The Beast of Blackslope

by Tracy Barrett

  “Sure.” Xander took the bundle of mail. He glanced at the top letter and caught his breath.

  “Zee,” he said, “do you know what Mrs. Roberts’s first name is?”

  Xena’s eyebrows drew together as she thought back. “I heard her husband call her Lina a couple of times. Why?”

  “Lina must be a nickname.” Xander held out the letter.

  Xena read, “‘Mrs. Adeline Roberts.’” Then she looked at Xander. “So?”

  “Adeline is the name of the lady Mr. Tuttle told us about, the one who disappeared.”

  “So?”

  “Mrs. Roberts has the same name, or almost, and she says cooking is in her blood. Adeline was a cook. And I just remembered! That picture in Mr. Tuttle’s book—remember? It seemed familiar to me and now I know why. It looks just like the picture on the mantelpiece inside. Don’t you see? The cook who disappeared must be Mrs. Roberts’s great-great-grandmother! I think it’s time we talked to Mr. and Mrs. Roberts.”

  “I’ll let you do the talking,” Xena said. “Flash those dimples!” He gave her a phony smile and they both cracked up, their earlier irritation forgotten in the triumph of their discovery.

  They found Mrs. Roberts reading the paper in the kitchen. Xander gave her the letters from the clerk. “Mrs. Roberts,” he said carefully, “we were wondering about your first name.”

  She looked up at him in surprise. “What were you wondering?”

  “If you were named for that other Adeline,” Xander went on. “The one who disappeared.”

  Mrs. Roberts went white again. “How could you possibly know about that?”

  “Our great-great-great-grandfather, Sherlock Holmes, came here a century ago to investigate the Beast of Blackslope,” Xena explained.

  To their surprise Mrs. Roberts burst into tears. Xena got her a glass of water and a dish towel to wipe her eyes with, and Xander stood by awkwardly, wondering what they had said to upset her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked when her sobs slowed down.

  “I am so sorry, children,” she said. “It’s just that …” She swallowed and dabbed at her eyes with the towel.

  Mr. Roberts’s voice came from the doorway. “Here, what’s this?” He hurried in. “What is it, my dear?”

  She smiled shakily up at him. “These children are the descendants of Sherlock Holmes. But even he couldn’t help.”

  “Help with what?” Xena felt like she was going to burst if nobody said anything directly. “Do you mean to say that the Beast is back?”

  Mrs. Roberts nodded. “Either that, or it never went away.”

  “Is that why you’ve been—” Xena hesitated. She didn’t want to be rude. “Is that why you haven’t been sleeping well?”

  “Lina—” Mr. Roberts said, but she kept going, her voice high and rapid.

  “There’s a curse on my family, you see. Every fourth or fifth generation in my family, someone disappears in the most awful way. Two hundred years ago an ancestor of mine, a doctor, set off at night from the Chimington estate to tend a man in the village who was sick with fever. People reported hearing mysterious howls that night, and the doctor was never seen again. A hundred years later the Beast carried off my great-great-grandmother, and now it’s back. And that means it’s come for me. Or even worse—for Trevor.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Mrs. Roberts looked so sad and scared. Xena reached out and touched the woman’s arm. “Don’t worry,” she said. Xena wished she knew how to reassure her. How dare anything—or anyone—frighten a nice old lady like that?

  “Is that why you wouldn’t let Trevor go out after dark?” Xander asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Roberts said. “The mayor has suggested that everyone stay inside after sundown. It’s not really a curfew—the town doesn’t have the power to do something so drastic without involving more authorities, and nobody in Blackslope wants word of the Beast to get out. They don’t want to risk chasing tourists away if it turns out to be nothing.” Then he gave them a curious look. “How do you know about Sherlock Holmes coming here to investigate the Beast?”

  “We inherited one of his journals,” Xander explained. “He has some notes about the investigation in it.”

  “Do you think Sherlock Holmes found out anything that would help?” Mrs. Roberts asked. She seemed more composed now.

