The Hundred-Year Mystery

by Gertrude Chandler Warner

  “Coming, COME-ing,” called a singsong voice. “Hold your horses. Hoooold your horses.”

  A key rattled in the giant lock. Slowly, the door creaked open. But no one was there.

  “Ghost!” cried Benny.

  “Where?” A smiling face peeked around the door. “Oh. You mean me?”

  A small woman stepped out. She was barely as tall as Violet. Silky black hair flowed down her back. She wore a long, old-fashioned dress. A pair of bright purple sneakers peeked out from under her skirt. “You must be James’s grandchildren. I’ve been expecting you. I’m Ella Nakamol. Come in, come in. Welcome to Wintham Manor.”

  The children stepped into a large hall. Violet gasped. “That’s beautiful.” A giant mural of Greenfield covered one of the walls. It showed the town before there were wide streets or tall buildings.

  Ella grunted as she pushed the door closed behind them. “I think this is the heaviest door in the world,” she said.

  “Why is the doorway so low?” asked Violet.

  “Low?” Ella said. “Why, it seems just right to me. Now, how can I help you? James mentioned something about a hundred something-something.”

  “A hundred-day project,” said Benny.

  “What’s that?” asked Ella.

  “It’s for school,” Benny said. “I have to bring in a hundred of something or make a hundred of something. It’s so I can learn what a hundred looks like.”

  “Why,” said Ella, “one hundred looks exactly like this. Everything in this house is at least a hundred years old…except me, of course.”

  Ella laughed as she led the children through another low doorway into a grand living room. Violet followed slowly. This was such a beautiful old house—polished wood floors, beautiful rugs, carved furniture—everything delighted her artist’s eye. Although, it did seem strange that all the doorways were built so low.

  “We’re usually closed today,” said Ella. “Wintham Manor is an historic home people can visit. Like George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon, Virginia, or Abraham Lincoln’s in Springfield, Illinois. But, seeing as how you’re my dear friend James’s grandchildren, I’m planning to give you my Super-Duper Deeee-luxe Tour.” She whispered, “Not many have seen what I’m going to show you today.”

  Benny stepped back. “Are there ghosts?” he asked.

  Ella sighed. “I keep hoping,” she said. “But so far I haven’t met a one.”

  Bor-ing, Benny thought as he wandered around the living room. Jessie and Violet oohed and aahed over plumpy sofas and lumpy chairs. Violet took pictures for Jessie’s Where in Greenfield? blog.

  “We’ve kept the manor exactly the way Mr. Wintham left it one hundred years ago,” Ella said. “People used to rent this first floor for parties—birthdays, weddings, holidays, and such.” She fluffed a pillow. A cloud of dust poofed up. “But lately, it seems folks prefer the newer, fancier party places in town.”

  “Wow, check this out,” called Henry from under an old table. Benny crawled under to look. “They don’t build tables like this anymore,” said Henry, excited. “See these nails? Each one is a little different because they were all made by hand.”

  The nails looked like ordinary nails to Benny. He climbed back out. Bor-ing.

  There wasn’t one single fun thing here for Benny’s hundred-day project. After a while, he almost hoped for a ghost—or one hundred of them. Benny walked through another small doorway that led to a big stairway. Wow! Paintings and drawings and photos covered the huge wall all the way up the stairs. There were wacky cartoon characters, planets with square moons, bicycles with twenty wheels.

  Benny climbed the stairs slowly, looking at every single thing. Even the old photos were fun to look at. Women wore old-fashioned dresses like Ella’s. Boys wore short pants with suspenders. Benny stopped in front of a large photo of a tall man. The man was planting a baby tree. Benny looked closer. The man had the biggest mustache Benny had ever seen.

  “Bingo!” cried Ella. Benny jumped. He hadn’t heard the others come up the stairs. Ella pointed at the photo of the man with the mustache. “You’re looking at the one, the only Mr. Alfred Wintham,” she said. “This is the only photo we have of him. We think it was taken a hundred years ago, just before he…before he…” Ella sniffed. “Poor Mr. Wintham barely got the chance to live here. He’d just finished building the manor and planting some trees and hanging up his artwork when a terrible flu epidemic swept through town.”

