Mystery at Peacock Hall

by Charles Tang

  “I knew we’d find a mystery here,” Violet said.

  “Two mysteries,” Benny corrected.

  “What’s the other one?” Jessie wanted to know.

  “The secret in this house,” Benny reminded them. “Cousin Althea was going to tell us about it, but we had to go to bed. Let’s ask her now!”

  He ran ahead, leaping up on the front porch and through the wide front door.

  Jessie called after him. “Save your energy, Benny! We have some serious housework to do.” She looked at Henry and Violet. “You don’t mind, do you? I feel sorry for Althea. The house is so big.”

  “I like old houses,” Henry replied. “And this one is neat.”

  Althea was delighted with Jessie’s plan. She gave them mops, brooms, and cleaning supplies.

  But before Benny lifted a dust rag, he had to know about the secret. “You said you’d tell us.”

  “Oh, that!” said Althea. “It’s just a silly story, passed from one generation to the next. Grayson told me there’s something in Peacock Hall that’s priceless.”

  “What is it?” asked Violet. She was curious, too.

  “I have no idea,” their hostess replied. “Grayson didn’t know, either. It’s truly a secret!”

  “It must be a hidden treasure,” Benny declared. “We’ll find it for you!”

  Althea laughed. “If anybody can, I believe you will, Benny Alden! You remind me of Celia when we were growing up. She was so full of life, just like you.”

  Benny flushed. “We haven’t seen the peacocks yet. Where are they?”

  “They wander the grounds,” Althea told him. “Don’t worry. You’ll know when they’re around,” she added with a grin.

  The kids started on the top floor. Jessie had never seen so many rooms.

  Althea followed them slowly up the steep stairs. “Don’t feel you have to scrub every room spotless. I want you to have fun. This afternoon I’ll take you to Monticello. I work there two days a week.”

  With the promise of a treat, the children set to work. Dust vanished from dressers and lamps; windows shone. Soon it was lunchtime. After eating Virginia ham sandwiches, chips, and lemonade, they set off in Althea’s ancient car to Monticello.

  As they drove down the road, Althea told them a little about Thomas Jefferson.

  “As Henry said last night, Jefferson was our third president,” Althea said. “He was a great statesman. Jefferson was governor of Virginia. He wrote most of the Declaration of Independence. He was the minister to France, the secretary of state, and the vice president.”

  “Whew!” Benny remarked. “He was a busy man!”

  Althea laughed. “Yes, he was! Besides all that, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia, built a great mansion, gardened, read, and wrote all his life.”

  Violet noted the signs they were passing. “What does ‘Monticello’ mean?”

  “It’s Italian for ‘little mountain.’ ” Althea turned onto another road that led up and up. “Back when Jefferson was alive, people had to walk up this mountain. It didn’t seem so little then! But they agreed it was worth the hike.”

  Like a jewel, Jefferson’s mansion glowed against the velvety lawn. The white dome reflected the sunshine.

  Althea parked the car and everyone got out.

  Henry gave a low whistle. “Look at that line! I never knew so many people wanted to see this house.”

  “It’s like this every single day,” Althea said, waving to the ticket-taker. “But I have a special pass.”

  They breezed by groups of tourists and into the entrance hall. Althea stopped to tell them more.

  “I won’t drown you in history,” she promised, “but you should know Mr. Jefferson started working on this house when he was twenty-six. He worked on it for forty years. Monticello tells the story of his life better than any biography.”

  The children gazed around the large, airy room.

  “Jefferson was interested in everything,” Althea told them. “This entrance hall used to be a sort of museum. Visitors who came saw a fossilized mastodon jawbone, a model of a great pyramid, a buffalo-hide map, and other curiosities. But many of those things are put away now.”

  Benny was disappointed. The elk antlers were neat, but he really wanted to see a fossil jawbone.

  “Let’s go into the east portico,” Althea said, leading them into the next room. “See the compass on the ceiling? It connects with the weather vane on the roof. Jefferson wanted to know the direction of the wind without having to go outside and look at the weather vane.”

