The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace

heels and stride away, but Anne had her hand tucked firmly into the crook of his elbow.
    “Yes, Macbeth is a hard play to produce,” the English girl said easily. She looked lovely in her long, midnight blue dress, and her father was very handsome in his tuxedo. Trixie, on the other hand, was unaccustomed to dressing up and was feeling distinctly uncomfortable.
    “Well, I think it’s great!” Jim said. “I never dreamed I’d be seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company playing Macbeth in Stratford-on-Avon. You and Anne are fortunate to live so close by, Mr. Hart.” Trixie’s face was red-hot, but to prevent herself from seeming an utter idiot, she felt she ought to contribute something besides catsup to the conversation. “We noticed a Gregory Hart in the cast,” she said politely. “Are you related?”
    “Yes, he’s my brother,” Anne said. “He’s—”
    “If you will pardon us,” Mr. Hart said stiffly, “we should return to our seats now.”
    “I was wondering why he comes every night,” Trixie said once the Harts were out of earshot. “His son’s in the play. So Gregory Hart is a real live actor, and he may turn out to be Honey’s cousin or something!”
    “Probably something twice removed,” Honey said with a rueful smile.

    The real live actor turned out to be a really lively boy, as the Bob-Whites found out when they met Gregory Hart the following morning after breakfast. He was about Jim’s age and looked a great deal like Andrew Hart except for his friendly grin.
    “I’m frightfully sorry you didn’t get to come backstage after the play last night,” Gregory told them. “Perhaps another time.”
    “Backstage!” Trixie said. “Jeepers, that would be neat. I think it’s perfectly marvelous that you’re an actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company.”
    “It’s only a bit part,” Gregory said modestly. “I just hang around till they can’t get rid of me any other way.”
    “He’s been doing that for years,” Anne said with an affectionate smile. “He learns all the parts—the small ones, you know—in case he should be needed. And now they count on him.”
    “What’s on the agenda for today?” Gregory asked.
    “Have you been to Shottery yet?”
    “Anne Hathaway’s cottage,” Anne explained. “We’re not just here to see the sights,” Trixie told Gregory. “You see—”
    “But we do want to see Anne Hathaway’s cottage,” Honey interrupted eagerly. “We can’t miss that, Trixie.”
    “My sister, the famous detective,” Mart drawled, “can’t be bothered with mere sight-seeing. She’s here to solve a mystery.”
    “A mystery!” Anne clapped her hands. “How smashing—can we help?”
    It was decided that Anne and Gregory would go along on the pleasant walk across the fields to Shottery, and on the way, Trixie and Honey would fill them in on their current case. Unfortunately, Miss Trask and McDuff joined the party. Trixie was almost certain that McDuff knew nothing about Honey’s necklace, and she wanted to keep it that way. However, that proved to be no problem. As usual, the big Scotsman was keeping Miss Trask entirely to himself, and they lagged far behind the young people.
    “My mother was very much interested in genealogy,” Anne said after Honey had told them about her great-great-aunt Priscilla Hart. “I’m sure we could find some of her charts.”
    “Wouldn’t it be smashing if Priscilla turned out to be on one of the branches of our family tree?”
    Gregory said with an admiring glance at Honey’s golden hair.
    Uh-oh, thought Trixie. Brian had better watch out. Back in Sleepyside, Honey and Brian had always had a special interest in each other. Of course, Honey’s so attractive that people take a special interest in her wherever we go, Trixie thought fondly.
    When Trixie described the necklace and Honey related what the appraiser had said about it, Gregory and Anne both looked thoughtful.
    “Elizabethan, you say, but not real jewels?” Gregory frowned. “But if the necklace is a copy, couldn’t it have been made much later?”
    “I don’t know,” Honey confessed. “That’s just what the appraiser told my mother.”
    “You’d think they’d have some way of dating the materials,” Jim said, “or maybe the workmanship.”
    “The way you describe it, it sounds like something I’ve seen somewhere.” Anne knit her delicately arched brown eyebrows. “But I can’t seem to remember where.”
    “Oh, really?” asked Trixie,