  “He had to give up,” Xena admitted, and the old lady’s face fell. Xena and Xander looked at each other, more determined than ever to solve the case.

  After breakfast Xena and Xander were sitting at the cleared table with pens, paper, and Sherlock Holmes’s casebook.

  “Let’s get organized about this,” Xena said. She pulled the paper and pen toward her. Under POSSIBILITIES, she drew a line to make two columns. The first was headed The Beast of Blackslope has returned or it never went away, and the second Someone is trying to make people believe the Beast of Blackslope has returned.

  “I think the second is more likely,” Xena said. “Someone is going around leaving footprints and bits of wool and stuff, howling, maybe even wearing a costume.”

  Xander cheered up at the thought. “Who would do that? And why?”

  “Let’s do why first. Maybe that will help us figure out the who.”

  “Motive,” she wrote.

  To scare people

  To scare one specific person—Mrs. Roberts?

  “What about money?” Xander suggested. “Money is a pretty common motive. Maybe someone is making money from pretending there really is a Beast.”

  Xena shrugged. “I don’t see how. Mrs. Roberts says everyone in town is afraid the Beast will scare tourists away. That means no money.” Still, she added another motive: Money.

  “Okay, that’s all the whys I can think of.” Xena nibbled the end of the pen. “Now let’s work on the who.”

  Neither could come up with anyone who would want to scare someone. “Well then, who could make money from this?” Xena frowned in concentration.

  “Mr. Tuttle, maybe?” Xander suggested. “He’d sell more books if people got interested in the Beast.”

  “I don’t see how he could do all that from a wheelchair—make footprints and break fences and all.”

  “Unless he’s just pretending to need a wheelchair. Or maybe he has an accomplice working with him!”

  “True,” Xena admitted. “Still, it seems like an awfully complicated way to sell some books, and it doesn’t seem to be working. What now?”

  “How about those pictures we took?”

  “Good idea,” Xena said, and she disappeared. She came back five minutes later with their mother’s camera. “Let’s compare the picture of the footprint with Sherlock’s drawing.” She turned on the camera and clicked through the photographs of Xander clowning around on top of a rock, of a clump of wildflowers, of herself with her mouth full of potato salad. That was the last one. No footprints.

  She went to the doorway. “Mom!” she called out into the hall. “What happened to the pictures I took yesterday?”

  Her mother called back, “What pictures? Oh, you mean those ones in the woods? Honey, I didn’t think you wanted to save those. They looked like they didn’t come out. Did you really want to save pictures of dirt and a fence?”

  “Yes! Oh, Mom, you don’t mean you erased them, do you?”

  “Sorry. I did it this morning so I’d have more room for pictures today.”

  Xena groaned. “Xander, you do remember what the pictures looked like, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t see them. Remember? I would have puked.”

  Xena tried to remember. It had been getting dark and the car was moving, but even so she thought she had seen clearly enough that the footprint in the woods had looked like the one in Sherlock’s journal. But she could no longer be sure. Why did the one with the photographic memory also have to be the one who got carsick?

  She swallowed her disappointment. “Well, what else does it say in the notebook?”

  Xander studied the page. “Just stu
ff we read already. The kind of thing the Beast was doing back then sounds a lot like what’s going on now. Sherlock wrote that he was asked here by Lord Chimington, and he stayed at Blackslope Manor as a guest when he came with Dr. Watson to investigate.” He looked up. “Not a whole lot to go on, is it?”

  “No, it’s not. But there’s something there anyway.” Xena tapped her lips with the end of the pen, thinking. “That footprint in the woods was right near Blackslope Manor, wasn’t it? Remember, Mom said something about the manor right before we stopped. And it sounded like the howls came from there, and Adeline the cook and her mean husband lived behind the stable there. We need to go to the manor and poke around a bit and see what we can find.”

  Xander thought back to the day before. “What about that pre-auction viewing thing Mom was talking about? Isn’t the auction at Blackslope Manor?” The thought of not having to go back into the woods was a huge relief.

