by Janet Lunn
“Where did you get that goat?” Willy asked, and right away Jane remembered all the things about Willy she particularly didn’t like.
“Oh shut up,” she said and went into the kitchen. Elizabeth went too.
They decided, sitting in the kitchen eating bacon and eggs, that Willy Wallet’s being there was all the more reason for going to the library. Jane asked Elizabeth if she had really wanted to know about books of families or was she just helping the conversation out. Elizabeth said she really wanted to know.
“You know,” she said, “if we find a family with the name Hester somewhere in it, it would be a great clue, wouldn’t it? I mean there can’t be too many Hesters can there?”
“You mean like red brick houses with white wood lace trim?” asked Jane.
Elizabeth agreed her sister had made a point, but they thought they might as well look anyway and off they went to the local library.
Miss Porcastle said hello to Elizabeth and remarked about how nice it was to see two such charming girls (“twins, aren’t you dears?”) so interested in history. She sat them down at a table in the corner and began to bring them books.
“How many do you want, dear?” she asked.
“As many as you’ve got,” answered Jane firmly.
Miss Porcastle looked doubtful but back she went and brought more and more books until the twins were almost hidden behind them. All morning they looked through the mountain of books, page by page, book by book. They found pictures of people, streets, shops, but never a sign of Hester’s house. They looked for names and found lots of those too – including, to Elizabeth’s chagrin, plenty of Hesters. Finally they couldn’t look at another picture or read another page, and they got up and went home with nothing accomplished.
At least Jane felt there had been nothing accomplished. Elizabeth felt strongly that some of the pictures she had seen in the books were places the doll might have remembered. She thought of telling Jane about her experience the day before at the streetcar stop but decided to wait. Now she had seen so many pictures, she wanted to check the doll’s clothes again, to look at it more carefully to be sure it belonged to the time they thought it did.
As soon as they got home, Elizabeth went right upstairs to get the doll, but, when she reached into the window seat to find it, the doll wasn’t there.
“That’s funny,” said Jane.
“No, it’s not,” cried Elizabeth, “no it’s not. Jane, there’s something wrong. I know there’s something wrong!”
“What do you mean, wrong?” asked Jane from outside the window. She was looking in the pigeon hole.
“I mean someone or something’s trying to take our doll away.”
“Don’t be silly,” came the answer, “Say – there are two pigeon holes down here, one just a little ways over from Porridge’s.”
“Is the doll in it?”
“No.”
“Then why did you tell me that?” Elizabeth was aggrieved. “What’s that got to do with our doll? I tell you, Jane Hubbard, someone’s trying to take our doll.”
“Who’d want it, or why?” Jane’s head was back inside the room.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s valuable. Remember what Papa said?”
“Oh, valuable,” Jane said scornfully. “Remember Papa said that it couldn’t be, it must be a cheap copy or something?”
“Well, I don’t care, all I know is that it’s missing and I want it.”
Jane had an inspiration. “We’ll ask William. William always sees everything.”
“All right,” Elizabeth agreed, somewhat mollified.
William was out on the beach just beyond the garden where he had made a most marvelous and elaborate system of roads. There were highways and streets, underground tunnels and sweeping overpasses, popsicle sticks for street lights, and all along were his cars and trucks. Over at one side, like a benevolent fairy watching over the entire scene, was the wooden doll.
“William!” said Elizabeth in outrage and relief, “where did you get our doll?”
William looked up in surprise. “I found it by the lilac bush,” he said, “so I thought it would be all right if I played with it. It’s the Friendly Car Spirit of the North.”
“That’s east,” said Jane automatically, “and anyway it wasn’t …”
“It wasn’t by the lilac bush, and you know it,” said Elizabeth indignantly, grabbing it. “It was up in our room on the window seat.”
“No it wasn’t,” William insisted. “It was under the lilac bush – way under it. Please, Liza,” his tone changed to one of pleading, “can I have it to be the Friendly Car Spirit of the North?”
