The Harriet Bean 3-Book Omnibus (8 page)

That evening, after the painter had gone home, we continued with the party. Aunt Harmonica, who was a very good cook, prepared a special meal, and we sat at the table with paper hats on, just as if it were Christmas.

“It’s been so very, very long,” said Aunt Veronica. “We must never allow ourselves to drift apart again.”

“We will visit you every week,” said Aunt Japonica.

“Without fail,” chimed in Aunt Thessalonika.

“Oh, the fun we’ll have!” added Aunt Majolica.

I said very little. They were so busy talking about the old days and what they had done as children that nobody had much time to listen to me. But that didn’t matter. What was important to me was that I had found my aunts and had made my grandparents’ wish come true.

And what amazing aunts they were! I could see that we were going to have extraordinary adventures together, and in fact that is just what happened. Perhaps I will be able to tell you about some of those adventures one day. And I will also tell you about the trick my father played on Aunt Majolica. I don’t have time to do that now. But I
can
tell you that it was very funny—very funny indeed…

Do you remember who I am? My name is Harriet Bean, and I was the person who had five lost aunts. Yes! It sounds ridiculous—perhaps even a bit careless—to have five lost aunts, but my father had never told me about them, and I had to find them all by myself. It was very hard, but I finally found every last one of them.

There was Aunt Veronica, who was a strong lady in a circus. There was Aunt Majolica, who was a very bossy teacher but really quite nice in spite of it. There was Aunt Harmonica, who was an opera singer who could also throw her voice into all kinds of
places. And last of all, hidden away in their detective agency, there were Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika. They were very curious aunts with extraordinary tricks up their sleeves, and they could also read what was going on in other people’s minds. What a marvelous collection of aunts!

When I said good-bye to my aunts after a wonderful reunion party, I knew that I was going to have adventures with them. It was a funny feeling—the kind of feeling that you have in your bones that something is going to happen. I had it the day they left, and the day afterward, and the day after that too. Then it happened, and because I had been expecting it, I was not in the least surprised.

The telephone rang early that morning. I think it was a Wednesday, because that was the day my father’s favorite magazine arrived. He read
Inventors’ Weekly
, which was all about the latest inventions, with tips for inventors, which is what he was. He wouldn’t speak to me for hours after
Inventors’ Weekly
arrived; he’d just sit in his chair, his nose buried in the magazine,
giving the occasional snort. Sometimes I heard him say something like, “That would never work!” or “The screw’s in the wrong place there!” or, very rarely he might say, “What a splendid idea! I wish I had thought of that first!”

I knew that my father would never answer the telephone while he was reading his magazine, so I did so myself. And at the other end of the line was Aunt Japonica.

“Harriet?” she said in her high, squeaky voice.

“Aunt Japonica,” I said. “I’m glad it’s you.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Japonica, in a businesslike way. “You may be. And
I
certainly am glad it’s
you
. We need your help.”

My heart gave a leap of excitement. So this is what the thing was—the thing that I had known was going to happen.

Aunt Japonica did not talk for long. She asked me to come to the detective agency (where they also lived), if possible, within the hour. I put my hand over the receiver and shouted out to my father, to ask him whether I could go.

“Hmm!” he said from behind
Inventors’ Weekly
. “Another no-tears onion peeler! I invented that years ago!”

“Can I go see Aunt Japonica?” I shouted.

“Japanese?” he snorted. “Did you say Japanese? Yes, of course. Very good at inventing things, the Japanese.”

“I think he said yes,” I explained to Aunt Japonica.

“Good,” she said. “We shall see you very soon. And do hurry. There is something very, very odd going on.”

Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika lived in a large studio at the top of a long flight of stairs. On the door there was a sign that simply said
PRIVATE DETECTIVES
, and underneath that was a bell. I pressed the button and heard, a long way off, a bell ringing.

Several minutes passed. Then the door opened slowly, and I saw an old man peering out at me. He seemed very ancient and very bent, and he had a walking stick in each hand.

“I’m so sorry,” he said in a very old, cracked voice. “No, there’s nobody in today. They’ve all gone away. All of them.”

My mouth dropped open.

“B-b-but,” I stuttered, “they knew I was coming. I spoke to them …”

The old man peered at me and shook his head. Then, with a sudden cackle of laughter, he jumped up in the air and clicked his heels together. For a moment or so I was too surprised to think, but then I realized what was happening.

“Aunt Thessalonika!” I exclaimed. “I had no idea it was you.”

“Of course you didn’t, my dear,” said Aunt Thessalonika, taking my arm in hers and leading me down the corridor. “Sometimes I even fool myself. Do you know, the other day I was heavily disguised and I saw myself in the mirror. And I said to myself, ‘Who are you, and what are you doing here?’ Of course, the person in the mirror said exactly the same thing, and so I replied, ‘But I’m Thessalonika and I
live
here!’ And it’s only
when I heard the person in the mirror saying that she was Thessalonika that I realized what was happening.”

