy? Fussy? Nosy? Yes, I know all of that. Sisters, eh! But what can you do?” He gave Sam a knowing look. Sam opened his mouth to respond, but Gerald launched himself between them.

  “Mr. Hoskins, I’d like to ask you something,” Gerald interjected, keen to avoid further hostilities between Ruby and Sam.

  “And what would that be?” Hoskins said.

  “At the church, the day of the funeral, you said something about Geraldine. You said she had to keep away from me to protect something. What did you mean?”

  Hoskins chewed hard on his peppermint.

  “Not yet,” he said at last. “You’ve still got to—”

  The sound of a bell tinkling signaled another customer entering the shop. Hoskins glanced at the front door, and his manner changed in an instant. He grabbed Sam, who had been flicking through a stack of old comic books, and frog-marched him to the staircase.

  “Looking for Christmas presents?” Hoskins asked. “Very wise. You’ll find a good selection on the second floor.”

  “Christmas presents?” Sam said. “It’s the middle of June.”

  Hoskins leaned in close. “I heard you weren’t too bright—upstairs,” he whispered hoarsely, delivering one final shove before ushering Gerald and Ruby after him.

  As they disappeared up the rickety staircase, they could hear Hoskins’s voice drifting up after them. “And a good morning to you, Major. Anything in particular you’re lookin’ for today, Major?”

  The second floor was less messy than downstairs but not by much. Bookshelves snaked off into the shadows, looking as if they could collapse in a bookslide at any moment. Gerald, Sam, and Ruby hovered by the top of the stairs, straining to hear what was going on below.

  “Who is that guy?” Ruby whispered.

  “I met him at Geraldine’s funeral,” Gerald said. “Old friend of the family, apparently. He seems to know everyone.”

  “I can’t believe he’s Mrs. Rutherford’s brother. Talk about opposites.”

  “Maybe they’re twins.” Sam grinned.

  Before Ruby could return fire, Gerald hissed for quiet. “Ssshhh! Listen!”

  They could just make out the major’s voice.

  “That book about the mythology of this area—the one I found here last month—I need it.”

  Hoskins’s reply was short and to the point. “It’s not for sale, Major. Wasn’t then, isn’t now.”

  “Then I’ll just take a look at it. Upstairs, is it?”

  The sound of advancing footsteps set Gerald, Sam, and Ruby into action.

  “Scatter,” Gerald whispered.

  They each shot down a different aisle between the bookcases.

  Gerald wound his way around towers of magazines. He checked left and right, looking for a bolt-hole to hide in. Without warning, his vision blurred in a haze of melting hues. He held out a hand to steady himself against a mountain of rotting newspapers. A bundle of magazines toppled onto the floor behind him as he gripped a shelf for support. Gerald shut his eyes but they were awash with whorls of color, like an oil slick spreading out across a lake. Then his vision cleared enough to see along one aisle. A small niche seemed to glow out of the shadows. He was drawn toward it. He stumbled, knocking more volumes to the floor, and found the tight nook on the bottom shelf of a broad wooden bookcase. He crawled in and crouched on a small pile of books, hugging his knees to his chest. Gerald shook his head and managed to clear his sight. He struggled to get his thoughts straight—he hadn’t felt that way since the Reading Room at the museum. He had barely pulled his feet in underneath him when the major’s stern voice rumbled close by.

  “Haven’t you heard of cataloging, Hoskins?” the major said. “This place is a shambles.”

  Hoskins was right behind him. “Course I have,” he said. “Just introduced a new system—everything’s arranged by color.”

  “What?”

  “From red to violet. I like to call it the rainbow selection.”

  Gerald looked about him. It was true. Every book, magazine, and journal around him was the same color. He was in the indigo section.

  “You order everything by color!” the major said. “How the devil are you supposed to find anything?”

  “The same way you find anything worth finding, Major. Perseverance!” Hoskins said. “Best of luck.” And with that, the man trotted back downstairs.

  Gerald sat in his alcove, not daring to move. He was surprised when he heard a second set of footsteps making its way through the stacks. Then a familiar voice piped up.

  “So what color is this book, Major?”

  Gerald’s eyes widened. It was Pinstripe Trousers from the Rattigan Club. Arthur Chesterfield.

>   “Don’t remember,” grumbled the major, his voice coming ever closer to Gerald’s hiding place. “Blue, maybe? It’s in French. Mythologie de l’Angleterre régionale, or something like that—The Mythology of Regional England.”

