The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace Page 8

“What will you have, Marge?” McDuff was saying—to Miss Trask!

  “Jeepers,” Trixie whispered. “Nobody ever—”

  “Sshh,” Jim whispered back.

  “Is that her name?” Mart asked under his breath.

  “It’s Margery,” Honey said. “I’ve seen it on the letters she gets from her sister.” She forced a pleasant expression onto her face as Miss Trask looked over at them and smiled.

  Trixie swallowed hard. Now, they’re adults, she reminded herself sternly, which means that they can call each other whatever they please. And anyway, that’s not so important now that we’re back on the track of Honey’s ancestors. She couldn’t wait to get on with the case.

  When the four friends had eaten the last crumbs of their delicious afternoon tea, they moved over to Miss Trask’s table, and Honey and Trixie filled her in on the Tweedies and Hartfield House.

  “The Tweedies said they’d be glad to recommend us,” Trixie said, “and that there’s sure to be a vacancy because they’re just opening up this week, and besides, Honey is probably related to them, because her great-great-aunt Priscilla who left her the necklace was a Hart, and when Mrs. Wheeler comes on Sunday, she’ll be so thrilled to find us living in her own ancestral mansion, probably, and—”

  “Whoa, there, Trixie!” Jim laughed. “You’re extrapolating quite a bit.”

  “He means,” Mart explained, “that you’re extending your knowledge of a known area into conjectural knowledge of an unknown area.”

  “He means,” Miss Trask said, “that you’re exaggerating again, Trixie.” The familiar twinkle in her nice blue eyes made the Bob-Whites feel that maybe she hadn’t changed all that much, after all. “By all means,” Miss Trask added, “let’s go see Hartfield House. It sounds lovely, and I don’t like being separated, the way we are in our present lodgings. That is, of course”—she turned to McDuff—“if you agree?”

  “Your word is my command, luv,” he said heartily, beaming at her.

  The word luv didn’t mean anything special in England, Trixie knew. Perfect strangers were always saying luv or duck or dear. What bothered Trixie was that when McDuff said it to Miss Trask, she blushed! One minute, Trixie thought, Miss Trask was her old self, and the next minute she was a whole different person. The Bob-Whites will have to have an emergency meeting and do something about this, she decided silently.

  Hartfield House was about a mile out of town on Welcombe Road.

  “Jeepers, imagine your very own relatives living this close to Shakespeare,” Trixie said to Honey. “They probably bumped into him in the grocery store, or wherever they shopped in those days!”

  “It all adds up,” Honey said thoughtfully. “If the Shakespeares lived so close to the Harts, it wouldn’t be that surprising for Shakespeare’s sister to marry a Hart. So that must mean that the tradition that we’re descended from Shakespeare is really true!”

  Unfortunately for that theory, Hartfield House didn’t look anywhere near as old as the half-timbered Elizabethan buildings the Bob-Whites had seen in Stratford-on-Avon. It was a beautiful mansion, however.

  “Well, the original Hart house could have burned down, and then they built another one,” Trixie guessed as McDuff guided the Maroon Saloon into the crescent driveway.

  The two-and-a-half-story pink-brick mansion was surrounded by bright-colored flower gardens. Emerald green ivy climbed the walls to a gabled roof that had dormer windows and more chimneys than they could see to count. The front entrance was protected by a grass-paned vestibule, which sparkled in the glow of the late afternoon sùnshine.

  The Bob-Whites held their breath as they waited inside the enclosure. Were they going to get to stay in this beautiful mansion? And was it really owned by a member of Honey’s own family?

  McDuff rapped on the door with a gleaming brass knocker that was in the shape of a deer.

  “Deer... Hart!” Mart exclaimed softly.

  “Dear heart?” Trixie repeated. “Who on earth are you talking to, Mart Belden?”

  “A male deer,” her brother explained patiently, “is a hart. Ergo, the family emblem.”

  It seemed like a long time before a brown-haired woman in a plain black dress opened the door a crack. “Yes?” she said coldly.

  “We heard you have rooms to let,” Miss Trask said, then hesitated. “But perhaps this isn’t the right place....”

