The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace Page 9

  Jim whistled, an appreciative gleam in his eyes. He wasn’t looking at Honey, however.

  McDuff and Miss Trask were entering the dining room—and Miss Trask was wearing an evening gown! It was a soft shade of pink, with a high neck, long sleeves, and a skirt that swished elegantly around her silver sandals.

  Trixie couldn’t remember ever seeing Miss Trask in anything other than one of her trim, tailored suits. “Jeepers, Miss Trask,” she blurted without realizing how tactless she sounded, “I didn’t know you wore dresses like that!”

  “You look perfectly beautiful,” Honey assured her.

  “Even more pulchritudinous than usual,” agreed Mart brightly.

  “Thank you, everyone,” Miss Trask said crisply. “Now, if people will kindly take their eyes off me, I believe there’s a dinner to be eaten.”

  The dinner, which turned out to be delicious, was served by a jolly, apple-cheeked English lad in his late teens. Besides the woman in black, who they’d found out was Mrs. Hopkins, the housekeeper, he and the cook seemed to be the only servants at Hartfield House.

  Midway through her fresh strawberry shortcake, Trixie realized that Miss Trask hadn’t been eating very much throughout the meal. She had mentioned at one point that she was too excited about seeing Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, but that confused Trixie. It wasn’t like Miss Trask to be, well, excited.

  Another thing that confused Trixie was how strangely quiet McDuff was being. In fact, now that she thought about it, he always talked a great deal on their sight-seeing trips, but he hardly ever seemed to say a word inside Hartfield House... particularly when Mr. Hart or Anne were around.

  After dinner, the boys rushed upstairs to put on their seldom-worn suits. As the girls were getting into their dresses, Trixie tried to discuss the new mystery with Honey.

  “Why d’you think McDuff’s so quiet all of a sudden?” she asked. “If ever an icky compliment was called for, what with Miss Trask looking so fabulous at dinner and all, you’d think now would be the time.”

  Honey shrugged. “Maybe he was struck dumb,” she giggled.

  The moment they were on their way to the theater in the Maroon Saloon, however, McDuff was off again with his extravagant praise. “Och, but ye’re the pink of perfection this evening,” he told Miss Trask.

  “Nonsense, Gordie,” she answered. “Everyone in the car looks perfect tonight.”

  ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’ Mart quoted under his breath.

  “I think you mean that something is rotten in the state of Scotland,” Trixie muttered back.

  “That’s Denmark,” Jim said softly. “And anyway, both of you have the wrong plays. We’re going to see Macbeth tonight, remember?”

  The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, from the old stone bridge, was a blaze of golden lights shining across the dark river. Tourists in evening dress were milling around the entrance as the Bob-Whites made their way through the crowd. McDuff bought programs, and then they all settled down in their seats.

  To Trixie’s delight, they were sitting in the front row. “It’s the closest thing to actually being on stage,” she said.

  Honey was reading all about Macbeth in the program. Suddenly she whispered, “Trix, look!” She leaned over and put her finger under the name of one of the actors in the cast of characters.

  “ ‘Third murderer,’ ” Trixie read from the program. “ ‘Gregory Hart.’ ”

  Gregory • 11

  DURING INTERMISSION, McDuff urged the Bob-Whites to go have an ice. “It’s a tradition in the British theater,” he told them.

  Trixie wasn’t sure whether it was tradition or the chance to be alone with their chaperon that McDuff was more interested in, but the young people were happy to follow the crowd to a balcony overlooking the Avon. The golden lights of the theater were reflected enchantingly in the river.

  An ice turned out to be lime sherbet in a cardboard cone.

  “After all that blood and gore in the play,” Mart said appreciatively, “this really hits the spot. And I don’t mean the ‘damned spot,’ either.”

  “Macbeth must be the bloodiest play Shakespeare ever wrote/’ said Honey with a slight shudder.

  “Right,” Trixie chortled. “For all the special effects, they probably go through a case of catsup bottles a night!”

  Just then, Anne and Mr. Hart walked up to the Bob-Whites. Trixie wanted to dive into the Avon. Here she was, surrounded by sophisticated theatergoers in an elegant theater, and she was snickering about catsup! Andrew Hart looked more than ready to turn on his heels and stride away, but Anne had her hand tucked firmly into the crook of his elbow.

