The Marshland Mystery

print it right on the front page!”
    “And I wouldn’t deny it!” Trixie laughed as they put the horses into their stalls and closed the stable doors. Then they said good night, and Trixie dashed home to her neglected duties.
     
    The story of the council’s decision to start the access road in the fall was headlined in the morning paper. Trixie, Mart, and Brian bent their heads over the paper to read it. “You were right, Brian,” Trixie said happily. “It says they’ll start sometime this fall. That’s lots more vague than early fall. Maybe the next story will say next spring!”
    “When will you learn that our ancient brother is always right?” Mart drawled, and then he ducked as Brian pretended to aim a fist at him.
    The playful scuffle that followed was broken up by a sudden gasp from Trixie. “Hey, look at this! A story by Trent on page two about the Martins!”
    Mart leaned over to read it with her, and Brian said, “Come on, let’s hear it! What’s his mean little slant?” Mart read aloud, “ ‘Recluse to leave historic property.’ ”
    “He didn’t waste much time spreading the news,” Brian said grimly. “Go on.”
    “Miss Rachel Martin, he says, has been notified that she has to move off the last piece of the once widespread Martin holdings.” Mart condensed it as he read. “He mentions the fire and weeps a few crocodile tears over the big house having been burned down forty years ago.”
    “Just gloating over poor Miss Rachel, I suppose, because she ran him away from her place for saying mean things about her ancestors!” Trixie said, anger reddening her cheeks.
    “He has certainly dug into the family history. Probably got it out of the old Sun-Courier files at the newspaper morgue,” Mart told them. “It seems that her great-granddad was a miserly old coot who owned a couple of trading ships that brought stuff from China.”
    “She has a gorgeous brass box her great-grandfather imported from there,” Trixie interrupted. “It has dragons battling all over it—perfectly ferocious dragons. One has green shiny eyes and five claws on each foot!”
    “Sounds ugh to me!” Brian teased. “Go on with the Martin family dirt, sonny boy.”
    “Well, it seems old Ezarach Martin had an only son, by the same name, who fell in love with one of the maids, named Melanie, and they ran off and got married. Old Ez disowned him for it.”
    “What happened to him?” Trixie asked.
    “Young Ez had one son and then was lost at sea, when one of his father’s schooners went down. He was just a common seaman, working for wages, and the scandal around town was that he wouldn’t have had even that job if his mother, Molly, hadn’t made the old man give it to him. Trent’s article says that Molly and the old man blamed each other because the boy was lost, but old Ez never softened enough to take young Ez’s boy and his mother, Melanie, in to live with him and Molly. He started living like a miser and making Molly live that way, too.”
    “Poor Molly! She must have been brokenhearted,” Trixie sighed.
    “Maybe,” Brian said. “All it says here is that after old Ez was gone, the little grandson and his mother came home to live. But nobody ever found any trace of the fortune Ez was supposed to have made from trading. If there was any, he certainly didn’t leave any clues to its whereabouts.”
    “I wonder how much of this is fact and how much is Trent’s fiction,” Brian said musingly.
    “Seems to me Miss Rachel could sue him if he made it up, especially calling her great-grandpa a miser,” Trixie said indignantly. “I certainly would.”
    Brian looked over Mart’s shoulder at the article. “I doubt if she could do anything about it. Trent covers himself very nicely by saying, it was rumored at the time’ and ‘The general opinion was.’ ”
    “Pretty slick,” Mart said with a disappointed sigh.
    “I wonder if Melanie or her little boy, Miss Rachel’s dad, ever found any of the fortune,” Trixie said, knitting her brows.
    “Trent says not. In fact, he seems to think it’s still there in the ruins. Hear ye!” Mart told her. “ ‘It would be a strange ending to the Martin mystery if the wrecking crews who pull down the ruins of those old mansion walls were showered with a fortune in gold and silver from some still-undiscovered hiding place!’ ” Mart tossed the paper on the table with a chuckle. “Some imagination! As if that fire wouldn’t have burned up any