Peter laughed. “I won’t wake anybody up. I’ll put out Blackberry and lock up. By then you may have thought of it.”
He returned a few minutes later. Judy was still awake. She said a little drowsily, “I know what it was. I wanted to tell you how she described her uncle’s house, the quiet and everything, almost as if she used to live there, but how could that be? Paul Riker was her husband’s uncle, not hers.”
“You knew my grandparents when I was a little boy,” Peter reminded her.
“That’s true. She must have lived near them. But there are no other houses near by except the caretaker’s cottage. Could she have been the caretaker’s little girl?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” Peter suggested.
Judy said she would first thing in the morning. But morning brought new problems. Mrs. Riker woke everybody up screaming that the children were missing.
“I found a doll in Penny’s bed,” she wailed. “It was put there as a warning—”
“It was put there as a surprise,” Judy told her. “I tiptoed in and put it there myself. It’s my old doll, Buttercup, and there’s nothing mysterious about her. The children were all right then.”
“They aren’t now. This is too much!” Helen Riker cried, becoming hysterical. “If those robbers entered the house during the night and stole them, I’ll never forgive myself. Maybe they think I lied to them when I said I didn’t know where Uncle Paul kept his jade collection. They may think if they hold the children they can force me to tell—”
“Wait a minute!” Peter stopped her. “Before you jump to any such conclusions, tell me when you last saw the children.”