“Good,” said Aunt Veronica. “Now listen to me. Do you like to eat nuts?”
“I do,” said the girl. “I love them.”
“Very well,” said Aunt Veronica. “And when you have a nut, can you usually find the nutcrackers?”
The girl shook her head. “Never,” she said.
“So I imagine that you would like to be able to crack nuts with your fingers?”
“I’d love that,” said the girl. “But it’s impossible. Nuts are far too hard for that.”
“You’re wrong,” said Aunt Veronica. “Look.”
Aunt Veronica reached into a pocket and took out a large walnut. Holding it between her thumb and forefinger, she gave it a quick flip and cracked it neatly into four pieces.
The girl was very impressed, and she watched closely as Aunt Veronica showed her how to do it.
“As I told you,” she said, “you’ll have to practice. But all you do is move this finger like this … and then this finger a little like that … and then you push down there, and turn the thumb around through there and …” Crunch! Another walnut had been cracked. The girl watched carefully and then Aunt Veronica gave her a few walnuts to use for practice. Then, thanking her again for helping us find Aunt Majolica, we returned to the trailer.
I opened the door and went in. There, sitting on a stool was a tall, rather thin lady. She looked at me carefully through the tiny pair of glasses that perched on the end of her nose, and I knew at once that I had found another aunt. It was Thessalonika or Japonica, but I had no idea which one.
To the Detectives’ Office
“Thessalonika,” said the new aunt, “I could tell that you were uncertain which one I was.”
I went forward and shook hands with Aunt Thessalonika. She had a kind face, and I knew at once that I was going to like her. The only problem, of course, was her mind reading. Could she really tell what people were thinking? And if she could, then I’d have to be very careful not to think about anything rude.
That’s very difficult, you know. Just you try it. Imagine that somebody else, maybe your best friend, could tell what was in your mind, and imagine that you knew it. The very first thing you’ll think about is something that you wouldn’t want her to know you were thinking about, and this happens even if you weren’t thinking about it before.
“Don’t worry,” said Aunt Thessalonika, as if she knew exactly what was on my mind. “I don’t read minds all the time. I find it a bit exhausting, you see, so I only use my powers at work.”
“Your aunt Thessalonika is a detective,” explained Aunt Majolica. “She and your aunt Japonica have a detective agency.”
“That’s right,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “And that’s why Aunt Japonica isn’t here at the moment. We’re in the middle of a very important investigation and I shall have to return to it in a very short time. In fact, I can tell that Japonica is becoming a bit annoyed, and so I’d better leave right now.”
She rose to her feet.
“There’s a good place to park your trailer in our backyard,” she explained. “Majolica will show you the way. We can all meet back there this evening.”
“May I come with you?” I asked, not wanting to lose my new aunt so soon after finding her.
Aunt Thessalonika looked at me and frowned.
“We have an awful lot of confidential matters in our office,” she said. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Of course,” I assured her.
She looked at Aunt Veronica, who nodded encouragingly.
“In that case,” she said, “you may come.”
The door of my aunts’ office had a bell and a small peephole. Aunt Thessalonika ushered me inside and led me along a narrow corridor to a further door at the end. This door was locked, and she fiddled with several keys for a moment or two before it opened.
Inside, I found myself in a large room with no windows at all, but it had a high skylight that let in the daylight. The room was lined with shelves and cupboards, and at the far end there were two desks. A tall man was sitting at one of the desks, and he looked up sharply when we came in. Aunt Thessalonika jerked her head in the direction of this man and told me to go and say hello to him.
“How do you do?” said the man, rising to his feet as I approached his desk. “So you’re Harriet.”
I was astonished to hear that he knew my name, and I assumed that Aunt Thessalonika must have called to say that we were coming.
We shook hands and he asked me to sit down. I did so and studied the man before me. He had a large mustache, gray hair, and a pair of heavy glasses. He was the sort of man you could walk past in the street without ever noticing. Looking at his mustache, which was rather bushy, I wondered how he cut it. Did he use…
“Scissors,” said the man. “Most people with mustaches use scissors.”
I gasped. Here was another mind reader! Were all private detectives mind readers, or was it just my two aunts and their friends?
“However,” the man went on, rising to his feet, “this mustache never needs to be cut at all. And why is that?” He paused, his eyes glinting through the thick lenses of his heavy glasses. “It’s because it is utterly and completely … false!”
And with that he ripped the mustache off his face with a quick flick of his wrist.
“Nor,” he continued, “do I have to spend too much time combing this hair, because it, you see, is … a wig!”
And with another flourish he ripped off the wig and I saw his real hair tumble out from beneath. And then I realized—he was a woman. In fact, he was my aunt. It was Aunt Japonica in disguise.
As I stared in astonishment, Aunt Japonica took off the rest of her disguise with a few deft movements. Off came the suit, to reveal a shiny green dress underneath. Off came the glasses and, with a wipe of a handkerchief, off came the makeup.
“Now you see me as I really am,” said Aunt Japonica with a sigh. “But I love disguises, and I’m so glad that our job requires us to dress up so much.”