  “What’s an epi…epi…” Benny couldn’t remember the word.

  “Epidemic,” said Ella. “It’s when many, many people become sick at the same time with the same illness.”

  “Mr. Wintham died?” whispered Violet. Ella nodded. Violet looked at the wall of paintings and drawings. “And he was the artist of all these?”

  “He had quite the imagination,” said Ella. “Come on, there are more surprises upstairs.”

  Whirrrr. Bzzzzzz. Whirrr. A noise made the children stop on the landing. It was coming from outside. They looked out the window into the backyard. A big man with a chain saw stood on a tall ladder. He was cutting limbs off an old tree. A yellow truck in the driveway had the words Levi’s Lumber—Cut and Carried on the door. The man sawed off the last branch and climbed down the ladder. Then he began sawing the trunk. Whirrrr. Bzzzzzz.

  “That’s the tree Mr. Wintham planted the day he moved in,” said Ella. “Sadly, it’s sick and must be cut down.”

  Suddenly, the tree cutter yelled, “Timbeeeerrrrrr!”

  The Aldens held their breaths as the tree tilted slowly, slowly, slowly away from the house. KABOOM! It crashed to the ground in an explosion of bark and twigs and leaves.

  The tree cutter happened to look up at the window and see the Aldens. Ella opened the window. “Hi, Levi, there’s a big plate of warm snickerdoodles in the kitchen and cold milk in the fridge.”

  The man smiled and waved.

  “That’s my brother, Levi,” said Ella. “He helps keep the manor shipshape. Now, I’m going to show you the second floor. Only VIPs—Very Important People—have ever seen what you’re about to see.”

  The children followed her up the wide staircase and around a corner, to…a brick wall.

  “Where do we go now?” asked Jessie.

  “Benny,” said Ella, “would you grab that chipped bottom brick and give it a tug?”

  Benny found the brick and pulled. He jumped back as the wall slid open.

  “A secret passageway!” said Henry.

  Ella laughed. “Oh, this is just the beginning.”

  The children entered a long hallway. More of Alfred Wintham’s artwork covered the walls. Mobiles hung from the ceiling. “But…but where are the rooms?” asked Violet.

  “Oh, dear, did I lose those rooms again?” asked Ella. “No, wait, I do believe they’re here.” She pointed to a painting of a clown with a large red nose. “Henry, would you be so kind as to push the clown’s nose?”

  Henry pushed, and another hidden door swung open. The children followed Ella into a large room. Funny, bright-colored creatures were painted on the walls. There were blue, red, green, and yellow tables and chairs of all sizes. “It looks like study hall at school,” said Jessie, “except way more fun.”

  The children returned to the main hallway. Every room had a secret way of opening its door—a floorboard you jumped on, a lever you pulled. One room had a staircase that led nowhere. Another had shelves filled with colorful blocks and wood puzzles. In the Art Room, Violet sat at a big drawing table. She imagined all the wonderful art she could create using the boxes of colorful pencils, old ink pens, bits of charcoal, and tubes of paint.

  When the children finished exploring all of the rooms, they gathered in the hallway. “I’ve never seen a house built like this,” Henry told Ella. “Hidden rooms, secret passageways, fun ways to open doors. Who designed this?”

  “Alfred Wintham designed every nook and cranny,” Ella said.

  Jessie looked around. “I agree it’s f
un to visit,” she said. “But I’m not sure grown-ups would like living here. They’d have to duck through doorways and push clown’s noses and pull chipped bricks.”

  “Maybe that’s why no one bought the house after Mr. Wintham died,” said Ella. “We’re lucky Greenfield bought the manor so everyone could come visit.”

  Benny reached up to the painting of the clown and pushed the clown’s nose. He laughed as the door closed. “Why did Mr. Wintham build the house this way?” he asked.

  “That is a wonderful question,” said Ella. “But whatever plans Alfred Wintham had for this house died with him. It seems he never told anyone and never left a message of any kind. This manor is really a mystery. A hundred-year-old mystery that I don’t think we’ll ever solve.”