As she spoke, Aunt Thessalonika removed layer after layer of disguise. Off came the gray beard. Off came the lines and the wrinkles, wiped quite clean, and there, underneath it all, was my aunt.

Aunt Japonica now appeared. At least
she
looked the same as she had the last time I saw her.

“Thank you for coming, Harriet,” she said immediately. “And I see that you have been writing in your diary.”

Once again, my mouth fell wide open with astonishment. She was right—I
had
been writing in my diary when she telephoned to invite me over. But how did she know?

Aunt Japonica gave a little laugh. “If you look at your right hand,” she said, “you will see that there is an ink stain on the forefinger. Now that shows you have been writing. And what are you likely to have been writing? It’s school vacation, is it not, so you will not be
doing school work. You could be writing letters, but then when I called, you answered the telephone immediately. People who are writing letters never like to leave what they’re saying until they’ve finished the sentence. Why is that? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? People feel it’s rude to cut off halfway through a sentence when you’re writing to somebody. Don’t ask me why, but that’s the way it is. Diaries are different. It’s not rude to stop talking to yourself halfway through, is it?”

“No,” I said, still astonished at how my detective aunts managed to work things out. That’s what made them good detectives, I imagined.

We sat down for tea, and while Aunt Thessalonika cut the cake, Aunt Japonica explained why they wanted to see me.

“We could tell that you were interested in detective work,” she explained.

“We could tell that from the moment we met you,” chipped in Aunt Thessalonika.

“Yes,” said Aunt Japonica, and then, from the side of her mouth, “please concentrate on
what you’re doing, Thessalonika. Cutting cake is not an easy task.”

Aunt Japonica turned back to me and fixed me with her gaze. “You see,” she went on. “A case has cropped up that we thought you might help us solve. After all, you are not as old as Aunt Thessalonika and I are. And you are somewhat smaller too. You can go where we can’t go. You can, I imagine, run faster than we can, and your eyes might be a little better when it comes to detecting very fast movements.”

“In other words,” interrupted Aunt Thessalonika, “you might be able to catch these wicked cheats!”

Wicked cheats?

I sat back and listened as Aunt Japonica talked. Every so often, Aunt Thessalonika interrupted her to correct some detail or add a scrap of information. But for the most part, it was Aunt Japonica’s story.

“We first heard about it only two weeks ago,” she said. “We received a visit from a very famous trainer of racehorses. Now, do you know anything about horse racing?”

“No, she doesn’t,” interjected Aunt Thessalonika, fixing me with a piercing look. She was right, of course.

“Well, anyway,” went on Aunt Japonica. “Racehorses have to be trained, and the people who do it are racehorse trainers. They take the horses for long gallops in the fields and teach them to go faster and faster. Then, when the horse goes into a race, it knows to gallop as fast as it possibly can. And that’s all there is to it.”

“Oh,” I said. It did not sound very interesting to me, but I suppose that the horses enjoyed it.

Aunt Japonica took another sip of tea. Then she went on to explain that the trainer, Mr. Fetlock, had not won a race for over three months. All of his horses, which were normally very fast, had become very slow. One of them had even sat down in the middle of a race. Another had thrown its rider off even before the race had begun. Mr. Fetlock had no idea what the trouble was, but it was obvious that somebody was interfering with the horses in some way.

It sounded very simple to me. If somebody was interfering with the horses—perhaps by
putting thorns under their saddles or sleeping pills in their oats—surely the answer was to watch and see who was doing it. I could not see how I could possibly help. Then Aunt Japonica answered my question.

“I see that you’re wondering how you can help,” she said, glancing at Aunt Thessalonika as she spoke.

Aunt Japonica looked at me closely.

“Have you ever seen the people who ride racehorses?” she asked. “Have you ever seen a jockey?”

I scratched my head. I thought that I had seen pictures of them in the newspapers. They wore riding helmets and very colorful shirts.

My aunts did not give me time to reply.

“They’re smaller than most adults,” Aunt Japonica said, her eyes glinting with enthusiasm. “Small people are lighter, and this allows the horses to go faster. So jockeys are usually not tall and certainly never fat.”

“Yes,” agreed Aunt Thessalonika. “They’re really all … well, just about your size!”

Immediately, I knew why my aunts wanted me to help them on this case. But what exactly would I be asked to do, and would it be dangerous? Would I have to ride a horse? Worse still, would I have to enter a horse race?

That very afternoon I traveled with my two aunts out to Mr. Fetlock’s racing stables. Mr. Fetlock himself met us at the gate and walked us up the long driveway to the group of buildings where the horses lived. He was a tall man, wearing brown jodhpurs, a smart checked coat, and riding boots.

“It’s very good of you to come out here,” he said. “I lost another race yesterday. It was my very best horse, Black Lightning. Not only did he come in last, but the horses in front of him overtook him on their second time around the racetrack. I was so embarrassed, I went and sat in my stall so that nobody would see me.”