Elizabeth looked at Jane who shrugged. In a way, Elizabeth was glad to let William have it. She felt no one on earth would be a better guardian so she said, “OK, but guard it with your life. I’m going to have lunch.”
A little while later, when the two of them were finishing lemonade and peanut butter sandwiches under the cherry tree, Elizabeth made a pronouncement. “I’m going to think,” she declared.
Jane groaned. She knew what that meant. Elizabeth’s think spells nearly drove her wild. When Jane had a problem, she wanted to do things – write lists, clean the room, make muffins, or play baseball. When Elizabeth had a problem, she had a think spell. “I just want to think,” she would say, and then she would lie, usually on her back with her head hanging over the side of her bed until her face was beet red, and think until she pronounced herself thought out. Then she would get up. It irritated Jane, who was sure it never solved anything, and besides, didn’t allow her to talk all the time it was going on.
“Please don’t think,” she pleaded. “We’ve found the doll now and it wasn’t something ghostly or anything.”
“Ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night,” chanted William on his way past.
“Go away William,” said Jane.
“It was only William playing roads with it,” Jane continued. “We can go back to the library,” she coaxed, “take the doll along if you like and …”
“Can’t go anywhere,” announced Mama, coming out of the door in her good white suit and her blue straw hat. “I’m going to see Aunt Alice, and you’re going to stay here and mind William. And,” she added, pulling on her gloves, “no getting into fights with the boys.”
“Boys,” said the twins in one voice, “where are they?”
“Swimming, but they’ll probably be home soon. Now behave,” and Mama disappeared around the corner.
“Probably,” said Jane disgustedly, “probably will.”
“I’ll think,” said Elizabeth, starting to get up.
“No wait,” said Jane, “why don’t we go on making our list. Remember we had only got started when …”
“When we found the roses,” Elizabeth sat down again. “Well, we don’t really know any more things, do we?”
“Still, detectives don’t either when they start solving a mystery.”
“Maybe we should get Sherlock Holmes hats and magnifying glasses,” Elizabeth giggled. She inched herself along on her stomach until her top half was completely shaded by the cherry tree and her bottom half was under the lilac bush. “I could think right here,” she murmured.
Jane got up. “If you’re going to go on and on and on about that,” she said crossly, “I’m going swimming.”
“Can’t. Have to mind William.”
The afternoon looked as though it might deteriorate into another fight. The sun was hot. No breeze moved the leaves in the cherry tree or the lilac bush. In the distance, people were shouting and splashing in the lake, but right there in the garden no creature moved. Even Horse had settled himself way under the lilac bush opposite Elizabeth, burrowing deeper and deeper until he had found what was probably the only cool spot in Ontario.
“All right,” Jane started to say, “I’ll let you think,” when Joe and Willy burst into the yard with glad shouts and began to snap dirty wet towels at them.
“Oh, go
away,” said Elizabeth crossly, which was like an invitation to a feast for those two boys.
“Ho! Ho!” sang Willy, and Joe, of course, followed suit, flinging towels even more wildly.
“Come on, let’s play tag. Come on Joe, let’s play tag with the girls. You’re it,” he punched Jane on the arm.
“I am not,” she said haughtily, “going to play games with little children. Go ask William to play,” whereupon Willy began to snap his towel at her so that it would really hurt, and she ran into the house shouting all the way, “Stop it you miserable little boy.”
Up the stairs she ran and Willy chased her. Fleeing the snapping towel, she ran toward the upstairs front porch. Willy headed her off. Turning along the hall, she ran down the steps to the unused room that was once the attic, raced inside, and slammed the door shut after her. Close behind, Willy turned the old key in the lock. Jane heard it clatter to the floor as he marched away, saying as he went, “Now spend the afternoon in the hot box and say all the things you like spitey-tongue, ha, ha!” She was well and truly locked in the old attic.
