have any desire to be questioned about where I had got the money to buy that batch.
“Why did you mention the chest?” I asked.
“I don’t know. As a kid, every time I watched a pirate movie I would think about that chest,” Jared said and had another sip from his glass. “In any case, I’m sure you did everything you could to find him.”
Chapter 6
Back in the taxi, I was thinking about that chest. Did we check it before it was moved down to the cellar? Of course, we didn’t. I was too worried about the police, and it never occurred to me that someone could’ve been hiding in it. Besides, I was not actually there when a couple of our footmen carried it down upon my request. No, it was crazy, but it’s driving me off the wall now. I had to be sure.
I arrived at the train station on time and gave a generous tip to my indifferent taxi driver. I got on the train and threw myself into the seat. Now I could think a bit.
“Alex?”
I turned my head and saw my old university friend James Harding. His family were our neighbors. The Hardings had lived in the area where our estate was long before Ezekiel Montague arrived but lost most of their land piece by piece over the years. They had been land-rich but cash-poor and had to make a lot of compromises to stay afloat. They still owned their Baroque-style manor house, Wintersmith Hall, which was built in the late 1600s, but was mostly uninhabitable due to lack of proper maintenance and funding. James’s family had been occupying one wing and using former stables for their needs for as long as I can remember. Our fathers were friends, until James’s dad passed away seven years ago, but our great-grandfathers weren’t as such. I remembered my father used to tell me that when I became the head of the family, I would have to make sure that the Hardings were always welcome in the house. I used to see him and his family at the parties that my parents had organized, but we hadn’t been awfully close. Perhaps the closeness of our fathers had been the reason why James and I went to the same university and that technically made us close enough to call each other friends. He studied history and I took business courses. After graduation, we didn’t keep in touch much but occasionally saw each other at different events in town.
I always thought of him as a sloppy nerd whose head was always in the clouds. He was a bit shorter than me and paid attention to neither the cleanliness nor tidiness of his wardrobe and hair. I remembered once, when I came to his dorm room to pick him up for some event when we were students, marveling at the mess that cluttered his living space. He pulled a white dress shirt from under his shoes, put it on and was ready to go. James had started to hide his weak chin under his dark beard long before it became fashionable, but food crumbs that had got stuck in his facial hair like little hostages. His lean body that rarely saw the gym, never looked too sexy to women. After his father had passed away, James returned to his house to help his formidable mother with what was left of their estate, which as far as I could remember, wasn’t making them much money. After that I hadn’t seen him much until today.
“It’s been years,” he said. “How the heck have you been?”
It felt unexpectedly good to see him. I could see a few greasy spots, sauce from burgers no doubt, on his jacket.
“James” I said, “I haven’t seen you since …” I squinted my eyes, trying to remember when was the last time when we’d seen each other.
“Since forever would be the right estimation.” I laughed.
“Come, man,” I said pointing to the seat next to me.
He sat down.
“How’s your back?” he asked.
I’d had a nasty car accident a few years ago when my car’s brakes malfunctioned, and I crashed into a brick wall. I hurt my back, spent some time in hospital and went through an unpleasant recovery therapy after that. I had my car, a Firenze red Range Rover, fixed because it was new at the time and a real chick magnet, but had been driving it rarely ever since.
“It’s all right as long as I don’t need to stand for a long time,” I said.
“So, what brings you to this neck of the woods anyway?” he asked.
I didn’t know if I should tell him the reason why I was on the train, but I had a feeling that I needed to share what was on my mind to feel better. Well, at least sharing some of it couldn’t hurt.
“I had a business meeting with Jared Shannon.”
“As in Jared Shannon, the founder of QC Solutions?”
“That’s the one. Trying to get some investors for this project that I have.”
I was trying to be as vague as possible yet attempting to make it important at the same time. It was futile because James didn’t have that much money nor did he have any good connections that could’ve been useful to me, but I couldn’t help it.
James widened his eyes and nodded. Suddenly he looked as if he just remembered something important.
“Hey, didn’t his mother work for your family?” he asked. As a frequent guest at Maple Grove House, he knew most of our staff. When we were kids, we would sneak into the kitchen to steal something that had been “forbidden before dinner.” James would always tag along and enjoy the fruits of our raids, which we would happily devour, hiding somewhere in the park.
“Yeah, he sort of reminded me about that,” I said.
“He did? That’s strange.”
“Why?”
“Well, I would think he’d try to avoid the subject, but it’s been years and I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“What subject?”
“Oh, that incident with his mother. Don’t you remember? She was fired. She was accused of something. Stealing, was it?”
“What? I don’t remember her being fired.”
“Well, it was just before … you know, Charlie’s disappearance,” James said, scratching his beard and releasing some questionable particles from its depths. “So it wasn’t that important to remember I imagine.”
“Still, it’s interesting why he never mentioned that,” I said mostly to myself, thinking out loud.
“Anyway, how have you been? Do you still date that girl I saw you with last time?” James asked, changing the subject for which I was thankful.
We talked all the way until my stop, reminiscing about our university days, talking about our families, James’s tense relationships with his mother, who kept him around but didn’t want to give him the reins to the estate, and discussing my poor choices in women. Even though I couldn’t stop thinking about Jared, I tried to keep him out of our conversation. James, never a nosy fellow, didn’t ask me anymore about my meeting. When it was time for me to get off the train–James’s stop was the next one–we agreed to catch up in the City next week. I forgot about that promise as soon as I got off the train.
Chapter 7
Our former footman-turned-maintenance person, Benjamin “Benny” Hudson, was waiting for me on the platform ready to drive me to the house. He was a short, heavy-set, spectacled man in his sixties with a very friendly wrinkled face. It was almost midnight when I saw the dark silhouette of our family nest with only two lit windows on the second floor – the guest room I was going to stay in.
Maple Grove House was a red brick Georgian style stately country house that had three floors. It was of simple rectangular form, with harmonious symmetry, sash windows and a central doorway. There were some smaller buildings behind the house – former stables, a carriage room, and a few cottages where the servants used to live. The house was set in grounds of almost five hundred acres, which also included a stream and a closed pig farm, but most of which was covered by the park with old fields of maples and oaks. There was a big old maple tree in a round clearing, right in front of the house that Charlie and I used to call The Giant. Its girth was more than two meters, and it was a great spot for hiding. When I was about five, my grandmother Anna told me that there