The Mystery of the Whispering Witch

admitted, brushing her long golden hair out of her eyes. “Did you hear all the questions they asked?”
    “I heard,” Di put in. “ ‘What did the ghost look like?’ ‘What did she say?’ ‘How did you get out of there alive?’ ”
    Fay started toward the large reception desk, but Trixie had planted herself firmly in her path. “Listen,” Trixie said earnestly, “I don’t know who told those reporters about last night, Fay, but it wasn’t me, honestly! Why would I do such a thing?”
    Fay still looked upset. “I don’t know,” she answered. “But those reporters said they’d had an anonymous tip. On the phone, they said. I know it couldn’t have been Honey. She and I were together all night and again this morning.”
    “I was with you, too,” Trixie protested.
    “Not after breakfast,” Fay said, her voice low. “Honey and I left you talking with your brothers, if you’ll remember. You could have used the telephone then—that is, unless it was—” She stopped and stared thoughtfully at Brian and Mart.
    “Hey, back off!” Mart said, throwing up his hands in a show of mock horror. “We weren’t the anonymous tipper-offers, either.”
    “Well, then—” Fay looked bewildered. “If it wasn’t Trixie, and if it wasn’t Brian or Mart, then who could it have been? Who else knew about it? The reporters said the call came in early this morning. No one else knew about it then.” She smiled at Jim and Di. “Even you hadn’t heard the story.”
    “Not that early,” Jim said, running his hand perplexedly through his red hair. “Anyone got any ideas?”
    But not one had.
    Trixie was still thinking about it when Fay returned from the information desk with the number of her mother’s room.
    Trixie heard Honey say, “Why don’t you go visit your mother alone, Fay? The rest of us don’t mind waiting out here.”
    “That’s right,” Trixie said absently. “Anyway, we can go see a couple of friends in the gift shop. Honey and I work as Volunteens here in the summer sometimes, and—” She broke off.
    “And what?” Brian demanded.
    “Hold on to your hats!” Mart exclaimed. “Ms. Sherlock Belden has got one of those a-thought-has-just-struck-me looks on her face.”
    “It was the door,” Trixie breathed.
    Jim frowned and glanced over his shoulder.
    “What door are you talking about, Trixie?”
    “The back door at Lisgard House,” Trixie replied impatiently. “I’ve been trying and trying to remember what made me think someone else could have been there last night. It was the back door. I’m sure of it. I heard it close.”
    “Or open?” Brian asked.
    Trixie shook her head. “I don’t think so. It was after those terrible noises we heard, and after the room was filled with smoke. Just as we were sure we were all going to die, the noises stopped. The smoke began to clear. But why? How could it? Fay’s bedroom didn’t have any window.”
    “Maybe it was more black magic,” Honey began, then looked as if she wished she hadn’t. “Er—that is, what I meant was—”
    Trixie wasn’t listening. “I opened the bedroom door. The passage outside was cold—very cold, as if cold air had been blowing through it. It was then I heard a door close—the back door. Oh, don’t you see? It’s the only solution. Someone else must have been there! But who?”
    “If you’re right,” Mart said slowly, “then undoubtedly the dirty-deed-doer was the anonymous informant as far as the boob-tube people were concerned. She must have called good ol’ Paul Trent at the same time.”
    “She?” Honey said, looking puzzled.
    “A slip of the protrusible oral organ,” Mart said loftily, “in other words, tongue, Trix. I could as easily have figured the stool pigeon as male.”
    All the same, Trixie noticed that Mart didn’t look at Fay. So he still suspects her of playing some game of her own, she thought.
    After Fay had hurried away, the Bob-Whites discussed Trixie’s theory about the possible identity of the intruder—if, indeed, there had been one, which Mart seemed to doubt.
    As no one had anything helpful to add, however, it wasn’t long before the girls hurried away to the gift shop, while the boys flung themselves into the lobby’s chairs to wait.
    Trixie was busy talking to Mariellen Hanrahan, the only Volunteen on duty behind the counter that day, when a voice said in her ear, “So this is where you’ve got to. I’ve been looking all over for you, Trixie.”
    Trixie