The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace Page 3

  AS THE BOB-WHITES were waiting in line for admittance to the Wax Museum, an English family strolled over to stand right behind them. The small boy and girl appeared to be twins, with red hair like Jim’s and blue eyes like Bobby’s. They bore a closer resemblance to her little brother, Trixie thought, the way they were staring at her. She did feel a bit self-conscious, suddenly, about the fact that the four Americans were dressed in identical red jackets, the ones Honey had expertly sewn for each of the Bob-Whites.

  Trixie bent down to the children and gave them her friendliest smile. “I’ll bet you’re wondering why we’re all wearing these red jackets,” she said. “You see, we belong to a club called the Bob-Whites of the Glen. That’s what the initials on the back of our jackets stand for. We have to earn our own money for club dues, and we have a lot of fun together. Sometimes we even get to solve exciting mysteries. Do you belong to a club?”

  Instead of answering, the children merely giggled and retreated behind their mother’s skirt.

  “The twins’re a bit shy, they are,” said the rosy-faced Englishwoman. “That is, with stryngers they are.”

  Strangers! Trixie’s jaw tightened. Why, I’ve always been able to make friends with little kids, she thought stubbornly.

  “And we have this special club whistle,” she persisted, still bending down, “for when we get into trouble.” Without stopping to think, she let out her most ear-piercing bob, bob-white!

  With a delighted grin, the children peeked out from behind their mother. The rest of the crowd, however, backed off, and a man in uniform appeared from inside the museum.

  “ ‘Ere now,” the man said sternly. “None of that!”

  Trixie hastily stood up, an uncomfortable redness spreading across her face. “I was only—” she began.

  Without waiting for her to finish, the museum guard shook a warning finger at her and hurried back into the building.

  “That’s lucky for you,” Mart murmured in Trixie’s ear. “I have a feeling your explanation would have got you into even more hot water.”

  “Come on, you two,” Honey said peaceably. “We can go in now.”

  Once inside, the Bob-Whites grew quiet as they gazed at the wax figures, which wore real clothes and seemed human right down to their hair, eyelashes, and bright, sparkling eyes. The figures looked so incredibly real and so familiar that the Bob-Whites didn’t even have to read their names.

  “It’s like seeing everybody you ever heard of, all in one place,” Honey marveled. “Napoleon and the Beatles, Abraham Lincoln and Liza Minnelli, all standing around together, big as life!”

  “And Shakespeare,” Mart said, going over for a closer look. He consulted his guidebook. “It says here that they make an impression of the skull in wax-using the actual head, if possible. If not, an artist sculpts it. Then they stick the hairs in the warm wax, one by one. The eyes are hand-blown glass, each one perfectly color-matched to the victim—that is, uh, the subject. There’s a collection of eyes in the storeroom drawers—that I have to see!”

  “I’ve heard that many world leaders—even kings and queens—come right here to Madame Tussaud’s to be measured and photographed,” Jim said.

  “There’s Madame Tussaud in the flesh—I mean, in the wax.” Trixie pointed to the famous old lady in the entrance hall. “Is she still alive?”

  “Not quite.” Mart grinned. “According to the guidebook, she started making wax figures way back before the French Revolution, when she was only eighteen, and she died in 1850, at the age of eighty-nine.”

  “It says here she modeled old Ben Franklin when he was in Paris in 1783,” Jim read from the guidebook. “He was the first American statesman ever to be done in wax.”

  “She also did Marie Antoinette—fresh from the guillotine,” Mart said. “They brought her the head in a basket.” He drew a grisly line across his throat.

  “Yipes,” Trixie said, and she saw Honey shiver. Trixie was reminded of how Honey used to faint at the sight of blood when she first came to Sleepyside. Now she's as determined as I am to become a detective, Trixie thought. Of course, she still does get scared sometimes, but that’s because she tends to have more sense than I do.

  Trixie wasn’t really careless. On second thought, she was always the first to agree that she had been too impulsive. The trouble was, she didn’t always have her second thoughts until too late.

