The 100-Year-Old Secret

by Tracy Barrett

  “Not yet,” he admitted. “These people wrote letters. I mean, they really wrote letters. Like every day. Long ones. They've been copied onto these little sheets, and you have to view them here.” He pointed at the screen.

  “Really?” Xena slid into the seat next to her brother. “Move over.”

  Nigel Batheson hadn't written many letters, and they were mostly orders for paint and brushes and canvas, but his wife had. She had a sister in London, and her husband's reluctance to travel meant that they didn't see each other very often, so they wrote frequently.

  “Lucky for us they didn't have e-mail yet!” Xander said.

  Mrs. Batheson wrote a lot about her boys. Abner, the oldest, was quiet and studious. Cedric, the second, had a talent for music. And little Robert was always getting into mischief. “Robbie wouldn't sit still for his portrait,” the mother wrote. “Nigel was quite put out with him and threw down his brush. He said that he should not have a portrait after all. Robert then put a toad in Miss Bailey's bed”—Miss Bailey, it appeared, was the governess—“and he gave away his shoes to a beggar boy he met in the lane. I have no doubt that the child needed shoes, but I would not be amazed if his father sold them for drink.”

  One by one the boys went off to school. They wrote letters home every week, but didn't really say much. Xander did some quick mental math with the date on the letters. “Boarding school when they were seven?” Xander asked.

  “I guess they do that in England,” she said. “Like Hogwarts.”

  Another letter mentioned that the boys had been ill. Cedric had nearly died of smallpox. He had recovered, “but I fear that his dear little face will never be the same,” read the letter from his mother to her sister. “Yet I am thankful every day that the Lord has spared my sweet boy.”

  Cedric returned to school and things went back to normal. The headmaster wrote letters home about the boys, generally complimentary. But Robert was still getting into trouble. He put a toad in the bed of the boy upstairs from him, the headmaster said.

  “Robert had a thing for putting toads in beds,” Xander said. “I like him the best.”

  “You would,” Xena answered.

  A church bell outside rang. “Time to go,” Xena said. “These letters aren't any help, and anyway, you've got soccer practice. I'll wait for you and if there's time when it's over we can come back to the case.”

  “Great.” Xander's stomach twisted. He didn't know if he wanted to face his teammates. Back home everybody would have known that he hardly ever made mistakes and that next time he'd be a star again, but nobody here knew that about him. It stinks being a new kid, he thought as he trudged down the sidewalk.

  Back at school he took his time changing. When he got outside, the boys were already playing on one field and the girls on the other. He spotted Xena near the bleachers with some girls in her class, watching the boys run a drill.

  Xander bent down to retie the laces on his soccer shoes and heard Coach Craig's voice.

  “Holmes!” he barked.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Go over there.” He pointed to the far end of the field. “Watson is going to give you some pointers.”

  Xander's heart sank. Please, not that know-it-all Andrew. Maybe there was another kid named Watson. No such luck. In the corner of the field stood an unmistakable figure, tall and skinny, with bright red hair, both hands on his hips and one foot balanced on a soccer ball.

  “Come on,” Andrew said. “I have a lot to teach you and not much time.”

  Andrew, surprisingly, was a patient teacher, and after an hour or so Xander started feeling the stirrings of confidence as he managed to dodge around the older boy and score a goal in the imaginary net behind him.

  “Good job!” Andrew said, raising his hand for a high five.

  Xander slapped the older boy's hand and threw himself onto the grass, panting. “Who are we playing next week?” he asked.

  “The Knuckers again,” Andrew said and laughed as Xander groaned loudly. “This is our chance to get even,” he added. “You'd better practice.”

  Xander walked a few yards away to pick up the jersey he had tossed aside during practice. I wonder why he's being so nice? he thought.

  “Ready to leave?” Xena asked, coming up alongside him. “How did it go with Andrew?” she said in a low voice.

  “Not bad,” Xander said. “Maybe since he's helping me he doesn't feel like the Watsons are so unimportant.”