  Chesterfield sniffed. “Sounds dreadful.”

  Book covers slapped against each other. Then Chesterfield called out again. “How do we know it’s here?”

  “It’s got to be here,” the major grumbled. “The page that described the peak of eternal light—I tore it from that book. There must be more information in there.”

  Gerald was startled as the major’s legs came into view only feet away. He was even more startled when he glanced down at his own feet. Poking out from under one grubby shoe, embossed in faded gold, was the word Mythologie. Gerald’s eyes bulged wide.

  The major hesitated in his tracks, then slowly turned in Gerald’s direction.

  “Maybe down here.”

  The brown shoes came to rest by Gerald’s feet. Then, to Gerald’s dismay, the major squatted down and started searching through a pile of books right next to his shoulder. He stared aghast at his own face reflected in the major’s glass eye. The only thing between him and discovery was the major’s bulbous red nose. Gerald stopped breathing. His heart thumped inside his chest. He could feel his pulse pounding in his temples. His eyelids peeled back and his chest tightened. Just as his vision was turning white, Chesterfield called out, “What about the police, Major? Have you heard from them since the club?”

  Major Pilkington paused in his search and his glassy stare lifted out of view as he stood up. Gerald sucked cool welcoming air in through his nostrils and let his head fall back in relief.

  “No,” the major said. “They don’t suspect a thing. They’ll be searching for clues in that Tube station for months. Those kids did us a favor.”

  “You must be joking!” Chesterfield said, tension clear in his voice. “If a bunch of kids could track us down, the police won’t be far behind.”

  “That was luck.”

  “Luck be damned,” Chesterfield snarled. “We need to find a permanent solution to those three—and sooner rather than later. There’s too much at stake.”

  The major paused and Gerald could sense the friction between the men.

  “Let’s find this diamond casket first,” the major said. “Then we can take care of the kids.”

  For the next ten minutes the only thing to be heard was the sound of books being shoved around, then Chesterfield groaned, “This is hopeless. We’re never going to find anything here.”

  The major muttered a violent oath and the two of them retreated down the stairs. Gerald sucked in a lungful of air and rolled out of his hiding spot onto the floor. He scrambled around to grab the book he’d been sitting on. The front was covered with dusty prints from his shoes, but there staring at him was the title: Mythologie de l’Angleterre régionale by Camille Flammarion.

  He opened it up right there on the grimy floorboards. Ruby appeared and leaned her chin on his shoulder.

  “How did you find that?” she gasped.

  “Dumb luck, I think.” He didn’t feel like explaining the weird vision that had led him to the book. He flicked to the index.

  “Dammit. It’s in French.” He turned to Ruby. “Do you speak French?”

  Ruby shook her head. “Only if you want to order a coffee with milk.”

  “Take a look. You never know.”

  Ruby ran her finger down the page. “Hmm,” she muttered. “Très difficile. Look. There’s a chapter on Somerset—that’s the area around here.” She thumbed through the pages and turned up a section of dense text. There was a rudimentary map of the district, with the Tor at the center and a series of circles emanating outward, like ripples on a pond. Each one was marked with a number.

  “This map must be a couple of hundred years old at least,” she muttered, poring over the detail. “Look, the town’s shown here and that must be the abbey.”

  Gerald shifted to get a better look. He and Ruby hovered shoulder to shoulder.

  “There’s no sign of any peak of eternal light?” Gerald asked.

  “No, but look. This must be where the major tore out the page. You can see where it’s come away from the spine.”

  Gerald flicked back to the map and traced his index finger out from the Tor.

  “This must be about where Beaconsfield is,” he said, tapping the page. “What do you reckon these numbers are?”

  “Distance from the Tor maybe? A lot of maps show that if there’s a central point of interest,” Ruby said.

  “Maybe.” Gerald studied the page. “But look at how far apart the circles are from each other. The distance is the same, but the numbers don’t go up by equal amounts. They’re all over the place.”

  “Well, if they’re not distance markers, what are they? Height above sea level or something?”

  “Or,” Gerald suggested, “they could be page numbers.”

  Ruby looked at the map. The number on the circle that ran through Beaconsfield was 337.

  In a tangle of hands and a flurry of paper they flipped the pages until the book lay open at page 337.

  “Oh my,” said Ruby.