  Thinking about Honey’s early days in Sleepyside made Trixie think of the absent Bob-Whites and how much she wished they could have come. “Especially Dan—he really deserves a trip like this,” Trixie said out loud, without realizing that nobody would know what she’d been thinking about. “Because he works so hard all the time!” Embarrassed, she blushed.

  Honey smiled understandingly. “I wish Dan could have come, too,” she said. “And Brian. They’re just so serious about earning money.”

  “And Di’s always having to go someplace with her parents,” Mart said grumpily. He kind of liked Di. Unlike Trixie, she always appreciated him.

  “It’s probably just as well everybody couldn’t come,” Jim pointed out. “That would be three more people to confuse waiters and museum guards!”

  Mart unslung his camera and called the others over to pose in front of a group of American presidents.

  “You should be in this one,” Trixie told him. “Here—let me take it.”

  Everybody groaned.

  “Trix, you always jiggle the camera while you’re taking the picture,” protested Mart.

  “Or else you chop off everyone’s head,” teased Honey. “And I’ve already had enough head-chopping for one day!”

  Finally Jim volunteered to take the picture.

  “Boy, will our history teachers be impressed,” exulted Trixie. “Here we are in a picture with George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt—isn’t he neat? And look—President Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. Gleeps!”

  “Here’s Henry the Eighth,” Jim said as they walked into another hall. The bulky king was surrounded by all six of his wives.

  “Talk about head-chopping!” said Mart. “That’s how a few of his wives met their end, you know.”

  “ ’E was a ’olv terror, ’e was,” their mother told the little redheaded twins, who were still close behind the Bob-Whites. “A naughty man, indeed!”

  Fortunately, Honey wasn’t around to hear this bloodthirsty conversation. “Trixie!” she shrieked from across the room. “Come here! Here’s Queen Elizabeth, and just look at her necklace. Isn’t it a lot like mine? Like my inheritance?” Honey was acting so excited that the other Bob-Whites hurried over to join her immediately.

  “Come now. Queue up, queue up,” a stout Englishman reminded them, flourishing his skinny black umbrella. A crowd of sightseers had just surged into the Hall of Kings, and the Bob-Whites were out of line. To the British, it seemed, this was a crime second only to first-degree murder.

  Honey didn’t budge. She couldn’t take her eyes off the red-haired queen, and Queen Elizabeth the First stared back at her disdainfully. She was wearing a glittering, bejeweled gown—and an ornate necklace of multicolored gems.

  “They’re not exactly like yours, though, Honey,” Trixie said.

  “No, but I think it proves what the appraiser told Mother,” Honey insisted.

  The Bob-Whites dropped behind to let the other tourists move ahead of them.

  “Honey, you may be right,” Jim said thoughtfully. “The appraiser said it dates back to about 1600, didn’t he? That would be about the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, wouldn’t it?”

  “Elizabeth the First, 1558 to 1603,” Mart recited glibly.

  “Elementary, my dear Watson,” Trixie scoffed. “You read it off the plaque.”

  “I promise this is the last time I’ll mention beheading,” said Mart, “but I just can’t resist mentioning that even Elizabeth was a decapitator. She was responsible for the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots—her own half sister!”

  Jim shook his head. “I’ve always h
eard Miss Trask say how soothing she finds the sound of the Scottish accent, and I think it’s neat, too. But I must say there’s a lot of blood in Scottish history.”

  “In English history, too,” said Honey with a shudder. “Come on, let’s go see the Sleeping Beauty upstairs.”

  Trixie was only too happy to follow. The sight of another figure near Elizabeth’s had slightly unnerved her. For some reason, she felt like getting as far away as possible from the bony, scar-faced figure, dressed all in gray from his battered golf cap to his dirty trousers.

  Upstairs, in the shadowy Chamber of the Tableaux, lay the famous fairy-tale princess. Her long golden hair, just the color of Honey’s, spilled over a white lace pillow, and her chest rose and fell as if she were alive.

  “She’s breathing, ” Honey whispered.

  The group was also impressed by the deafening Battle of Trafalgar, laid out on two levels below. It was like a real battle at sea, with cannons roaring, smoke billowing, flares bursting, and fifty wax sailors fighting across the pitching deck of the ship.

