The Mystery on Cobbett's Island

by Kathryn Kenny

  “I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear the electricity is back on,” Celia said as she served the juice. “The power company crews must have worked all night to restore the service.”

  “Well, it looks as though our work is cut out for us. The yard is a mess,” said Jim, “but we told El we’d take care of things, so we’d better get at the job right after breakfast.”

  “Oh, it won’t take too long if we all pitch in and help, and then we can start working on the let—” Trixie caught herself as she saw Jim shaking his head at her. Celia was just returning from the kitchen with a platter of sausages and a dish of hot corn muffins, and much as the Bob-Whites liked her, they had decided long ago to keep the affairs of the club to themselves whenever they could.

  “You were saying we’d have to start writing letters home, so our parents wouldn’t be worried?” Brian asked.

  “Yes,” said Trixie, glad to be helped out of her predicament by her brother’s quick thinking.

  “Miss Trask telephoned Mrs. Belden early this morning,” said Celia, “just as soon as the lines were repaired. She didn’t want to wake you. She told Mrs. Belden we were all safe, and asked her to tell Mrs. Lynch, so you don’t have to worry. Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler had already left on their trip, but she sent them a telegram.”

  By the time they had finished breakfast, the rain had stopped. Bright patches of blue began to show through the scudding clouds. It was still quite cold so they put on sweat shirts and the red B.W.G. jackets Honey had made for each of them and went outside to where the tree had fallen.

  “Jeepers, I don’t see how we can ever move that without a saw,” Trixie said ruefully, looking at the large uprooted locust tree.

  “Maybe there’s one in the barn. We’ve found just about everything else we needed in there. I’ll go see,” volunteered Honey helpfully.

  “Good idea,” Brian said. “I’ll come with you.” He grabbed Honey’s hand and they headed for the barn. They were soon back, however, with the only thing they could find—a very small pruning saw.

  “This thing is worse than nothing at all,” moaned Honey, dangling the little saw in front of her. “I do wish we could do something. Tom won’t be able to get a car out of here until that tree’s moved.”

  At that moment, Trixie interrupted. “Do you hear something over there on the other side of the wall?” she asked, listening intently.

  From the sound of branches being pushed aside, it appeared that whoever was there was making his way toward The Moorings. They listened closely, and presently over the top of the wall popped a boy’s head. “Hi, strangers. Are you castaways, or are you by any chance from The Moorings?” he asked as he leaped over the wall and landed in their midst.

  “We’re actually from The Moorings, but at the moment we feel like orphans of the storm,” replied Trixie as the others joined in greeting the newcomer. He was as tall as Jim, with broad shoulders and a strong build. His hair was so blond it looked almost white, and his deep-set eyes were dark blue. He, too, was dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt.

  “Gosh, that’s great. Not that you’re orphans, you understand, but that you’re at The Moorings,” he laughed. “I’m Peter Kimball from next door. I was hoping we’d have some life around here this summer. The people who rented your house last year were so old, all they did all day was sit on the porch and rock.”

  “Well, there was certainly plenty of excitement around here yesterday,” commented Trixie. “El, the caretaker, broke his leg just after we got here. We’re guests of the Wheelers. Jeepers, I’m getting the cart before the horse as usual,” she said. “I’d better introduce everyone. Peter, this is Honey Wheeler, and Diana Lynch. This is Honey’s brother, Jim. I’m Trixie Belden, and these two suspicious-looking characters are my brothers, Mart and Brian.”

  “I’ll get all those names straight before the summer’s over. You will be here for the whole summer, won’t you?” he asked hopefully.

  “I’m afraid not,” answered Honey, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Just ten days. That is, the Bob-Whites will be here for ten days. After that, Jim and I may be coming down occasionally for weekends with our parents.”

  She had no sooner said this than she realized she had broken one of the rules of the club in mentioning it to a stranger, but as she looked around, she was relieved to see the others didn’t seem to be too concerned about her slip. As they later discovered when talking it over, they had all taken an immediate liking to their new neighbor.

