SHAKESPEARE’ SECRET Page 2

“No,” Hero said. “Tomorrow.”

  “And what grade are you entering?”

  “Sixth. Beatrice is in eighth.”

  “It must be difficult for you, adjusting to a new school.”

  Hero snorted at the understatement before she caught herself. “Yeah, it is, sometimes. But I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.”

  She passed a last handful of roses to Mrs. Roth and straightened. “That’s enough, isn’t it?” She was beginning to think she’d be stuck here until the school bus came tomorrow morning.

  Mrs. Roth lowered her face into the armful of petals and inhaled. “Yes, that’s plenty. You’ll have trouble finding a vase large enough to hold them.”

  She gave the roses to Hero, studying her thoughtfully. “Good luck tomorrow at school. It’s been such a pleasure to meet your family. Arthur Murphy, the man who used to live in your house, told me he’d found the perfect new owners for it. I can see exactly what he meant. He wouldn’t sell to just anyone, you know. That house was very special to him.”

  Hero glanced over her shoulder at the gate. “My mom and dad said he was really nice to them.”

  “Oh, he was very impressed with your father. A Shakespeare scholar! Arthur’s wife was English, and they were both quite literary.”

  Hero nodded. “Well, I should go.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Roth said. “With school starting, you probably have lots to do. Let me open the gate for you.” She swung it wide and seemed about to step out of the way but then she paused. “You know, Hero, when you meet your classmates tomorrow, if you need something to break the ice, you might tell them that you’re living in the Murphy diamond house. That will make you something of a celebrity.”

  Hero lowered the thorny stems to look at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Your house,” Mrs. Roth repeated. “Your parents know the story, don’t they? I thought the Realtor would have told them. Most people around here believe that the house has a diamond hidden in it. A seventeen-carat one, somewhere on the property.”

  “A diamond? You’re kidding.”

  “No, not at all. It was quite a scandal last year. The police, the insurance company—everyone got involved.”

  Hero shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why would anyone hide something so valuable?”

  “Well—” Mrs. Roth began, but at that moment they heard Beatrice’s voice from the Netherfields’ back porch.

  “Hero! Hero, Mom needs you.”

  Hero frowned. “Okay, coming,” she called. She looked at Mrs. Roth. “Maybe you could tell me the rest of the story some other time.”

  “Of course. Stop by after school tomorrow if you like. I’d be happy to tell you about it.”

  Hero nodded. Holding the roses gingerly, she negotiated her way through the gate and started toward home. “Bye, Mrs. Roth,” she called. “Thanks for the flowers.”

  “Goodbye, Hero. I’ll see you soon.”

  Hero glanced over her shoulder. She could see Mrs. Roth moving through the wild tangle of garden, tenderly lifting the blossoms.

  CHAPTER

  3

  As the school bus pulled into the long drive, Hero craned for a closer look at the blank, brick side of Ogden Elementary. It was only eight thirty in the morning, but the air was so soupy and hot that her thighs stuck to the vinyl seat. She felt vaguely sick to her stomach, just as she had all morning, too worried even to think about eating breakfast. At the kitchen table earlier, her mother’s encouraging glances and her father’s hearty enthusiasm had only made her feel worse.

  Beatrice had left an hour ago for junior high, gotten a ride, of course, with a girl who lived three blocks away. Hero felt a pang of pure envy. This wouldn’t be nearly so bad if she had somebody, anybody, to walk in with her. But at the bus stop that morning, the neighborhood crowd had sized her up sullenly and quickly sorted itself into small bunches of kids talking and comparing backpacks. Hero had been left to stand with a little boy who was starting first grade. To her chagrin, he seemed to take an immediate liking to her and chattered nonstop. His name was Aaron, he was losing his bottom tooth (“This one right here!“), he’d been to a Baltimore Orioles game on Saturday (“It was great!“), and his dad got him a hat, but hats weren’t allowed in school so he was just going to wear it on the bus.

  Now he was leaning over the back of the seat in front of her, looking anxious. “Can you take me to my classroom?”

  “Don’t you know where it is?”

  “I think so. But I don’t remember how to go.”