  “Yes, Macbeth is a hard play to produce,” the English girl said easily. She looked lovely in her long, midnight blue dress, and her father was very handsome in his tuxedo. Trixie, on the other hand, was unaccustomed to dressing up and was feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Well, I think it’s great!” Jim said. “I never dreamed I’d be seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company playing Macbeth in Stratford-on-Avon. You and Anne are fortunate to live so close by, Mr. Hart.” Trixie’s face was red-hot, but to prevent herself from seeming an utter idiot, she felt she ought to contribute something besides catsup to the conversation. “We noticed a Gregory Hart in the cast,” she said politely. “Are you related?”

  “Yes, he’s my brother,” Anne said. “He’s—”

  “If you will pardon us,” Mr. Hart said stiffly, “we should return to our seats now.”

  “I was wondering why he comes every night,” Trixie said once the Harts were out of earshot. “His son’s in the play. So Gregory Hart is a real live actor, and he may turn out to be Honey’s cousin or something!”

  “Probably something twice removed,” Honey said with a rueful smile.

  The real live actor turned out to be a really lively boy, as the Bob-Whites found out when they met Gregory Hart the following morning after breakfast. He was about Jim’s age and looked a great deal like Andrew Hart except for his friendly grin.

  “I’m frightfully sorry you didn’t get to come backstage after the play last night,” Gregory told them. “Perhaps another time.”

  “Backstage!” Trixie said. “Jeepers, that would be neat. I think it’s perfectly marvelous that you’re an actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company.”

  “It’s only a bit part,” Gregory said modestly. “I just hang around till they can’t get rid of me any other way.”

  “He’s been doing that for years,” Anne said with an affectionate smile. “He learns all the parts—the small ones, you know—in case he should be needed. And now they count on him.”

  “What’s on the agenda for today?” Gregory asked.

  “Have you been to Shottery yet?”

  “Anne Hathaway’s cottage,” Anne explained. “We’re not just here to see the sights,” Trixie told Gregory. “You see—”

  “But we do want to see Anne Hathaway’s cottage,” Honey interrupted eagerly. “We can’t miss that, Trixie.”

  “My sister, the famous detective,” Mart drawled, “can’t be bothered with mere sight-seeing. She’s here to solve a mystery.”

  “A mystery!” Anne clapped her hands. “How smashing—can we help?”

  It was decided that Anne and Gregory would go along on the pleasant walk across the fields to Shottery, and on the way, Trixie and Honey would fill them in on their current case. Unfortunately, Miss Trask and McDuff joined the party. Trixie was almost certain that McDuff knew nothing about Honey’s necklace, and she wanted to keep it that way. However, that proved to be no problem. As usual, the big Scotsman was keeping Miss Trask entirely to himself, and they lagged far behind the young people.

  “My mother was very much interested in genealogy,” Anne said after Honey had told them about her great-great-aunt Priscilla Hart. “I’m sure we could find some of her charts.”

  “Wouldn’t it be smashing if Priscilla turned out to be on one of the branches of our family tre
e?”

  Gregory said with an admiring glance at Honey’s golden hair.

  Uh-oh, thought Trixie. Brian had better watch out. Back in Sleepyside, Honey and Brian had always had a special interest in each other. Of course, Honey’s so attractive that people take a special interest in her wherever we go, Trixie thought fondly.

  When Trixie described the necklace and Honey related what the appraiser had said about it, Gregory and Anne both looked thoughtful.

  “Elizabethan, you say, but not real jewels?” Gregory frowned. “But if the necklace is a copy, couldn’t it have been made much later?”

  “I don’t know,” Honey confessed. “That’s just what the appraiser told my mother.”

  “You’d think they’d have some way of dating the materials,” Jim said, “or maybe the workmanship.”

  “The way you describe it, it sounds like something I’ve seen somewhere.” Anne knit her delicately arched brown eyebrows. “But I can’t seem to remember where.”

