The Hayloft. A 1950s Mystery

as if he were uncomfortable wearing it. Mrs. Drucquer had a run in one of her stockings.
    Kate Drucquer didn’t really fit in with the rest of the family, as Tom and Archie had already told me. She was pretty and slim, with short, red hair and green eyes. Under her light coat, she wore a blue dress with a white, Peter Pan collar, as my mother called it. She had almost no accent. I vaguely remembered seeing her at school. She would be a sophomore now, like Tom.
    I noticed that Ed and Kate called the older generation “Cousin.” Cousin Dorothy and Cousin Jeff, and my parents were Cousin Tom and Cousin Sarah. I thought about it and determined that they were cousins, not uncles and aunts. I suspected that they had been drilled by their parents.
    Once introductions were made, we trooped into the kitchen where appetizing odors permeated our nostrils, and from there into the dining room. Aunt Dorothy had cooked a turkey, as if it were Thanksgiving, and for dessert she had baked apple pie, featuring apples from the old apple orchard, cherry pie, with berries from the sour cherry tree, and rhubarb pie. I had picked the rhubarb, along with hubbard squash and tomatoes, from her garden that morning.
    I had also set up two card tables at the end of the dining room table, and by appropriating chairs from various parts of the house, we managed to seat all eleven people. Tom wangled a chair next to Kate.
    Halfway through dinner, in answer to questions from Tom and me about our ancestry, Mr. Drucquer started to speak in his strong British accent.
    “I did some investigation of our genealogy when we lived in England. I found out that the original spelling of Drucquer is D-R-U-K-K-E-R. The Drukkers lived in Holland. One of our common ancestors is reputed to have been a bareback rider in her grandfather’s circus.”
    “Was she also a bare front rider?” Tom asked, to disapproving looks from my parents and a stifled giggle from Kate.
    “She married a man named Drukker,” Mr. Drucquer continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Then she and her husband immigrated to England under mysterious circumstances, in 1831, and changed their name to D-R-U-C-Q-U-E-R, which is a made-up spelling. There are no more Drucquers living in England. We were the last of them.”
    “Maybe they were running from the law,” Archie said. “It would be fun to have some black sheep in the family.”
    My father scowled at Archie, but Mr. Drucquer smiled and said, “It’s not clear which side of the law they were on. Their names were John and Adelade. His real name was Joachim, but he changed it to John when he reached England. They had two sons shortly after they went to England. I am descended from one of the sons. You yanks are descended from the other son. And each of them had a son.”
    “Who were grandsons of John and Adelade,” I said, trying to keep the relationships straight.
    “Right. The grandson who stayed in England was my grandfather and he was named John, after his grandfather. And I am named John, after both of them. He died when I was young, but I remember him telling me stories about his grandparents.”
    “Please pass some more turkey,” Archie said. “This is exciting.”
    “Unfortunately, my grandfather didn’t tell me everything. Perhaps he thought the details were too sordid for a young person, or perhaps he just didn’t know. So I asked my father. He and his father had questionable communications skills with each other, but he said he had heard stories. First, I should tell you that, although according to census records, the original John had many jobs during his lifetime, while he was in Holland, he was a tutor. My father said that he tutored some children who were members of Dutch royalty.”
    “Like princesses?” Kate asked.
    “Very possibly. One story is that a member of the royal family took a liking to Adelade and that the couple had to flee in the middle of the night to get away from him.”
    Mr. Drucquer paused to take a bite and let us digest this information. Every eye was focused on him.
    “The other story is that when they left Holland, they took a valuable piece of jewelry belonging to the royal family. It was supposedly worth a king’s ransom, so to speak.”
    “A diamond necklace,” Kate said.
    Ed had mentioned a diamond necklace to Tom and Archie. “I can see why they changed the spelling of their name,” I said. “What happened to the necklace?”
    “It has never surfaced, as far as I