  Gerald gazed at the page, then said, “Where’s Sam? He should see this.”

  On page 337 was a black-ink drawing. Gerald ran his fingers down the paper. “This is starting to freak me out,” he said.

  The drawing depicted a landscape with St. Michael’s Tower on the left and the clock tower at Beaconsfield on the right. Dominating the picture were four identical images, joined by a diagonal line running down the page from left to right. The images were each of a triangle formed by three forearms clasped hand-to-elbow with a blazing sun in the center.

  “Your family crest is turning up in some interesting places, Gerald,” Ruby said.

  Gerald shook his head. The crest on the far left, the highest on the page, appeared to be suspended in the sky. The next one sat squarely on the top of St. Michael’s Tower, and a third hovered above the Beaconsfield clock tower. The last crest, on the far right of the drawing, was on the ground. Printed under the sketch was a single line of text: Pleine lune du solstice de l’été.

  Gerald dragged a hand across his forehead. “What on earth does all this mean?” he groaned.

  Suddenly, Sam’s head popped around the corner. He was holding a silver-gray sphere slightly smaller than a volleyball.

  “The question isn’t what on earth,” he said, holding up the ball. “It’s what on moon.”

  Ruby gave him a look. “What are you on about?” she said.

  “I’m on about the peak of eternal light, dimwit,” he said. “Remember—the thing that’s going to show us the way. We’ve been going about it all wrong.”

  “Oh yeah? How?”

  “Well, think about it. Is there any place in the world that has eternal light—where the sun never sets? Not around here, that’s for sure.”

  “So where is it, Einstein?” Ruby said.

  Sam held up the gray sphere in front of him. “It’s on the moon, actually.” A grin spread across his face.

  Gerald and Ruby looked blankly at Sam.

  “What did I tell you?” Ruby said at last. “A complete idiot.”

  “What do you call this then, genius?” Sam thrust out the gray ball. Gerald took it and saw that it was a globe, not of the earth but of the moon. Sam pointed to a spot at the top. Near the north pole and by an enormous crater was written: “Peak of Eternal Light.”

  Ruby was dumbfounded.

  “Where did you find this?” she asked.

  “I hid in a cupboard in the green section,” Sam said. “Among a bunch of atlases, maps, and stuff. This was in a box.”

  Gerald took the globe and tossed it in his hands.

  “A place on the moon where the sun never sets…in eternal light,” he said. “But how does that show the way to the diamond casket?”

  Ruby picked up the book and studied the drawing again
.

  “Look at this crest, the one that’s hanging in the air,” she said. “What if that’s the moon?”

  “The moon?”

  “What say the peak of eternal light beams down from the moon onto the Tor—that’s the crest on top of St Michael’s Tower. And it’s then reflected onto the clock tower at Beaconsfield, where the next crest is.”

  “Then what?” Gerald said.

  “From there it’s reflected onto the place where the diamond casket is hidden. The four crests are like points of light, marking a path from the moon to the Tor, to the clock tower and then to the hiding place. Pic de la lumière éternelle indiquera le chemin—the peak of eternal light will show the way.”

  “Gee, I dunno,” Gerald said.

  Sam looked over his sister’s shoulder. “Come on, Gerald. You said St. Michael’s Tower looked like a lighthouse—maybe this is the light. And look at the name of the major’s place—Beaconsfield! That’s gotta stand for something.”

  Gerald looked unconvinced. “But we were there last night. The moon wasn’t shining any spotlights.”

  Sam took the book from Ruby. “Look what’s written here. Lune is French for moon, you know, as in lunar. And solstice is midsummer. I bet this means something about a full moon during the summer solstice.”

  “What did Mrs. Rutherford say?” Ruby chimed in. “It’s the first time in more than a hundred years that there’ll be a full moon on the stroke of midnight on Midsummer’s Eve. Remember? The hippies are getting all excited about it. Maybe the position of the moon has to be just right for this to work.”

  “And maybe that’s why the major kept going on about running out of time,” Sam said. “If this happens only once every hundred years you don’t want to be waiting for the next one.”

  The Valentines stared at Gerald. He looked from one to the other.

  “Light has to reflect off something,” he said at last. “Like a mirror or glass.”

  “The weathervane on top of the clock tower,” Sam said with a snap of his fingers. “Remember? It didn’t move, even though there was a breeze. It held its position as if it was pointing somewhere specific.”