  Hero sighed. “I guess.”

  The bus rumbled to a stop in front of the school, and the seats emptied in a flurry. The bigger boys jostled their way to the front, their backpacks swinging through the air. Aaron, twisting his Orioles hat, hung back, and Hero felt obliged to stay with him. They were the last to get off the bus.

  In the lobby, she grabbed his hand and they stood for a minute, resisting the press of moving bodies, looking around. The main corridor echoed with laughter and noise. The walls were painted a dull green, and beige-flecked linoleum tile covered the floor, stretching in all directions. It looked institutional, like a hospital or prison. The overall effect was completely bland and vaguely threatening at the same time.

  Hero glanced down at Aaron. “What’s your room number?”

  Aaron’s brow furrowed. “Urn ... it has an 8 in it.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t you even—” Hero exclaimed, but she stopped herself. Aaron seemed about to cry.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll find it.”

  Finding it turned out to be more complicated than Hero expected. It meant a visit to the office, then a detour to the first-grade wing, then her own longdistance sprint to the opposite end of the school, where the sixth-grade classrooms were. She paused outside the closed door of Mrs. Vanderley’s room, knowing with a terrible, sinking certainty that she was late. She could hear the low murmur of the students inside, broken by the teacher’s staccato announcements. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and walked in.

  As Hero suspected, the other kids were already in their seats. The teacher looked up in surprise when the door opened.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Hero mumbled, quickly scanning the room for an empty desk.

  “Oh hello, you’re new, aren’t you?” the teacher said, smiling. “I’ll introduce you to the rest of the class. Let’s see, your name is ...” Mrs. Vanderley studied the attendance roster, pursing her lips. Here we go, thought Hero.

  “It’s Hero,” she said, her voice ringing in the quiet classroom. “Hero Netherfield.”

  “Hero?” said a red-haired girl in the front row. “Hey, that’s my dog’s name.”

  The words seemed to spill into the air and stay there, frozen, like the speech bubble in a cartoon. For a moment, Hero hoped against hope that no one had heard. But a split second later the classroom erupted in laughter. Not snickers or muffled giggles but a great rolling roar. Two boys in the back began whistling and slapping their jeans, calling, “Here, Hero, here, girl!”

  Someone else yelled, “Watch out, she’s not house-broken!” Hero felt her cheeks burn. She stared at the floor.

  Mrs. Vanderley seemed momentarily at a loss. She looked at Hero and at the class with equal annoyance. Then she thumped her hand on the desk.

  “That’s enough! That is enough. Hero, why don’t you sit at this desk in the front? I want all of you to take out your spelling notebooks.”

  Hero hurried across the room and slid into the empty seat. She searched her backpack for her notebook, trying to look like she didn’t care, like this kind of thing happened all the time. But her heart filled with despair. There was no way the dog joke would end here. It was exactly the kind of mindless label that stuck to a person like glue. In this class, in this school, she would always be the girl named after a dog.

  The rest of the day did nothing to make her feel better. All morning, she could hear furtive whispered commands like “Down, girl” and
“Roll over.” In the hall on the way to the art room, several boys whistled softly. Back at her desk, she found a torn strip of notebook paper with “woof” scrawled across it.

  Lunch was even worse. Hero threaded her way through the crowded, noisy cafeteria to an empty table, only to have a small posse of kids surround her as soon as she sat down.

  “You can’t sit there. That’s our table,” a thin blond girl told her.

  “Yeah,” another girl added. “You’re in Kendra’s seat.”

  Hero looked at them doubtfully. She was pretty sure there weren’t assigned seats, but if they wanted her to move, it didn’t really matter.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. She picked up her tray and slid into a seat at the end of a long table nearby. But the kids there immediately began making barking noises.

  For the entire day, her only small consolation was that the red-haired girl who’d started the whole thing clearly felt as embarrassed about the teasing as Hero did. When the bell rang at dismissal, they ended up next to each other in the bus line.

  The red-haired girl said softly, “I wish I hadn’t said that about my dog. I didn’t know they’d start teasing you about it.”

  Hero looked away. “Yeah . . . how could you know?”