  “The Bob-Whites, did you say? That sounds like a club. Am I right?” the boy asked with a smile.

  “Well, you are, as a matter of fact,” said Trixie slowly. “Of course, we’re supposed to be a secret, or at least a semi-secret club, so if you tell anyone about us, tell them not to tell.”

  Peter and the others laughed heartily, and all agreed that with all the members wearing identical jackets, it was rather difficult to keep the club really secret.

  “But what does the ‘G’ stand for?” asked Peter as he examined the letters B.W.G. that Honey, who sewed beautifully, had cross-stitched on the back of each jacket.

  “That’s for Glen. We all live near each other on Glen Road in Sleepyside. It was Jim’s idea to call ourselves the Bob-Whites of the Glen,” explained Trixie.

  “I was in a club called the Owls before we moved down here. Not that we were wise or anything. We just liked to stay up late at night, and spent most of our time thinking up reasons for not going to bed. It was crazy, but we did have a lot of fun. I miss those old birds,” Peter said, smiling reminiscently.

  “What do you do around here for excitement,” asked Diana with just a suggestion of a flutter of her long lashes, “besides battling the elements?”

  “I can answer that in one word, sailing. I’d rather sail than eat,” Peter answered. “As soon as the Yacht Club opens, I’m long gone in my Lightning. Do any of you sail?” he asked.

  “Well, Trixie, Honey, and Jim here are pretty good hands with a rowboat,” said Brian, thinking back to the time when his sister had been caught in the flood in Iowa, “but I can’t say any of us are actually sailors.”

  “I guess we’ve been too busy riding and fixing up our clubhouse and things to think about boats,” added Honey, “but it must be loads of fun.”

  “Did you say you sailed a Lightning?” broke in Mart. “Last Fourth of July there was a big regatta at Nyack, right across the Hudson from us. I read about it in the paper. I could see all the boats from the hill back of our house.”

  “I know. That was another fleet. But we’ll have a regatta, too, later in the summer. Gee, you should be here. It’s great!” exclaimed Peter, his eyes straying toward the nearby bay. “I was going sailing this morning, but I’ve got to get the mess from the storm cleaned up first. I was just starting when I heard you and decided to investigate.”

  “We were going to do some cleaning up here, too, but this tree has us licked,” said Brian, giving the fallen trunk a hard kick.

  “I should think so if that’s all you have to work with,” said Peter, looking at the pruning saw which Honey was still holding. “What you need is a power saw. I’ll get ours,” and he was off over the wall like a deer.

  “Gosh, what a great guy!” said Jim.

  “And did you notice what gorgeous eyes he has?” sighed Diana.

  “I wouldn’t say there was anything so special about his eyes,” said Mart. “You squaws always flip for someone just because he has broad shoulders or gorgeous eyes or something. Don’t you ever think about brains or character or anything?”

  “When it comes to brains and character, we always have you, dear brother,” Trixie flung back at him. “So allow us our little pleasures.” And then becoming serious again, with Peter out of earshot, she continued, “Say, you don’t suppose, since he lives on the island, he might be able to help us with the letter, do you?”

  “Oh, we weren’t going to tell anyone about that,” cautioned Mart. “For gosh sakes, Trix, don’t always
be so impulsive.”

  “I know, Mart,” said Jim, jumping to Trixie’s defense, “but he certainly looks like a dependable character if I ever saw one.”

  Stung by her brother’s criticism, Trixie sat down on the tree trunk, cupping her chin in her hands. After a short pause, she said, “I suppose Mart’s right. I know you can’t always trust first impressions. Remember what we thought of Dan when we first met him? We were sure he was a crook because he wore a black jacket and acted sort of anti-social. So it’s okay with me to wait until we know Peter better.”

  “Good girl,” said Mart, giving her a pat on the shoulder.

  “All those in favor of waiting signify by the usual sign,” said Jim, rapping on the tree with a stone for a gavel, as everyone agreed.

  Peter was soon back, and after he had handed the saw over the wall to Jim, he himself jumped over. “Now, this is more like it,” he said as he got a firm foothold, adjusted the choke, and pulled the starter cord.