  “Well,” said Henry, “thanks for showing us around. It’s been great.”

  “Oh,” said Ella. She paused. “So I guess you don’t want to see…”

  “See what?” asked Benny.

  Ella looked around, then whispered, “The secret, secret, secret place.”

  “I do. I do,” said Benny.

  Ella led them through a door at the end of the hall and up a twisty staircase to the top floor. Everything was child sized—the doorways, the rooms, the hidden passages. They followed Ella up, down, and all around.

  “It’s like a maze,” said Jessie.

  One passageway opened into the stone tower. “Look,” said Violet, pointing up, “there’s Rapunzel’s window.” Sunshine poured through the window near the top of the tower.

  But the tower looked wrong to Violet. “The inside of this tower seems too narrow,” she said. “The tower looks much bigger from the outside.”

  “I’ve noticed that too,” said Ella. “I’ve always thought they built it with bricks between the inside and the outside walls. That would make the tower stronger. We wouldn’t want those heavy stones falling down.”

  High up, a platform ran all the way around the tower. It reminded Henry of his school’s running track that circled above the gym floor. “Can we go up there?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” Ella said. “There used to be a rope ladder hanging from that beam.” She pointed to a thick wood beam that ran across the center of the tower. A scrap of rope still hung from the middle. “That ladder was gone years before I came to work here. I was told the view from the platform is amazing. You can see out that window for miles. But I guess the rope became old and unsafe, so they took it down. I’ve always wondered if some secrets might be tucked away up there.”

  Greenfield’s town bell clanged in the distance. Henry checked his watch. “We’d better go,” he said. “We have a long ride home.”

  “Let me pack you up some snickerdoodles for the road,” said Ella. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  Out front, Violet said, “Let me take a picture of all of you next to the manor.”

  Henry, Jessie, and Benny quickly stood next to a big white stone at the corner of the house. As Violet focused her camera, the Levi’s Lumber truck rattled down the driveway.

  “Let me help you,” called Levi, climbing out. “I’ll take the photo so you can all be in it.”

  Violet handed him the camera and joined the others. “Move a little to the right,” Levi told Henry. “You’ll want that cornerstone in the photo.” Levi took several pictures and returned the camera to Violet. “If you want to photograph something really interesting,” he said, “I’ll be back in a couple days to cut that hundred-year-old tree trunk into slices.” He climbed back into his truck and waved as the truck rattled away.

  Jessie traced her fingers along the letters chiseled into the white cornerstone. It said Alfred Wintham Manor and was followed by the year, one hundred years ago.

  Benny noticed a chip in the stone that looked like the chip in the brick upstairs. He gripped the stone and pulled. A chunk of the cornerstone fell away.

  “Oh no,” he said, quickly picking up the stone. He tried to put it back. “It won’t go.”

  “Let me,” said Henry. He took the chunk of stone and was about to put it back. “Hey,” he said, “it’s hollow inside.” He reached his hand into the cornerstone. “There’s something in here!”

  Cold Clues and Warm Cookies

  Henry pulled out a large cylinder with gray metal caps on both ends. “What is it?” asked Benny.

  “It looks like the capsule we use at the bank drive-through,” said Violet.

  The children loved folding the money they saved into the capsule. Then they slid the capsule into a tube. Whoosh! Air sucked the capsule through the tube right from their car all the way into the bank.

  “Those capsules are airtight,” said Henry. “I wonder if this one is.” Gripping one end, he gave it a hard twist. Pffffssssstttt. Air hissed out. Startled, Henry dropped the capsule. It clanked to the ground. A small book slid out.

  Benny reached for it. “Wait,” said Jessie. “Be really, really careful. It might be fragile.”

  “You do it,” said Benny.

  Very gently, Jessie picked up the book and smoothed it with her hand. “The pages are still nice and soft,” she said. “The capsule protected them from drying out in the air.”

  The words A Journal for the Curious were hand printed on the cover.

  “I’m curious,” said Benny.

  Jessie opened the journal. The writing looked old-fashioned and fancy. She read:

  In these pages you will find

  Clues to spark your curious mind

  Travel to my world long past

  To find my treasure trove at last

  “Treasure!” cried Benny. “But what’s a ‘trove’?”

