The 100-Year-Old Secret (10 page)

Xander ignored her. “The problem is, this doesn't really help us figure out where the painting is. Even if the model was one of the Batheson boys, so what? We don't have any more clues that will help us find the painting in time for the art opening tomorrow.”

“That doesn't mean we should give up,” Xena said. “We're on to something, Xander! When we go to the opening we're bound to see some of his descendants. I'm sure we'll find more clues there.”

“What do you wear to an art opening anyway?” Xander asked.

“Black,” Xena said promptly. “Whenever you
see people on TV at something like this, they're always wearing black.”

Xena had tried on everything in her closet before finally settling on a pair of black jeans and a matching turtleneck. Now, as they waited to get into the Victoria and Albert Museum, their parents were chatting with a woman who had tattoos on both arms and a man with so many piercings in his ears, nose, lips, and eyebrows that he looked like a porcupine. I guess it doesn't matter what you wear to these things, Xena thought.

Xena and Xander checked their coats, then wandered around admiring the paintings and trying not to stare at the blank space on the wall representing the missing
Girl in a Purple Hat
.

Xander nudged Xena and pointed at something in the brochure. “It says that the artist made the frames himself out of wood and then they were covered in gold leaf—really thin sheets of gold. That's so cool!”

Xena wasn't interested in frames, gold-covered or not. She was scrutinizing the people. The artist they'd met on Wednesday was there with her niece, Sarah, who was wearing her “girl in a purple hat” costume. Sarah waved at Xena, who smiled and waved back. Then Xena spotted
Mrs. Emerson, the lady they had met in Taynesbury. She was over in a corner, talking to a group of men. Xena was curious. Maybe they were talking about the missing painting. It was a long shot but worth a listen.

She weaved along the edge of the crowd toward Mrs. Emerson's group. The plan was to get close enough to eavesdrop without getting caught. She could usually blend in without people noticing her. Her mother called this talent “Xena's cloak of invisibility.” Xander called it nosiness. Whatever you called it, it would come in handy now.

But they weren't saying anything particularly interesting, just talking about how bad the traffic had been, and wasn't the weather awful, and what were they planning to do for Christmas. Xena looked at the men out of the corner of her eye. They shared a resemblance to one another and to Mrs. Emerson, especially their bright green eyes. They had to be Batheson descendants.

“What are you doing?” Well, that was the end of her invisibility. Nobody could help noticing Xander, especially when he didn't even try to keep his voice down.

“Nothing anymore,” she said. “Now that you blew it.”

“Why, it's those children,” Mrs. Emerson said.

“The ones who were looking for great-great-grandfather's house. They're doing a school report on him. You children must be real art lovers!”

“We are,” Xena said. “Especially when it comes to Nigel Batheson. I'm Xena Holmes, and this is my brother, Xander.”

“Are you the kids who called me a few days back?” asked one of the green-eyed men.

Xena nodded. “Yes,” she said. “We were disappointed not to be able to see the house he lived in.”

“So much was destroyed during the war,” said a man who was clutching a drink. “Such a tragedy. A lovely old farmhouse, reduced to rubble.”

“No, the
real
tragedy is that Nigel Batheson's collection is incomplete.” Mrs. Emerson pointed at the blank space reserved for the memory of
Girl in a Purple Hat
. “It's so sad.”

“True, true,” one of the men agreed.

“It's a shame the world will never get to study his greatest work,” the tall one said. “Even the identity of the model is a mystery.”

“We think we know who the model was!” Xander piped in. “Or at least we think we know who it
wasn't
.”

Xena nudged Xander with her elbow. It was only a theory, after all.

“Whatever can you mean?” asked Mrs. Emerson. “How could you kids know who the girl in the picture was? Even we don't know that, and we're family!”

“We think,” Xena said, “that it wasn't a girl at all. We think it was a boy, one of Nigel Batheson's sons, dressed up to look like a girl!”

Xena waited for their reaction. Would they laugh at them? Have them thrown out of the museum?

For a moment there was silence. Then the man with the mustache said, “What a fascinating theory! Which son do you think it was?” he asked Xander.

“We're not sure,” Xander answered. “We don't know much about Nigel's children except that they went to boarding school and one had smallpox and another liked toads.”

“Maybe you could help,” Xena said. “Do you know which one might have been about eight years old when Nigel painted the portrait?”

The tall Batheson turned to Mrs. Emerson. “Here, Emily, you always have a little of everything in that bag of yours. Could you find a bit of paper and something to write with? Let's see what we can remember.”

Mrs. Emerson dug in her purse and produced
an envelope and the stub of a pencil. One of the Batheson men cleared a space on a small table that was littered with paper napkins and empty glasses, and the adults all put their heads together. Xena and Xander stood on tiptoe peering over their shoulders.

The little snippets of conversation they heard just tantalized them more. “Abner was born when, Jack?” and “But I thought their cousin Frank was older than Cedric.” Just when they thought they would burst with curiosity, the adults moved aside a little and let them see what they had been working on.

It was a family tree. Birth years of most of the relatives had been penciled in. There were no daughters, no female cousins, not even an aunt who would have been a young girl when the painting was done.

Xander studied the paper carefully. “So if
Girl in a Purple Hat
was painted in 1902 and Abner was born in 1885, he'd be too old to be the model.”

“Cedric was born in 1890,” Xena remarked. “That would make him twelve. That's a little too old, even if he looked young for his age. And, anyway, he had smallpox scars on his face by then.”

“But Robert,” Xander went on. “He was born in 1894.”

“That would have made him eight when the painting was made!” Xena exclaimed. “That's about the age of the model in the painting. It could be him!”

