Harriet Spies Again

by Louise Fitzhugh

  Surprisingly, Ole Golly had not called any of her old friends. But she had called her mother, Mrs. Golly, who still lived in Far Rockaway, several times.

  Harriet had devoted a page in her notebook to Mrs. Golly a long time ago after Ole Golly had taken her there for a brief visit.

  OLE GOLLY’S MOTHER LIVES IN A VERY SMALL AND VERY DIRTY HOUSE AND SHE SAYS “AIN’T” AND SHE THINKS BOOK-LEARNING IS A WASTE OF TIME. HOW DID SHE EVER HAVE OLE GOLLY?

  And now, to her horror, Harriet had discovered through eavesdropping that Ole Golly planned to go live with Mrs. Golly in that filthy, unhappy house in December, after Harriet’s parents returned.

  “Thank you,” she had heard Ole Golly say politely on the phone to Mrs. Welsch. “I do appreciate your generosity in offering. But I’ll be moving on after you return.

  “No,” she went on after a moment, “it’s not that I’m unhappy here. Harriet is a delight, as she always has been. And Cook and I have reached a rapprochement.”

  Harriet didn’t know that word. Sitting in her cramped spying-and-eavesdropping position behind the door, she had written it hastily in her notebook and resolved to look it up.

  Then, to her astonishment, she had heard Ole Golly say, “I’ll be moving to my mother’s in Far Rockaway.”

  Harriet was amazed. Ole Golly hated Far Rockaway! She didn’t even like her mother very much!

  She had watched as Ole Golly listened at the telephone. Mrs. Welsch was probably saying the same thing Harriet was thinking: “But you hate Far Rockaway! And you don’t even like your mother!”

  Then, at last, Ole Golly had whispered in an odd voice—actually whispered, all the way to Paris—“But you see, I realize I’m innocent.”

  Harriet had been stunned. It had never even occurred to her that Ole Golly might not be innocent! A very large oversight for a spy. It was time to give her complete focus to this case. Crouched in her moving-while-spying stance, she had gone over to her desk and resumed writing.

  OLE GOLLY IS SAD BECAUSE GEORGE WALDENSTEIN IS DEAD. OLE GOLLY DID NOT KILL GEORGE WALDENSTEIN. IT WAS OBVIOUSLY AN ACCIDENT BUT NO ONE BELIEVES HER. AND NOW SHE IS A FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE.

  SHE IS INNOCENT, Harriet added.

  • • •

  Later she discussed the notebook entry with Sport and told him about the conversation she had overheard.

  “Are you sure she said innocent?” Sport asked. “Maybe she said insane. You’d have to be insane to go live in Far Rockaway with Mrs. Golly.” Sport had met Ole Golly’s mother, too.

  “I have acute hearing,” Harriet reminded him. “It’s true, the door was partially closed, but I feel certain she said ‘I am innocent.’ ”

  Sport shrugged. “Well, okay, maybe she did. But what if she isn’t?”

  “Isn’t what?”

  “What if she isn’t innocent? What if she’s just practicing saying it, for the police?”

  “She is innocent. How can you even question that? We must help her,” Harriet said firmly.

  Now, walking home from school thinking about Ole Golly, approaching her house, Harriet saw the front door open.

  As she watched, Ole Golly, dressed as always in layers of tweed and carrying her purse, came out.

  Harriet drew back quickly so she was concealed by the half-dead arborvitae in a cement pot beside the wrought-iron railing on the Rhinelanders’ steps. Harriet was adroit at making herself invisible, and she did it now, blending in with the greenery—or the brownish-greenery, in this case.

  Stealthily she parted the brittle twigs of the sickly shrub and peered out. Ole Golly had turned and was walking purposefully down Eighty-sixth Street, away from the Rhinelanders’ house, toward the corner. Harriet decided she would wait until it was safe and then follow.

  Quickly she looked at her watch, turned the page in her notebook, and wrote:

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26TH. 3:55 P.M. CATHERINE GOLLY LEAVES HOUSE, CARRYING PURSE AND

  Harriet took her binoculars from her jacket pocket and focused on Ole Golly and what she was carrying in her left hand. She added:

  SMALL PAPER BAG.

