The forest around the mansion was deceptively dense. When Leo first saw the surrounding jungle, he had assumed it was just a sparse collection of trees. But as he made his way through the foliage now, he realised just how densely packed and huge the trees were. His mother was walking at the very back, and she was making sure that the mansion was always behind them.
"It's way too easy to get lost in here without that huge mansion looming behind us." She had said grimly when they had started their journey.
There was considerable contention in the morning about how to separate the groups. Leo had been quite tense at seeing Henry, but the brash twin seemed to have forgotten last night's humiliation all together. He didn't glance once at either Leo or his mother, though Charles grinned and nodded at them both.
On the other hand, William seemed even more distraught and exhausted, if it were possible, than last evening. It seemed he could barely keep his eyes open, and he kept muttering something under his breath. Elizabeth and Margaret both looked quite worried about him, even though they themselves looked quite healthy.
"William, do you want to rest at the mansion? You look quite unwell child." Sophie had said gently.
"Yes please. I don't feel quite well." William had gratefully accepted and trudged right back up to his bedroom.
"I guess we can divide the groups up now." Charles had said once William had gone upstairs.
"And how do you propose to do that?" Sophie asked slowly.
"Well, I am most comfortable with Henry here, so me and him will explore the east side of the island - that is left from the mansion. You four can explore the west and south side - that is to the right of the mansion."
This seems too good to be true
Charles was volunteering to go on a different party than the rest of them? Not even accusing them of being biased against the twins?
No, no there has to be something more to it.
Evidently his mother thought the same for she asked warily, "Are you sure you two will be all right just by yourself?"
Charles smiled, baring all of his teeth. Leo thought he looked more like a vicious hyena than a human when he smiled like that.
"Of couuurse Auntie. Don't you worry about us. Henry and me can take care of ourselves just fine." Saying so, Charles almost dragged Henry out of the door and they walked off towards the east, quickly vanishing in the trees.
"They give me the creeps." Elizabeth said once their silhouettes had vanished in the forest.
Sophie said nothing, but from the expression on her face Leo knew that his mother fully agreed with that. It seemed none of the others knew about the altercation last night between Henry and his mother, which would give them even more reason to be distrustful of those snakes.
"Anyway. Let's start moving. We have to get back here before dark." Sophie took command once more, leading out through the door. Once more they decided to proceed in single file through the narrow path in the jungle, with Sophie in the front, Elizabeth behind her and then Margaret and Leo bringing up the rear. The path through this jungle was much less well defined than the one which had led them into the mansion, so Sophie had to be careful at the front.
"Do we know what we are even looking for at this point, Aunt Sophie?" Elizabeth asked after about twenty minutes of slowly walking through the jungle.
"A laboratory or some sort of study or some place where Father ran his experiments. He would have needed quite a large open space."
"Isn't the mansion a better place to search for that?" Leo asked.
"It may be. We will search the mansion tomorrow. But for today we need to eliminate the jungle as an option. I don't want to go out into these woods more than absolutely necessary." Leo knew from her tone that his mother was dead serious about this, and he agreed with her wholeheartedly. The jungle felt weirdly silent, there was no animal sounds that would usually accompany such a dense forest and it made the entire area feel much more ominous. In fact Leo hadn't even seen any insects which would be essential for such a forest - no bees, caterpillars, ants or even mosquitoes. It was as if this dense jungle had the flora and fauna of the Sahara.
Suddenly Sophie stopped in front of them. She was looking at something in front of her with wide eyes.
"What is it Mom?" Leo called out, his voice automatically hushed because of his mother's expression.
His call seemed to snap his mother out of her thoughts and she beckoned them to come forward. As they crept forward slowly, they saw what Sophie was seeing.
Right there in the middle of the jungle, there was a somewhat open area. It was not large, maybe the size of a modest garden plot, but the more interesting structure was the small hut right in the middle of it. It was very old obviously, with vines and weeds completely surrounding it, but it was a hut nonetheless.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Is this..?" Margaret began but was cut off by her elder sister.
"No surely it can't be this small." Elizabeth leapt ahead of Sophie and began inspecting the hut from the sides.
"It seems even older than the mansion we are in." She said softly, in a tone of wonder.
"How can there be a hut this deep in the forest?" Sophie wondered also stepping towards it after Elizabeth.
Margaret and Leo were next, cautiously stepping towards the hut. Elizabeth was already inside it, but Sophie was more interested in the outer structure of the hut. The hut was made completely of wood, and the roof and sides had already completely rotted away, leaving large holes everywhere. Leo stepped towards the hole in the side, and could see Elizabeth rummaging inside.
"Found anything?" He called out.
"No, nothing at all. Isn't it weird?"
"What's weird about it? It's an abandoned hut."