  “Come in,” the woman said grudgingly, and she opened one of the lace-curtained double doors.

  The Bob-Whites filed in, followed by Miss Trask and McDuff. The woman disappeared through a hallway in the rear, leaving them standing in the reception hall.

  “Wow!” Trixie marveled. “I’ve never seen so many colors!”

  “It’s beautiful!” Honey’s eyes were shining. “Just wait till Mother sees it. Everything blends so well— the different shades and tones....”

  “It’s what Mrs. Wheeler would call a decorator’s dream,” Miss Trask agreed.

  “I know what Trixie means about color,” Jim said. He looked from the deep-purple-carpeted reception hall, with its antique furniture slipcovered in blending mauves and lavenders, to a pink and gray parlor at one end and a crimson-walled dining room at the other. “I never would have expected an English home to be brighter than we’d have in America!”

  “It rains a lot here,” McDuff explained with a chuckle. “A bit of color warms it up.”

  “Surprisingly enough, the stereotyped ideas we have about people of other nations are more often false than true,” Mart said earnestly. “You know, like I thought that the English would have terrible food. That was certainly an elephantine prevarication!”

  “Big lie,” Jim translated helpfully.

  “I have a hunch that more surprises are on the way,” Trixie said under her breath.

  A strikingly handsome dark-haired man in full dress had emerged from the hallway at the rear. “Yes?” he said, repeating the monosyllabic greeting of the woman in the black dress. Under arched black eyebrows, his dark eyes were sardonic.

  To Trixie, he looked like a mad scientist from a monster movie, but she was so eager to talk to him that she couldn’t keep quiet another minute. And besides, she thought bravely, the way to make friends is to be friendly, like we were with the Tweedie sisters. It worked fine with them.

  “Are you Mr. Hart?” she asked brightly.

  “Andrew Hart,” he said.

  “Andrew! That’s the name of my favorite uncle,” Trixie rushed on. “And we’re just dying to stay in your hotel because we think Honey—this is Honey Wheeler—well, her ancestors—on her mother’s side— were named Hart! So she might even be related to you, and—”

  “That will do, Trixie,” Miss Trask interrupted quietly. “Mr. Hart, we do hope you have accommodations for us for the rest of this week. We understand that you have only just opened your beautiful home for guests.”

  “You have been misinformed,” Mr. Hart said icily. “We have not yet finished with the necessary renovations.” He walked to the front door and held it open. Before the group knew what was happening, they were standing outside in the gravel driveway.

  “Gleeps.” Trixie tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “It looks like I did it again.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Honey said soothingly. “You were just being friendly, like you were with the Tweedies. Most people appreciate your friendliness. Don’t worry about it, Trixie.”

  “Methinks our host has something against us,” Mart agreed.

  “I think it was something else,” Miss Trask remarked thoughtfully. “Something that has absolutely nothing to do with us, personally.”

  Well, I think Andrew Hart is a bit of a meanie, Trixie thought privately. And I kind of hope that Honey’s not related to him!

  Anne ● 10

  MCDUFF HEADED straight for the Maroon Saloon, and the Bob-Whites followed him. Miss Trask lingered behind to admire the red, yellow, and orange mums and marigolds bordering the crescent drive in front of Hartfie
ld House. The Bob-Whites were about to climb into the backseat, when the vestibule door opened, and a girl came running out.

  She was about Trixie’s height but very slender, and she seemed a little older. She had dark brown hair cut in a smooth and shiny pageboy style, and she was wearing a blue and white tennis outfit. Her eyes were a very dark blue.

  “Hullo,” the girl said forthrightly, holding out her hand to Miss Trask. “I’m Anne Hart. My father says you are looking for lodgings.”

  The Bob-Whites gathered around her. She looked as though she might have been crying, but perhaps, thought Trixie, it was just the English strawberry-and-cream complexion that made her cheeks seem so pink.

  “We understand you’re not ready to open yet,” Miss Trask said pleasantly.

  “But Miss Tweedie—” Trixie began.

