Tattletale Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner Read Free Book Online Page A

granddaughter. “I thought your bedroom would be the perfect place for it.”
    Violet gasped. “You bought this for ... for me?” She looked as if she didn’t quite believe it.
    Nodding, Grandfather said, “I can’t think of anyone who appreciates art more than you do.”
    “How can I ever thank you, Grandfather?” Violet gave him a warm hug.
    James Alden chuckled. “The look on your face is all the thanks I need.” Then he added, “I’ll get Edmund to frame it for you after the exhibit.”
    “Your bedroom really is the perfect place for it, Violet,” Jessie said, smiling happily at her sister.
    “It sure is!” Henry was smiling, too.
    “And don’t forget,” put in Benny, “it’ll be worth a fortune in a few years. That’s what Jem Manchester says.”
    Later, as the children sat in Violet’s room, Henry brought up something he had been thinking about.
    “There’s somebody else we might want to include on our list of Tattletale suspects,” he said.
    “Who is it?” they all asked at the same time.
    “Mrs. Spencer.”
    “What ... ?” The others were so surprised, all they could do was stare at their older brother.
    “You don’t really mean that, do you, Henry?” asked Jessie, who was sitting on the edge of Violet’s bed. “You can’t suspect Mrs. Spencer.”
    “We have to consider everybody.”
    “But why would she want to play a trick on us, Henry?” Violet couldn’t believe Mrs. Spencer would do something so awful. “She’s always been so nice to us.”
    “We all like her,” said Henry, “but still ... she could’ve planted all those clues herself. She wants her daughter to move in with her, remember? Maybe Rachel will move in if she thinks her mother’s frightened by all the strange things that are happening.”
    They had to admit that it was possible. Didn’t Mrs. Spencer want her daughter to go back to school and become a nurse? Wasn’t moving in with her mother the only way Rachel could afford to do that?
    “I still think our best suspect is Janice Allen,” Violet insisted. “She even works at the gallery.”
    “And at the library,” added Benny. “Don’t forget, Mrs. Spencer likes to read. So Janice probably knows her.” He thought for a minute. “I bet Janice knows everybody in Greenfield. She even knows Margaret Longford from school. Only ... she calls her Peg.”
    Jessie clapped her hands. “Benny, you’re brilliant!”
    The youngest Alden was perched on the window seat, his arms wrapped around his knees. “Thank you,” he said, grinning.
    The others looked at Jessie, puzzled.
    “I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen her before,” Jessie explained. “Margaret, I mean. Just now, when Benny mentioned the name Peg, it suddenly hit me. Margaret’s the woman with the blond ponytail! She was in that snapshot with Milly.”
    “Mrs. Spencer did say her name was Peg,” Henry realized. “I guess it could be the same person.”
    Benny looked doubtful. “Margaret said she’d never met Milly.”
    “We only got a quick look at that snapshot,” said Violet, who was sitting right next to Jessie. “You can’t be sure it was Margaret.” Violet admired the young artist’s work and didn’t like to think she was dishonest.
    “True,” admitted Jessie. “There’s no way of knowing for sure until we see the photograph again.”
    Henry got up from his chair. “If it was Margaret in the photo,” he said in the middle of a yawn, “what do you think it means?”
    “I don’t know,” replied Jessie, yawning, too. “I wish I did. Right now I’m too tired to think about it anymore.”
    It had been a long day and the Aldens decided to get a good night’s sleep.
    Just before climbing into bed, Violet took one more admiring glance at Margaret’s painting. But as she looked a little closer, she couldn’t help noticing that the background was a different color around the edges of the canvas — almost as though the landscape had been painted over a finished