The Mandie Collection (61 page)

“We should go back to your grandmother's, shouldn't we?” Celia reminded her friend.

“Ben can walk with us if you're afraid we might find somebody,” Mandie suggested. Without waiting for Celia's reply, she called the Negro man, “Ben, would you walk around the church with us?”

Ben walked over to them with a puzzled look on his face. “Why, 'course, Missy.”

“Dat man couldn't catch nobody fo' you,” Annie said with a teasing glance at the driver. “He too slow, dat Ben is.”

Ben scowled at her. “Fust you says I'm too fast, and now you says I'm too slow,” he grumbled. “Woman, make yo' mind up, or ain't you got one?”

Annie ignored him and walked on around the side of the church. The girls grinned at Ben and followed the Negro girl around the building.

Thick shrubbery grew against the church, but since it was wintertime, there weren't any leaves, and they could see right through the bushes. Annie stayed ahead of the other two girls, and Ben lagged behind as they all carefully looked over the outside of the building and the yard.

When they turned the back corner and faced the rear of the church, the girls stopped in amazement then ran up to the wall. There, all over the brick, was a lot of huge, illegible handwriting, evidently written with whitewash.

“What does it say?” Celia gasped.

“I cain't read dat,” Annie fussed.

Ben stared at the writing with the others. “You cain't read nohow,” he mumbled.

“I don't think it says anything,” Mandie decided. She brushed her hand over the mess. “It's dry now, but it either dripped and ran together, or whoever wrote it didn't know how to write.”

“Who in the world could have done such a thing? Imagine messing up a church building with all that!” Celia said.

“It's probably connected with the mystery of the bells,” Mandie replied.

“Missy, I think we better git goin,' ” Annie spoke up.

“Let's just walk the rest of the way around the building,” Mandie urged. “We can hurry.”

She led the way. They returned to the front of the church without finding anything else unusual.

The girls were puzzled. What was that mess supposed to be? A message? A warning? And when did it get there? No one had mentioned that strange writing before.

The mystery was deepening.

CHAPTER THREE

APRIL'S THREAT

Later that day Ben loaded the luggage and drove the girls to school. As they rode up the half-circle graveled driveway, the huge, white clapboard house at the top of the hill came into view. Gray curls of smoke rose out of the tall chimneys. The giant magnolia trees surrounding the school were now bare.

The rig came to a halt in front of the long, two-story porch supported by six huge, white pillars. A small sign to the left of the heavy double doors read The Misses Heathwood's School for Girls. Tall narrow windows trimmed with stained glass flanked each side of the doors. Above the doors, matching stained glass edged a fan-shaped transom of glass panes.

The white rocking chairs, with their bare cane bottoms, were still sitting along the veranda behind the banisters. The green flowered cushions had been removed and taken inside for the winter. The wooden swing hung bleakly on its chains attached to the ceiling. Uncle Cal, the old Negro man who worked for the school, came out to help unload the baggage.

“Hello, Uncle Cal,” Mandie greeted him as she and Celia stepped down from the rig. “Did you and Aunt Phoebe have a nice Thanksgiving?”

“Sho' did, Missy 'Manda, but we'se glad to see you back,” the old man replied. “You, too, Missy,” he told Celia.

“Thanks, Uncle Cal,” Celia replied, tossing back her long auburn hair. “Guess what! We have another mystery to solve.”

“ 'Nuther mystery? I sho' hope y'all ain't aimin' to git in no mo' trouble,” the old man said, reaching for a bag in the rig.

“It's about the bells in the church downtown, Uncle Cal,” Mandie explained. “They're ringing the wrong time.”

“Ev'rybody know dat, Missy 'Manda. De whole town mad 'bout it. Cain't set no clock by dem bells no mo.' ” Uncle Cal turned to go up the front steps and Ben and the girls followed.

Celia laid her hand on Mandie's arm, and stopped her on the porch for a moment. Uncle Cal and Ben went inside with the luggage. “Mandie, I just remembered something,” she said. “Remember what April Snow told us when we left school for the Thanksgiving holidays?”

“She said, ‘Enjoy your holidays, because you might not enjoy coming back,' wasn't that it?” Mandie asked.

“Her exact words,” Celia confirmed. “What do you think she's planning to stir up now?”

