sassydotnet:river heights

@1972 Dammit, we’re back to “reddish-blond” again. It’s like the editors keep saying “Stop trying to make ‘titian’ work.”

Nancy is invited by her Aunt Eloise in NYC to help a detective with a baffling case. Without the internet, how does the news of her prowess spread far and wide? Bess and George, wearing casual summer dresses, drive Nancy, in a “smart beige suit,” to the airport. When she arrives at her aunt’s apartment she is surprised at the unmanned elevator. Is her surprise because she spends all her time with Dad and Hannah Gruen or was that new in 1972? That sacred text Mad Men dropped the elevator man a while ago and they’re still in the mid-60s. Perhaps it’s a cultural comment on the writer’s part because the elevator stalls, leaving Nancy trapped for an hour. This wouldn’t have happened in my day!

Nancy of course has a flashlight in her purse so she at least doesn’t have to wait in the dark. Once she is rescued she meets Eloise’s detective friend Boyce Osborne or Boycey as he prefers.

The detective was of medium height. Although he was rugged looking, the man had a very kind face and Nancy thought his smile was enchanting. How different from many comic strip detectives!

Boycey tells Nancy about the mystery he and his Murder Club of detective friends recently failed to solve. It involved a “French missionary from Canada (so, a French Canadian, then?) named Père François” who traveled around Illinois converting the Algonquins until they were attacked by the Iroquois in 1680. Père François was found and managed to croak out “Valuable message in hollow oak” before he died.

Boycey and his gang discovered a hollow oak with a lead plate in it that Père François engraved with an arrow. They were unable to find the next oak before having to leave.

“I’m amazed,” said Nancy, “that a tree 300 years old and hollow in 1675 would have survived all this time.”

So am I, frankly, but then Boycey sasses that oaks are, like, totally sturdy and tons of people find 300 year old ones. “By the way,” he added, “the oak is the state tree of Illinois.” Nyah! But seriously, way to get in some learnin’, publishers. Aunt Eloise asks if there would be any danger for Nancy and Boycey reluctantly mentions a scoundrel named Kit Kadle who gave the Murder Club some trouble.

The last thing he passes on is that there is an archaeological dig run by Paulson University in the hollow oak area. Then he’s off:

“Wait until I tell my friends a girl found the message in the hollow oak!”

There is a lot of pre-game wrangling before Nancy sets off for Illinois. Carson won’t let her go alone and Bess & George, gasp, have plans:

“I guess you forgot that our cousin, Marian Shaw, is being married next week and we’re to be bridesmaids.”

Finally Ned calls and at first I think this might turn out to be a scandalous Very Special Episode but he just remembers that his cousin Julie Anne Carswell is joining the Paulson dig so maybe they could travel together. Once Julie Anne confirms with the dig leader, Theresa Bancroft, that Nancy is welcome to stay at the digs digs, our girl is off!

She and Julie Anne encounter the mysterious Kit Kadle before they even make it to the dig but it’s nothing a little sightseeing and a local dinner can’t fix:

“Um! It’s delicious,” said Julie Anne, biting into a broiled, freshly caught fish topped with buttered almonds.

The next morning they arrived at the dig and Nancy met Julie Anne’s college friends and the dig leader, Theresa Bancroft. Mystery intervenes the first night, with Nancy awakened by a goat! Eventually, a local named Clem Rucker shows up to retrieve his goat that someone let out last night and gets roped into driving Nancy and JA around to find hollow oaks. They break for lunch, of course.

“My wife Hortense,” he said, “makes the best beaten biscuits you ever ate. Then she opens ‘em and puts a little fishball inside.”

Umm?

And then just like that Nancy, Clem and Julie Anne find the second hollow oak. In your face, Murder Club!

Later, back at the dig, Nancy is put to work and immediately finds a finger bone. Way to go, Temperance Brennan! Claire Warwick, know-it-all, butts in to argue “it’s obviously a metatarsal bone, not a phalange” but she is swiftly corrected by Theresa. Watch and learn, Claire.