“That is so clever of you, children,” the man with the mustache said. “And just think of all the art historians who haven't been able to figure this out.”

Blushing but pleased, Xena pocketed the envelope with the Batheson family tree on it. Then they said good-bye to the Bathesons and left the room.

“So where do we go from here?” Xena asked. “How does knowing who modeled for
Girl in a Purple Hat
help us figure out who stole it?”

Xander didn't have a response for that. He took his coat from the hook where he had hung it on his way in. When he put it on, the picture of him in his daisy costume fell out of a pocket.

“Hey!” Xena cried. “My picture!”

Xander quickly swiped it off the floor. “It's
my
picture now,” he said. “I told you. You're not getting it back. I don't trust you not to show it again.”

“So you're going to carry it with you everywhere?” Xena asked. “Or will you tear it up?”

“Maybe,” Xander replied, though he knew that he wouldn't. There was something—well, something weird about tearing up his own picture. But as soon as he got back to their apartment, he'd hide it deep under his mattress.

And that's exactly what he did. Then, with his arm shoved halfway underneath his mattress, he realized something about the mystery.

Xena didn't think the identity of Batheson's model in
Girl in a Purple Hat
mattered. But it did matter . . . it was the key to solving the whole case!

I
solved the case! I solved the case!” Xander raced into his sister's bedroom down the hall.

Xena was sitting on her bed, the casebook open on her lap. “Slow down,” she said. “What are you talking about, Xander?”

Xander took a big gulp of air. “I figured out who took the painting,” he said. “It was Robert. It had to be.”

“How did you get to that?” Xena asked.

“Don't you see?” Xander asked eagerly. “Even though that picture of me is totally embarrassing, I couldn't bear to tear it up. So I decided to hide it instead. I bet that's what happened to the painting!”

Understanding was dawning in Xena's eyes. “So maybe Robert did the same thing!”

“He was the youngest and his big brothers probably teased him,” Xander went on. “I'll bet his brothers made fun of him about it for years!

I mean, what brother wouldn't?” Then his face fell as he thought of something. “But then the house got bombed. I bet the painting was destroyed.”

“Maybe not,” Xena said slowly. “Robert wasn't home for most of the year, right? He went away to school.”

“Right,” Xander said. “Maybe he took it to school with him.”

“Who says he didn't take it back home too?” Xena asked.

“He might have,” Xander admitted. “But maybe nobody else knew he took the painting to school, and he figured no one would ever find it, so he just left it there. What if after all these years it's still there?”

“We have to find out where Robert went to boarding school.” Xena leaped up and began to pace around the room. “What about the letters in the library?” She stopped. “Oh,
darn
!”

“What?” Xander asked.

“The library's closed over the weekend,” she said. “We can't wait until Monday! We're almost there!”

“It doesn't matter,” Xander said. “The name of Robert's school isn't mentioned in the letters.”

“How do you know that?” Xena asked.

“Uh, hello?” Xander tapped a finger on his head. “Photographic memory, remember?”

Xena picked up the casebook and flipped through it. “The answer has got to be in here somewhere.” She pored through Sherlock Holmes's notes for about the millionth time.

“Taynesbury.” With that note, Sherlock had led them to where Nigel and his family had lived. “Abner, Cedric, Robert.” That was the list of the artist's sons that the great detective had made. Then the note, “Model?” Sherlock had wondered who the model was too. And finally there was that doodle of a dragon.

“I just know I've seen that someplace,” Xander said, pointing to the drawing. “But where?”

“Huh!” said Xena. “Why don't you use that famous photographic memory of yours?”

“All that tells me is that I've seen it,” he pointed out. “It doesn't tell me
where
. And I bet it's important to the case. Sherlock doesn't seem like the type to write all of these important notes and then mess up the page with a doodle.”

Xena stared at it. “It's not a very good picture either,” she said. “Where are its legs, and how could fire come from it if the thing is twisted into a circle and has its own tail shoved in its mouth?”

Xander thought about it some more. “Maybe it's
not
a dragon,” he said.

“I know!” Xena said. She ran out to the living room and came back holding a magnifying glass. Enlarged, the drawing wasn't much clearer. They could see, though, that what had looked like one dragon with its tail in its mouth was actually two separate creatures.

Xena sat back and said, “Sherlock Holmes was a great detective, but he was not a great artist.”

But why does the picture feel so familiar? Xander wondered. He closed his eyes, willing the answer to come to him. And then, a vision of two scaly blue and yellow creatures surged into his brain. Two ferocious sea serpents twisted in battle.

And there was something else. A shield. Then a green background. It was a jersey. On a kid who was playing soccer.

Knuckers.

“Xander?” Xena put a hand on his shoulder. “What is it? What's the matter?”

Xander turned to his sister, and his dark blue eyes met her brown eyes. “I think I know what Sherlock Holmes was trying to draw,” he said. “It wasn't a dragon at all—it was two knuckers!”

Xena traced the sketch with a finger. “You're right! It's all falling into place. Sherlock must have known that the mascot for Robert Batheson's school was a knucker. That's why he drew this.”

Xander nodded. “And I bet he would have checked out the school next if he hadn't been called away on another case.”

“The Giraffes played the Knuckers in a scrimmage,” Xena said. “That means the school can't be too far away. We have to go there!”

The next day Xena and Xander headed out with bus fare, directions, and a plan. They would go to Worthington, Robert Batheson's old boarding school and the home of the Knuckers, to search for the painting. Xander scribbled a note to their mother, saying that they were taking a bus to the school that their school was playing in soccer.