The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace

back on the track of Honey’s ancestors. She couldn’t wait to get on with the case.
    When the four friends had eaten the last crumbs of their delicious afternoon tea, they moved over to Miss Trask’s table, and Honey and Trixie filled her in on the Tweedies and Hartfield House.
    “The Tweedies said they’d be glad to recommend us,” Trixie said, “and that there’s sure to be a vacancy because they’re just opening up this week, and besides, Honey is probably related to them, because her great-great-aunt Priscilla who left her the necklace was a Hart, and when Mrs. Wheeler comes on Sunday, she’ll be so thrilled to find us living in her own ancestral mansion, probably, and—”
    “Whoa, there, Trixie!” Jim laughed. “You’re extrapolating quite a bit.”
    “He means,” Mart explained, “that you’re extending your knowledge of a known area into conjectural knowledge of an unknown area.”
    “He means,” Miss Trask said, “that you’re exaggerating again, Trixie.” The familiar twinkle in her nice blue eyes made the Bob-Whites feel that maybe she hadn’t changed all that much, after all. “By all means,” Miss Trask added, “let’s go see Hartfield House. It sounds lovely, and I don’t like being separated, the way we are in our present lodgings. That is, of course”—she turned to McDuff—“if you agree?”
    “Your word is my command, luv,” he said heartily, beaming at her.
    The word luv didn’t mean anything special in England, Trixie knew. Perfect strangers were always saying luv or duck or dear. What bothered Trixie was that when McDuff said it to Miss Trask, she blushed! One minute, Trixie thought, Miss Trask was her old self, and the next minute she was a whole different person. The Bob-Whites will have to have an emergency meeting and do something about this , she decided silently.
    Hartfield House was about a mile out of town on Welcombe Road.
    “Jeepers, imagine your very own relatives living this close to Shakespeare,” Trixie said to Honey. “They probably bumped into him in the grocery store, or wherever they shopped in those days!”
    “It all adds up,” Honey said thoughtfully. “If the Shakespeares lived so close to the Harts, it wouldn’t be that surprising for Shakespeare’s sister to marry a Hart. So that must mean that the tradition that we’re descended from Shakespeare is really true!”
    Unfortunately for that theory, Hartfield House didn’t look anywhere near as old as the half-timbered Elizabethan buildings the Bob-Whites had seen in Stratford-on-Avon. It was a beautiful mansion, however.
    “Well, the original Hart house could have burned down, and then they built another one,” Trixie guessed as McDuff guided the Maroon Saloon into the crescent driveway.
    The two-and-a-half-story pink-brick mansion was surrounded by bright-colored flower gardens. Emerald green ivy climbed the walls to a gabled roof that had dormer windows and more chimneys than they could see to count. The front entrance was protected by a grass-paned vestibule, which sparkled in the glow of the late afternoon sùnshine.
    The Bob-Whites held their breath as they waited inside the enclosure. Were they going to get to stay in this beautiful mansion? And was it really owned by a member of Honey’s own family?
    McDuff rapped on the door with a gleaming brass knocker that was in the shape of a deer.
    “Deer... Hart!” Mart exclaimed softly.
    “Dear heart?” Trixie repeated. “Who on earth are you talking to, Mart Belden?”
    “A male deer,” her brother explained patiently, “is a hart. Ergo, the family emblem.”
    It seemed like a long time before a brown-haired woman in a plain black dress opened the door a crack. “Yes?” she said coldly.
    “We heard you have rooms to let,” Miss Trask said, then hesitated. “But perhaps this isn’t the right place....”
    “Come in,” the woman said grudgingly, and she opened one of the lace-curtained double doors.
    The Bob-Whites filed in, followed by Miss Trask and McDuff. The woman disappeared through a hallway in the rear, leaving them standing in the reception hall.
    “Wow!” Trixie marveled. “I’ve never seen so many colors!”
    “It’s beautiful!” Honey’s eyes were shining. “Just wait till Mother sees it. Everything blends so well— the different shades and tones....”
    “It’s what Mrs. Wheeler would call a decorator’s dream,” Miss Trask agreed.
    “I know what Trixie means about color,” Jim