  They went downstairs and found their parents in the sitting room.

  “Mom,” Xander said, sitting on the arm of her big overstuffed chair, “we did what Dad wanted yesterday, so let’s do what you want today. Is that pre-auction viewing going on?”

  “Well, how sweet.” Their mother gave him a hug. “But are you sure you want to do that?”

  “We’re sure,” Xena said.

  “Fine with me,” their father said. “Let’s go!”

  Xander ran back upstairs for the cold-case notebook. He gave it to Xena, who stuffed it in her backpack. They jumped into the car.

  Xena looked out the window as they drove toward the manor. Hills rolled away on both sides of the road, some dotted with sheep. The hedges were thick but not threatening, and the stand of trees where they had found the footprint looked a lot smaller than it had seemed last night. She thought of asking their parents to stop so that they could take another picture, but she didn’t want to face the questions this would bring. Maybe on the way back she’d think of an excuse to check it out again.

  “It’s hard to picture a creature hiding out in those woods,” she said to Xander. “They’re so pretty, not the kind of place where a wild animal would live.”

  “I guess,” Xander said. The problem was, he could picture a wild creature hiding just about anywhere. What if they found it—and it went after him or Xena? How could they possibly fight a monster like that?

  “Wow!” Xena said as the magnificent old house came into view. The car turned into a drive that went down a gentle slope and then rose again to the house in a huge circular sweep. Lofty columns ran along the front of the graceful stone building, and many of the large windows were open in the warm morning, showing white curtains that flapped in the breeze.

  “Can’t you just imagine carriages coming up to this door for a ball?” she asked.

  “Or people getting ready to go out on a fox hunt?” Xander said.

  “Yuck,” said Xena. “Poor little fox.”

  “Poor little fox, nothing,” their father said from the front seat. “They carry disease and they kill people’s pets. They even have them in London now.”

  A dozen or so cars were already parked by the house. Hand-lettered signs reading PREVIEW THIS WAY pointed left.

  “You kids coming?” their mother asked as she got out.

  Xander started after her but Xena pulled him back and asked hastily, “Can we go exploring?” Their mother looked doubtful, so Xena added, “It’s such a nice day.” Xander started to object but changed his mind. This was a regular old country house with sheep and probably with dogs. No wild animals were likely to be around.

  “All right,” their father said. “Just keep out of mischief, okay?”

  They followed the flagstone walkway to the right, around to the back of the house. “Can you imagine living in a place like this?” Xena asked.

  Xander shook his head, craning his neck to gaze at the upper stories. “You could spend weeks exploring. They must have lots of servants.”

  Xena stumbled on a broken flagstone and said, “Well, I hope they take better care of the house than the garden. Look at this place.”

  They stopped and surveyed the lawn. It was a mess, with uncut grass and overgrown shrubbery. Wildflowers and weeds competed for space with plants that looked as if they had been carefully chosen long ago. A rusty rake and a broken watering can leaned against a bush.

  “You can tell that used to be a maze.” Xander pointed at ragged hedges that still preserved some of the angles and openings that must have once made a puzzle. “And look at this building.” He climbed the steps of a forlorn gazebo whose roof gaped with holes and whose floor had moss creeping over it. He sat down on a bench and hastily stood up again when it creaked as though it was about to break.

  “What is it, a hexagon?” Xena put her hands on her hips and looked up at the ceiling. She counted the sides. “No, an octagon. Must have been pretty once.” She looked at the faded paint that could have been yellow years ago.

  “Did you say octagon?” Xander asked. Xena nodded and started down the steps. “Wait a sec, Zee. Let me see the notebook.”

  Xena stopped and pulled the straps of her backpack off her shoulders, and then rummaged around in it. She handed the book to her brother.

  Xander leafed through it. “Aha!” He was triumphant. “Check it out!”

  “Whoa!” she said. “A drawing of an octagon! I didn’t even notice that before. Do you think it’s this building?”