After another night of mischief—this time an attemped break-in—Nancy and Art, who clearly is sweet on Nancy, drive into town to call the police. Later, two troopers and an “elderly Indian” arrive at the dig. Nancy makes with the interrogation of the Indian, Robert Lightfoot. He tells her that Père François had a treasure that was stolen by river pirates after he escaped from the Iroquois; the river pirates were the ones who killed him. So Nancy decides to take a towboat trip down the river to Cave in Rock near Elizabethtown.

On the way to arrange the boat trip, Nancy stops to call Ned who surprises her by saying that he, the other boys and Bess and George are coming to visit! Nancy relates the awesome news to Art who

had become glum but replied, “At any rate I’ll like Bess and George.”

Nancy is all wide-eyed “whatever do you mean?” until

Suddenly [she] wondered, “Could Art be jealous of Ned?”

It takes the whole ride into Cairo to sink in that Art had heard that redheaded detectives do it undercover but our girl was ready with a plan. Throw Julie Anne at him! She invites them both to join the Love Boat Muppet Babies Adventure Cruise.

After making plans for their trip with Hornbeck’s towboat friend, they return to the dig. Nancy finds a crudely printed note in her room:

“You will never find the right hollow oak. I have taken the message out of it and destroyed the tree. Now the treasure it told about will be mine! Ha! Ha!”

The students all deny leaving the note as a joke and Nancy offers to leave the dig and stay in Cairo to avoid bringing danger to the others. Theresa insists she stay and that her friends stay as well once they arrive. Art and Julie Anne get permission to go on the river trip with the Scoobies and then everyone gets back to work.

One of the students, Bob Snell, stands guard that night. Nancy awakes from a nightmare and decides to go for a walk and manages to stumble upon someone trying to steal the skeleton the boys had unearthed earlier. The noise awakens the others and they all discover Bob Snell is missing!

In other bad news, Mr. Drew sends word to N that ol’ Boycey has discovered that one of his Murder Club pals, A.C.E. Armstrong (of course) is also missing. He hasn’t been seen since he left the club trip. The dig goes on lockdown.

“May I make a suggestion?” Nancy asked. “There must be some whistles in camp.”

I think the days when there must always be whistles just lying around are, sadly, long past.

As expected, the night does bring occasion for whistle blowing. This time two men are found creepin’ around Nancy’s cabin & overheard planning to kidnap her. They get away but from the description given by the boy guards it’s clear one of the men was Kit Kadle. 

Nance feels bad about the continued danger so she tells the others she’ll leave tomorrow. Crappy Claire pipes up “no offense,” but she’s glad to hear it. Theresa tells her to STFU and Julie Anne reassures Nancy:

“Don’t let her worry you, dear. Nobody cares for Claire…”

The next morning Art, Julie Anne and Nancy take off in a helicopter for their river trip. Art is still emo’ing around by the time they reach Cairo so Nancy suggests to Julie Anne that she try to cheer him up. Then when the rest of the gang arrives, Bess immediately sniffs out the romantic intrigue and tries to steer Art toward JA as well. Nancy takes Bess aside and basically tells her to keep her yenta mitts to herself even though Nancy was trying the same scheme. No one trusts Simple Bess!

Once everyone boards the towboat Sally O, we meet Captain Boge and the cook Mattie who “was taking a pan of hot rolls from a shiny oven” and we are treated to the first of our mandatory “ha ha, Bess loves food!” lines:

“Oh my diet!” moaned Bess.

The next day they reach Cave in Rock and the kids set out to explore while Captain Boge does some barge business. Once at the cave, Julie Anne exposits:

“I’ve read about this place,” said Julie Anne. “Prehistoric Indians used it, too. And in 1831 the cave was the hideout for a gang of counterfeiters.”

Foreshadowing?

They don’t find any counterfeiters in the cave now but they do come across a damp, tattered note Nancy is able to easily decipher:

Prisoner of Kit Kadle
Taking me to cellar
in Elizabethtown

It’s signed A.C.E—Boycey’s missing friend! The Scoobies get a ride to Elizabethtown and meet the deputy and his cousin Jimmy who of course is invited along to investigate the one empty house in town. But first, food!