  “The thing is,” the girl continued, “he’s a really great dog. That’s why we named him Hero.”

  Hero hoisted her backpack over her shoulder. She knew the girl was trying to apologize. She knew she should say something to make it easier. But she felt completely empty, as if every ounce of thoughtfulness and courtesy had been sucked right out of her.

  “I guess it does make a good dog’s name,” she said at last, and then hurried outside to the bus.

  She had never wanted to go home so badly in her entire life. Her whole body longed for it. At least the nausea she’d felt that morning, the waves of fretful anticipation, had disappeared. Every time her family moved she had a brief spell of imagining that the new school might be different, that here she would somehow reinvent herself and end up accepted, liked, even popular. Sometimes that small bubble of hope lingered for weeks. This time, even though the bubble had burst, at least it had all happened quickly.

  Hero climbed onto the bus. Aaron was waving his baseball cap at her. As she settled into the seat behind him, she thought for the first time that day about Mrs. Roth, who was expecting her to stop by on the way home.

  CHAPTER

  4

  The school bus groaned to a halt at the street corner. Hero hurried down the steps and jumped lightly to the sidewalk. Three older boys stood in an intimidating huddle at the street sign, and she ducked her head as she walked past.

  “Bye, Hero,” Aaron yelled, racing toward his front yard. Hero started to call out to him, but she noticed the boys were watching her, so instead she lifted one arm to wave. The junior high bus must have come a while ago. Beatrice would be home already.

  Until Hero reached the edge of Mrs. Roth’s yard, she hadn’t fully decided whether or not to stop. She wanted to hear about the diamond. But she felt so battered by the school day that she wasn’t sure she had the energy to be with anyone, even if all she had to do was listen. But then, as she glanced at the lush jungle of flowers, she saw Mrs. Roth sitting on her front stoop, reading the newspaper. Again she was dressed in a crisp blouse and long pants, oblivious to the wilting heat.

  Hero stopped at the gate. “Hi,” she called uncertainly.

  Mrs. Roth looked up. “Well, hello! I didn’t realize it was so late. How was your first day?”

  Hero shrugged. “Pretty much the same as always. A little worse, maybe.”

  Mrs. Roth looked at her for a minute, then patted the step. “Come sit down,” she said. “You can help me with the crossword. Then I’ll keep my promise and tell you about the Murphy diamond.”

  The wooden boards of the porch were warm from the sun and creaked agreeably as Hero sat down. Mrs. Roth spread the newspaper between them, handing Hero the pen she was holding.

  “Five letters, exhausted,” she said. “There’s a y at the end.”

  “Weary,” said Hero promptly.

  “Oh, yes, excellent. Fill it in.”

  Hero carefully wrote the word in block letters. She scanned the remaining clues.

  “Eight letters, one who hopes,” she read.

  “Optimist,” said Mrs. Roth.

  They took turns with the pen until the puzzle was almost complete. Then Mrs. Roth slid the paper onto Hero’s lap.

  “Try to finish it. I’ll fix us something to eat.”

  Hero considered the remaining blanks until Mrs. Roth returned carrying a tray with two rippled green glasses of iced tea and a china plate heaped with wedges of cinnamon toast. They ate silently for a few minutes, looking at the puzzle. Hero licked her fingers. She hadn’t had cinnamon toast in a long time. The crunchy sweetness reminded her of the elaborate tea parties she and Beatrice used to organize underneath the kitchen table when they were little.

  “Well, I suppose we’ll have to throw in the towel,” Mrs. Roth said eventually. “I’ve grown too attached to these crosswords anyway. It’s an ’old lady’ habit, I’m afraid. I never used to bother with them. But now I find it gratifying to solve their little mysteries.”

  Hero nodded. “I read somewhere that it’s supposed to be good for old people to do crossword puzzles. It’ll keep you from getting senile.”

  Mrs. Roth smiled. “That certainly is an advantage.”

  She collected the dishes and carried them into the house, her voice echoing from somewhere inside. “Do you know who used to do the crosswords with me?

  Arthur Murphy’s wife, Eleanor. Did you have a chance to tell your classmates you’re living in the Murphy diamond house?”

