The 100-Year-Old Secret (9 page)

The woman nodded. “I make sure to change some details so that nobody can be fooled into thinking it's the real thing. See, my girl has
brown eyes instead of green. My niece, Sarah, is the model.”

“Oh,” Xena said. “But how come we've seen her all over this neighborhood wearing the costume?”

“I use a photograph of the picture to paint the background,” the artist went on. “But I need a live model for the expression. I still don't think I have it just right, but it's better. Sarah lives nearby, so she comes here after school most days. She puts on the costume before she comes to get used to wearing it.”

“The dress is scratchy,” Sarah chimed in, “and the wig is hot.”

“Yes, dear,” her aunt said patiently, as though she'd heard it all many times before. She turned back to Xena and Xander. “Anyway, I expect that's why you've seen her before.”

Refusing the offer of tea, Xena and Xander left the gallery. It had stopped raining, but that didn't help their mood any. They went by the tea room to pick up their things and then headed for home.

“Well, that was a dead end,” Xander grumbled, kicking at a soggy piece of newspaper on the sidewalk. It clung to his boot and he hopped on the other foot, pulling the paper off
and dropping it in a trash can. “We're never going to find the painting. We only have two days left!”

“Come on,” Xena said, trying to look on the bright side. “At least we know that the girl in the purple hat has nothing to do with the missing painting, right?”

Xander nodded. “Right.”

“So now that we've eliminated her we can stop being distracted and concentrate on getting other clues,” Xena went on. “There's that dragon drawing in the casebook. We still don't know if it's just a weird doodle or if it means something. Let's see if we can track it down.”

Back at home Xena picked up the casebook. As she flipped through the pages looking for the drawing of the dragon, something caught her eye. She turned the book sideways.

“Read Batheson's letters,” said the words near the edge of the page. She looked at Xander. “Okay,” she said. “It's almost like he's telling us what to do next.”

The following day they were dying to get to the library down the road from their school to look for Batheson's letters. But Xena had to research migratory habits of birds in northern Europe for
a report before she could work on the mystery. Their parents had been firm. “School first,” they said. “Everything else can wait.”

So it was up to Xander. While Xena looked for books in the ornithology section, he sat down at the computer nearest to her and typed “Batheson” into the “author” blank on the library page.

Only one name came up. It was “Nigel et al.”

“Xena?”

“What?”

“What does ‘et al.' mean?”

“It's short for ‘and others' in Latin.”

“Look at this,” he said, and she came and peered over his shoulder at the screen. She tapped a few keys and more information came up.

“The letters!” she breathed.

“They're on microfilm,” Xander said. “What's that?”

“I don't know,” Xena said. She was itching to get to work on the case, but she knew she couldn't yet. “Can you go find out? I'll finish up as soon as I can.”

Thirty minutes later Xander was absorbed in the Batheson letters, carefully lining up the small plastic films in the viewer the way the librarian had showed him. He jumped when he
heard Xena's voice behind him ask, “Find anything?”

“Not yet,” he admitted. “These people wrote letters. I mean, they
really
wrote letters. Like every day. Long ones. They've been copied onto these little sheets, and you have to view them here.” He pointed at the screen.

“Really?” Xena slid into the seat next to her brother. “Move over.”

Nigel Batheson hadn't written many letters, and they were mostly orders for paint and brushes and canvas, but his wife had. She had a sister in London, and her husband's reluctance to travel meant that they didn't see each other very often, so they wrote frequently.

“Lucky for us they didn't have e-mail yet!” Xander said.

Mrs. Batheson wrote a lot about her boys. Abner, the oldest, was quiet and studious. Cedric, the second, had a talent for music. And little Robert was always getting into mischief. “Robbie wouldn't sit still for his portrait,” the mother wrote. “Nigel was quite put out with him and threw down his brush. He said that he should not have a portrait after all. Robert then put a toad in Miss Bailey's bed”—Miss Bailey, it appeared, was the governess—“and he gave
away his shoes to a beggar boy he met in the lane. I have no doubt that the child needed shoes, but I would not be amazed if his father sold them for drink.”

One by one the boys went off to school. They wrote letters home every week, but didn't really say much. Xander did some quick mental math with the date on the letters. “Boarding school when they were seven?” Xander asked.

“I guess they do that in England,” she said. “Like Hogwarts.”

Another letter mentioned that the boys had been ill. Cedric had nearly died of smallpox. He had recovered, “but I fear that his dear little face will never be the same,” read the letter from his mother to her sister. “Yet I am thankful every day that the Lord has spared my sweet boy.”

Cedric returned to school and things went back to normal. The headmaster wrote letters home about the boys, generally complimentary. But Robert was still getting into trouble. He put a toad in the bed of the boy upstairs from him, the headmaster said.

“Robert had a thing for putting toads in beds,” Xander said. “I like him the best.”

“You would,” Xena answered.

A church bell outside rang. “Time to go,”
Xena said. “These letters aren't any help, and anyway, you've got soccer practice. I'll wait for you and if there's time when it's over we can come back to the case.”

“Great.” Xander's stomach twisted. He didn't know if he wanted to face his teammates. Back home everybody would have known that he hardly ever made mistakes and that next time he'd be a star again, but nobody here knew that about him. It stinks being a new kid, he thought as he trudged down the sidewalk.

Back at school he took his time changing. When he got outside, the boys were already playing on one field and the girls on the other. He spotted Xena near the bleachers with some girls in her class, watching the boys run a drill.

Xander bent down to retie the laces on his soccer shoes and heard Coach Craig's voice.

“Holmes!” he barked.