  “Oh, really?” asked Trixie, pouncing on a promising-sounding lead. “Well, the necklace is in your father’s safe at your house. If we show it to you tonight, do you think you’ll remember?”

  “Possibly,” Anne said.

  “But we wouldn’t want to bother your father,” said Honey. “I’m afraid we’ve been such an inconvenience to him already.”

  “Oh, Father,” Anne said a bit crossly. “I’m frightfully sorry he’s been such a bore. He simply hates having to take in guests.”

  “He refused to do it for the longest time,” Gregory said. “But it came down to putting up with the tourists, or selling the family home.”

  “My mother finally persuaded him.” Anne’s face saddened. “That was before she died. She did enjoy doing over the rooms.”

  “They’re so beautiful,” Honey said softly.

  “After she died, Father wanted to go back on his word,” Gregory said, “but we couldn’t let him. The rates kept going up, you know—the taxes.”

  “No wonder your father is so—so sad,” Honey said. Trixie felt awful. Why couldn’t she ever understand why people acted the way they did? Anne shouldn’t have had to explain it.

  No one said anything for a while. It was a beautiful sunny day, with a few cloud-puffs in the sky. Soon the footpath came to an end. There, across the road, was the famous thatch-roofed cottage of Anne Hathaway, surrounded by shrubs, bright flowers, and herbs of every kind.

  “Shakespeare got a lot of his poetry right from this garden,” observed Mart.

  “Please—no more quotations,” Trixie said. “I can’t believe how big this house is! I thought it was just a little cottage.”

  “English cottages aren’t so small,” Miss Trask said.

  She and McDuff had caught up with them, and they all joined the queue of tourists that was filing through the old two-story farmhouse where Will Shakespeare had come to woo Anne Hathaway. The wooden bench on which they were supposed to have sat still stood in the kitchen by the large open hearth. The rough, flagstone floors and raftered ceilings were picturesque, and all the rooms, upstairs and down, were furnished with authentic furniture. McDuff and the Harts took turns pointing out items of interest.

  “The Tweedie sisters live up the road,” Anne told the Bob-Whites after they had finished the tour. “Would you like to drop in on them? They’ve just bought their own place, and they’re as pleased as punch about it.”

  Trixie was delighted at the chance to show off her and Honey’s special English friends.

  “You’ll love them, Miss Trask,” Honey said. “They’re just about your age,” Trixie added.

  Miss Trask didn’t seem to appreciate that remark. “Since I plan to do some research at Oxford University tomorrow, this afternoon is my last chance to do some shopping,” she said tartly. “You children go visit your friends. We’ll see you at dinner.”

  And off she went—with McDuff!

  “Dinglebuckles,” Trixie said, stamping her foot. “There they go again.”

  Gregory burst out laughing. “Jolly good word,” he said. “Where’d you find it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Trixie said. “It just seems appropriate right now.”

  “You don’t like the man much, do you, Trixie?” Anne asked.

  “How did you guess?” Mart put in.

  “To tell you the truth, we’ve been wondering where you met up with him,” Anne went on.

  “In London,” Trixie said. “I thought he was in one of those tourist rackets at first—you know, a con man. But it turned out he wasn’t.”

  Gregory and Anne listened attentively to the Bob-Whites’ jumbled report of how McDuff had come to be their guide.

  “Is he registered with the London Tourist Board?” Gregory asked.

  “I don’t know,” Honey admitted. “He just arrived from Canada, but he said he had been a guide before.”

  “Ordinarily, you shouldn’t hire a guide that isn’t registered,” Anne said. “But of course, if he saved your life—”

  “Oh, he did,” Honey said earnestly. “I was practically under that huge bus, and he pulled me out.”

  “I can’t explain why I don’t like him,” Trixie said to Anne. “It’s just that he seems so—so phony!”

  Anne and Gregory looked at each other, as if they didn’t know whether they should say something or not.

  “I think we should tell them,” Anne said.

  Just then, Miss Mary Tweedie came bursting out of the side door of a large thatched cottage that looked just like Anne Hathaway’s.

  “You’ve come to see our new home,” she cried, her round face rosy with excitement. “Isn’t that lovely? Elizabeth will be so pleased.”