  “Yes, we know the Tweedie sisters,” said Anne. “Actually, they rang us up to ask if we could accommodate a party of six.” Anne flushed even pinker and went on breathlessly. “We are still in the process of renovation, which my father felt might inconvenience you. But we do have a few rooms we could make available.”

  “Are you sure?” Miss Trask asked. “We wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”

  Anne smiled. “If you can put up with us, we’d be glad to put you up,” she said in her straightforward way. “Would you like to see the rooms? I’m afraid they wouldn’t all be adjoining. We have three dormer rooms ready on the second story, and then there’s a twin bedroom opening off the rose garden.”

  “Oh, Miss Trask, could Honey and I have that one?” cried Trixie. “It sounds fantastic!”

  “What do you think?” Miss Trask asked McDuff, who had joined them in the driveway. “Should we go ahead and look at the rooms?”

  “Anything ye say, Marge,” he told her.

  Anne showed them the rooms herself. Andrew Hart and the gloomy woman in black were nowhere to be / seen.

  The bedrooms turned out to be as colorful as the entrance area. It was hard to believe that their forbidding host had authorized this imaginative interior decoration. The dormer rooms were done in different color schemes—a blue and gray one for Miss Trask, green and gold for McDuff, and a medley of reds for the boys.

  “When Mother sees how gorgeous this place is, she’ll probably go home and redo our entire house,” said Honey with a little sigh. Manor House could be hard to live in when Mrs. Wheeler was on one of her redecorating sprees.

  The loveliest room of all was the Rose Room. It had its own separate entrance from the large garden behind the mansion—a garden with pebbled paths and vine-covered bowers, a maze of hedges, and roses, roses, roses! The room was mostly white, with white furniture and white-canopied beds, but the wallpaper was covered with pink roses, and there were bowls full of pink blossoms fresh-picked from the garden outside.

  “You’re our first guests,” Anne said, “although we do have a number of bookings for next week.”

  “Then you can practice on us,” Trixie laughed, and Anne smiled back at her. She had a lovely smile.

  “We’ll run back to town now and get our things,” Miss Trask said.

  “Would you like dinner tonight?” Anne asked. “I’m afraid my father won’t be here. He’s off to the theater.”

  “Oh, no,” Miss Trask assured her. “We’ll eat in Stratford tonight. And we’re hoping to attend the play tomorrow night.”

  “Jolly good,” said Anne. “We serve dinner at six for the theatergoers. As you probably know, the price of the room includes dinner and breakfast.”

  And the prices Anne quoted, agreed the group once they were back in the Maroon Saloon, were so reasonable that they would have been foolish to stay anywhere else.

  Overjoyed, Trixie slouched down in the backseat. Not only are we staying in what is probably the prettiest house in the whole country, she thought, suppressing a howl of glee, but we're also in a perfect position to really get cracking on our case. Now, if we could just do something about McDuff....

  Immediately after breakfast the following morning, Trixie called an emergency meeting of the Bob-Whites.

  “We’re all chiefs and no Indians at this meeting,” commented Jim. He and Trixie were copresidents of the club; Honey was vice-president, and Mart was secretary-treasurer. “Too bad Brian, Di, and Dan can’t be here. Anyway, what’s this all about, Trix? I understand we’re here to save Miss Trask from a fate worse than death.”

  “This is no time for jokes,” said Trixie, her blue eyes flashing. “I wish the others could be here, too, but we can tell them everything when we get home. We have to act fast! Did you hear McDuff at breakfast this morning? Can you believe all those icky things he says to Miss Trask? I told you, I just don’t trust that man!”

  “You were worried he was going to steal our money,” Mart said lightly, “and now you’re worried he’s going to steal our chaperon.”

  “It’s not funny,” Trixie insisted. “Maybe it’s not so bad for you, Mart, but what about Honey and Jim? And what about Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler? What are they all going to do without Miss Trask? How can we sit back and let this happen? After all they’ve done for us!”

  “Are you saying she’s going to elope with Mr. McDuff to Scotland at the end of the week?” Jim asked. “That’s pretty fast work, even for a con man— if in fact that’s what he is. And besides, Miss Trask isn’t the type to get conned that easily.”

