The Marshland Mystery

by Campbell, Julie

  “But that’s just Trent’s mean story! Can’t we make the Sun tell what really happened?” Trixie begged.

  “I’m afraid it’s a bit late to do anything,” her father said gently. “You see, dear, there seems to be something magical about printer’s ink. Once people read a story in a newspaper, most of them believe that story is true, even if it’s retracted.”

  “Bud Brown, whose dad is on the city council, told me the council had a special session about it today and decided to take steps to protect Miss Rachel Martin,” Brian told them. “I hadn’t gotten around yet to telling you abut it, Trix, but I meant to.”

  Trixie looked unhappy. “What do they mean by that?”

  “I don’t know,” Brian admitted and looked inquiringly at his father. But Mr. Belden shook his head.

  “It’s my fault,” Trixie said miserably. “I had to go out hunting for Gaye, and that’s what started all this.” A big tear started to roll down her cheek. Such weakness was so unusual for her that Mart scowled blackly and exclaimed, “Quit going crybaby on us, toots! I’m the one who made Trent sore, over at Wheelers’, so I’m as much to blame as you are. Now turn off the waterworks before I disown you!” He turned briskly to Brian. “Am I right?”

  “Check!” Brian said, nodding. Trixie dashed away the single tear and smiled gratefully at them both.

  “This may all blow over if you children are careful about what you say the next few days,” their father counseled soberly. “So let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope that there’ll be no more double-meaning stories in the Sun. ”

  “Yes, Dad,” Trixie said, very subdued and worried.

  More Trouble ● 17

  TRIXIE BOUNCED out of bed the moment she heard the delivery boy whistle at the gate. It was just getting light, and she had trouble locating one of her slippers, but within a few minutes, she was hurrying quietly downstairs and out the front door to get the paper.

  She could hardly wait to get back to the house to look for a story under Paul Trent’s by-line, but she made herself wait and ran back inside before she opened the Sun.

  There was no story by him on the front page nor on any of the other pages. He was, she thought, with a load lifting off her heart, most happily absent. She was so relieved that she paid no attention to any other stories in the newspaper but folded it up neatly and left it at her father’s place at the maple dining table. Then she dashed upstairs to snatch a few minutes’ more sleep before it was time to wake Bobby and get him dressed.

  She was in high spirits as they all gathered around the breakfast table a little later. In a few days, she hoped, if there were no more stories about Miss Rachel in the Sun, Sleepyside would forget about the whole thing, just as her father had said.

  “There’s a council meeting scheduled for today,” her dad was saying as he skimmed the second page of the paper. “Special session, this says, to discuss draining Martin’s Marsh and starting to put that access road into work. I thought that had been postponed.”

  “I suppose the thing about Miss Rachel and Gaye was what reminded them of it,” Mrs. Belden sighed.

  “I’m afraid there’s no question about that,” her husband agreed with a frown.

  “Will Miss Rachel have to sell her cottage and move away? Can the city make her?” Trixie was shocked.

  “Actually, Miss Martin doesn’t own any of that property any longer. The bank does.”

  “But how can that be? It’s always belonged to her family!” Trixie argued indignantly.

  “Unfortunately, Miss Rachel had to sign over all her rights to the property several years ago, after the changes in the road had put an end to her rug and quilt business. For a while, she borrowed from the bank, but she found that she had no way to pay back her loan, so she insisted on signing over everything to the bank. The board planned to let her stay there as long as she lived, but now—” He shook his head gravely. “I only hope that this is just a flurry of talk in the council.”

  “But where will she move to if the council does start building that road?” Trixie asked unhappily. She still couldn’t help feeling that she would be to blame if that happened. “They know she has no money to buy another place—probably not even enough to rent one.”

  “There are places where she can go if she wishes to,” her father said, and he busied himself with breakfast.

  Trixie turned to her mother for help. Mrs. Belden looked uneasy and rose hastily to go and putter with something on the stove. “But where?” Trixie asked.