“I have no idea, but we'll be on the lookout for her this time,” Mandie assured her friend. “We'll be prepared.”

They went on through the double doors into the long center hallway. They stopped and looked around the wainscoted, wallpapered hallway. It was empty. Their eyes traveled up the curved staircase leading to a second-story balcony, which ran near a huge crystal chandelier. The place seemed to be deserted.

They walked on. A tall, elderly lady with faded reddish-blonde hair, wearing a simple black dress, came out of the office off the hallway.

“Hello, Miss Hope,” Mandie said, hurrying to greet the lady.

“I hope you girls had a nice holiday,” Miss Hope Heathwood replied, putting an arm around each girl.

“We did, Miss Hope. I know y'all did, too, with all of us noisy girls gone,” Celia said, laughing.

“Oh, but we missed you lively young ladies,” Miss Hope said. “You know we only had three girls here over the holidays—just the ones who lived too far away to go home. But we hardly saw them. They would show up for meal time and then disappear for the rest of the day.”

“April Snow didn't go home, did she?” Mandie asked.

“No. She's around somewhere,” Miss Hope said. “Now y'all get upstairs and get unpacked before time for supper.” She turned back toward the office.

“Yes, ma'am,” the girls replied together.

Mandie and Celia hurried upstairs to their room. They had been lucky enough to get a small bedroom together near the stairs to the attic and the servants' stairway going down. The other girls lived in rooms with four double beds and eight girls in each. Even though Mandie and Celia's room was hardly more than a large closet that could barely accommodate the necessary furniture, they were happy there.

A fire in the small fireplace warmed the room. Uncle Cal and Ben had brought up their luggage. The girls hurriedly began unpacking their trunks.

“I want to make sure that whoever wrote on the church walls is punished to the limits of the law. No one should be allowed to treat the Lord's house that way,” Mandie said. “It must have been done recently, because Grandmother didn't know about it until we told her. And she always knows everything first.”

“It was probably done while we were inside the church,” Celia said.

“Maybe.” Mandie shook out her dresses from the trunk and prepared to hang them in the huge chifforobe. With her hands full of clothes, she opened the door to the chifforobe.

A small mouse quickly jumped out, landing on her boot and causing her to drop everything.

“A mouse! Look out!” Mandie screamed.

The mouse frantically ran around in circles on the carpet, apparently looking for a way to hide.

“I'll get Uncle Cal!” Celia yelled. She almost knocked down Aunt Phoebe as she ran out the door.

The old Negro woman appeared in the doorway with a broom, and found Mandie standing up on the bed, too frightened to move.

“I wuz jes' sweepin' de hall when I hears Missy scream,” Aunt Phoebe said. “Lawsy mercy, whut be de matter?”

“A mouse, Aunt Phoebe!” Mandie cried.

“It c-came out of the ch-chifforobe,” Celia stuttered, watching the floor around her feet for the creature.

“I don't see no mouse, Missy. Where it be?” Aunt Phoebe asked, sweeping the broom around the room. “I don't see none. It must be done gone and hid now.”

“I d-don't know, Aunt Phoebe,” Mandie said, collapsing on the bed.

Aunt Phoebe picked up the clothes Mandie had dropped in a pile and laid them on a chair. She examined the chifforobe. “I don't see how no mouse could git in there,” she said. “Ain't no holes or cracks in it.” She closed the door to see how it fit. “Somebody musta—”

“Put it in there,” Mandie interrupted. Sliding off the bed, she stood up and looked at Celia. “You know who.”

“Right,” Celia agreed.

“Now, who dat be wantin' to put a mouse in yo' chifforobe?” Aunt Phoebe asked.

“Can't you even guess?” Mandie asked.

“You mean dat tall, black-headed, black-eyed gal wid a Yankee mama—whut's her name?”

“April Snow,” Mandie answered. “You see, she told us when we left that we'd better enjoy our holidays, because we might not enjoy coming back.”

“But, Mandie, we don't know for sure that it was April,” Celia reminded her.

“No, we don't. So, Aunt Phoebe, please don't tell anyone we thought it might be her,” Mandie requested.

“I won't mention huh name, Missy 'Manda, but I will tell Miz Prudence dat a mouse got in yo' room,” the Negro woman promised. “I'se gwine hafta put some rat poison out to git rid of it.”