“She’s very good at it,” chipped in Aunt Thessalonika. “You should see her disguised as a nun.”
“Or as a bus driver,” added Aunt Japonica.
“And what about the time you were a dog?” said Aunt Thessalonika. “Tell her about that.”
“Oh yes!” said Aunt Japonica, her face creased with pleasure. “That was a case where we had to try and trap somebody in a park. I managed to get hold of a dog’s outfit and I dressed up in it. Everybody thought I was a large dog, even the other dogs.”
“Yes,” said Aunt Thessalonika, “and everything would have gone very well if the dogcatcher hadn’t come and spoiled it all.”
“I’ll never forgive him,” said Aunt Japonica. “I felt so ashamed being dragged away like that in his awful dogcatcher’s van. But I got my own back in the end.”
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“I asked him the time when he opened the back of the van to get me out at the other end,” said Aunt Japonica, with a smile. “He got such a fright that he dropped his keys and ran. I drove his van back to the park, but by that time the person we were planning to trap had gone. It was a great shame.”
After Aunt Japonica had finished her story, I glanced at the room around me. It was full of very intriguing things, and I was on the point of asking to be shown around when Aunt Thessalonika suggested that we do just that.
“I can tell you’d like to see some of our things,” she said, mind reading again. “Is that all right with you, Japonica?”
“Of course,” said Aunt Japonica. “Let’s start with some of the disguises.”
I was led by Aunt Japonica to a large cupboard in a corner. She opened the doors with pride and I saw inside an array of extraordinary outfits. There was a uniform of the French Foreign Legion; there was the outfit of a Russian sailor. Then there was a doctor’s white coat and a ballet dancer’s tutu. There were many others.
Next, Aunt Japonica opened a drawer to the side of the cupboard. Inside w
ere all sorts of devices to stick on your face. There were scars—straight and curved—there were pimples and spots (these were for use if you wanted to look like a teenager). Then there were false ears and false noses—all very realistic—and several kinds of false chins.
“I could make you look like anyone,” Aunt Japonica said proudly. “I could pass you off as the president of the United States himself, if I wanted to.”
“That’s enough of that,” said Aunt Thessalonika rather impatiently. “There are other things in the office, you know.”
I followed Aunt Thessalonika past a row of neatly stacked notebooks.
“Our old cases,” she said proudly. “We keep notes on everything we do.”
I stopped and looked at some of the titles. “The Case of the Double-cracked Mirror.” “The Case of the Vanishing Bus.” “The Case of the Poisonous Lettuce.” (“A very disturbing case,” said Aunt Thessalonika, shaking her head rather grimly.)
Next we came to a shelf that was full of magnifying glasses. I was wondering why the aunts needed so many of them, when Aunt Thessalonika took one of them off the shelf and showed it to me.
“These are no ordinary magnifying glasses,” she said, her voice lowered almost to a whisper. “Look through that.”
I held the glass over a section of the shelf and stared through it. All I saw were fingerprints.
“You see,” said Aunt Thessalonika, “that’s our fingerprint glass. If you look at anything with that magnifying glass, you’ll see any fingerprints that happen to be around. It’s a very great help, I can assure you.”
I picked up another magnifying glass and showed it to Aunt Thessalonika.
“What does this one do?” I asked.
Aunt Thessalonika took it from me and examined it for a moment.
“Ah!” she said. “That one’s very useful indeed. There aren’t many of these around.”
“But what does it do?” I pressed.
“Translates French into English,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “Look.”
She reached for a book off another shelf and opened it. I could see that the book was written in French.
“Now look at this page through the magnifying glass,” said Aunt Thessalonika.
I held the glass over the page and looked through it. At first the words seemed a little bit blurred, but when I moved the magnifying glass slightly they became clearer. What is more, they were in English!
“This one does German,” said Aunt Thessalonika, pointing to another, very heavy and serious-looking magnifying glass. “And this one,” she went on, pointing to a very elegant magnifying glass with swirls of silver around the handle, “does Italian.”
We moved around the room, examining all the bits and pieces that my aunts used in their unusual work. There were bags of coins, all neatly labeled; there were maps; there were pens that wrote in different colors. At one point I picked up a large white object and asked Aunt Thessalonika what it was. “That,” she said, “is very strange. It still puzzles us.”
“Yes,” agreed Aunt Japonica. “We haven’t heard the last of that.”
Aunt Thessalonika took the object from me and placed it under a light.
“This is a plaster cast,” she said. “I take it that you know what a plaster cast is?”
I nodded. I had made casts at school, pouring the plaster into shapes to make impressions.
“Well,” continued Aunt Thessalonika, “you’ll see that this plaster cast is of a footprint.”
I felt rather disappointed by this news. I was hoping that it would be something much more exciting than that.
“Look at the toes,” said Aunt Thessalonika grimly. “Count them.”
I counted out the number of dents in the plaster where the toes had been. Six!
“Precisely!” said Aunt Japonica. “Six. What do you make of that?”
“I don’t know,” I replied truthfully.
“Neither do we,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “But we will certainly make it our business to find out!”
Suddenly Aunt Japonica looked at her watch.