  “Not exactly,” Hero answered. “They were more interested to find out that one of the kids in the class has a dog named Hero.”

  Mrs. Roth appeared at the door, frowning. “Oh, heavens. What an unfortunate coincidence.” She sat down next to Hero. “But you know, people always choose the best names for their dogs. No one names a dog Miriam, I can assure you.”

  Hero laughed. “No, I guess not. Anyway, tell me about the diamond.”

  Mrs. Roth leaned her head against the wood post. She gazed across the garden at the weathered gray shingles of the Netherfields’ house.

  “The diamond,” she said. “Well, let’s see. It was very large, almost the size of a walnut. Seventeen carats is enormous for a diamond, did you know that? It was yellowish, and not a particularly good cut, but that’s because it was so old. An antique. I only saw it once, actually. It was part of a necklace, a very beautiful jeweled necklace that had been in Eleanor’s family for centuries.”

  Hero cupped her hand, trying to picture a diamond big enough to fill her palm. Even the diamond rings of millionaires and movie stars weren’t that big. They certainly weren’t that old. “Centuries?” she asked.

  “Isn’t that remarkable? Her family was English, as I told you, and this was an heirloom piece that Eleanor had inherited from a reclusive aunt on the Vere side. That was her maiden name—Vere.”

  Hero nodded impatiently. “So what happened to the diamond?”

  “Well, the Murphys knew the necklace was so valuable they couldn’t possibly afford the insurance. But they had the diamond itself appraised and got coverage for that. It was valued at almost a million dollars.”

  “Really?” Hero couldn’t imagine owning anything worth so much money. “Did they put it in a safe or lock it up somewhere?”

  Mrs. Roth smiled faintly. “That wasn’t their style. They were very modest, private people. I don’t think anyone but me knew about the necklace.”

  Hero clasped her hands around her knees. “But where is it now?”

  Mrs. Roth sighed, still staring at the Netherfields’ house. “One Saturday afternoon last year, while they were out, their house was broken into. They’d left the kitchen window open, and the thief supposedly climbed in. He didn’t take much, just so
me cash from the kitchen drawer and the diamond. It was all very odd. Didn’t take the necklace—just the diamond, removed it from the setting.”

  Hero turned to her, puzzled. “But I thought you said the necklace had jewels on it. Why didn’t the thief steal the necklace?”

  “That’s just it. It didn’t make sense. The necklace was an antique, worth a fortune. And the thief didn’t take anything else of the Murphys’ either, not the sterling silver, nor the electronics, not any of Eleanor’s other jewelry. There were no fingerprints in the house except Arthur’s and Eleanor’s. There had been no other break-ins in the neighborhood. And the police found it strange that someone climbed through the window. I guess the back door was so old, it would have been easy to force open.”

  Hero rested her chin on her knees. “Did the police think they’d faked the whole thing?”

  “Well, yes,” Mrs. Roth said. “I suppose they did. As did the insurance company, of course. There were detectives prowling around for months. They even interviewed me.” She looked at Hero more closely. “Are you sure you haven’t heard any of this? It’s common knowledge in town.”

  “My parents may have heard about it. But they didn’t say anything. Why would the Murphys do that? Just for the money?”

  Mrs. Roth didn’t answer. She smoothed her trousers, and Hero noticed how old her hands looked, the skin thin and white, a network of blue veins near the surface.

  Hero asked again, “Why would they pretend the diamond was stolen?”

  Mrs. Roth sighed. “They were very good friends of mine,” she said finally.

  Hero glanced at her. She fiddled with her shoelaces, waiting for a response. Why wasn’t she answering? And then she thought she understood.

  “You can tell me,” Hero said slowly. “I won’t tell anyone. There’s nobody I could tell anyway.”

  “No?” Mrs. Roth turned to her, and her gaze was steady. “You’re like me, then. There’s nobody I can tell either. Eleanor was my closest friend. Isn’t it strange? She’s the one I’d most like to talk to about it, and she’s gone.” Her lips twitched. “There’s a wonderful Emily Dickinson poem: