The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [73]
“No, thank you,” Mr. Arbuthnot called back. “You have made my task much easier.”
Mr. Allerton shrugged his shoulders and walked back to find his nephew, who was skipping rocks along the bank farther down the path.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Stories with continuing characters have always been a favorite theme of mine both as a writer and a reader. I had no idea when I wrote “Poppy’s Coin” in our first anthology, Bump in the Night, that the coin would be the element that continues in each novella.
If you go to my website, MaryBlayney.com, you will find a chronology of the coin in each of the novellas in which it has appeared.
The coin I call “Poppy’s coin” does exist, though I have never seen it do its magic. The Admiral Gardner, a ship bound for India, left England in 1809 carrying a load of freshly minted coins. The ship sank just off the Goodwin Sands. Between 1984 and 1985, an authorized treasure-hunting diving syndicate recovered the cargo. My good friend, writer Lavinia Kent, gave me one of them, and it inspired “Poppy’s Coin.”
There are still some stories untold. What did Martha Stepp wish for? She is the maid who is fired in the second novella, “Amy and the Earl’s Amazing Adventure” in Dead of Night, and Martha appears again as the baby’s nurse in “The Other Side of the Coin.”
At the end of “The Other Side of the Coin” in The Other Side, Miss Lucy Bright is left with the coin and knows exactly what she will wish for, but so far she has not told me what that is. I’m not sure how Alexei Chernov worded his wish, but it’s the reason he never came back from his trip abroad.
I do know what Mr. Allerton wishes for: that someone will love him for himself and not for his money. His wish is granted when his selfish, feckless wife, Irina, eventually bears a son, and later a daughter. The two children love their father dearly and care for him all his life.
The coin interprets the wish as it sees fit. So, yes, be careful what you wish for.
Finally, a little history of purple dye. Before the chemistry of dyeing was perfected, purple dye came from mollusks. Discovered around 1600 B.C. on the Levantine coast, the process required twelve thousand shellfish to recover 1.5 grams of dye, making it the most expensive color to produce, and thus, the color of royalty. Who knows how the Chernovs developed their mollusk recipe, but it was, even in 1816, a very valuable commodity.
Yes, people used magnets in the early nineteenth century, though the relationship between magnetism and electricity had yet to be demonstrated. And yes, there were women who owned and managed shops then, mostly widows, just as Lydia pretended to be.
If you have any other questions, please let me know. My email address is MaryBlayney@gmail.com.
DEAR ONE
PATRICIA GAFFNEY
To everybody. Thanks for everything.
ONE
“Hm?” Charlie Worth said the first two times his grandson, Oliver, asked him about the credit card bill. If he feigned deafness indefinitely, Oliver might give up and leave him alone. Although such a thing had never happened before.
“Grandfather.”
A chair scraped on the kitchen floor. Charlie kept his binoculars focused on the insipid view, three floors below, of a flock of geese and an old lady pushing a walker around one of the bean-shaped lakes at The Lakes at Cartamack, Vibrant Living for Active Seniors.
“Grandfather,” Oliver said at his elbow.
Charlie gave up. “What?”
“What’s this?”
He squinted. Maybe he could feign blindness.
“Here.” Oliver tapped a line on the bill. “I’m sure it’s a mistake. It says you spent over four hours on the phone this month to a 900 number, something called ‘M. Romanescu.’ For a total of $780.39.”
Stalling, Charlie pulled back his lips, trying to mimic his grandson’s amused, incredulous smile. “M. Romanescu. M. Romanescu.” He said that a few more times, then fell back on “Hm.”
Gradually Oliver stopped smiling. At the moment his eyes went wide with shock, Charlie realized what Oliver was thinking.
“It’s not phone sex!”
“Of course not. Of course