  “She’s only having a little fun for a change,” Mart added. “And who are we to stop her? What do you think, Honey?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” Honey was almost in tears. “She isn’t acting a bit like herself, and I don’t want her going off to Scotland or wherever. But I don’t want to be selfish, either. I—I guess we ought to be happy for her.”

  “Honey, you’re being so romantic,” Trixie sighed. “We don’t know a thing about the man. For example, what about that huge roll of bills he asked Anne to put in the safe for him last night? I think there’s something—”

  “Strange about him,” the others chorused.

  “He may not be a professional con man, like I thought at first,” Trixie went on stubbornly. “He did bring our money back, and he did save Honey’s life, but I can’t help it. I simply don’t like him. All that stuff he says to Miss Trask sounds so phony.”

  There was a short silence.

  “I have to admit I don’t quite trust this whirlwind courtship, either,” Jim said finally, and Trixie could have hugged him.

  “Well, what are we going to do about it?” she demanded.

  “The main thing we have to consider is Miss Trask’s feelings,” Jim said slowly. “We don’t want her getting hurt—by us or by Mr. McDuff. So we don’t want to do anything rash.”

  “Right,” said Mart. “If we butt in and she doesn’t want us to, we could lose her even sooner than you think, Trixie.”

  “So it looks like we’ll have to take a wait-and-see attitude,” Honey said thoughtfully, “and not do anything till we have more to go on.”

  The boys agreed and turned to Trixie.

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Trixie. Her friends were always so cautious. But then, she herself was often too hasty.

  Whatever McDuff’s intentions were toward Miss Trask, the Bob-Whites became aware that they couldn’t have found a better guide. By the end of a day of sight-seeing around the nearby countryside, with McDuff at the wheel, even Trixie had to admit that they’d had a marvelous time. And they had gained a little knowledge about their case, besides.

  That night, the four Bob-Whites talked over the day’s discoveries as they waited for dinner to be served in the Crimson Room at Hartfield House. They were also waiting for Miss Trask and McDuff, who had decided to get dressed for the theater before their dinner.

  Each of the young people had seen sights that day that had had particular appeal to his or her interests and ambitions.

  “As far as the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency is concerned,” Trixie said near the end of their lon
g discussion, “the most important thing was getting to see Shakespeare’s father’s house and his mother’s house. It’s wonderful to be able to get such a clear picture of how the Shakespeares lived. And I just can’t get over how all those four-hundred-year-old houses are still in such good shape!”

  “His mother’s house was what got me,” Mart said. “Mary Arden’s farm. With a dairy and all those old milk pails and things they made cheese and butter with, and a cider mill—”

  “And the stable!” Jim added enthusiastically. He was crazy about horses.

  “And all those old plows and sowing and harvesting gadgets,” Mart went on. “I could have stayed there a week.”

  “I thought Mary Arden’s house was beautiful,” Honey agreed. “I just love these old Elizabethan kitchens, with those huge stone fireplaces and big brass pots.”

  “No dishwasher, though,” sniffed Trixie.

  “That’s right,” Mart said, poker-faced. “No one had got around to inventing Trixie Beldens by the sixteenth century!”

  “I wonder if almost-twin brothers had been invented then,” said Trixie sweetly. “Anyway, what am I complaining about? I’m getting out of all my chores at home for a whole week!”

  “Me, too,” said Mart. “Except for the chore of keeping my little sister in line!”

  Before Trixie could think of a retort, Honey said, “I wonder what’s keeping Miss Trask and Mr. McDuff. If we don’t get started with dinner soon, we won’t have time to get properly dressed for the theater.”

  “What are you wearing, Honey?” Trixie asked her friend anxiously.

  “Well, I notice that Anne’s father has been going to the theater every night, and he’s been wearing a tux, so I suppose that means we should wear our very best.”

  Mart clapped his hand to his forehead. “Good heavens!” he cried. “We’ve forgotten our tuxes, haven’t we, James?”

  Jim nodded ruefully. “That’s right, Martin. I guess we’ll just have to wear our jeans, won’t we?”

  “You can't wear jeans—” Honey began, and then she noticed the twinkle in Jim’s green eyes. “You guys are too much,” she snorted.