  Harriet watched Ole Golly cross Eighty-sixth Street and prepared herself to follow once she disappeared around the corner. But to her amazement, Ole Golly began walking toward her, back the way she had come, but on the opposite side of the street. Of course! She had done what she had always taught Harriet to do: to cross at the corner. And now (Harriet ducked back behind the bush) she was walking in the opposite direction from the way she had started; and now—

  Harriet blinked. Ole Golly was going up the Feigenbaums’ front steps! She was ringing the bell! Speaking into the intercom! And then entering through the Feigenbaums’ front door.

  Now that Ole Golly had entered the house and couldn’t see her, Harriet dashed down the street and up her own front steps and let herself in. She stood behind the draperies in the living room and peered through the window. From here she had an excellent view of the Feigenbaums’. She had been watching their house, looking fruitlessly for Rosarita, for ages, so she knew it by heart. Nothing ever changed. The curtains and window shades hung in the same positions day after day.

  Harriet sighed. Surveillance was so boring. And it was time—past time, in fact—for the cake and milk Cook gave her every afternoon. She wondered if she dared to dash down to the kitchen for her snack.

  Then she glanced at the telephone in the front hall and had an idea. She had memorized the number Rosarita had given her but had never tried to call. Now she dialed it carefully, let it ring once, and hung up. She waited.

  Five minutes later the telephone rang. Harriet picked up the receiver and went into the living room. “Hello?” she said.

  “H’spy?” Rosarita’s voice was low.

  “Yes. I haven’t called till now because I was busy with school starting.” It seemed rather strange to be talking to someone who was in the same house Ole Golly had mysteriously entered. She wondered if Ole Golly might be sitting right there watching while Rosarita talked on the telephone. “Do you have company?” Harriet asked.

  “No. I am alone. You wish to meet? We can set up a time and place.”

  Harriet looked at her watch. “Can you come over? Our cook always serves milk and cake about now.”

  She could hear the withering disdain in Rosarita’s voice. “You’ve mistaken me for someone who likes social events,” she said. “You go ahead and have your little snack. I will meet you when you’re finished. Five P.M. in the alley, behind the trash cans.

  “I can see you, by the way,” Rosarita added. “You’re in your living room, holding a beige telephone receiver to your right ear. Your glasses are crooked.”

  “I’ve been watching your house with binoculars, and I can’t see you!” Harriet stretched the phone cord and ran to the window. But the Feigenbaums’ windows were all still dark and empty.

  “I’m fiendishly clever,” Rosarita replied.

  “Are you on the roof?”

  “I’m looking now at the watch on your left wrist. The second hand is passing the eight. Now the nine.”

  “Are you behind a bush?”

  “I’ll see you at five,” Rosarita said.

  Harriet sighed. “Yes, all right, five,” she said.

  “G’bye, H’spy.”

  • • •

  “Harriet! Is that you up there?” Cook was calling from the kitchen.

  “No, it’s Scarlett O’Hara!” Harriet called back. “I’m up here designing a ball gown.”

  “Very funny, ha ha ha. Your milk is getting warm sitting here.”

  That did it. Harriet loathed warm milk. She glanced once more at the Feigenbaums’ house, where nothing had changed. She replaced the binoculars in her pocket, returned the telephone to the hall table, and went down to the kitchen. At least she could use the time for an interrogation, she decided. Carefully she opened her notebook beside the plate of chocolate cake.

  THURSDAY, 4:12 P.M. INTERROGATION OF COOK:

&n
bsp; Q: DO YOU KNOW WHERE OLE GOLLY WENT A LITTLE WHILE AGO?

  A: NONE OF YOUR BEESWAX.

  Harriet put her pencil down and frowned at Cook. “It is my beeswax,” she said. “She’s supposed to be taking care of me, after all. But she’s left the house, unexcused.”

  Cook was having cake as well. She licked some frosting from her lips. “You’re twelve years old, Harriet,” she said.

  “Not quite.”

  “Well, pretty soon you will be. That’s half grown. You don’t need taking care of every minute.”

  “True. But I’m worried about Ole Golly. Also, this is an official interrogation, so you have to answer.”

  “What do you mean, official?”

