Jane Carter Investigates: Episode Eighty-One
In dismay, we watched the trinket
settle slowly to the bottom of the pool.
“Oh, my beautiful pin,” moaned
Florence. “Aunt Lucinda gave it to me for my birthday. I wouldn’t have lost it
for anything in the world.”
“I guess it was my fault,” I
admitted.
“No, it wasn’t. I must have been
careless about fastening the clasp. When I leaned over, it slipped off. Well,
it’s gone, and that’s that.”
The cameo pin had fallen into the
deepest part of the pool, not far from where the alligator lay. I could not see
its final resting place because of the lily pads and plants which cluttered the
water.
“If that old alligator would just
behave himself we could wade in and get it easily,” I said.
“Fancy trying it!”
“I’m afraid he would take special
delight in snapping off an arm or a leg. And we don’t dare ask anyone to help
us get the pin, or we’ll be ejected from the grounds as trespassers.”
“We may as well forget about it,
Jane. Come along, this place is giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
“No, wait, Florence. We might be
able to fish it out with a stick.”
“I don’t think we’d have a
chance.”
“It won’t do any harm to try.”
I searched the woods until I
found a long, slender tree branch with a curve at the end. I leaned out over
the high concrete rim at the edge of the pool as I prodded for the pin.
“I can touch it, all right! I’ll
pull it over to the side.”
“Be careful you don’t tumble in,”
Florence warned, as she clung to my waist. “If you should lose your balance—”
I hooked the cameo pin in the
curve of the stick and began raising it inch by inch up the side of the pool.
“If I can get it up high enough,
reach down and snatch it,” I said. “Oh, bother, there it goes!”
The pin had slipped away from the
stick and settled once more on the bottom of the pool.
“You can’t get it, Jane,”
Florence insisted. “You’re making the alligator all excited by prodding
around.”
“I don’t care about him. He can’t get out. I’ll try once
more if I can locate the pin. It seems to be hiding from me now.”
The water was so disturbed that I
could see neither the pin nor the bottom of the pool. I waited several minutes
for the silt to settle.
“There it is!” I said. “It moved
over quite a way to the right.”
“Oh, let the pin go,” Flo said.
“No, I think I can get it. Look,
there seems to be something else on the bottom of the pool.”
“Where?”
I pointed. Flo still could not
distinguish anything until I parted the lily pads with my stick.
“Yes, I do see something now,”
Florence said. “What can it be?”
“Doesn’t it look like a metal
ring?” I asked.
I had suddenly lost all interest
in the cameo pin.
“Yes, it does. Someone probably
threw it into the pool.”
“But it looks to me as if it’s
attached to the bottom of the tank, embedded in the cement,” I said. I bent
closer to the water, trying to see.
“Be careful,” Florence warned
nervously. “That alligator might come up and snap off your nose.”
I ignored her and leaned even
further out over the pool to prod the ring with my stick.
“It is attached! Florence, do you
know what I think?”
“What?”
“It’s the ring of a trapdoor!”
“A trapdoor!”
“You can see for yourself that
it’s an iron ring.”
“It does look a little like one
from here,” Florence admitted. “But whoever heard of a trapdoor in a lily pool?
Only you would even think of such a thing. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Does anything on this estate
make sense?”
“The ring might have something to
do with draining the pool,” Florence said without replying to my question. “I
suppose a section of the pool could be lifted up and removed. But I’d never
call it a trapdoor.”
“I wish we could tell for sure
what it is. Maybe the alligator has a room down under the pool where he spends
his winters!”
“You’re simply filled with ideas today,” Florence said. “What about my pin? Shall we let it go?”
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