  The saw made short work of the tree. Under Peter’s direction, the boys took turns using it, but manfully insisted that it was too heavy for the girls to manipulate. They had to content themselves with piling the big pieces of wood near the wall to be split later on, and with taking the smaller ones to the rear of the house where the fireplace logs were stored.

  “Honestly,” said Trixie, throwing down an armful of wood with unnecessary vigor, “boys think they know everything!”

  “Well, it doesn’t hurt to let them think they do sometimes,” replied Diana with a knowing smile.

  Chapter 5

  The Letter

  It was well past the usual lunchtime when the lawn was finally cleared, but Honey had asked the cook to make a lot of sandwiches so they could eat whenever they got hungry. She invited Peter to stay for lunch, so he telephoned his mother that he wouldn’t be home until later.

  As they were eating, he said, “How about all of you coming over to my house? It’s sort of interesting because it’s the oldest house on the island.”

  “I can’t think of anything that would be more fun!” exclaimed Honey. “I love to explore old houses!”

  “Watch out for Trix and Honey, Peter. They’re always exploring something and coming up with a mystery,” Brian laughed. “Is your house haunted, by any chance?”

  “Oh, there’s some story about Aunt Cornelia coming back to try to find a lost fan,” Peter answered, “but I never saw any signs of the old girl. Let’s go back by way of the Shore Road. It will be easier than going through the underbrush,” he added.

  They walked a short way down the road, and then they turned into a beautiful wrought-iron gate. As they were going down the long driveway, through thick woods where pink and white dogwoods were in bloom, Peter told them a bit about the history of the Oldest House, as it was known on the island. It dated from 1713 when Peter’s ancestors first settled on the island, and it had been in his family ever since.

  “Unfortunately, Uncle Jasper, who was the last to live here before we came, was sort of an oddball.” Peter chuckled as he continued. “He wasn’t interested in the house or the gardens, and he had just enough repairs done to keep things halfway livable. He spent all his time on some research project. I think it was about the eating habits of some remote African tribe, but he never even got around to writing the book about it. So the place went to pieces while he lived here.”

  “What are those rocks over there?” asked Di, pointing to some crudely carved stones under a huge oak tree.

  “That’s a slave cemetery,” Peter answered. “We found it last year when the tree surgeons were working on that old oak, and later, Dad found a list of the slaves in an old ledger.”

  The driveway made a graceful curve a little farther on and revealed the house, set among stately trees and bushes of syringa and lilac. It was a two-story house with an enormous central chimney. The only thing about it that was not perfectly simple was the main doorway which was dark red and flanked on each side by narrow leaded windows. Overhead was an arched panel bearing a beautifully carved eagle.

  “Oh, how lovely!” cried Honey as they went through the gate of the picket fence. “I can hardly wait to see the inside.”

  Peter called his mother who came into the large central hall to meet them and be introduced.

  “I’m so glad to see all of you. It’s always a pleasure to have Peter’s friends here, and I want you to feel welcome at any time,” she said with a warm smile which was very much like her son’s. “And now if you will excuse me, I’ll let Peter give you what he calls the fifty-cent tour of the house. I’m trying to get ready for a garden party I’m giving later this week, but the storm has really put a quirk in my plans.” With a friendly wave, she was gone.

  “A garden party! What a perfect place for one,” said Trixie, “but the storm surely came at the wrong time.”

  “I’ll say it did!” said Peter. “We’ve been working for days to clean up the gardens, and we’d hoped to get the old gazebo in shape before the party, but I’m afraid now we’ll have to let that go and just get this fallen stuff cleared up. I guess Mother will have to serve tea on the porch.”

  “Look, I have an idea,” said Trixie, her eyes shining. “Why can’t the Bob-Whites help you clear up? We haven’t a thing planned, and we’d love to repay you for all the help you gave us this morning.”

  “I’m all for it!” cried Jim. “How about it, Peter? When can we start?”