  “I guess Dad means the Home,” Brian said quietly.

  “It’s really quite a comfortable place,” Mr. Belden said hastily, “and she would find people near her own age to keep her company. Excellent doctors, too, if she needed them.”

  Mrs. Belden came back to the table, wearing the same stricken look that Trixie had. “But, Peter! A Martin in the Home!” she protested.

  Mr. Belden looked uncomfortable. “Oh, Helen!” he said with gentle reproof. “It isn’t like going to jail, dear. And you must realize how much better off Miss Rachel would be. At her age, out there far away from everyone as she is, almost anything could happen to her. A fall or a stroke! She could be sick for days before anyone found out about it.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Mrs. Belden sighed.

  “Well, she looks good and healthy to me.” Trixie frowned rebelliously. “And I hope the council decides to forget all about that icky old access road for a long time!”

  “To be truthful, so do I,” her father admitted.

  The Bob-Whites discussed it every time they had a chance to get together during the day, but none of them could think of any way to help Miss Rachel if the council decided to get started with the road;

  It was Brian who heard the news first, from the councilman’s son. The city council had voted unanimously to begin work on the access road not later than early fall. Jim and Brian told the girls and Mart the news as they hurried for the bus after school.

  Trixie brightened, and her voice was almost a squeak as she asked, “Early fall? Oh, that’ll give us all summer to find a way to help Miss Rachel so she won’t have to go to the Home to live!”

  “Maybe we could hold a square dance on the Fourth of July as a benefit for her!” Honey suggested eagerly. “That’s a gorgeous idea!” Trixie agreed.

  But Brian and Mart and Jim all looked glum. “Oh, great!” Mart said witheringly. “That would make a hit with the city fathers, wouldn’t it? A benefit to keep someone from having to go to the Home to live. After they’ve put a couple hundred thousand dollars of tax money into the new building there!”

  “Forgetting that angle,” Jim said seriously, “I’m pretty sure Miss Rachel would never hold still for a public benefit. From what I’ve heard of her, she has too much pride. I imagine she’d prefer to go quietly to the Home.”

  “I guess you’re right, Jim,” Trixie sighed, “but then, you most always are. We didn’t stop to think.”

  Honey smiled at her. “Well, we have lots of time to think in all directions now,” she told Trixie.

  “Maybe longer than you expect,” Brian said lightly. “All sorts of things could delay the start of work on the road. You know, red tape and stuff.”

  “Hooray for red tape!” Trixie exclaimed.

  The rest of that day she was her usual happy self and only thought of Miss Rachel a couple of times. One of them was when she and Honey were grooming Strawberry and Susie after a canter through the Wheeler woods and all around the lake. She was busy with the currycomb, and Honey was saddle-soaping the gear. “Listen!” Trixie said, cocking her head in the direction of the house. “That poor child is still at it!”

  Honey stopped work to listen to the distant strains of Gaye’s violin. Over and over, the unseen violinist played the same passage of brilliant notes. “I wish I had a good big cup of hot mint tea from Miss Rachel’s right now. I’d march right up to the music room and make that governess let poor Gaye rest and sip that tea. I know it would do
her a lot of good.”

  Trixie nodded and grinned. “I wouldn’t mind a dash of it right now, myself.” Then she frowned thoughtfully. “I wonder what Miss Rachel’s going to do about her herb garden when she has to give up the cottage. Just leave it there, I suppose, and let the city cover it with concrete.”

  “It’s the rose garden I think she’ll miss the most,” Honey said. “Did you hear her telling Di that one of the first things she remembers is her great-grandmother Molly walking with her in that rose garden? She said her great-grandmother had a thick Irish brogue and always wore a white lace cap. She told her fabulous stories about Irish fairies and leprechauns and pookas, whatever they are.”

  “Leprechauns are fairy shoemakers only a few inches high,” Trixie chuckled. “Pookas I’ve never heard of, but I bet Regan could tell us all about them. Dan, too.”