Elizabeth looked up through the hole. "But it wasn't always abandoned right? At some point there were people living here, otherwise why build the hut at all? But there's no sign of that. No rotted bed, no rotten anything actually inside. It's spotlessly clean in fact, despite the weeds growing through what I assume were the windows."
"Clean?" Leo wondered how it could be clean. Clean implies human intervention, surely nothing exposed to nature this long could be clean.
It seemed Margaret was coming to the same realisation.
"The killer." She whispered, the gleam of excitement back in her eyes. She had been somewhat deflated ever since William had all but quashed her theory of a killer hidden on the island for the last decade, but this abandoned, clean hut in the middle of nowhere gave credence to her idea.
"There can be other explanations as well." Elizabeth said, furrowing her brows. It seemed she wasn't all too keen on the killer theory.
"Like what? The inside of the hut just happened to be clean over a decade?"
"If I assume your theory to be correct, then how did the killer live in this hut? There is actually nothing in here except for the clean floor. No way to make food, no bed to sleep in, no protection from the elements, nothing."
"And besides," Sophie chimed in now, walking into the hut as well, "why would the killer live on this hut for a decade instead of the deserted mansion?"
Leo stayed silent, but he noticed that every point made thus far was in negation of the opposing view. Nothing either Elizabeth, Margaret or Sophie said were in support of their own viewpoints.
Probably because neither of the possibilities made much sense!
If there was actually a killer on the island for a decade, why didn't they escape? Why did they not live in the mansion? Why did they send a telegram after ten years? And more importantly how did he send a telegram from this island? If he went to the mainland to send the telegram, how did they do so past the navy cordon? And even if somehow they made it off the island, why didn't they just do it ten years or even five years back and send the telegram to their parents instead?
On the other hand though, if there was no killer, then what is the purpose of this hut? How is the floor so clean after a decade?
Again and again Leo's thoughts circled back to those five corpses. Somehow he knew that identifying those corpses was crucial to understanding everything about this mystery. He was even considering asking his mother where she had buried the bodies so he could dig them up and check them at least once more, when Elizabeth gave a soft cry from inside.
"Look at that." She said, pulling out what looked like a rolled-up calendar, which was almost hidden amidst the roots of the weeds. This object was however covered with dust, and Elizabeth and Sophie both coughed as the dust billowed out from the object. Then as Elizabeth slowly rolled it open, all of them realised what it was.
"A map!" Elizabeth's voice was hushed in excitement.
Leo and Margaret tried to rush inside, but there wasn't enough space inside the hut for four people. Therefore they had to look inside from the hole in the ceiling as Elizabeth and Sophie inside pored over the old parchment.
The map was quite faded, but even so it was clearly one of the island. The mansion was marked clearly at the centre of the island, and there were four crosses marked at the four corners of the map. From those crosses, there were lines drawn to the opposite cross, and they all intersected at the mansion. The lines were quite faded, but still it was quite easy to deduce their path.
"Gold...." Margaret whispered, but loud enough that all three of them heard it. Sophie looked quizzically at her, while Elizabeth sighed and shook her head.
"Still going on about the gold Margi-"
"Sorry sorry big sis, but that's what it has to be no?" Margaret's voice shook with excitement.
"Sorry what gold are you two talking about?" Sophie asked, and Leo finally got the answer to his question on whether his mother knew about the gold or not.
Margaret quickly explained what she had told him aboard the boat. After she was done, Leo saw his mother furrow her brows, more in concentration than in annoyance, as if she were trying to remember whether she had ever heard any legends about any gold.
"Don't listen to her Aunt Sophie. It's just something Dad said off-handedly once. Neither Will nor me actually believe in gold being hidden here." Elizabeth sounded sincere, but Leo doubted her words. Maybe she herself didn't believe there was gold hidden on the island, but he was sure William hadn't dismissed it outright.
"What else would those four crosses mean then?" Margaret asked indignantly.
"Well.." Elizabeth looked once more at the map, turning it around to see if it made more sense.
"It can be the location of the laboratories or research centres as well no?" She said eventually, keeping the map down on the floor.
"Who would Grandfather be marking them for though?" Leo thought out loud.
There was no answer.
"It may be the time machine." Sophie offered.
"I don't believe in the time machine still. It must be the gold." Margaret said obstinately.
"I think we are close to one of the crosses." Leo said slowly, turning his neck to verify that.
Sophie picked up the map and frowned at it, and then slowly nodded. "Yeah we seem to be close to the one on the bottom left, since we came in that direction from the mansion."
There was a silence. No one suggested what they were all thinking. Finally it was Leo again who said, "I think we should check it out now. If there is gold or something else, this is the first hint we have found since coming on the island."
Elizabeth and Sophie looked reluctant, but relented finally. Margaret was already excitedly on the path.
"Let's find the gold." She said excitedly. Evidently she was not going to give up on her idea this quickly.
Leo sighed and just hoped that whatever was there in that place marked with a cross was as harmless as a piece of gold.