“My goodness,” she said. “Time is flying past. We have work to do, I’m afraid. You can sit in that chair over there and read a book until it’s time for us to go to join the others.”
So I sat in the chair and read. Or rather, I tried to read, but my concentration kept slipping, and I sneaked glances at what my two aunts were doing. They were fussing over their desks, fiddling with microscopes and magnifying glasses, and whispering to one another. I tried hard to hear what they were saying, but it was impossible. So I gave up in the end and just waited until they were ready to go.
At last they packed up their work, locked the office behind them, and drove me off to their house. There in the backyard was the trailer, with the table set with tea, sandwiches, and cakes, and Majolica bossing all the others around, getting things ready on time. I felt tremendously proud of myself. It had taken a little time, but at last I had assembled all my aunts in one place.
There was only one thing left to do. Now that I had found my five aunts, it was time to take them all back to show my father. Then, if only I managed to find a painter, we could have the painting finished. Not only that, of course, but the family that had been so unhappily split up so many years ago would be together again.
We traveled back that day. It was very hard work for Aunt Veronica, pedaling the trailer with all those aunts in the back, but she managed. Every few miles I would pass her a chocolate bar, which she would swallow almost in one gulp. This seemed to keep her strength up.
At last we drew up to our house. I left the aunts in the trailer while I went in the front door. There was my father, sitting in his usual chair with his slippers on, doing a crossword puzzle.
“Hello,” he said. “I see you’re back.”
“I am,” I replied.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked, hardly raising his eyes from the puzzle.
“Yes,” I said. It was clear to me that he had forgotten all about my search for the aunts, so I slipped outside and signaled for the aunts to come in.
My father looked up from his puzzle and turned quite pale. For a moment I thought he was going to faint, but then, with a sound somewhere between a groan and a gasp, he rose to his feet.
“Harold!” said Aunt Majolica. “Look at the state of your slippers! When did you clean them last?”
Before my father had the opportunity to answer, all five aunts dashed across the room to give him a hug. Unfortunately, they knocked him back into his chair, and Aunts Thessalonika and Japonica ended up sprawled all over him.
When they untangled each other, the aunts all stood around him, kissing him on the cheek and patting his shoulders. They were talking so much that nobody could hear what anybody else was saying. My father, however, seemed to be happy to see all his sisters, so I left them together and went up to my room.
I had left the painting behind my wardrobe, safely covered with an old sheet. Now I took it out and carried it downstairs, still draped in its sheet. My aunts were all so busy talking when I entered the room that at first nobody paid much attention to me. Then, one by one, they began to notice the large covered object that I was holding, and they fell silent.
“What on earth is that?” asked Aunt Majolica.
“It’s something I very much want to show you all,” I began. “In fact, it’s the reason why I started to look for you in the first place.”
“What can she mean?” asked Aunt Veronica, looking puzzled.
“I have no idea,” replied Aunt Japonica, who was too tired and too excited to do any mind reading.
I waited until they were silent again and then, with a dramatic pull at the sheet, I exposed the painting. As the picture came into view, there were gasps from several of the aunts.
“Oh my goodness!” exclaimed Aunt Thessalonika. “It’s that picture … the one that was never finished.” Aunt Majolica took several steps forward and examined the painting more closely.
r /> “I believe you’re right,” she said. “Yes, look at the barn! And look, I’m wearing my favorite bracelet—the one I got for my tenth birthday.”
The other aunts crowded around to examine the picture and all of them seemed quite delighted.
“I never thought I’d see it again,” said Aunt Majolica, reaching for a handkerchief she had tucked into her sleeve. “Oh dear! This is just all too much for me.”
And at that, she burst into tears of emotion, closely followed by her sisters. I let them weep for a moment, and then I made my announcement.
“I think we should have this picture completed,” I said. “We can find the painter, or if we can’t find him, we can find another. Then we’ll at last have the family portrait that grandfather and grandmother always wanted.”
The aunts were silent for a moment as they considered my suggestion. Then, almost with one voice, they shouted their agreement.
“A brilliant idea!” crooned Aunt Veronica. “Let’s contact the painter this very moment!”
Of course, it was not quite that easy. Although Aunt Japonica remembered the painter’s name, he had long since left the house he was living in at the time when he had started the picture. Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika, however, pointed out that if anybody could find him it would be them, and that the rest of us should give them two hours to do so. So they dashed off and only an hour and a half later they came back, looking flushed with excitement.
“We’ve found him,” they announced proudly. “It wasn’t easy, but we found him.” They paused before continuing, “And what’s more, he has agreed to come to finish the painting first thing tomorrow morning.”
There was general jubilation at this news, and the aunts all began to talk again. I left the room, leaving the painting propped against a wall. I was delighted to have found all my aunts, but I felt that it would be best to leave them to themselves for a little while.
I could hardly wait, though, for the picture to be finished. I could already imagine it above the fireplace in our living room. I would show all my friends and announce: “My aunts!” Nobody would have as many aunts as that and I knew that everybody was bound to be very impressed. I must admit that this thought rather pleased me.