  “Where is your house?” Trixie looked up and down the road, but she couldn’t see anything that looked like a house. Honey and the boys looked puzzled, too, much to the Harts’ amusement.

  “The Tweedies have bought a home in Hathaway Hamlet,” Anne explained, pointing to the big thatched cottage. “I expect in America you would call it an apartment.”

  “Just one up, one down, and a wee garden,” Miss Mary said proudly.

  The Bob-Whites were more puzzled than ever.

  Miss Elizabeth was waiting to greet them inside the wooden gate. “Do come in,” she said heartily.

  Their “apartment” consisted of two main rooms— one upstairs and one downstairs, as Miss Mary had said. A small staircase next to the fireplace led to the bedroom, and there was also a modern kitchen and bath, with the “wee garden” at the back door. The white plaster walls and dark-beamed ceilings were distinctly Elizabethan.

  “It looks just like Anne Hathaway’s cottage, only it’s cut up into apartments!” Honey exclaimed. “And there’s a whole row of them.”

  “It’s even older than the Hathaways’,” Miss Elizabeth said.

  “Now that we own property,” her sister chimed in, “we are called City Burgesses and can vote in the Council.”

  “And pay the rates,” Miss Elizabeth added wryly. “So Hathaway Hamlet is a thatched condominium,” Mart chuckled.

  It was the Tweedies’ turn to look puzzled.

  “Usually, apartments are rented in the United States,” Mart explained. “But sometimes people buy into a building, and they call it a condominium.”

  “A thatched condominium,” Miss Elizabeth repeated, and the sisters laughed delightedly.

  After serving their visitors a delicious tea, the Tweedies escorted them back to the wooden gate, and the Bob-Whites set out across the fields again with Anne and Gregory.

  Trixie turned around for one last good-bye wave to the Tweedies, and then she whirled back to the Harts. “Please,” she said, “tell me what you were going to say before—about McDuff.”

  The Harts looked at each other again, and Anne nodded. “Tell them, Gregory,” she said. “They really ought to know.”

  “Well—mind you, I’m not saying he’s not a proper chap,” the English boy said reluctantly. “But....”

/>   “Gregory has studied acting, and he’s been around very good actors all of his life,” Anne said, “and he thinks—go on, Gregory, tell them!”

  It s just that he’s no Scotsman,” Gregory said. “What do you mean?” gasped Trixie.

  “That accent’s as phony as the wig I wore in the play last night,” Gregory said simply.

  To Market, To Market ● 12

  BEFORE DINNER that evening, the Bob-Whites held a brief emergency meeting and decided against telling Miss Trask what Gregory had told them.

  “Maybe his accent sounds different because he’s lived all those years in Canada,” Honey said.

  “Well, if we notice anything else suspicious, I think we should tell her everything we know,” insisted Trixie.

  “Let’s keep our eyes and ears open,” said Jim. “But in the meantime, he’s going to Scotland in a few days, anyway. We can tell her after he’s gone.”

  After dinner, the Bob-Whites met with Gregory and Anne, who got the necklace out of the safe for them and came into the Rose Room to examine it.

  “Ah, now I know what it reminds me of,” Anne said, then hesitated. “But perhaps I shouldn’t mention it, in case I’m wrong.”

  “Oh, tell us,” begged Trixie and Honey.

  “Well, are you going to be visiting Warwick Castle?” Anne asked.

  “The famous medieval fortress with all the priceless artwork inside?” asked Mart. “Yes, McDuff said something about taking us there the day after tomorrow.”

  “What I’m thinking of is in the Great Hall there,” Anne said. “I’ll try to arrange it so I can go there with you, but if I can’t, I’m sure you’ll be able to spot what I’m talking about.” She looked at her watch and opened a folder she had brought in with her. “It’s getting late, but I did want to show you these genealogy charts that our mother made.”

  By the time the Bob-Whites finished poring over the charts, they were too sleepy to do more than say good night. They were still yawning over breakfast in the Crimson Room the following morning, although an announcement from Miss Trask soon jolted them awake. They had been planning on spending the day in the Bodleian Library at nearby Oxford University, but Miss Trask had apparently thought better of it.