  “Look.” Harriet slid the notebook across the table so Cook could see the title INTERROGATION OF COOK, followed by a spastic colon.

  Cook frowned. “Is this more of that spy stuff, Harriet?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Yes. Completely official.”

  “If I answer one question, will you let me get back to my work?”

  “One question is all I have for you,” Harriet promised.

  “Oh, all right. Ask me again, then.”

  Harriet picked up her pen and began the interrogation a second time.

  Q: DO YOU KNOW WHERE MISS CATHERINE GOLLY IS CURRENTLY LOCATED AND WHY?

  A: YEAH, SHE’S ACROSS THE STREET FOR A DOCTOR’S APPOINTMENT.

  “Cooky! Thank you!” Harriet closed her notebook and gulped the rest of her milk. “Of course! I should have figured that out for myself!”

  She ate the last forkful of cake, wiped her mouth, and headed back upstairs, leaving Cook shaking her head. This time Harriet went past the living room and continued up two more flights to her own bedroom. She took the phone into her room with her, sat down on her bed, and dialed Simon Rocque.

  “Sport? Harriet here. Good news!”

  Sport sighed. “No good news here,” he told her. “School still pretty much sucks.”

  He had been telling her that every day since school had started. Harriet was concerned.

  “Bugs and thullies still?” Harriet asked sympathetically. Sometimes it made a bad situation seem less bad if she switched beginning consonants. She had discovered this phenomenon when she was eight, and sick, and had heard her mother speaking on the phone to the pediatrician. “Domiting and viarrhea,” her mother had said by mistake. It sounded so funny that Harriet had forgotten briefly to feel sick.

  “Yeah, bugs and thullies,” Sport said, and sighed again.

  “Did you try what I suggested, taking chocolate-chip cookies to school as a bribe?”

  “Yeah. It worked pretty well. I gave them out and everybody liked them okay. I doubled the walnuts.”

  “So?”

  “Well, I can’t do it every day. I have homework, and I have to clean the house—”

  “Sport, your father got married. Doesn’t she clean the house?”

  Sport sighed. “Kate’s not very good at it,” he said. “She misses corners when she vacuums. I have to redo almost everything.”

  “I wonder why your dad married her.” Harriet herself could not cook very well, but she considered that a moot point as she wasn’t certain she wanted to get married.

  “She has many fine qualities,” Sport said defensively. “And Harriet, that reminds me of something—”

  “Wait. I have to tell you this. It’s my good news! Ole Golly has taken action!”

  “She’s gone to the police? She turned herself in?” Sport sounded astonished.

  “No, no, no. She’ll never do that. She knows they’d beat a confession out of her even though she’s innocent.”

  “What has she done, then?”

  “She’s going to a psychiatrist! To Morris Feigenbaum! She’s seeking therapy!”

  “Cool. She’ll confess to him, I bet.”

  “Of course. But it will be privileged. He can never testify against her. But she’ll be able to unburden herself. No more whimpering and muttering in her room. I’m so pleased for her, Sport. It’s good to unburden oneself, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah.”

  Harriet waited, but he was silent.

  “Sport? You seem distracted.”

  “I am.”

  “Why? You said you wanted to tell me something. What was it? Come on, Sport. Unburden yourself. And do it fast. I have to go someplace.”

  Harriet waited, but again there was a long silence on the other end of the line. She listened carefully.

  “Sport,” she said suddenly, “you’re blushing, aren’t you?”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You know I’m psychic. I can hear blushing.” Harriet reached for her notebook. “Unburden yourself.”

  Sport sighed. “Remember the hairs?” he asked, still blushing.

  “Of course.”

  “There are more,” Sport said.

  “Of course there are. They don’t just stop coming.”

  “And something else,” Sport mumbled.

  Harriet opened her notebook and held her pencil poised. “Yes?” she said. “Continue.”

  “There’s a girl in my school,” Sport said with a groan. “She wears green shoes. And I think I’m in love.”

  “Oh my lord,” Harriet said. “You’re in for it now, Simon Rocque.”

  • • •

  Five P.M. It was important to be precisely on time, Harriet felt. She rounded the corner and walked down the alley behind the Feigenbaums’ house to the place where two large trash cans were placed behind a waist-high wooden barrier.