  “Wow!” said Mart. “Wonder how they build this.”

  “They do a lot with electronics,” Jim explained. “Strobe lights, magnetic tape—I guess it’s a lot noisier than it used to be when Madame Tussaud was around.”

  “Let’s not forget to see the Chamber of Horrors,” said Trixie. Eager to view some of history’s most notorious criminals and villains, she led the way down the winding stone steps to the dungeons.

  In the gloomy light, it was hard to see very well. Eerily highlighted were the faces of people like Jack the Ripper, Nazi war criminals, Lee Harvey Oswald, and a mob of French peasants gleefully watching the very guillotine that had been used in the French Revolution. Weird music drifted through the dark cells.

  “Brrr,” Honey shivered. “It’s cold down here,”

  Most of the archcriminals were behind bars. “Visitors have been known to break off wax fingers for souvenirs,” said Mart. “And speaking of wax fingers, I’m not leaving till I see how they put these things together. I bet we could get them to let us see the workshops.”

  “Go ahead,” Trixie said. “I’d rather see the rest of the Horrors. How about you, Honey?”

  “We-ell,” Honey said, “neither alternative sounds all that attractive to me. But I guess the workshops do sound even gorier than this, so I’ll stay down here.”

  “You go with Mart if you want to, Jim,” Trixie said. “We can meet at the exit.”

  “I don’t think we should split up,” Jim said doubtfully. He glanced at Trixie.

  “Oh, pish!” Trixie tossed her curls. “What could happen? All these figures are wax, remember? This must be one of the safest places in the whole world, as bloodcurdling as it looks!”

  Jim grinned and looked at his watch. “Well, okay,” he agreed. “But let’s meet at the main exit in ten minutes. We have to find our way back to the hotel before Miss Trask decides to call in Scotland Yard.”

  “Only ten minutes?” Mart sighed. “Ah, ‘the time is out of joint,’ as the Bard would say.”

  “Only when you’re wasting it,” Trixie said pointedly, and the boys took off.

  It was near teatime, and not many tourists were left in the subterranean vaults. Trixie and Honey stuck close together as they wandered from one Horror to the next.

  “I’m beginning to wish I’d gone with the boys,” quavered Honey.

  “Just another minute,” begged Trixie. “If we’re going to be detectives, we have to know what we may be up against some—oh, my goodness!”

  In turning a corner in a narrow passageway, Trixie had brushed against a rigid figure standing in a shadowed niche in the wall. “Look—isn’t he strange?” she muttered.

  Honey inched closer and, without a word, clutched Trixie’s arm.

  The strangest thing about him, thought Trixie, was that he looked almost exactly like that bony gray figure she’d seen up in the Hall of Kings. For a moment, the thought crossed her mind that the museum had “planted” these spooky figures in various places, as a practical joke to scare the tourists. No, that doesn't make any sense, she thought, moving back a step. This has to be the same one I saw upstairs. His pallid face was set in the same evil leer, his beady black eyes sparkled with the same brilliance, and he was dressed in the same dirty gray clothes.

  “Wonder what kind of criminal he is,” breathed Honey.

  Trixie snapped her fingers. “A pickpocket, I bet!” Miss Trask had warned them about pickpockets in London, and this was exactly Trixie’s idea of what a pickpocket would look like. She looked around for a plaque identifying this figure, but could find none.

  “Come on, Trixie,” Honey pleaded. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait a second.” Trixie gazed steadily into the man’s beady eyes, until—she was almost certain—the pale white eyelids twitched.' Defiantly, she kept on staring.

  “He looks so real,” Honey whispered.

  “Guess what,” Trixie said grimly as the eyes wavered. “He is!”

  The stiff figure broke into motion and grabbed at Honey’s arm.

  “Hang on to your bag!” Trixie yelled.

  The little man tried to wrench the handbag from Honey, who screamed as the leather strap bit into her shoulder.

  Trixie tried to pull him away, but he was surprisingly strong. His bony hands felt like steel claws as he grappled with them in the dim passageway.

  Bob, bob-white! Trixie whistled shrilly.

