The Mystery off Glen Road, page 1
part #5 of Trixie Belden Series
Copyright © MCMLVI, MCMLXXVII by
Western Publishing Company, Inc.
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All names, characters, and events in this story are entirely fictitious.
Blowingfor Trouble ● 1
IT’S SUPER-GLAMOROUS perfect, Honey,” Trixie said with satisfaction. “I never thought we’d get it all done before Thanksgiving, did you?”
“It seemed to take forever,” Honey Wheeler agreed.
The two girls were surveying the interior of their newly finished clubhouse. They belonged to a teenage group and called themselves the B.W.G.’s—short for the Bob-Whites of the Glen. Other members were Trixie’s brothers, Brian and Mart; Honey’s adopted brother, Jim Frayne; and pretty Di Lynch.
In the days of carriages and sleighs, the small cottage had been the gatehouse of the huge estate that now belonged to the Wheelers. The Manor House, as it was called, formed the western boundary of Crabapple Farm, the Beldens’ property. Both homes faced Glen Road and were about two miles from the village of Sleepyside, a small Westchester town that nestled among the rolling hills on the east bank of the Hudson River.
All of the B.W.G.’s attended the junior-senior high school in town, where Mr. Belden worked in the bank. Trixie and Honey were both thirteen, but they didn’t look at all alike. Trixie was small and sturdily built, with round blue eyes and short sandy curls. Her best friend was tall and slim with enormous hazel eyes. She had shoulder-length golden brown hair, which had earned for her the nickname Honey. She loved to sew, and it was she who had made the attractive curtains that Trixie had just helped her hang at the windows.
The boys had recently put a new roof on the clubhouse, painted it both inside and out, and partitioned off one section of the interior, which they had lined with shelves. Here the boys and girls kept their winter and summer sports equipment: skis, skates, hockey sticks, sleds, pup tents, tennis rackets, and the like. Brian and Jim, who were older and good at carpentry, had made a big table and benches for the conference room, using odds and ends of pine that they bought very cheaply at the Sleepyside lumberyard. Mart, who was eleven months older than Trixie, was not as handy with carpentry tools as the other boys were, but he had done his share by sanding and staining the furniture.
The cottage had a dirt floor, which they hoped to cover someday with wide boards, but right now there remained not a cent in the treasury. A rule of the club was that no member could contribute money that she or he had not earned. Although Honey’s father was very rich, she had earned her share of what was needed for the necessary repairs through mending jobs. Jim, who had inherited half a million dollars from a great-uncle, had worked as hard as the Belden boys, serving as a handyman after school and on weekends. Earning the money themselves had meant, of course, that there was very little time left for work on the clubhouse, but at last it was finished.
Trixie had put into the treasury every week the five dollars that her father gave her for doing household chores and helping her mother take care of mischievous six-year-old Bobby Belden. Because she hated any kind of indoor work and was very apt to lose patience if Bobby were left in her care for too long, Trixie sometimes felt that she had worked harder than anyone else. But it had been worth all of their efforts because the clubhouse was now a “dream cottage.”
“Only one thing is lacking,” Trixie said to Honey. “Heat. Now that Indian summer is over, it’s going to be so cold in the evenings that we’ll have to wear fur coats when we hold meetings.”
Honey giggled. “Not that any of us has a fur coat! But the boys are wonderful trappers. Maybe they’ll catch a couple of million mink for us. The streams on our property are filled with mink. Daddy hates them because they eat up all his trout.” She backed out of the cottage and stared at it speculatively. “The evergreens protect it from the wind, but you’re right, Trixie. It will soon be too cold for us to sit around. Up until now, we’ve all been working so hard we haven’t noticed how chilly it gets after sundown.” She shivered and slipped her arms into the sleeves of the sweater she had been wearing over her slim shoulders. “B-r-r. This wind is an icy blast.” Trixie nodded. “It was a gentle zephyr when we went inside early this morning.” She closed the clubhouse door and slipped on her own sweater. “Wow! It’s eleven o’clock, Honey. If this wind keeps up, it means we’re in for a hurricane.”
Honey sighed. “And only yesterday it was so hot we were wearing shorts and blouses.” They linked arms and started up the sloping lawn to the big house. “Speaking of clothes, we’d better start getting ready for the wedding reception. The ceremony is at noon.”
“I know,” Trixie said mournfully. “I wish we could go just as we are. I never feel comfortable in anything but jeans. But I suppose I’ll have to wear a dress today.”
Celia, the Wheelers’ pretty little maid, was getting married that day to Tom Delanoy, the handsome young chauffeur. After a wedding breakfast at the Manor House, they were going off on a two-week honeymoon. On their return, they would make their home in the Robin, a luxurious red trailer that was parked on the hill above the stable. The Robin had once belonged to Mr. Lynch, whose daughter, Diana, had recently been admitted to the club.
“I wish I had enough money to buy Celia and Tom a wedding present,” Trixie said to Honey. “Moms and Dad are giving them those Adirondack blankets they wanted, but I’d like to give them something on my own.” She reached into the pocket of her jeans and produced a grimy dime. “Do you think a box of toothpicks would be appreciated?” Honey hugged her arm. “You’re so funny, Trix. Every time you hand over your money to the club, you make a big fuss, but deep down underneath, you’re the most generous girl in the world.”
Trixie flushed with pleasure. “I’m not generous at all,” she mumbled. “I’m terribly selfish. I don’t help Moms half as much as I should. If we were rich like you, it would be different, but Moms does everything, and she never complains. Even when she’s canning gallons of stuff all day in boiling hot weather, she always looks so young and pretty. When I do help, I moan and groan. Honestly, Honey, half the time when Dad gives me that five dollars, I feel so guilty I wouldn’t take it if it weren’t for the club.”
“Well, I think you work very hard and deserve it,” Honey said loyally. “But you’d better hurry home now.” She started up the steps to the wide veranda, and Trixie raced off down the path to her little white farmhouse in the hollow.
There she found that Brian and Mart had just finished putting up the storm windows. They were carrying a long ladder down the terrace steps and greeted her with sour expressions on their faces.
Mart, although several inches taller than Trixie, looked enough like her to have been her twin; He wore his sandy hair in a short 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 supermens work, but when we have to do women’s work, too—ugh. I think the domestic help should be more reliable.”
Trixie sniffed. “Help 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 certainly not a lady, you will be constrained 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 simpleminded, 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 that 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 that 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 muttered 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. Bel-den’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 crab apple trees that 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!
The Wedding Breakfast ● 2
TRIXIE RACED DOWN to the driveway and found that Brian and Mart were staring in awed amazement at the uprooted crab apple tree. It had fallen so close to them that the outer branches had scratched their faces.
“Wow!” Mart finally got out. “That was kind of 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 that’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, my dear sibling, 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 waxed paper and treasure them for you.” She scampered off, chuckling to herself.
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 also from towns 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 lace over satin, and Tom, looking like a movie star in his rented cutaway, greeted the guests. Trixie was surprised to find Mr. and Mrs.
Wheeler were not in the receiving line, as had originally been planned.
“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 crab apple, 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, I suggest we have an emergency conference.”
“You all go ahead,” Honey said. “I can’t leave Miss Trask to cope with everything by herself. She has to take not only Mother’s place as hostess, but also 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 doesn’t seem like him to hire someone 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 Fleagle 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.”