“Yes, sir?”

“Go over there.” He pointed to the far end of the field. “Watson is going to give you some pointers.”

Xander's heart sank. Please, not that know-it-all Andrew. Maybe there was another kid named Watson. No such luck. In the corner of the field stood an unmistakable figure, tall and
skinny, with bright red hair, both hands on his hips and one foot balanced on a soccer ball.

“Come on,” Andrew said. “I have a lot to teach you and not much time.”

Andrew, surprisingly, was a patient teacher, and after an hour or so Xander started feeling the stirrings of confidence as he managed to dodge around the older boy and score a goal in the imaginary net behind him.

“Good job!” Andrew said, raising his hand for a high five.

Xander slapped the older boy's hand and threw himself onto the grass, panting. “Who are we playing next week?” he asked.

“The Knuckers again,” Andrew said and laughed as Xander groaned loudly. “This is our chance to get even,” he added. “You'd better practice.”

Xander walked a few yards away to pick up the jersey he had tossed aside during practice. I wonder why he's being so nice? he thought.

“Ready to leave?” Xena asked, coming up alongside him. “How did it go with Andrew?” she said in a low voice.

“Not bad,” Xander said. “Maybe since he's helping me he doesn't feel like the Watsons are so unimportant.”

While Xander ran back into the locker room, Xena dug into her backpack to check for Tube fare. As she opened her wallet, a few papers fluttered away. The wind picked them up. “My pictures!” she cried.

Andrew, who was chatting with some guys nearby, heard her, turned around, and grabbed two pictures as they sailed past.

“Your dog?” he asked as he handed her a photo of Sukey, their basset hound.

Xena nodded. “Our cousins are taking care of her until we go home.”

“Who's this cute little girl?” he asked, holding up another.

“Little girl?” Xena was puzzled. She looked at the snapshot Andrew was holding.

“Oh, that's Xander!” she said. “He played a daisy in his preschool play.” In the photo, a chubby-faced Xander stood with a circle of white petals around his head. “I'm a daisy, I'm born in the spring, I burst from the ground when the birdies sing,” she recited in a high-pitched baby voice.

“Hey, cut it out!” Xander came back to the field just in time to hear his sister recite the last lines of his part. He made a grab at the picture, but Andrew held it above his head.

“You want this?” Andrew asked, lowering it a little. “Be a nice little flower girl and maybe I'll give it to you.”

Xander leaped at it again and this time he got it. And he'd been thinking that Andrew might not be so bad after all! But Xander's first impression had been right—the guy was a jerk. Xander started to tear up the picture.

“Hey, that's mine! I need it to remind me of when you were a nice little kid and not a pain.” Xena tried to snatch it from his fingers, but Xander pulled it away.

He looked at it again, then slipped the photo into his back pocket. It was humiliating. No
way
would it ever see the light of day again. Xander would make sure of that.

On the way home Xena said, “I'm sorry about showing Andrew the picture,” she said. “I didn't know you were still mad about that daisy costume.”

No answer. He just stared at the floor for the rest of the ride.

“At least he said you were a
cute
little girl,” she pointed out as they reached the front steps of their building. Still no answer. She unlocked the door and let herself in. She turned to close it again but Xander wouldn't move. “What are you doing?”

Xander stood frozen on the doorstep. His mouth hung open and his eyes looked dazed.

“Xander!” Xena was worried. “What is it?”

He blinked as though waking up.

“I have it, Xena!”

“You have what?”

“I think I know who the girl in the purple hat was!”

X
ena reached out and pulled him in, then slammed the door shut against the evening chill.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“We need to make a list,” Xander said. “See if you make the same deduction.”

Xena found a piece of paper and drew a line down the middle, dividing it neatly into two columns, the left-hand one headed
Clue
and the right-hand one
Deduction
. She passed it to Xander.

He wrote in the Clue column, “We thought Sarah looked like the girl in the missing painting but when she took off the hat and the wig she didn't.” Under Deduction he wrote, “The girl in the Batheson painting didn't necessarily look like the model who posed for it either.”

“So?” Xena asked.

Xander ignored her. “Clue: Little kids don't look especially boyish or girlish. Flower petals
around the head of even a very masculine little boy make him look like a little girl.”

“Very masculine?” Xena hooted.

“Shut up,” Xander said and kept writing. “Deduction: The model for the painting wasn't necessarily a girl.”

“Ah,” Xena said. She saw where he was going and it made sense.

“Clue.” Xander paused, then wrote, “All of Nigel Batheson's children were boys. He was very shy and didn't talk to people outside his family. He would never have had a stranger pose for him, even a kid.”

Xander put down his pen and leaned back. “When you have excluded the impossible,” he said, quoting Sherlock Holmes, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” He locked eyes with his sister.

“The girl in the purple hat,” Xena said slowly, “was a boy?”

Xander nodded. He wrote in the Deduction column “The model was either Abner, Cedric, or Robert Batheson!” He sat back.

Xena pulled out the newspaper clipping about the Batheson exhibit from her desk. She and her brother studied the copy of
Girl in a Purple Hat
. True, they couldn't tell for sure from just the
face. The green eyes could belong to either a boy or a girl, and so could the rosy cheeks and the pouting mouth. But the model appeared uncomfortable. Was the dress scratchy, like Sarah's? Or was it because the model was a boy who didn't want to wear a dress?

“I think the real clue,” Xena said slowly, “is in the expression. If most portraits from that time make children look”—she consulted the clipping again—“look overly sweet, why did Batheson make this one look as grumpy as you did when Dad told you that you couldn't quit the soccer team?”