  No one was there. She took out her notebook to make some notes about the meeting.

  5 P.M. CAT IS STROLLING THROUGH YARD. I AWAIT ROSARITA SAUVAGE.

  Harriet looked around. She said, “Hello, cat.” The cat gave her a sidelong glance and continued its mysterious slow-motion errand through some weeds.

  “Hi, H’spy!” Rosarita’s voice was very loud, and Harriet jumped.

  “Where are you?” she asked nervously.

  “Close by, H’spy!”

  Now Harriet identified the source of the voice. Angrily she pulled a tilted lid from one of the trash cans. Rosarita stood up.

  “Here,” Rosarita said. “I made two. One’s for you.” She handed Harriet a long periscope created from cardboard tubes held together with shiny gray duct tape.

  It was hard to stay angry with someone who was giving her a present. And the periscope was actually a pretty good gift. Harriet had made one in first grade, but this was a longer, more complex, more sophisticated periscope, and Harriet knew she would find it useful.

  “Thank you. Is this how you were seeing me in my living room?”

  “Yes. I was under your front steps using the Feigenbaums’ cordless phone. Tip this can, would you? I had a heck of a time getting in. And now I can’t get out.”

  Harriet helped Rosarita out of the trash can.

  “I have to go back in a minute before they know I’m gone,” Rosarita said, brushing dirt from her clothes. “I’m under surveillance all the time, but they get sloppy.”

  “Who’s they? The Feigenbaums?”

  Rosarita nodded.

  “I know somebody who goes to Dr. Feigenbaum,” Harriet told her. “Somebody who is very troubled.”

  “So what? Lots of people do. I hear them whining and complaining in his office. Also they cry. I could even use my periscope and spy on them, but it would be too boring.”

  “Does he help them?” Harriet couldn’t picture Ole Golly whining, but she did hope that the psychiatrist was going to be able to help her through her sadness.

  “I guess.” Rosarita shrugged.

  Harriet changed the subject. “Did you start at your new school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How is it?”

  “Same as my last school. Everybody hates me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m weird. And I’m flunking everything. I expect they’ll kick me out.”

&nbs
p; Rosarita put her periscope to her eye and watched something in a nearby tree. “Squirrel,” she said, and lowered the periscope. “Probably has rabies.

  “I have to go in,” she announced suddenly. “My jailers will freak if they realize I’m gone.”

  “Well, ah, thank you for the periscope. I really like it,” Harriet said.

  “It’s junk,” Rosarita said with a sneer.

  “No, the interesting thing about it,” Harriet explained, “is that you made it from junk, and it turned out to be something really, really useful. And also, it’s always nice to get an unexpected gift. I’m probably going to make a note of it on my time line. I have this—”

  But Rosarita had turned away. With a grand gesture she dropped her own periscope into the trash can. “Junk,” she said loudly. Then she walked toward the back door of the Feigenbaums’ house.

  “Bye-bye, H’spy,” she shouted. “Do call again.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Harriet felt that Ole Golly should see Dr. Feigenbaum more often. She knew from observation that most of his patients had appointments once a week. But Ole Golly didn’t. Almost a whole month passed after that first visit before she went to see him again.

  Probably, Harriet realized, she couldn’t afford more visits. Psychiatrists were very expensive. They didn’t do much, either, for all that money, in Harriet’s opinion. Last year when she had visited Dr. Wagner, Harriet had seen exactly what psychiatrists do: write in notebooks and play Monopoly. She loved the first but hated the second. And Dr. Wagner had acted a little batty the whole time. It had been Harriet’s first—and last—appointment with a psychiatrist

  Since then she had spied on Morris Feigenbaum’s office. She had actually stood briefly on tiptoe on the front stoop, balanced herself by holding onto the railing, and peered through the corner of the first-floor window. Then, when a passing taxi driver honked at her because he had nothing else to do and was a generally intrusive person, she had lost her balance and fallen into a small patch of pink impatiens surrounded by a fence. She had mashed some flowers, ripped her jeans, and skinned her knee, and had also had a very difficult and embarrassing time trying to climb over the fence and get out. It had not been one of her successful spying episodes.