  But the boys were nowhere near.

  Clues in the Catalog ● 4

  ’ERE NOW, wot’s all this?”

  Trixie’s whistle had instantly produced a guard, probably her old friend from the entrance, although she wasn’t sure.

  “Quick, catch him!” Trixie urged. “He’s getting away!”

  “Catch ’oo?” the guard asked, looking around.

  The little gray man was nowhere in sight. He had wriggled out of Trixie’s clutches like a slippery fish and taken off down the dim passageway.

  “Oh, Honey,” she wailed. “Did he get your bag?”

  “No, I—I hung on to it,” Honey said, still shaking.

  “Why don’t you go after that pickpocket?” Trixie demanded angrily of the guard.

  The guard just stared at her.

  “There! He was standing right there.” Trixie pointed forcefully at the niche in the wall. “We thought he was a wax man at first, because he looked so awful, like a famous criminal. Only he wasn’t wax—he was alive.” Trixie was talking as fast as she could, so that the guard would still have time to catch the pickpocket. “Oh, please, hurry!”

  The guard frowned. “Young lydy,” he said, “I cahn’t myke out a word you’re sying, but I will ’ave to arsk you to leave. This is the second time you ’ave cre-yted a disturbance.”

  “You—you’re throwing me out?” Trixie gasped, incredulous. She stared at the guard.

  Honey squeezed her hand. “We’d better go.”

  Trixie bristled all the way back to the hotel. Fortunately, the Bob-Whites were given very good directions by a policeman, or bobby, as the English called their police.

  Miss Trask was waiting for them. She showed a slight flicker of a smile when she heard how Trixie had got herself and Honey evicted from the museum, but she grew serious when the talk turned to pickpockets. “From now on, I think you should all stick together, at least while we’re in London,” she said. “And why doesn’t everyone give me their passports? We’ll leave them in the hotel safe, just in case we run into any more pickpockets.”

  When the Bob-Whites awoke on the following day, a Saturday, it was raining.

  “It seems to rain a lot in England,” commented Honey.

  “Nobody pays any attention, though,” Trixie said, yawning. “They carry umbrellas just as naturally as they wear shoes.”

  “Brollies, they call them,” Mart put in.

  They and Miss Trask were planning to spend the morning at the British Museum and Library, foll
owing up on the research already begun by Miss Trask. At the museum entrance, they not only had to get special reading passes but also had to be searched for bombs.

  “London has survived more bombs than any great city in the world,” Miss Trask told them, “mostly in the Second World War, but even today they have to keep a close watch for terrorists. In the forties, squadrons of Nazi planes flew over every day, destroying or damaging about eighty percent of the houses in London.” Miss Trask’s kind blue eyes clouded over as she told them about England’s terrible ordeal.

  “I guess there wouldn’t be any London,” Trixie said, “if our country hadn’t entered the war.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Miss Trask demurred. “The people of Great Britain were very brave. They fought without us for over two years, and then they continued to fight beside us.”

  “Thank goodness this museum isn’t much like the Wax Museum,” Honey said as the group walked through the large exhibit halls toward the reading rooms.

  Gigantic black sphinxes and bas-reliefs from ancient Egypt towered over them. There were huge marble columns from the Parthenon and almost an entire Greek temple in one of the halls.

  “The purpose of this museum is a little different, too,” said Miss Trask. “It’s designed to preserve and interpret the history of humanity, specializing in the history of ancient and medieval civilizations. Many individuals have donated their entire collections of objects and information, making this one of the most famous museums in the world.”

  “Sounds like the Bob-Whites,” Jim said with a grin. Whenever the Bob-Whites got a reward for solving a mystery or capturing some criminals, or whenever they found something valuable, they always gave it to someone who needed it more than they did. In fact, that was the secret purpose of their club—to help people.

  “And the British Library is one of the largest libraries in the world,” Miss Trask went on. “It has about eight million books. We could spend our whole lives just in the British Museum and never run out of fascinating new exhibits,” she added regretfully. “But we have only ten days to find out about Honey’s necklace and Mrs. Wheeler’s ancestors.”