The Mystery Off Glen Road (2 page)

Mart, although several inches taller than Trixie, looked enough like her to have been her twin. He wore his sandy hair in a crew cut; if he hadn’t, it would have been as curly as Trixie’s and Bobby’s. He narrowed his blue eyes and said out of the corner of his mouth:

“Where have you been, if I may be so bold as to ask? You were supposed to wash the storm windows before we put them up.”

“Oh, is that so?” Trixie demanded although she knew perfectly well that it was so; she had simply forgotten.

“Yes, it is so!” Brian tiredly pushed a lock of his wavy jet-black hair out of his eye.

“Say,” Mart yelled. “Hang on to your end with both hands, please. This wind will snatch the ladder away from us if you don’t watch out.”

Brian grabbed the swaying ladder and the wind promptly blew the lock of hair back into his eye. He glared at Trixie. “We don’t mind doing men’s work, which in this gale was
super
men’s work, but when we have to do women’s work, too—ugh. Me no like lazy squaws.”

Trixie sniffed. “Squaw is right. That’s just what I am. I slave from morning to night, making beds, dusting and washing dishes, while you two—”

“Dusting dishes?” Mart elevated his sandy eyebrows. “Come, come, young woman. No dish in our house stays on a shelf long enough to collect dust.” He licked his lips hungrily. “Personally, I can’t wait for that wedding breakfast. Which
you
are going to miss.”

“Wha-at?” Trixie, buffeted by the gale, had been trailing them up the driveway toward the garage. Now she stopped dead in her tracks, and the wind almost blew her flat. “Oh, no, Mart,” she gasped. “I
am
going to the breakfast. Don’t tell me I’m going to be punished
because I forgot to wash the storm windows. Moms and Dad wouldn’t be so cruel.”

He glanced at her over one shoulder. “Our parents have not yet been informed of how remiss you were.” Mart, who considered himself far superior to Trixie mentally, loved to use big words when he talked to her. “Brian and I are not what, in the vernacular, would be termed tattletales. So we have decided to mete out justifiable punishment in our own way. Namely, we have priority on the shower. Under normal circumstances, since we are gentlemen of the first water, we would bow to the ancient and honorable rule concerning precedent in such matters; that is, ladies first. But since you are neither a lady, nor a squaw, you will be forced to refrain from ablutions which are all too obviously indicated, until we have abluted and disported ourselves in the shower. Thus, to put it simply for the simple-minded, you haven’t a prayer of getting ready in time for the wedding breakfast.”

Trixie stuck out her tongue at him. “Oh, go jump in the lake.”

“That,” Mart said emphatically, “is just what
you
should do. Complete with a cake of soap and a scrubbing brush.”

“Correct,” Brian agreed. “True, the water in the
Wheelers’ lake will be very cold on a day like this, but it’s your only chance, Trix. Moms and Bobby have established priority on the bathtub for the next hour. Dad is now occupying the shower room. When he departs, I and Mart, in that order, take over.” He set the ladder against a wall in the garage. “By the time you are bathed and dressed, there will be nothing left of the breakfast except a turkey carcass and a ham bone.”

“I don’t agree,” Mart interrupted as they went out into the wind again. “The ham bone goes to Jim’s springer spaniel Patch. All parts of the turkey carcass which are not injurious to canines go to our own Irish setter Reddy.” He shrugged. “Trixie can, of course, nibble on bones that are apt to splinter in the stomach and cause canine digestive disturbances. For example, the drumsticks, but since those are our favorite portions, Brian, I doubt—”

“Oh, stop it,” Trixie exploded. “I don’t care if I am late at the breakfast, there’ll still be tons to eat. The Wheelers are giving it, remember?” She ran up the terrace steps and into the kitchen. The wind snatched the door out of her hands, banged it against the wall of the house, and then slammed it shut.

Oh, dear
, Trixie thought as she climbed the stairs,
I’ll get the blame for that. I get the blame for everything
.
In the upstairs hall she stopped, her self-pity overwhelmed by a sense of guilt. She had not only promised to wash the storm windows that morning, but she had assured her mother that she would bathe Bobby and dress him in his Sunday suit.

