Treasure hunt

Falling Short

It took a week for Peter to finally open the notebook he had stolen from the man he first met at the museum. Annie and Morgana had required all of his attention, leaving him exhausted and wishing only for his bed every night since. Anna was soon going to come out of kindergarten while Morgana had finally started her first year of primary school. As a result, the homework piled up day after day. Making matters worse, the girls refused to get help from anyone but him.

Peter had a lot on his mind but was scared of only one thing: being evicted from the only apartment the girls had ever known. He felt that this, compounded with the recent loss of their mother, would break their small family even further. So he did his best to make up for the loss of income that was needed to pay for the sky-high rent. This took a heavy toll on the free time that he had with the girls.

Peter handled the small notebook with great care. From the little he had understood from Pierre, this notebook had enormous value. Though Peter had never really extracted from Pierre how exactly, he knew that this could clearly change the tide for him. He had even settled, before opening the notebook, on only seeking one out of the three objects he had been told about. Once that was done, he would return the notebook to Pierre. He was not doing this to become rich, he just wanted a decent future for his daughters, one that was not compromised by their lack of luck early in their lives.

Peter scanned through the pages and found writings that he could barely decipher. All he could say was that it was cursive and mostly old French. Thankfully, there were no weird symbols, no pictograms that he would have to learn or research. Over the three weeks he had the notebook in his possession, he isolated writings in twelve different colours present throughout. He also guessed that these came from potentially three different writers. Worst of all, for the few pages he managed to transcribe, the texts in the different colours often contradicted one another.

Peter understood that he was way over his head and started to doubt. He reconsidered why he had ever thought he would be more capable than a man that had been doing this for decades. All Peter had was a passion for history and art, but that had never proved very helpful except for wasting his time in museums and impressing his late wife enough to get her on their first date. He researched some of the hints that he had been given by Pierre, and from whatever he could grasp in the notebook. This lead him nowhere. The more time he spent pouring over the notebook late into the night, the more he felt he could be using this time to make actual money doing a real job.

Finally, after two sleepless nights and a couple of arguments with his daughters, on account of his sleep deprivation, he concluded that there was no point to his endeavour. It had all been a mistake and a waste of time. He would return the notebook to Pierre, anonymously, and never think about it again. He looked up Pierre online and tracked his address down. It was decided, he would drop the notebook at Pierre's house as soon as he could.

One night, the night before he was to return the notebook, he was double checking Pierre's address and he came across an article on Pierre. He recognised the name instantly in the title, though he was surprised to find such an article on a mostly unremarkable man: "In memoriam - Pierre Deschamps". He read the short article. Pierre had died a month prior, found drowned in the Seine. The obituary was concise and praised Pierre for his work, his strive for perfection in the maintenance hall and his passion for treasure hunting, a passion, the article said, he had shared with all of his colleagues on numerous occasions.

Peter felt his world tumble. He felt helpless, weighed down by the feeling that he had made a big mistake. He was now in possession of a dead man's map to a treasure that he was certain he would never be able to find without help. There was no way the treasure would ever be found. 'This is how treasures are lost,' he thought. He considered returning the notebook to the family, but he worried that this might raise some sort of suspicion. It was probably better if they never found out, especially considering what Pierre had hinted at about his wife. She probably had no idea the notebook was missing. Peter was at an impasse, he had wasted weeks worth of time and was coming dangerously close to running out of money. He had put his family on the brink, and it was all for nothing.

That same night, Peter fell asleep and dreamt about the notebook. The dream was the perfect embodiment of all his fears relating to that small pocketbook. Towards the dream's end, Pierre's son appeared. This woke Peter up. The young man still on his mind, he jotted down an idea that he had just had, remembering what Pierre had told him at the cafe, or maybe it was the museum. Peter smiled at the idea that had hatched in his head. He was optimistic that there might finally be a way out, though it was far from what he had expected. If it worked it would be an adventure but this could be his holy grail.

Over the next few weeks, he set his plan in motion.