  “What’s that?” Jessie asked, pointing to a strange contraption by the door.

  “It’s a clock,” Althea said. “Jefferson designed it, along with many other inventions we’ll see.”

  Henry examined the cannonball weights on either side of the door. “This is a weird clock.”

  “Actually, it’s very clever.” Althea indicated words on the walls. “The cannonballs are attached to those wires. As the weights descend, they pass the days of the week marked on the wall. Not only does the clock tell time, it tells you what day it is!”

  Benny peered into a hole cut into the floor where the weights disappeared. “What day is down there?”

  Althea laughed. “Okay, so Jefferson wasn’t perfect. He made a slight mistake and forgot Saturday.”

  Jefferson’s inventions were all over the house. In the library was a folding table that turned into steps used to reach the top bookcase shelves. Thomas Jefferson wrote so many letters, he invented a device that allowed him to make two copies at the same time.

  “I could use that,” Violet commented. “Then I wouldn’t have to write so many thank-you notes for birthday presents!”

  Each of the children had a favorite invention. Henry liked the chaise lounge with candlesticks fitted into the arms and a revolving writing desk.

  Jessie thought the music stand was neat. Five racks held sheet music for five musicians and folded into a small box for easy transporting.

  Violet decided the bedrooms were the best. Built into cozy alcoves, the beds had overhead storage spaces and porthole windows high above. One bed sported a revolving coat rack at one end that could be turned with a stick.

  “You could pick out your clothes without getting up!” she remarked.

  But Benny hadn’t yet seen the invention that he would like best of all.

  CHAPTER 3

  A Pair of Ripped Jeans

  Althea led them into the dining room just as a tour group was leaving.

  “We’ll have this room to ourselves until the next group comes,” she said.

  Benny glanced around. Dining rooms were only interesting when there was food on the table.

  “Mr. Jefferson was an intensely private man,” Althea was saying. “He wanted his guests to speak freely without servants hanging around. As you may know, Jefferson unfortunately kept many slaves. They carried food from the kitchen through an underground passageway, up a small staircase, and into this room.”

  Now Benny was fascinated. “Can we see the tunnel?” he asked eagerly.

  “I’m sorry we can’t. But,” Althea added, “we can see this.” She walked over to the ornately carved fireplace. “Sometimes the servants would put food on a special elevator in the cellar below. By using pulleys, meals were sent up here.”

  She pulled open a panel on the side of the fireplace. Inside was a narrow compartment with boxes to hold trays and bottles.

  “A dumbwaiter!” Henry exclaimed.

  “Wow!” Benny said. “If I had one at home, Mrs. McGregor could send me cookies and milk anytime I wanted!”

  Jessie laughed. “Mrs. McGregor is our housekeeper,” she explained to Althea.

  Althea showed the children a matching secret panel on the other side of the fireplace, then said they ought to go.

  “I think Benny is tired,” she observed.

  “Can we come back to Monticello?” asked Jessie. “I’d like to see the gardens.”

&nb
sp; “Absolutely!” Althea said. “I work in the Jefferson Center for Historic Plants tomorrow. You can come with me.”

  “Did Thomas Jefferson have peacocks?” Benny asked.

  Althea shook her head. “But he had a pet mockingbird. When Jefferson lived in the White House, he tamed a mockingbird. The bird sat on his shoulder and chirped in his ear.”

  Violet was charmed by the story. Jefferson seemed more like a person.

  Back at Peacock Hall, the children walked around outside. Daffodils bloomed around the empty goldfish pond, but fall leaves still lay heaped under the pecan trees.

  “I thought a gardener lived here,” Jessie commented.

  Henry nodded. “Tate, Althea called him.”

  “He doesn’t seem to do very much.”

  Suddenly a loud, eerie sound shattered the stillness.

  Jessie got goose bumps. “What was that?”

  Henry laughed. “I think it’s the master of Peacock Hall. He wants to make sure we notice him.”

  Sure enough, the male peacock strutted around the side of a small brick outbuilding. His folded train swept behind him.