Judging from the sounds which were coming out of the bathroom, there could be no doubt that Bobby was now being scrubbed from head to toe under violent protest. His shrieks rose above the roar of the wind.

“Holp, holp!” Bobby was yelling. “Mummy, you’ve rub-ded off my ear and I got soap in my eyes. Holp! I’m drownding. I’m drownding! Holp! Holp!”

From the adjoining shower room came very different sounds. Mr. Belden was singing a happy song at the top of his lungs.
He’s singing
, Trixie thought miserably,
so he can’t hear Bobby’s shrieks. He’s going to be furious with me because Moms will be a wreck when she’s finished with Bobby. What made me stay at the clubhouse so long? Honey didn’t really need me. Brian and Mart are right. I don’t deserve to go to the wedding breakfast. I’ll stay home instead, and vacuum the whole house and scrub and wax the kitchen linoleum. I’ll even—

Then suddenly above Bobby’s yells and Mr. Belden’s gay song, came another sound that drowned out all others. It was a deafening crash.

Trixie fled to the nearest window. What she saw made her close her eyes and sink to the floor on her knees. One of the ancient crabapple trees which lined the driveway had been uprooted by the gale. If it had fallen a few seconds sooner, Brian and Mart would have been buried under the debris!

Trixie raced down to the driveway and found that Brian and Mart were staring in awed amazement at the uprooted crabapple tree. It had fallen so close to them that the outer branches had scratched their faces.

“Wow!” Mart finally got out. “That
was
close.”

Trixie, in order to hide her own horror at the near-catastrophe, said tartly, “Well, at least you won’t have to shave now, Brian. There’s not a speck of fuzz on your face, which, I might add, is as pale as a ghost’s in spite of your tan.”

“You look pretty ghostly yourself,” he retorted.

“Ghastly is the word,” Mart said.

“Yes, yes,” Trixie said airily. “I feel I’m going to faint. I’d best take a shower right away. It’s the only thing which’ll revive me.”

“Okay, you win,” they said in unison. “We have to get rid of this mess before we do anything.”

“However,” Mart added, shaking a stern finger at Trixie, “let it be strictly understood, squaw, that you are
not
to eat everything before we manage to drag
our weary bodies up to the Manor House.”

“I’ll do my best,” Trixie replied. “Let’s see now, what did you say? The ham bone for Patch and the turkey carcass for Reddy. When I’ve finished with the drumsticks I’ll wrap them in wax paper and treasure them for you.” She scampered off, chuckling.

But, as it turned out, all of the Beldens were among the early arrivals at the reception. Guests came not only from the immediate neighborhood and from Sleepyside, but from towns farther up the river. Some of those in the latter group, friends and relatives of the bride and groom, were delayed by the Sunday traffic and arrived long after Brian and Mart appeared.

Celia, looking prettier than ever in her white gown of tulle over satin, and Tom, looking like a movie star in his rented cutaway, greeted the guests. Trixie was surprised to find that Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, as had originally been planned, were not in the receiving line.

“Daddy was called away on business at the last minute,” Honey said in answer to Trixie’s question. “To Florida, and so Mother just couldn’t resist going along. All planes have been grounded on account of this terrible wind, so they’re driving as far as Washington and taking a plane from there.”

“I keep telling you it’s a hurricane,” Trixie said.
“We’ve already lost a crabapple and Dad says we’ll probably lose more before the wind dies down. Some of them are more than a hundred years old. Moms is in tears about it. They’re so beautiful in the spring when the blossoms ‘snow’ all over the place.” She stopped suddenly and grabbed Honey’s arm. “Oh, woe! Some of those evergreens down by the clubhouse are ancient, too. Suppose one of them crashes into the cottage!”

Honey covered her face with her slim hands. “Let’s not even think about such a horrible thing. The walls aren’t really much stronger than those toothpicks you were going to give Celia and Tom as a wedding present.”