  “Which reminds me that we’d better get these pookas under blankets, or Regan will slay us both!” Honey said, and they hurried through the rest of the grooming with speed and concentration.

  “A leprechaun would be fun to see,” Trixie said when they had finished, “but I think I’d prefer to see a dragon, especially one with bright green beads for eyes and five claws on each foot.”

  “Goodness!” Honey teased. “I think I’ll get in touch with Paul Trent and tell him there are rumors that Miss Trixie Belden has fallen in love with a gentleman dragon. He’d be sure to print it right on the front page!”

  “And I wouldn’t deny it!” Trixie laughed as they put the horses into their stalls and closed the stable doors. Then they said good night, and Trixie dashed home to her neglected duties.

  The story of the council’s decision to start the access road in the fall was headlined in the morning paper. Trixie, Mart, and Brian bent their heads over the paper to read it. “You were right, Brian,” Trixie said happily. “It says they’ll start sometime this fall. That’s lots more vague than early fall. Maybe the next story will say next spring!”

  “When will you learn that our ancient brother is always right?” Mart drawled, and then he ducked as Brian pretended to aim a fist at him.

  The playful scuffle that followed was broken up by a sudden gasp from Trixie. “Hey, look at this! A story by Trent on page two about the Martins!”

  Mart leaned over to read it with her, and Brian said, “Come on, let’s hear it! What’s his mean little slant?” Mart read aloud, “ ‘Recluse to leave historic property.’ ”

  “He didn’t waste much time spreading the news,” Brian said grimly. “Go on.”

  “Miss Rachel Martin, he says, has been notified that she has to move off the last piece of the once widespread Martin holdings.” Mart condensed it as he read. “He mentions the fire and weeps a few crocodile tears over the big house having been burned down forty years ago.”

  “Just gloating over poor Miss Rachel, I suppose, because she ran him away from her place for saying mean things about her ancestors!” Trixie said, anger reddening her cheeks.

  “He has certainly dug into the family history. Probably got it out of the old Sun-Courier files at the newspaper morgue,” Mart told them. “It seems that her great-granddad was a miserly old coot who owned a couple of trading ships that brought stuff from China.”

  “She has a gorgeous brass box her great-grandfather imported from there,” Trixie interrupted. “It has dragons battling all over it—perfectly ferocious dragons. One has green shiny eyes and five claws on each foot!”

  “Sounds ugh to me!” Brian teased. “Go on with the Martin family dirt, sonny boy.”

  “Well, it seems old Ezarach Martin had an only son, by the same name, who fell in love with one of the maids, named Melanie, and they ran off and got married. Old Ez disowned him for it.”

  “What happened to him?” Trixie asked.

  “Young Ez had one son and then was lost at sea, when one of his father’s schooners went down. He was just a common seaman, working for wages, and the scandal around town was that he wouldn’t have had even that job if his mother, Molly, hadn’t made the old man give it to him. Trent’s article says that Molly and the old man blamed each other because the boy was lost, but old Ez never softened enough to take young Ez’s boy and his mother, Melanie, in to live with him and Molly. He started living like a miser and making Molly live that way, too.”

  “Poor Molly! She must have been brokenhearted,” Trixie sighed.

  “Maybe,” Brian said. “All it says here is that after old Ez was gone, the little grandson and his mother came home to live. But nobody ever found any trace of the fortune Ez was supposed to have made from trading. If there was any, he certainly didn’t leave any clues to its whereabouts.”

  “I wonder how much of this is fact and how much is Trent’s fiction,” Brian said musingly.

  “Seems to me Miss Rachel could sue him if he made it up, especially calling her great-grandpa a miser,” Trixie said indignantly. “I certainly would.”

  Brian looked over Mart’s shoulder at the article. “I doubt if she could do anything about it. Trent covers himself very nicely by saying, it was rumored at the time’ and ‘The general opinion was.’ ”

  “Pretty slick,” Mart said with a disappointed sigh.

  “I wonder if Melanie or her little boy, Miss Rachel’s dad, ever found any of the fortune,” Trixie said, knitting her brows.