  “Oh, boy!” Benny cried. “He’s big!”

  The children waited, hoping the bird would display his tail. The peahen appeared, too, in her less flashy plumage.

  Giving his call again, the peacock lifted his train in a dazzling show of color. He turned in a slow circle.

  “He’s so beautiful!” breathed Violet. “I wish I had my camera.”

  “Maybe Cousin Althea has some paper and pens. You can draw him,” Jessie suggested.

  Benny admired the sapphire “eyes” in the tail feathers. “I’d sure like to have one of those feathers,” he said.

  “Birds lose their feathers all the time,” Henry told him. “You and Watch are always finding blue jay feathers in the grass back home.”

  “I bet Watch would bark if he saw this big bird,” Benny said. He missed his dog, but knew Mrs. McGregor was taking good care of him.

  “Henry’s right,” said Jessie. “Let’s see if we can find any feathers.”

  They walked around the small brick building. In the back was an enclosure made of chicken wire.

  Inside the pen were pans of water and cracked corn, and a wooden shelter like a doghouse. But no sapphire-tipped plumes.

  “We’ll be here all week,” Violet assured her little brother. “Maybe we’ll find a peacock feather later.”

  But Benny was staring at something beyond the peacock pen. “Look!” he cried.

  Violet turned her head, wondering what was so exciting about a clothesline. T-shirts and jeans hung from a line that was stretched from the small building to a locust tree.

  Next to him, Jessie gasped. “Benny, you have sharp eyes!”

  “It’s just a bunch of laundry —” Henry began. Then he saw it, too. The pair of jeans on the end had a hole in one knee.

  “Those jeans!” Violet declared. “I bet the scrap of denim we found this morning matches the hole in those jeans. Henry, do you have it?”

  Henry tugged the scrap from his pocket. “Right here. All we have to do is —”

  Just then a man came around the corner. He had white hair that stood up in spikes and wore baggy jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. His face was scarlet with anger.

  “What do you kids think you’re doing?” the man growled.

  “Nothing, sir,” Henry said politely. “We were just walking around.”

  The man came up to him. Jessie noted he wasn’t much bigger than Henry. He also seemed a lot older than Grandfather. What was he so mad about?

  “We’re the Aldens,” she said, introducing the others. “We’re visiting Cousin Althea. You must be Mr. Tate.”

  The man raised a white eyebrow. “You’re with Mr. Alden? Mrs. Randolph said she’d asked him to come.”

  “That’s right,” Henry said. “Cousin Althea wrote to our grandfather for help.”

  “She’s a fine lady,” the old man remarked. “I hope your granddaddy can get her out of this fix she’s in.”

  “He’ll do his best,” Violet put in. “Are you the gardener, Mr. Tate?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I’m the gardener. I’ve worked here for fifty years. My daddy was the gardener before me. And my name is just plain Tate.”

  “Is this your house?” Benny asked, glancing at the brick outbuilding. “We have a little house, too. Not the one we live in now. But we can play in our old house.”

  Tate looked confused.

  Jessie explained, “Benny means we once lived in a boxcar. That was before Grandfather found us. He brought our boxcar to his house and we use it for a sort of clubhouse.”

  Benny asked Tate again, “Do you live in this house?”

  “It’s the smokehouse,” Tate said, somewhat gruffly. “In the old days, meat was hung in this building to cure. But it’s no place for children to fool around. Go on back to the main house, you hear?”

  Shocked at the old man’s sudden unfriendliness, the Aldens turned and headed toward Peacock Hall.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Violet said.

  “I guess he’s funny about his place,” Henry said with a shrug. “It must be his house. Nobody else lives here but Althea, and she wouldn’t hang her laundry way out here.”

  “She wouldn’t wear jeans and T-shirts, either,” Jessie added. “But Tate does. Those must be his clothes hanging on that line. And I still think the piece of material we found came from that pair of jeans.”

  Violet stopped. “Do you think Tate climbed the ladder up to our window last night? Why would he do that?”

  Jessie didn’t have an answer.