“But there must be something we can do,” Trixie cried. “Now that the boys have eaten just about everything in sight, let’s have an emergency conference.”

“You all go ahead,” Honey said. “I can’t leave Miss Trask to cope with everything by herself. Not only does she have to take Mother’s place as hostess, but Celia’s place as the downstairs maid! You know what a good sport she is, Trixie. I’ve got to help her now.”

Miss Trask, who had originally been Honey’s governess, ran the whole huge estate, together with Regan, the redheaded groom. Honey’s mother, who looked exactly as Honey would in another twenty years, was
not very strong, and as she often said herself, she couldn’t boil water without burning it. Mr. Wheeler was called away so frequently on business trips that he was only too glad to leave the management of the Manor House in the capable hands of Miss Trask and Regan.

“I don’t know what your parents would do without Miss Trask and Regan,” Trixie said to Honey. “But what about that cross-looking gamekeeper your father just hired? It wasn’t like Mr. Wheeler to hire him without Regan’s approval. What cooks, anyway, Honey?”

Honey sighed. “It’s all so involved. Ever since summer, Daddy has been buying up land on both sides of Glen Road so now he has a sanctuary of about three hundred acres. You know how he loves to hunt and shoot and fish. Well, it’s stocked with all sorts of creatures like deer and pheasant and partridge and trout and bass, which cost a small fortune—more even than the land itself, I guess. So when one of Daddy’s friends recommended Mr. Fleagle as the best gamekeeper in the world, Daddy snapped him up.”

“Oh, well, I suppose he’s all right,” Trixie said cheerfully. “But you can see that Regan doesn’t like him. They’ve been glowering at each other ever since they arrived.”

“Regan,” Honey confided in a whisper,
“despises
him. And since they have to share the apartment above the garage, the situation is impossible. They squabble from morning till night, mainly because Fleagle thinks he can take a horse from the stable whenever he feels like it.”

Trixie shuddered elaborately. Regan was a great friend of all the B.W.G.’s, and had helped them out of many scrapes. But, like Jim and Mr. Wheeler, he had the quick temper which so often goes with red hair, and so they were very careful never to disobey his orders. “I wouldn’t dare take even an inch of old leather out of the stable without Regan’s permission,” Trixie said, “and neither would you, Honey Wheeler.”

Honey nodded. “Fleagle thinks he’s just wonderful. Not Regan, Fleagle, if you know what I mean. He claims that he can’t patrol the game preserve any way except on horseback, which is true, because there aren’t any roads wide enough for a jeep—just winding paths and trails.” She glanced worriedly through the French doors at the two big, broad-shouldered men who were out on the veranda now, obviously in the midst of a heated argument. “If only Fleagle would be more polite.
You
know, consult Regan before he goes galloping off on Jupiter or Strawberry. The worst part of it,” she finished exasperatedly, “is that when Fleagle comes back with a
horse all sweaty, he refuses to groom him or clean the tack.”

It was Trixie’s turn to cover her face with her hands. “I’m surprised Fleagle is alive,” she gasped. “Regan would draw and quarter us if we returned a horse to the stable and didn’t groom said horse and saddle soap every inch of leather.”

“I know,” Honey said with a wan smile. “But Fleagle thinks he’s above such menial chores. Trying to keep those two men from each other’s throats is driving Miss Trask out of her mind. Look!”

Miss Trask was the brisk kind of woman who, no matter what the occasion was, always wore tailored suits and sensible oxfords. She seldom wore a hat over her short gray hair and liked nothing better than to take long walks in the pouring rain, spurning an umbrella as something beneath her dignity. Usually her bright blue eyes had a merry twinkle in them, but they were somberly gray as she joined the two angry men on the veranda. Trixie could see that Miss Trask’s face was lined with worry as she struggled against the wind to close the French doors behind her.

“Gleeps,” Trixie said to Honey, “she
does
need your help. With Tom off on his wedding trip, Miss Trask will have to do all of the chauffeuring, too.”