The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace by Julie Campbell Read Free Book Online Page A

the bill.
    “Just the same,” Trixie said later, after they’d recounted their adventures to Miss Trask, “there’s something strange about that man.”
    Everybody laughed.
    “Trixie Belden, you’re a schlocky Sherlockian shamus, (Try saying that five times fast!) You couldn’t exist without ‘something strange’ in your life. And if it’s not there, you just go ahead and make it up,” accused Mart.
    Trixie ignored him. “And what’s more,” she went on, “I saw that pickpocket again today— twice.” She glanced around the group triumphantly.
    The boys looked skeptical, but Honey turned pale. “Where?” she asked.
    “Once in front of the British Museum, like I told you, and again—” Trixie paused mysteriously—“in Piccadilly Circus. Right before you got pushed off that curb .”
    “Like I said, if it’s not there, you make it up. Now you’re going to see Gray Cap everywhere we go,” Mart hooted.
    “But, Mart, I do,” Trixie insisted. “I’m developing my powers of observation.”
    “Your powers of imagination are incomparable,” conceded her brother.
    “Sounds like it’s time for bed,” Miss Trask said diplomatically.

    Early the following morning, the Bob-Whites were on their way to the Sunday morning services at Westminster Abbey. Miss Trask had said she had a slight headache, and so she was sleeping in.
    “It’s all the studying.” Trixie wrinkled her freckled nose. Research was more fun than she had expected, but she wouldn’t want to do it all day. Miss Trask, however, seemed never to tire of it.
    “Trix, about that pickpocket,” said Jim. “You know, it could be that you’re seeing different ones. Everybody’s been warning us that London is full of them.”
    “And they would all dress sort of like that,” Honey put in. “I mean, all in gray, so no one would notice them.”
    “Inconspicuous,” Jim agreed.
    “Delitescent,” Mart tossed off nonchalantly.
    “Where?” Trixie looked up and down the shop-lined street. “I didn’t know they had any.”
    “Had any what?” Mart’s blue eyes were as puzzled as his sister’s.
    “Delicatessens, silly. And anyhow, I don’t see how you could be hungry already, after that super breakfast we had at the hotel.”
    Mart chortled. “I wasn’t talking about salamis, sibling. I said delitescent.”
    “You got me,” Jim said.
    “Delitescent—it means lying hidden,” said Mart. “Any self-respecting private investigator ought to know that.”
    “And we know you well enough,” Trixie said with a toss of her curls, “to safely assume that you’d be talking about food, not detective terms.”
    Westminster Abbey turned out to be a magnificent cathedral, its massive stone buttresses black with age. Inside, the Bob-Whites gasped at the beauty of the gold-screened altar and stained-glass windows. The Abbey Choir sounded like a band of angels.
    After the service, the four friends walked around, looking at the engraved stones and gilded statues that lined the walls. Plaques in the floor, too, commemorated England’s famous dead. Some of the tombs were centuries old, some quite recent. Many of the names carved on them were familiar to the Bob-Whites from their classes at school.
    “It’s sort of like a cemetery right inside a church,” Honey said. “I read where being buried here is practically the greatest honor England can give to someone.”
    “Hey, here’s Chaucer,” Mart cried as they wandered into the Poet’s Corner.
    Trixie shivered at the thought of the bones of poets she studied in school being buried right under her feet. “Jeepers,” she whispered, “I’m walking on T. S. Eliot!”
    There were famous scientists, too, like Sir Isaac Newton, and musicians, artists, and statesmen.
    After Westminster Abbey, the Bob-Whites took in the nearby Houses of Parliament, with the famous clock in the tower.
    “Big Ben got hit by a bomb during the war and went right on ticking,” Mart recalled from his