The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace

jeweler’s, and I left it in your top dresser drawer. They did a beautiful job of cleaning and polish—”
    “Mo-therrr,” Honey warned, pulling Trixie after her up the broad, crimson-carpeted stairway. The carpet was new—Mrs. Wheeler loved to redecorate— but the gleaming cherry wood banisters would never change. The Manor House was modeled after the Dutch settlements that had been built on the Hudson before the American Revolution. It was certainly magnificent, but Trixie never dreamed of trading it for her own small farmhouse in the hollow below. Everybody loved Crabapple Farm.
    Honey’s room was done in white, with a ruffled organdy bedspread and curtains to match. Trixie had been a little in awe of it, too, at first, but no more.
    “Now,” Trixie demanded, plopping down on the bed, “if you don’t show me whatever-it-is right this minute, I’ll—I’ll—” Not being able to think of anything worse than her usual death scene, she subsided. Besides, Honey was already opening her bureau drawer and taking out a moth-eaten purple velvet box.
    “It’s something I just inherited,” said Honey. “From my great-great-aunt Priscilla, whom I never even knew. Mother just faintly remembers her, from when she was a little girl and went to visit her in New England. My great-great-aunt was terribly old even then. She’s been in a rest home, and she just died last spring—at the age of ninety-nine.”
    “Gleeps,” Trixie said. “That’s ancient. It’s too bad she didn’t make it to a hundred so she could be a centennial.”
    “I think you mean a centenarian,” Honey said. “You and your near-miss vocabulary.”
    “Whatever,” Trixie said hastily. “Just tell me— what did you inherit?”
    “This!” Honey snapped open the old box with a flourish and spilled its contents out onto the bed. Huge sapphires, emeralds, and rubies sparkled against the snow-white bedspread. They were set in a thick gold chain encrusted with diamonds and pearls. “Yipes!” Trixie whispered. “Are they real?”
    “Mother had them appraised,” Honey said. “She didn’t think they were, but she wasn’t sure, because they were all gucked up before she had them cleaned. She said if they were real, they ought to be locked up in the Tower of London with the crown jewels. Nobody but kings and queens would wear something like this.”
    “Fortunately,” Mrs. Wheeler said from the open doorway, “they turned out to be only imitations.”
    “Fortunately?” Trixie gasped. “You mean they’re fake? And you’re glad of it?”
    Honey slipped the heavy, glittering necklace over her head. It hung in a wide circle almost to her waist. “Doesn’t look much like junk jewelry, does it?” she said. She struck a pose for Trixie’s benefit.
    Mrs. Wheeler sat down in a white-ruffled rocker. “The stones are not real, but the piece still may be valuable, particularly if it turns out to have any special historical interest. The appraiser assures us that it is very old.”
    “As old as your aunt Priscilla?” Trixie asked. “Older than that,” Mrs. Wheeler said.
    “It might go back to the days of Queen Elizabeth,” Honey said. “Queen Elizabeth the First, that is. That’s over four hundred years.”
    Trixie gulped.
    “That remains to be seen,” Mrs. Wheeler said, smiling at their excitement.
    “That’s what I was just coming down to Crabapple Farm to tell you.” Honey’s eyes glowed. “Now you just have to come to England with us, Trix—you and Mart, even if Brian can’t come. Because we have to trace the necklace, and we already know that it comes from England! Miss Trask will come with us— she used to teach history as well as math before she came to be my governess—and there are a lot of old libraries where we can look up stuff, like my mother’s ancestors, and the jewelry of different periods, and all. Besides, my dad says that if we’re going to solve a mystery, there’s nobody who can do that better than Trixie Belden.”
    “Our supersleuth!” came a cheerful voice from Honey’s open door.
    It was Jim, and right behind him, in the hall, was Mart. Trixie was about to burst already, from all sorts of mixed-up emotions, and the sight of Jim’s friendly face and tousled red hair was almost too much.
    “But we can’t go with you,” she wailed. “My parents say it’s absolutely out of the qu-question.” She blinked back tears, determined not to cry in front of Jim, who was always saying how