Out of breath and confused, she thought she was somewhere else, in a room with flower-striped wallpaper and loosely woven white curtains at the window. When her breath returned, she could see it was really the attic, dusty, dingy, gray, with a fat beam going up the center of it and one shutter hanging loose from the curtainless window. Wishful thinking, I guess, she decided.
At first she waited, listening to the sounds of Willy and Joe chasing Elizabeth toward the water, trying to throw her in. After a few moments there was a scream, a splash that told her they had been successful, a great horselaugh, and then silence. Jane knew she was abandoned.
She looked about her curiously, wondering what about the room had given her the impression it had flowers on its wall. “It’s black and almost burned-looking,” she said to herself. And it did look as though there might once have been a fire. The beams near the window looked quite charred, although they were so black with age no one could really tell. The whole attic was black and bleak. It was the most depressing place Jane had ever been in. She began to feel as though there were eyes watching her – like the night we found Porridge, she thought and smiled. But the smile soon faded and the eyes were still there. There was something in the attic, something in the dark attic that didn’t like her. She was sure of it. She had to get away. She ran to the window – the one glow of light.
“It can’t have been opened in years and years,” she gasped, shoving against it with all her weight. Fear made her strong, and with one creak the window flew up. Jane, flung forward by her own strength, just missed falling out. She clutched the window to save herself and breathed the freshness of the outside air.
Down below William was trying to ride a very reluctant Horse.
“William,” called Jane weakly.
He looked up.
“Please,” she whispered, “come open the attic door. Willy Wallet’s locked me in.”
“All right.” William disappeared and in a minute or two was outside the attic fiddling with the key.
Gratefully Jane slumped through the door and down the stairs. William stood looking curiously inside for a couple of minutes and then he too came away.
She found Elizabeth in the tower room – thinking. When Jane hadn’t reappeared from Willy’s chase, Elizabeth assumed she had gone swimming. With the idea still firmly fixed in her mind that she needed a think to solve their problem, she had taken the doll and gone upstairs. But it hadn’t worked. She had tried standing on her head, sitting with her hands touching the doll lightly as though it were a ouija board, concentrating with all her might on the little red house, and finally, lying on her bed with her head hung backward over the edge. It had all been no use.
“The only odd thing that happened,” she told Jane, “was that I thought for a moment that I saw you in an old-fashioned bedroom with roses on the wallpaper, but it went away so soon I’m not sure about it now.”
It was almost too much for Jane. She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t tell that she had seen it too. Not right then. She had to think about if for a while first. She put on her bathing suit and went swimming, trying to throw off the edges of fear that still clung to her.
“It wasn’t really the attic,” she told herself unhappily as she swam with strong, even strokes out from the beach, “it’s the doll and all those funny things.” Jane could no longer convince herself that those funny things were Elizabeth’s imaginings or that she was hunting Hester’s house to please her sister. There was something strange going on. She knew it now. She didn’t like it, but she knew too that she would have to do everything she possibly could to find out what it was. How else would anything ever again make sense? When she was too exhausted to swim any more, she came in, still not happy.
Late that night Horse set up such a lot of barking out near the coach house it woke Jane from a muddled dream. She sat up, saw Marble sitting straight up tall in a patch of moonlight on the window seat beside the doll, and lay down again, glad Horse was in the coach house and Marble standing guard at the window.
Jane Makes Up Her Mind
Jane said nothing to anyone about the barking in the night or Marble’s strange behavior, but she was badly frightened. It had come to her in the dark and muddle of her dreams that they, she and Elizabeth, had brought ghosts to Aunt Alice’s house. In the morning she felt foolish. There aren’t ghosts, she told herself crossly. There aren’t. Maybe there are dreams and maybe they mean something even, but it doesn’t mean there are ghosts. But she didn’t entirely believe the things she told herself. Ever since the roses had shown up on the old leather box, she had been shaken and unsure. Ever since yesterday afternoon in the attic, she hadn’t been able to throw off the uneasiness that clung to her like a smothering velvet cloth. There was something wrong. Something was going to happen. Against all sense and reason she knew something was going to happen.