“Thanks, Aunt Phoebe,” Mandie said with relief.

After helping the girls hang up the rest of their clothes, Aunt Phoebe hurried back into the hallway to finish her sweeping.

Mandie and Celia put their stockings and underthings in the drawers of the bureau and placed their bonnets in hatboxes on top of the chifforobe. Leaving personal belongings such as jewelry and letters in the trays of their trunks, they locked the lids.

Mandie stood up with the trunk key in her hand. “I think I'd feel safer about my trunk if I put this key on a ribbon around my neck,” she said. “I can slip it under my dress. What do you think, Celia?”

“That's a good idea. I have some odd pieces of ribbon.” Celia walked over to the bureau and pulled a handful of ribbons out of one of the drawers. “What color do you want?”

“Any color,” Mandie said. “I think I have some extra ribbons, too.”

“I have plenty here,” Celia insisted. “I think you ought to take the blue one. It matches your eyes.”

“But it won't show, so it doesn't matter what color it is,” Mandie said, taking the blue ribbon.

“Well, you'll know what color it is anyway. I'll use the green one.” Celia pulled out a bright green ribbon and carefully threaded it through the hole in her key as Mandie fixed hers. They tied the ends together, hung the ribbons around their necks, and dropped the keys out of sight inside their dresses.

“If somebody put that mouse in our chifforobe, it had to be April Snow,” Mandie said, still nervously looking around on the floor.

“I think so, too, but we can't prove it,” Celia agreed. “I just feel like I'm going to step on it any minute.”

“Aunt Phoebe will get rid of it for us,” Mandie assured her. “Let's sit down.”

Sitting on the window seat, the two girls looked out at the bare limbs of the magnolia trees standing on the brown grass below.

“I'll be glad when Saturday comes,” Mandie said. “Joe will be here then, and we can go back to the church.”

“We can't unless we spend the weekend with your grandmother,” Celia reminded her. “Miss Prudence would never let us go that far away from school.”

“I thought you knew,” Mandie said with a smile. “Grandmother promised to send Ben for us Friday after classes, and we won't have to come back here until Sunday afternoon.”

“Oh, great!” Celia said excitedly. “We'll have all that time to work on the mystery.”

The big bell in the backyard began ringing, beckoning the students to supper.

“Let's go,” Mandie said, leading the way. The two girls hurried downstairs to wait in line outside the dining room door.

When Aunt Phoebe opened the French doors, the girls streamed into the dining room and took their assigned places, standing behind their chairs. No one was allowed to talk in the dining room, so they waited silently until all the girls were in. Then Miss Prudence Heathwood, the school's headmistress and sister of Miss Hope, entered from the other side of the room and took her place behind the chair at the head of the table.

As they stood there waiting, Mandie and Celia noticed that Etrulia had taken April Snow's place beside Mandie and April stood behind the chair directly across the table from them—where Etrulia ordinarily sat. They must have had permission to swap seats Mandie reasoned, because when Miss Prudence looked around the table, she did not mention the switch.

Miss Prudence picked up the little silver bell by her plate and shook it. All eyes turned in her direction.

“Young ladies, welcome back to all of you,” Miss Prudence said. “I have an announcement to make. Our school is investing in those modern lights that work on electricity.”

The students glanced at one another, not daring to say a word.

Miss Prudence continued. “A socket with a light bulb in it will be installed in each room. Hanging down from this socket will be a chain, which you will pull to turn the light on and off. You have all seen this kind of light downtown at Edwards' Dry Goods Store, haven't you?”

“Yes, ma'am,” the girls replied almost in unison.

“Good. Then you understand what I'm talking about,” she said. “Now, there will be workmen coming in tomorrow, but y'all do not have permission to carry on conversations with these men. You will stay out of whatever room they are working on until they've finished. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Miss Prudence,” the girls responded all around the table.

“After the lights are installed,” the headmistress continued, “there will be more workmen coming to put in one of those large furnaces in the basement. This will be connected by metal ducts to what they call a radiator in each room. The house will be heated this way, and
we will discontinue fires in the fireplaces except for emergencies and special occasions. You are not to talk to these workmen either. Are there any questions?”