  There were many mysteries at Peacock Hall. Would they solve any of them by Friday?

  CHAPTER 4

  A Whispered Warning

  “You heard Grandfather last night,” Henry said as they cleared the breakfast dishes the next morning. “Cousin Althea needs nine thousand dollars by Friday. That’s three days from now.”

  The night before, Grandfather brought back groceries along with his grim news. The tax bill was indeed correct. But he would try to get Althea an extension, more time to pay. “Nine thousand dollars!” Benny exclaimed. “That’s more than I have in my piggy bank!”

  “It’s more than we all have in our piggy banks,” Jessie said.

  “I’ll call Mrs. McGregor,” Benny said, putting the jelly up on the cupboard. “She’ll send me my bank and I’ll give it to Althea.”

  Henry stacked plates to rinse before washing. “That’s nice of you, Benny, but Althea probably wouldn’t take your pennies and nickels.”

  “How will Grandfather help her raise that much money by Friday?” Violet wanted to know. “It seems impossible.”

  Henry filled the sink with hot, soapy water. “There’s only one way: We have to find the treasure.”

  “But we don’t even know what it is!” Jessie said, shaking the tablecloth out the back door.

  “Then we’ll just have to look harder,” said Benny.

  “We’ll find it,” Violet said confidently. “We can’t let Cousin Althea down.”

  As soon as the dishes were done, the kids dashed upstairs. Yesterday they’d cleaned the small rooms on the third floor. Today they’d work on the second floor.

  Jessie yanked back the dusty curtains in the first room. She looked out the window and into the yard below. Althea was talking to Tate. Both had slumped shoulders.

  She wondered if Cousin Althea and the gardener were afraid. If Peacock Hall was sold, where would they go? Grandfather was in town again, looking for a way to save Peacock Hall.

  The children worked hard for two hours. They also peered behind paintings for hidden wall safes, searched dressers and desks for secret compartments, and tapped inside closets for false backs.

  But their hunt turned up only dust bunnies. No treasure.

  They were all grimy and tired. They needed a break.

  “Let’s walk to Heather and David’s roadside stand,”
Jessie suggested. “I’d like parsley for tonight’s dinner to go with those new potatoes Grandfather bought.”

  “Yeah!” Benny agreed. As much as he liked the big old house, he was glad to go outside.

  After washing up, the children set off across the dandelion-spotted field that was a shortcut to the highway.

  Benny skipped in the bright green grass. The warm sunshine made him giddy. He plucked a handful of dandelions and tossed them in the air.

  Henry smiled at his brother. The soft spring air made him feel like running, too.

  “Race you!” he challenged, and the kids were off.

  By the time they reached the wooden stand at the side of the highway, they were out of breath and giggling.

  Heather Olsen was arranging ivy in a basket. She smiled when she heard the Aldens.

  “Looks like you guys have spring fever!” she said.

  Benny felt his forehead. “Not me. I’m not sick.”

  “It’s an expression,” Henry told him. “It means that people feel good in the springtime.”

  “What can I do for you today?” Heather asked them.

  “I’d like some parsley,” said Jessie. “Grandfather bought some new potatoes. I’m going to make parsley potatoes for dinner tonight.”

  Heather slipped the leafy plant into a plastic bag. “That sounds delicious. I bet you’re a good cook.”

  “We all like to cook,” Jessie said.

  “But I’d rather eat!” Benny put in.

  Violet sniffed. Something fragrant sweetened the air around the stand.

  “What is that nice smell?” she asked Heather.

  “Lavender. It’s often made into sachets, perfumes, and lotions.” Heather pointed to a bouquet of dried purple flowers pinned to her sweater. “I wear it all the time.”

  Violet wondered where David was today. Before she could ask, a shiny black car pulled off the highway.

  A woman with stiff blond hair and pink lipstick stepped out of the car.

  “Hello,” the woman said, stalking across the gravel in spiky high heels. “I’m Marlene Sanders.”

  Jessie perked up. The name sounded familiar. Where had she heard it before?