The Aldens woke up early. The storm had moved on, and sun filled the house as they ate the breakfast of cold cereal and bananas and drank the milk Mrs. McGregor had packed. They tried the phone and were happy to find it was working again.
“There isn’t much more work we can do,” Violet said. “Let’s just clean up the kitchen.”
“I want to go upstairs again and make sure everything looks neat there,” Jessie said.
“We can use the back staircase,” Henry added.
The children walked up the back stairs, which Henry lit with the flashlight. Halfway up, Jessie stepped on something soft, and stumbled. She bent down and picked up a gray and red sweater. “This is Mrs. Carter’s,” she said. “She had it on the first time we met her. Why is it here?”
“She must have been using this staircase,” Henry said.
“But how did she get in?” Violet asked. “We were always so careful to lock the doors.”
“Then she must have had a key,” Benny said. “But why does she have it?”
“I know what we should do,” Jessie said. “We’ll hide outside. If we close all the windows and pull down all the shades, the Carters will think we’ve gone home. If they’re the ones who’ve been trying to scare us, they’ll probably come back into the house again soon.”
The Aldens quickly packed their things and rolled up their sleeping bags. Henry looked out the window and spotted a couple of large bushes at the side of the house that would be a perfect hiding place. They were big enough for the children to hide in, and from there they’d be able to see anyone who might come up the front walk or use the back door.
The children locked up the house, and walked down the front walk as if they were going home. Then one by one they sneaked into the bushes. Jessie and Benny watched the front walk, and Henry and Violet watched the back door.
“Look!” Henry finally whispered. “Mr. and Mrs. Carter are going in the back door. And they do have a key.”
The Aldens stayed hidden and soon the Carters came out of the house carrying the tape player and a lacy pink dress.
“That’s the dress that was on the bed!” Violet said. “And the tape player.”
The children watched the Carters go back into their own house. “We have to tell Grandfather and Aunt Jane about this,” Henry said. “Come on, let’s call home.”
The Aldens went back into the house and phoned their grandfather. Jessie quickly told him what had happened and he said, “Just stay in the house. Aunt Jane and I will drive right over. Don’t talk to anyone. Just stay there.”
“What are we going to do until Grandfather gets here?” Benny asked.
“I know,” Violet said. “Let’s take some pictures with the camera you brought, Henry.”
They tried to forget about the Carters while they took pictures of each other in funny poses. Finally, they heard a car pull up to the house. They ran out to Grandfather and Aunt Jane.
Grandfather looked very serious. “I think we have to talk to the Carters about what you saw and get an explanation from them.”
They walked up to the Carters’ front door and rang the bell. Mr. Carter answered, looking, as usual, very unfriendly. “Yes?” he said.
“We’d like to come in and talk to you and your wife about something very important,” Grandfather said.
“We don’t want any visitors,” Mr. Carter said.
Then Mrs. Carter appeared behind her husband at the door. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“We’d just like a few minutes with you and your husband,” Grandfather said.
Mrs. Carter looked at Mr. Alden’s serious, unsmiling face and her own face turned pale. She glanced at her husband and then said to the Aldens, “Come in.”
They all went into the Carters’ living room. “Won’t you sit down?” she said to Mr. Alden and Aunt Jane.
They sat and the children stood near them. “Why don’t you tell the Carters what has been happening and what you saw,” Grandfather said to Jessie.
Jessie began. “All sorts of strange things have been happening in the Roth house. We found roses we didn’t put there. An old dress was on the bed one day — and then it disappeared. A threatening note was in the mailbox. And there was this voice … the voice of a girl singing a song. Last night we found a tape player with a tape of the girl’s voice. And this morning, Mrs. Carter, we found your sweater on the back stairway. And then …” Jessie hesitated, “we saw you and your husband unlocking the back door and going into the house. You came out carrying the tape player and the dress.”
Mrs. Carter gasped.
Grandfather said, “Since you knew where the tape player and the dress were, you must have put them there. You have been deliberately trying to frighten my grandchildren. Why? I don’t like people upsetting my family.”
Mrs. Carter began to weep softly. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I knew this wasn’t right.”
“I think you’d better explain,” Mr. Alden said.
Mr. Carter, now as pale as his wife, began to talk. “It was the house. We had wanted to buy the Roth house and the land for a long time. But we never had enough money to do so. We thought if we made sure the house stayed empty long enough, we would manage to save the money to buy it.”
Mrs. Carter took up the story. “When we heard that Joe and Alice Alden had bought the house, we thought that if they could be made to believe the house was haunted, they wouldn’t move in. Then we would have a chance to buy the house someday. So we did all the things Jessie mentioned. But I guess the children were smarter than we were.”
“What you did wasn’t very nice,” Benny said. “I really was scared.”
“I’m sorry, Benny. I know what we did was wrong,” Mrs. Carter said.
“Where did you get a key to the house from?” Violet asked.
“Once the real estate agent gave us a key to let some people in to see the house, on a day she couldn’t show it herself. We just made a duplicate of the key.”
“The dress, and the roses … you did all that?” Violet asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Carter said. “I found that dress in an antique clothing store, and it seemed like the kind of thing Celia might have worn. Mr. Farley had told us about the Roth’s beautiful rose garden, so the roses seemed to make sense, too.”
“And the singing?” Benny asked directly.
“We used the back stairs to turn on the tape recorder,” Mr. Carter explained.
“But other people thought the house was haunted,” Henry said.
“We started the rumor about the house and Celia’s singing years ago,” Mr. Carter said. “It worked with some people, like Mr. Farley. And even some people who bought the house didn’t stay very long. They just thought that every funny sound that you normally hear in an old house came from a ghost. We were successful for a long time. Until you children came to the house,” Mr. Carter said.
“We are sorry. Really. And we do hope your cousins will be very happy here. We really do,” Mrs. Carter said.
“I agree with my wife,” Mr. Carter said. “I want them to be happy, too. We know what we did was wrong, and I hope we can make it up to you all. If your cousins ever need anything, I hope they’ll call on us.”
“We accept your apologies,” Violet said generously. “There was no real harm done.”
The Aldens got into Grandfather’s station wagon and they rode home. Jessie was frowning. “What about Celia? Where do you suppose she went? And do you think she is still alive?”
“She would be a very old lady,” Aunt Jane said.
“We can’t just forget about her,” said Violet. |