by Robin Hillard
Sam, the owner of Archie’s Antiques, and his niece Sandra were showing Edward Destranger their latest acquisition, a Victorian mirror, when Sandra’s friend, Peter Gale, came into the shop.
Sam couldn’t understand why the boy looked so worried, hadn’t Edward Destranger put his mind at rest last week? When his great uncle had the family convinced he’d murdered a man in Western Australia. Once Destranger pointed out the flaws in the old man’s story Peter wondered why they’d been so gullible.
“Great Uncle Alfred’s all right. It’s Grandfather’s sister, my Great Aunt Emily, who has us all worried. No, she’s not spinning a yarn,” he said, remembering the snake-bite story. “She’s fallen for a real con man.”
Sandra had met Peter’s great aunt. The term spritely might have been invented to describe the lively octogenarian.
“She’s developed diabetes,” Peter explained. “It’s easily controlled, as long as she follows her doctor’s advice, but she’s given up her medicine. She’s got these bottles of magic water as she calls the stuff, and she thinks it’s going to cure her. She says the water wants her to have faith.”
It sounded to Sandra as if Great Aunt Emily was suffering delusions, and she was surprised to hear Edward Destranger telling Peter to bring the old lady into the shop, with the confident assertion that “We’ll set her straight.”
“I think she’s fallen for an old trick,” he said. “I’m off to get some props of my own.”
When he came back he had a small case. He took out several sheets of cardboard, paper and a black marking pen and responded to Sandra’s questions with a teasing, “Wait and see.”
They did not have to wait long. Whatever story Peter told his Great Aunt, she was happy to come to Archie’s Antiques.
And eager to talk about her magic water.
“It told me I’ll be cured,” she told Edward Destranger, who listened with every appearance of respectful attention.
“How did it tell you?” he asked, “Did it talk?”
“Of course it didn’t talk. It’s water.” Great Aunt Emily said scornfully. Destranger looked suitably abashed. “I asked it a question and the arrow moved.”
He nodded, as if that explained the magic water’s ability to communicate, picked up a piece of cardboard, and folded it into a tent. “What did you ask?”
“The only thing I wanted to know, could the magic water cure me?”
Destranger unfolded the sheet, wrote Great Aunt Emily’s question and refolded it, with the writing inside. The Great Aunt nodded approval.
He drew an arrow along the blank, outside flap, set up his tent and put two small squares of paper on either side. On one he wrote “Y” and on the other “N”. The arrow pointed to “N”.
“And you sat in front like this?” He pulled up a chair.
What did Edward Destranger know about the magic water? And how did he convince Great Aunt Emily to go back to her own doctor?
You can find the solution to the mystery HERE
This entry was posted by rhillard on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Mystery Space.
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