There was a heaviness in the air, which didn’t help Jane’s mood at all. Already, at seven o’clock in the morning, the sun was a round yellow furnace in the sky – a furnace with a ring of fog around it. There was scarcely a cloud, and even the gulls were barely floating, not flying. The lake gave a lazy now-and-then lick at the shore as if too exhausted to do more. The heat eased its way into the house and sent Jane and Elizabeth and William down to the beach. They took their toast crusts to feed the ducks.
Everything on the beach seemed so normal that Jane made a determined effort to forget about her fears and forebodings. Wasn’t it enough, she argued with herself, to have all that business about the doll, without me thinking we have ghosts in Aunt Alice’s house? I’m getting worse than Elizabeth.
But just as they arrived back at their own garden, Patrick came charging out of the coach house, bellowing as he came, “Where are those twins? Wait till I get my hands on them. Just wait.” He saw them and thundered toward them.
“Shall we run?” whispered Elizabeth.
“Too late.” Jane stood and faced Patrick.
“What do you mean going into my stuff like that?” he roared. “What do you want in there, anyhow? What have I got in there that you have to go and turn everything upside down? You kids make me so mad!” His face went dark red. His brown hair stood up in tufts where he had pushed his hands through it. His khaki pants were dirty where Horse had climbed over them with wet, muddy feet and he hadn’t any shirt or shoes on. He really looked funny, and Elizabeth started to giggle.
“Don’t you laugh, you little misery!” Patrick grabbed her long pony tail and pulled. In doing so he dropped something from his hand. Jane bent down and picked it up.
“What’s this?” she asked, paying no attention to Patrick’s anger. Elizabeth drew back out of his arm’s range, rubbing her head.
“What’s that,” he began to roar all over again. “What do you mean, what’s that? You should know. You left it there. Who else around here has bracelets and doodads and things like that?”
; Jane looked closely at it. It was a bracelet made of links. Dirt and age had encrusted them, turned the metal quite green, and completely obscured their design.
“It isn’t ours,” Jane said flatly.
“Don’t tell me that garbage,” said Patrick. “Gar-bage,” he said again, this time more controlled but sharp and distinct. “GAR-BAGE,” he said once more and turned and marched, hands in his pockets, back to the coach house. “And,” he turned back to the twins, “don’t go near my stuff again. I’ll skin you if I find you near that coach house.”
Elizabeth looked at Jane. Jane was decidedly pale.
“What’s wrong? It isn’t like you to let Pat get you down.”
“I don’t know,” Jane answered slowly. “Pat didn’t bother me. He’s just a steam engine.” She giggled unexpectedly. “He runs down like William’s windup car, doesn’t he?”
Elizabeth laughed but she knew something was bothering Jane. Jane had been so silent ever since yesterday afternoon, off in a dream or something, paying no attention to her, not wanting to talk about the doll – or anything else for that matter. And now she seemed really worried. She watched Jane twist the funny old bracelet from the coach house round and round on her wrist.
“Let’s see the bracelet,” she said. Jane held out her arm without taking the bracelet off. “Wonder where it came from?” Elizabeth asked. “It’s a funny color, isn’t it?”
Jane didn’t answer directly. She told about the imprisonment in the attic; about seeing the flower-patterned bedroom (“I guess that’s why you saw it”); about the eyes that watched and her great fear and fight to get away (“And you know, I just remembered. That window was tight shut. The one Aunt Alice had to close that day we first came.”); she told about Horse’s barking in the night and Marble standing guard. She told what she had figured out about the ghosts. “And now,” she finished, trying to control the worry in her voice, “this.” She held up her arm with the bracelet on it.