  “Could be.” Xander was starting to get excited. “Look! It is! This big rectangle with lots of lines in it is this house. It looks just like those architectural drawings that contractor guy made when Mom and Dad were talking about putting an addition on the kitchen back home, remember?”

  “Yes!” Xena pointed at the drawing. “There’s the front porch with the columns, and the big circular drive. Xander! Remember that Sherlock said he stayed at the manor when he came to investigate the Beast? It looks like he didn’t just sleep here—he must have thought there was something important about the house and the barn and things. That’s why he drew the map of the manor!”

  Xander read, “‘Invited to Blackslope Manor, home of Lord Chimington. V. good dinner, hard bed. Interesting.’” He looked up. “Interesting what? I wonder.”

  “Not the dinner, I guess. Or the hard bed. Does he say any more?”

  Xander studied the page. “Nothing more about what was interesting, if that’s what you mean. But what’s this weird-looking shape supposed to be?”

  “Let me look.” Xena turned the page so that it was facing her and studied it. “Those aren’t regular rooms. See? No doors. It’s like a bunch of closets lined up in a row.” She thought another minute. “Don’t you think it looks like a stable? Those lines could mark where the stalls for the horses are! And Adeline and her husband lived in an addition built onto the stable, remember? I wonder if it’s still here.”

  Xander rose to his feet and put the book back in Xena’s pack. “Let’s figure this out. This property is huge and we don’t have time to look all over. Mom and Dad won’t take too long at the pre-auction thing, so we have to work fast. If there’s a stable, where would it be?”

  Xena tried to imagine what the manor would have looked like in the old days, before there were cars. “In Sherlock’s time, they would have driven their carriages up to the front door, right?”

  “Right! And that drive is long but not too wide, so the coachmen probably didn’t turn the carriages around but just kept going straight and put them away after the people got out.”

  “So the stable must be on the other side of the house from where Dad parked,” Xena said. “Let’s go!”

  She took off running, and even wearing the pack, she outdistanced Xander easily. “Slow down!” he called, but she disappeared. When he caught up to her she was standing triumphantly at the door to a large wooden building that was painted brown. “Why do you keep doing that?” He was exasperated. “You shouldn’t ditch me like that.”

  But she ignored him. �
�Look at this. I bet this is the place!” The door was enormous, easily large enough to lead in two horses side by side. It had to be the stable. Was the place where the cook and her husband lived still there? Where should they start looking?

  “Did you try the door?” Xander asked.

  She shook her head. “I was waiting for you.”

  “Thanks.” He reached out his hand.

  Just then a deep voice behind them said, “What are you kids doing here?”

  CHAPTER 12

  Xena and Xander whipped around, their hearts thumping.

  A man, his bushy gray eyebrows drawn together in a frown, stood a few feet away. He was leaning on a cane and glaring at them. “I said, what are you kids doing here?” the man repeated. “This part of the grounds isn’t open to the public.”

  “Oh—w-we didn’t know,” Xena stammered. “Our parents were looking at, you know, the antiques, and we—”

  “We were getting bored, sir.” Xander managed to appear younger than his ten years as he looked up through his long dark eyelashes. “We didn’t mean to get in the way, but our parents have been looking at the antiques for hours and we wanted to take a walk.”

  “Well,” the old man said, still gruffly but with less menace, “since you’re here with your parents, let’s go find them and see what they have to say.”

  Just then Xena and Xander heard a sneeze. A boy about Xena’s age came around the corner of the stable. “It’s all right, Mr. Whittaker,” he told the old man.

  “Do you know these children, Master Ian?”

  “Of course. They’re Xena and Xander Holmes. Americans. They’re here for the holidays, just like me.”

  How did this boy know all that? News must really get around in the small town.

  “As long as they’re friends of yours,” the old man grumbled, and without saying good-bye he turned and went off, leaning heavily on his cane. He stopped at a bend in the walkway and called back, “Just don’t let them in that stable!”