  “A ‘treasure trove’ just means a hidden treasure,” explained Jessie.

  “And the poem talks about traveling to a world in the past,” said Violet. She loved reading books about people time-traveling to the past or the future.

  Henry grinned. “I don’t think this riddle means we’ll really travel back in time,” he said. “But it does say it has clues to finding treasure.”

  Jessie turned the pages. “What if this journal is like a treasure map?” she said. “Maybe, if we follow the clues, we’ll find the—”

  “Snickerdoodles!” called Ella. She carried a paper bag down the front steps. “Who wants some fresh-baked snickerdoodles?”

  Benny rushed over. “We found a hidden treasure!” he said, grabbing Ella’s hand. “Come look.”

  Ella hurried over. She froze when she saw the cornerstone. “Wha…what happened?”

  “I just pulled,” said Benny, “and it opened!”

  Ella blinked. Then blinked again. “Oh my,” she said softly. “Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.” She sat on the ground, and the children gathered around her.

  Jessie handed her the journal. “We found a time capsule with this inside.”

  Ella’s hand shook as she took it. “Well…well…I mean…I never…” She opened the book and read the poem. “Whatever can this mean?”

  “Do you know who put it in there?” asked Henry.

  “I didn’t even know there was a journal…or a secret hiding place. I just thought the cornerstone was an ordinary piece of stone telling when the manor was built.” She tried to think. “I guess the stonemason who carved the cornerstone could have put it in. Or a construction worker. We really know so little about the history of the manor.”

  “I hope we haven’t damaged anything,” said Jessie.

  Ella shook her head and brushed back her silky hair. “Actually, this could be quite wonderful, quite wonderful indeed.” Suddenly, the smell of cinnamon filled the air. “Oh, gracious, I forgot your cookies.” She passed around the bag of cookies. Bites of cinnamony, sugary snickerdoodles melted in the children’s mouths.

  “Ella,” said Jessie, “you just said that this journal could be ‘wonderful.’ What did you mean?”

  “Remember I told you that not many people come to Wintham Manor anymore?” Ella asked. “Well, the town has always helped pay to keep the
manor going. But now the mayor said the town is thinking of tearing it down and building something new.”

  “They can’t tear it down!” said Violet. She loved this old house with its Rapunzel tower and hidden passages.

  Ella held up the small journal. “I’m thinking this just might be the way to bring visitors back. Don’t you think that folks would come to see a hidden cornerstone? And a time capsule? And a hundred-year-old journal with a mystery inside?”

  “And there’s a treasure!” said Benny. “The poem says there are clues.”

  “Let’s see.” Ella turned to the next page. “Ah, here we go.” She read:

  Come find my home away from home

  From which I traveled to worlds unknown

  Where I was raised from all my brothers

  Known to me, but not the others

  Go to where the sun’s first ray

  Shines just east of town each day

  Then plumb a line both straight and true

  And dig there for your second clue

  “What does that mean?” asked Benny.

  No one had an answer.

  Ella hugged the small journal. She closed her eyes and swayed slowly side to side. Violet could tell how much this all meant to Ella. She reached over and gently patted Ella’s shoulder.

  Ella looked at Violet and smiled. “Here,” she said, handing Violet the journal. “James has told me how much his grandchildren love mysteries. He said you’ve helped solve quite a few. I’m too old to be running around town trying to figure out riddles. Besides, I need to stay here to run the manor. Perhaps you can find the treasure. And maybe that treasure will be so wonderful it will save the manor.”

  Henry looked at his brother and sisters. They all nodded. He turned to Ella. “We’ll try,” he promised. “We’ll do our best.”

  The path back to Greenfield was mostly downhill. It was an easy ride for four tired children. This time, Benny kept up. They hadn’t met any ghosts at Wintham Manor. And Benny hadn’t found anything for his hundred-day project. But they did find a word-map that might lead to a treasure. Solving this mystery was going to take some hard work. But, as Grandfather often said, “Nothing worth having comes easy.”