“Did you folks have lunch?”
“A little,” Nancy replied.
“Jimmy,” said the deputy, “go in the kitchen and fetch some apples and that bag o’ doughnuts on the table.”

They set off for the old Hatchett house where, surprise, Nancy and Ned find A.C.E. bound and gagged in the attic. They don’t really learn anything from him other than he was waylaid by Kadle and another man who took him to the cave to meet a third man and that’s when he was able to leave his SOS note.

Deputy Bag O’ Doughnuts takes A.C.E. to the hospital and then he and Jimmy drive the Scoobies back to the tugboat. First stop, the galley, of course:

“Oh!” gasped Bess. It’s like a beautiful dream. I had such a skimpy sandwich for lunch!”

They just make it through dessert before the next mishap.

…there was a loud crash of glass and a log whizzed through a window, sailed over their heads and landed against the far wall.

The aftermath is that Burt has a cut on his hand but everyone else is fine. So I’m imagining a small log, like a fireplace log, pitched through the window like a brick. Then I turn the page and see this illustration:

Felix Raybolt! Is Kit Kadle the Hulk?

But that’s not all. The next morning the gang’s gathered to check out the barges being put into place and George manages to fall in the river. She is of course “an excellent swimmer” and is able to swim to safety.

The rest of the trip is full of emo Art and nosy Bess and crazy slang from George:

“Hypers!” George exclaimed.

George looked at him skeptically. “You’re spoofing.”

Back at the dig, Bob Snell is still missing and the Scoobies leave Art and Julie Anne behind to search for more hollow oaks but come up empty. They return to the dig where:

Everyone enjoyed Bess’s delicious supper of ham patties, macaroni and cheese, and banana ice cream topped with cherries and ground walnuts.

After dinner two men roll up on the dig claiming to be from the museum in Cairo and demanding Theresa hand over all the artifacts and bones. When asked for ID, they craftily evade the issue with grade school crazy talk:

“What do you mean?” the other man said haughtily. “Our word is good enough.”

“Listen, lady, I could have this whole project stopped. Not one of you is from Illinois!”

It’s Simple Bess who saves the day by shouting that George will “use some judo on you!” 

Apparently they thought “George” was a man and they wanted no part of a judo encounter.

And I am now so sick to death of this adventure I wish I could be knocked out in a judo encounter. This recap will never end! Things do not come to a swift conclusion but I will try to swift it up.

First, the missing Bob Snell manages to send an SOS from a ham radio; then Nancy receives a ransom note demanding the contents of the hollow oak plus five thousand dollars in return for Bob’s release; the Scoobies arrange a sting at the dropoff and overcome some guards, rescuing Bob; Bob and Burt take the prisoners to the police leaving the others to continue the hurt for the hollow oak; THEY FIND THE HOLLOW OAK; Kit Kadle shows up and demands they hand over the “copper hunting horn decorated with exquisite Limoges porcelain work depicting scenes in France” that was hidden inside the oak; then the police finally appear and everyone stands around while Kadle confesses every last detail of his crimes.

Once the prisoners are taken away, the gang examines the hunting horn. Inside they find:

• a solid gold chain and cross
• a man’s large signet ring with a religious design on it
• a surveyor’s kit, composed of a plumb bob, a compass and a brass tube for sighting
• a message from Père François (which is in old-fashioned French but of course Nancy is able to translate it) telling of an ancient Indian burial mound east of the tree filled with fine objects

They return to the dig and tell everyone about their finds, then call home and rub Boycey’s face in his failure. They also stop in and tell Clem:

“We haven’t had so much goin’ on around here since one o’ the town girls eloped with the postmaster’s son.”
Embarrassed by Clem’s comment, Nancy and Ned smiled.

In a first, the mystery ends with a postscript mentioning the excavation of the burial mound the following summer:

“Nancy was praised for having added valuable information to the archaeological knowledge of America.

I am so sorry; if you’ve got to the end of this monster I totally owe you a drink. Onward to lucky 13!