SECURE YOUR CLUE NOW! (AUGUST 23RD) The Maidenspore

 The year is 1920. Prohibition has just become the law of the land, and a wave of dry laws sweeps across North Carolina. On the outskirts of Wilmington—where sandy farmland meets marshland—stood the crumbling remains of a once-grand estate known as the Eldren Property. It wasn’t a vineyard in the European sense, but it had once bottled muscadine wine made from native grapes that thrived in the heat and humidity. By 1905, that had dried up. What remained was something quieter, and far more illegal.

The estate’s owner, Bartholomew Eldren, was no winemaker. He was an importer and collector. Through quiet dealings at the port and paid-off customs agents, Eldren built a private collection of foreign wines—bottles from France, Spain, and Italy—hidden deep in the old root cellar beneath the house. His pride was a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite, a rarity rumored to have once belonged to the Jefferson estate in Virginia, later passed through the hands of a Confederate officer during the war, and finally acquired by Eldren through a private broker in Charleston in 1901.

Among the staff was Irene Marrow, a housemaid who’d worked for the Eldren family since she was a girl. She was clever, overlooked, and fiercely loyal to her younger brother Elias, who had worked the grounds before being dismissed in a rage by Eldren months prior. Rumors swirled that Elias had caught wind of Eldren’s smuggling operation, or worse, that he’d threatened to expose it.

As the heat of Prohibition closed in and whispers of a federal raid drifted through the port, Eldren grew increasingly paranoid. He sealed off the root cellar, barred up the second floor, and forbade the staff from speaking to outsiders. Some claimed he began pacing the halls at night, speaking to his wines as if they were old friends—or enemies. It was said Irene once caught him trying to bribe a federal agent with the Château Lafite, the final insult after what he’d done to her brother.

Then, one humid night, Irene vanished.

Two days later, Eldren was found dead at the edge of the marsh. A wine bottle lay shattered beside him. There were no witnesses, no signs of forced entry, and no record of the prized bottle among the estate’s remaining inventory. The coroner’s notes were destroyed in the flood of ’21. Some called it suicide. Others whispered poison.

Years passed. The Eldren estate was abandoned and sold off in pieces. Most assumed the wine collection was either seized or destroyed. But in the spring of 1942, a mason restoring the foundation of a nearby farmhouse uncovered a hollow space behind the chimney bricks. Inside was a weathered book of hymns. Folded between the pages was a single note, handwritten in ink:

There’s only speculation of what the note read, was it a confession, was it a personal note, or a clue to the disappearance of the bottle of Lafite? one thing is is for certain the signature matched the name on an old servant registry: Irene Marrow.

Since then, whispers have persisted that Irene stole the 1787 Lafite and hid it somewhere on the Eldren land—possibly in the ruins of the old wine shed, or beyond the marsh where the wild grapes still grow in crooked rows. Some say she marked the spot with an iron crucifix. Others claim it was a rosary hung in a pine tree. No one’s ever found it.

But the land is still there. And if the bottle is real—sealed in wax and cloth and scripture—it would be worth a fortune. Or at least a story worth dying for.