“That was silly of him,” Marjorie said with a sniff. “He might have known that the Allens don’t frighten easily.”
“Be quiet, imp,” Jimmy said. “He didn’t know anything about us then.” He added to Philip: “So it was Taggart who wrote the two threatening letters? And left his footprint on the ground under the shed floor?”
“That’s right,” Phil told him. “He confessed that he wrote the one to Penny after she fell down the well. And he also confessed that he was our night prowler. Actually he did a lot of prowling we didn’t know about, trying to find out if his anonymous letters had any effect. The first night he came snooping around he listened outside the living room window and heard us joking about digging in the well for buried treasure. That gave him the idea of keeping us busy digging outside, instead of searching around inside.”
“I can guess what he did next,” Marjorie said with a rueful laugh. “He wrote that note on an old piece of paper, put one half in the bottle Judy and I found down on the beach, and the other half in the pocket of the old suit Brook found when the boys were out camping.” She stopped suddenly, her blue eyes wide with amazement. “But how and when did he manage to put that map in the lid of the costume jewelry box?”
“I can answer that one,” Penny said with a sigh. “The day our first guests arrived, I heard someone rummaging around in the storage room. I thought it was you, Marjorie, and thought you were fibbing later when you insisted you were out in the Donahues’ cabin helping Ann Mary count their laundry.” She laughed. “I owe you an apology, honey. While you and Ann Mary were busy, and Phil and I were upstairs hanging curtains, Taggart must have sneaked into the storage room and pasted that map behind the rotten lining of the old jewelry box.”
“You’re both two jumps ahead of me,” Philip said, laughing. “Taggart did put the map where you found it, but first he had to have some excuse for coming out here. He heard in the village that we were looking for someone who would take the soiled linen in to the laundry-mat and applied to Penny for the job.”
Penny moaned, covering her pretty face with both hands. “Oh, why did I fall into his trap so easily? I should have guessed when he offered to do it so cheaply, that something was wrong.”
“Not at all,” Peter said protectively. “Taggart did handle the laundry situation in a very satisfactory manner, so I don’t think anyone can blame you for not suspecting him of an ulterior motive.”
Phil nodded. “That’s right, Penny, nobody blames you. The trouble was that no one paid much attention to him when he came out here. I imagine Ann Mary didn’t always have the bundle ready, or his pay when he brought out the clean wash. Once when she left him alone in the kitchen he slipped down to the beach and stuck the bottle containing half the note under a rock.”
“We made everything so easy for him,” Marjorie groaned. “He was there in the kitchen, I remember, the day Ann Mary suggested that Judy and I search for rare shells. He was also there the time I asked her if it would be all right for us to spend the first rainy day rummaging through the old trunks in the storage room.”