  While Xander ran back into the locker room, Xena dug into her backpack to check for Tube fare. As she opened her wallet, a few papers fluttered away. The wind picked them up. “My pictures!” she cried.

  Andrew, who was chatting with some guys nearby, heard her, turned around, and grabbed two pictures as they sailed past.

  “Your dog?” he asked as he handed her a photo of Sukey, their basset hound.

  Xena nodded. “Our cousins are taking care of her until we go home.”

  “Who's this cute little girl?” he asked, holding up another.

  “Little girl?” Xena was puzzled. She looked at the snapshot Andrew was holding.

  “Oh, that's Xander!” she said. “He played a daisy in his preschool play.” In the photo, a chubby-faced Xander stood with a circle of white petals around his head. “I'm a daisy, I'm born in the spring, I burst from the ground when the birdies sing,” she recited in a high-pitched baby voice.

  “Hey, cut it out!” Xander came back to the field just in time to hear his sister recite the last lines of his part. He made a grab at the picture, but Andrew held it above his head.

  “You want this?” Andrew asked, lowering it a little. “Be a nice little flower girl and maybe I'll give it to you.”

  Xander leaped at it again and this time he got it. And he'd been thinking that Andrew might not be so bad after all! But Xander's first impression had been right—the guy was a jerk. Xander started to tear up the picture.

  “Hey, that's mine! I need it to remind me of when you were a nice little kid and not a pain.” Xena tried to snatch it from his fingers, but Xander pulled it away.

  He looked at it again, then slipped the photo into his back pocket. It was humiliating. No way would it ever see the light of day again. Xander would make sure of that.

  On the way home Xena said, “I'm sorry about showing Andrew the picture,” she said. “I didn't know you were still mad about that daisy costume.”

  No answer. He just stared at the floor for the rest of the ride.

  “At least he said you were a cute little girl,” she pointed out as they reached the front steps of their building. Still no answer. She unlocked the door and let herself in. She turned to close it again but Xander wouldn't move. “What are you doing?”

  Xander stood frozen on the doorstep. His mouth hung open and his eyes looked dazed.

  “Xander!” Xena was worried. “What is it?”

  He blinked as though waking up.

  “I have it, Xena!”

  “You have what?”

  “I think I know who the girl in the purple hat was!”

  CHAPTER 14

  Xena reached out and pulled him in, then slammed the door shut against the evening chill.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “We need to make a list,” Xander said. “See if you make the same deduction.”

  Xena found a piece of paper and drew a line down the middle, dividing it neatly into two columns, the left-hand one headed Clue and the right-hand one Deduction. She passed it to Xander.

  He wrote in the Clue column, “We thought Sarah looked like the girl in the missing painting but when she took off the hat and the wig she didn't.” Under Deduction he wrote, “The girl in the Batheson painting didn't necessarily look like the model who posed for it either.”

  “So?” Xena asked.

  Xander ignored her. “Clue: Little kids don't look especially boyish or girlish. Flower petals around the head of even a very masculine little boy make him look like a lit
tle girl.”

  “Very masculine?” Xena hooted.

  “Shut up,” Xander said and kept writing. “Deduction: The model for the painting wasn't necessarily a girl.”

  “Ah,” Xena said. She saw where he was going and it made sense.

  “Clue.” Xander paused, then wrote, “All of Nigel Batheson's children were boys. He was very shy and didn't talk to people outside his family. He would never have had a stranger pose for him, even a kid.”

  Xander put down his pen and leaned back. “When you have excluded the impossible,” he said, quoting Sherlock Holmes, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” He locked eyes with his sister.

  “The girl in the purple hat,” Xena said slowly, “was a boy?”

  Xander nodded. He wrote in the Deduction column “The model was either Abner, Cedric, or Robert Batheson!” He sat back.

  Xena pulled out the newspaper clipping about the Batheson exhibit from her desk. She and her brother studied the copy of Girl in a Purple Hat. True, they couldn't tell for sure from just the face. The green eyes could belong to either a boy or a girl, and so could the rosy cheeks and the pouting mouth. But the model appeared uncomfortable. Was the dress scratchy, like Sarah's? Or was it because the model was a boy who didn't want to wear a dress?

  “I think the real clue,” Xena said slowly, “is in the expression. If most portraits from that time make children look”—she consulted the clipping again—“look overly sweet, why did Batheson make this one look as grumpy as you did when Dad told you that you couldn't quit the soccer team?”

  Xander ignored her. “The problem is, this doesn't really help us figure out where the painting is. Even if the model was one of the Batheson boys, so what? We don't have any more clues that will help us find the painting in time for the art opening tomorrow.”

  “That doesn't mean we should give up,” Xena said. “We're on to something, Xander! When we go to the opening we're bound to see some of his descendants. I'm sure we'll find more clues there.”

  “What do you wear to an art opening anyway?” Xander asked.

  “Black,” Xena said promptly. “Whenever you see people on TV at something like this, they're always wearing black.”

  Xena had tried on everything in her closet before finally settling on a pair of black jeans and a matching turtleneck. Now, as they waited to get into the Victoria and Albert Museum, their parents were chatting with a woman who had tattoos on both arms and a man with so many piercings in his ears, nose, lips, and eyebrows that he looked like a porcupine. I guess it doesn't matter what you wear to these things, Xena thought.

  Xena and Xander checked their coats, then wandered around admiring the paintings and trying not to stare at the blank space on the wall representing the missing Girl in a Purple Hat.

  Xander nudged Xena and pointed at something in the brochure. “It says that the artist made the frames himself out of wood and then they were covered in gold leaf—really thin sheets of gold. That's so cool!”

  Xena wasn't interested in frames, gold-covered or not. She was scrutinizing the people. The artist they'd met on Wednesday was there with her niece, Sarah, who was wearing her “girl in a purple hat” costume. Sarah waved at Xena, who smiled and waved back. Then Xena spotted Mrs. Emerson, the lady they had met in Taynesbury. She was over in a corner, talking to a group of men. Xena was curious. Maybe they were talking about the missing painting. It was a long shot but worth a listen.

  She weaved along the edge of the crowd toward Mrs. Emerson's group. The plan was to get close enough to eavesdrop without getting caught. She could usually blend in without people noticing her. Her mother called this talent “Xena's cloak of invisibility.” Xander called it nosiness. Whatever you called it, it would come in handy now.

  But they weren't saying anything particularly interesting, just talking about how bad the traffic had been, and wasn't the weather awful, and what were they planning to do for Christmas. Xena looked at the men out of the corner of her eye. They shared a resemblance to one another and to Mrs. Emerson, especially their bright green eyes. They had to be Batheson descendants.

  “What are you doing?” Well, that was the end of her invisibility. Nobody could help noticing Xander, especially when he didn't even try to keep his voice down.

  “Nothing anymore,” she said. “Now that you blew it.”

  “Why, it's those children,” Mrs. Emerson said.

  “The ones who were looking for great-great-grandfather's house. They're doing a school report on him. You children must be real art lovers!”

  “We are,” Xena said. “Especially when it comes to Nigel Batheson. I'm Xena Holmes, and this is my brother, Xander.”

  “Are you the kids who called me a few days back?” asked one of the green-eyed men.

  Xena nodded. “Yes,” she said. “We were disappointed not to be able to see the house he lived in.”

  “So much was destroyed during the war,” said a man who was clutching a drink. “Such a tragedy. A lovely old farmhouse, reduced to rubble.”

  “No, the real tragedy is that Nigel Batheson's collection is incomplete.” Mrs. Emerson pointed at the blank space reserved for the memory of Girl in a Purple Hat. “It's so sad.”

  “True, true,” one of the men agreed.

  “It's a shame the world will never get to study his greatest work,” the tall one said. “Even the identity of the model is a mystery.”

  “We think we know who the model was!” Xander piped in. “Or at least we think we know who it wasn't.”

  Xena nudged Xander with her elbow. It was only a theory, after all.

  “Whatever can you mean?” asked Mrs. Emerson. “How could you kids know who the girl in the picture was? Even we don't know that, and we're family!”

  “We think,” Xena said, “that it wasn't a girl at all. We think it was a boy, one of Nigel Batheson's sons, dressed up to look like a girl!”

  Xena waited for their reaction. Would they laugh at them? Have them thrown out of the museum?

  For a moment there was silence. Then the man with the mustache said, “What a fascinating theory! Which son do you think it was?” he asked Xander.

  “We're not sure,” Xander answered. “We don't know much about Nigel's children except that they went to boarding school and one had smallpox and another liked toads.”

  “Maybe you could help,” Xena said. “Do you know which one might have been about eight years old when Nigel painted the portrait?”

  The tall Batheson turned to Mrs. Emerson. “Here, Emily, you always have a little of everything in that bag of yours. Could you find a bit of paper and something to write with? Let's see what we can remember.”

  Mrs. Emerson dug in her purse and produced an envelope and the stub of a pencil. One of the Batheson men cleared a space on a small table that was littered with paper napkins and empty glasses, and the adults all put their heads together. Xena and Xander stood on tiptoe peering over their shoulders.

  The little snippets of conversation they heard just tantalized them more. “Abner was born when, Jack?” and “But I thought their cousin Frank was older than Cedric.” Just when they thought they would burst with curiosity, the adults moved aside a little and let them see what they had been working on.

  It was a family tree. Birth years of most of the relatives had been penciled in. There were no daughters, no female cousins, not even an aunt who would have been a young girl when the painting was done.

  Xander studied the paper carefully. “So if Girl in a Purple Hat was painted in 1902 and Abner was born in 1885, he'd be too old to be the model.”

  “Cedric was born in 1890,” Xena remarked. “That would make him twelve. That's a little too old, even if he looked young for his age. And, anyway, he had smallpox scars on his face by then.”

  “But Robert,” Xander went on. “He was born in 1894.”

  “That would have made him eight when the painting was made!” Xena exclaimed. “That's about the age of the model
in the painting. It could be him!”

  “That is so clever of you, children,” the man with the mustache said. “And just think of all the art historians who haven't been able to figure this out.”

  Blushing but pleased, Xena pocketed the envelope with the Batheson family tree on it. Then they said good-bye to the Bathesons and left the room.

  “So where do we go from here?” Xena asked. “How does knowing who modeled for Girl in a Purple Hat help us figure out who stole it?”

  Xander didn't have a response for that. He took his coat from the hook where he had hung it on his way in. When he put it on, the picture of him in his daisy costume fell out of a pocket.

  “Hey!” Xena cried. “My picture!”

  Xander quickly swiped it off the floor. “It's my picture now,” he said. “I told you. You're not getting it back. I don't trust you not to show it again.”

  “So you're going to carry it with you everywhere?” Xena asked. “Or will you tear it up?”

  “Maybe,” Xander replied, though he knew that he wouldn't. There was something—well, something weird about tearing up his own picture. But as soon as he got back to their apartment, he'd hide it deep under his mattress.

  And that's exactly what he did. Then, with his arm shoved halfway underneath his mattress, he realized something about the mystery.

  Xena didn't think the identity of Batheson's model in Girl in a Purple Hat mattered. But it did matter . . . it was the key to solving the whole case!

  CHAPTER 15

  I solved the case! I solved the case!” Xander raced into his sister's bedroom down the hall.

  Xena was sitting on her bed, the casebook open on her lap. “Slow down,” she said. “What are you talking about, Xander?”

  Xander took a big gulp of air. “I figured out who took the painting,” he said. “It was Robert. It had to be.”

  “How did you get to that?” Xena asked.

  “Don't you see?” Xander asked eagerly. “Even though that picture of me is totally embarrassing, I couldn't bear to tear it up. So I decided to hide it instead. I bet that's what happened to the painting!”