  The others joined in enthusiastically as they crowded around Peter with suggestions and offers of help.

  “Gosh, that’s great of you, and you don’t have to repay me for a thing. But this party is to raise money for a new town library, so on behalf of the Library Building Fund Committee, I gratefully accept your offer,” he said, making a theatrically low bow. “You know, if word gets around that more of the gardens have been opened up and the gazebo restored, more people will come to see them.”

  “More people, ergo, more money,” said Mart gleefully. “Right?”

  “I don’t know anything about ‘ergo,’ ” said Trixie, “but ‘money’ I understand. When do we start?”

  “We can start as soon as I show you the rest of the house,” Peter said, leading them into the sitting-room. He pressed one of the little rosettes on the mantle, and to everyone’s surprise, one of the panels above the fire-place slid slowly back revealing a hiding place behind.

  “There wasn’t a thing in it except some old copies of Youth’s Companion,” said Peter. “What corny stories!”

  Beyond was the dining-room which was papered with some scenes from the days when whaling had been an important occupation. The kitchen was in an ell at the rear of the house and one whole side of it was filled with a wide fireplace and brick ovens. A refrigerator and modern stove had been built in so cleverly that the early American atmosphere of the room had not been disturbed.

  “What a wonderful place for parties!” exclaimed Jim. “I can smell the popcorn right now.”

  “As a matter of fact we do usually end up here Saturday nights,” Peter remarked.

  After looking into the library with its big mahogany desk, comfortable leather chairs, and shelf upon shelf of books, Peter took them upstairs to see a curious four-poster bed covered with a tester and with a trundle bed underneath. Each post was elaborately carved, and the bed was so high that to get into it, one had to use a step stool.

  They decided to postpone the visit to the attic until they had more time. Peter said his family had been so busy getting the downstairs redone that no one had had time to explore it fully.

  “Jeepers, it’s an awful temptation to start looking through all those fascinating old trunks and boxes,” said Trixie, poking her head through the narrow door that led to the attic, “but I know if we took one peek, we’d never be able to tear ourselves away.”

  “You’re so right,” Honey agreed. “Come on, everybody, let’s get out of this enchanted house.” And she led the way down the narrow back stairs and out the kitchen
door.

  After getting rakes from a nearby shed, they took the path which led to the entrance to the gardens behind the house. It was obvious that the gardens had been lovingly and skillfully planned years ago, and even time and neglect had not been able to erase their beauty. Fruit trees lined a path leading to a shallow pool where Mrs. Kimball had started water lilies. Behind the pool was an ancient statue of a woman holding an urn on her shoulder, and on either side were gracefully carved stone benches. Carefully laid-out flower beds were already bright with color, and beyond them could be seen the vegetable gardens. To the right of the pool and at some distance lay the still-unrestored section of the garden. Honeysuckle and wild grape vines had grown to the tops of the trees, making an almost impenetrable tangle, and practically concealing a little structure which Peter said was the gazebo.

  “You know, I was wondering what a gazebo was,” mused Diana. “I always get that word and carousel mixed up, for some reason or other.”

  “My mother tells me these fancy little houses were the last word in Queen Victoria’s day, for tea parties, or just to sit in and gaze about. That’s probably how they got their name,” Peter offered.

  They all went to work cleaning up the debris in the main garden so it, at least, would be presentable for the party, and it was dusk when they finally stopped work.

  “If I can get everyone up early tomorrow, we’ll be back and get this finished in jig time,” said Trixie.

  “Say, who was first up this morning, I’d like to know?” asked Jim with mock indignation. Turning to Peter, he continued, “I’ll take charge of this work crew and have them here at eight, sir.” He clicked his heels and gave a brisk salute.

  On the way back to The Moorings Trixie said, “Now how do you all feel about Peter and the letter?”

  “Oh, I think he’s about the greatest!” Diana answered with a faraway look in her big eyes.

  Mart gave her a withering glance but agreed with Trixie that Peter certainly seemed dependable.

  “How about you, Honey?” asked Trixie. “Do you think we should tell him about the letter?”