  “Trent says not. In fact, he seems to think it’s still there in the ruins. Hear ye!” Mart told her. “ ‘It would be a strange ending to the Martin mystery if the wrecking crews who pull down the ruins of those old mansion walls were showered with a fortune in gold and silver from some still-undiscovered hiding place!’ ” Mart tossed the paper on the table with a chuckle. “Some imagination! As if that fire wouldn’t have burned up any secret doors or cabinets and left the gold and silver in the open!”

  “I suppose it would have,” Trixie conceded sadly. Then she brightened again. “Maybe it was buried in the cellar! It could still be there, under all the bricks and dirt. And if we could dig down deep—”

  “Hold it!” Mart threw up both hands. “You’re not about to hornswoggle us into going out there on Trent’s hunch and getting blisters for nothing!”

  “Mart’s right, Trix,” Brian said hastily. “Remember that both Melanie and her son, Rachel’s father, must have searched the house many times during the years they lived there. And the first place they would have looked would probably have been the cellar.”

  “I suppose so,” Trixie conceded with a sigh. “Just the same, I wish somebody could find it. It would be wonderful to be able to hand it to Miss Rachel so she could buy herself another little house, close to town, and open up a handicraft shop or something.”

  “That’s a nice little dream, Trix,” Brian said, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to think up a more possible answer for her. Miss Martin is in real trouble, and she needs more than a dream to get her out of it.”

  Time Limit • 18

  THE REST of the school week passed without any of the Bob-Whites being able to think of any way to help Miss Rachel avoid going to the Home to live.

  “At least we have lots of time to rack our massive brains and come up with something spectacular,” Trixie told Honey as they saddled up Susie and Strawberry for their Friday afternoon ride.

  Honey nodded agreement. Then she said, “Do you think it would be all right for us to ride out that way this afternoon? I just had a horrible thought.”

  “What was that?” Trixie asked in a startled tone. She wasn’t sure whether Honey was joking or not. But when she looked over Susie’s back and saw her friend’s face, she knew that Honey was serious.

  “Why, here we’ve been fussing about Miss Rachel’s having to go to the Home this fall, and nobody has even asked her how she’s going to feel about it! Maybe she won’t mind at all.”

  Trixie stared at her friend, her own eyes widening into two blue pools. “Honey! I never even gave that a thought! I guess we’d better find out before we get all steamed up a
bout trying to keep her out of it!”

  A few minutes later they were riding along Glen Road, in the direction of Miss Rachel’s home.

  They had gone only a short distance along the turnoff road, when they heard a sound like a car engine backfiring. It seemed to have come from up ahead on the old road.

  “Somebody’s old car is having a tough time getting up the road,” Honey called over gaily to Trixie.

  But Trixie, looking down from her saddle at the nearly dry road, suddenly drew in and stopped. “There are no tire tracks,” she said. And just as she finished speaking, there was another distant sharp sound.

  Honey, who had stopped when Trixie did, turned puzzled eyes to Trixie. “It sounded more like a shotgun. Dad took me duck hunting last fall, and his gun sounded just like that.”

  “But this is the closed season, and, anyway, this is within city limits.” Trixie frowned.

  “It could be a poacher or some careless kid trying to be smart,” Honey said worriedly. “Maybe we’d better just turn back. He could hit one of us or the horses by mistake.”

  “Oh, phoo!” Trixie growled. “I hate to turn back after we’ve come this far. My mouth was all set for mint tea.”

  “Mine, too,” Honey sighed, “but there’s no use taking chances on being mistaken for a deer by some goofy amateur hunter!”

  They were turning their horses, when they heard voices of men coming from farther along up the road. The voices were loud and sounded angry.

  “Let’s duck,” Trixie said quickly. “We can get behind those bushes and watch without being seen. Those fellows up ahead seem to be angry about something.” Honey didn’t wait to discuss it. She wheeled Strawberry and headed the roan horse toward the bushes. Trixie was close behind her.