Transcript: MaYaND 001: CB 01: The Secret of the Old Clock

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[Sound Cue: Eerie piano tune reminiscent of the Nancy Drew PC game soundtracks]

Colleen: Hello and welcome to Me and You and Nancy Drew, a podcast in which I, Colleen-

Meghan: -and I, Meghan-

Colleen: -are going through the Nancy Drew books, classic and modern, the TV show, the movies, the games, the whole extended “Nancy Drew-niverse,” one story at a time. To start us off, we're discussing The Secret of the Old Clock, which was originally written in 1930, although both of our copies are the 1959 Grosset and Dunlap edited versions. The edited versions, we looked this up, they apparently make her two years older and quote, more respectful of male authority unquote. So do with that what you will. 

Meghan: And also, allegedly, the books that started being released in 1959 removed some racial stereotypes, possibly. We're going to do our own research to figure out exactly what that means, since the internet wasn't quite as clear as we’d hoped about that. 

Colleen: And in fact, multiple people online have pointed out that the job they did of removing these racial stereotypes just kind of…removed the people of color from the original books instead of just kind of dialing down the prejudice. 

Meghan: We have actually gotten our hands on a 1930s version. So maybe look out for an episode where we'll dive deeper into that to see what exactly the changes are from The Secret of the Old Clock 1959 version from The Secret of the Old Clock 1930 version. 

Colleen: I hope they still have a clock. I wonder if it gets older over time. Maybe the clock is still from the same time period. 

Meghan: Or yeah, is it a younger clock if they're changing the time period? 

Colleen: Such a good point. 

Meghan: Secret of the Slightly Younger Clock.

Colleen: So yeah, as previously discussed, my name is Colleen. My late mom, Char, had this amazing podcast idea. And so we're keeping the title she came up with and a lot of her segment ideas and just kind of, like, the general spirit and vibes of my awesome mom in this. So she grew up reading Nancy Drew. And so I have most of, if not the entire series on my bookshelf that were her personal copies when she grew up. So the one we read for this one, that I read for this one, is actually two books in one volume. It's kind of like a grayish purple. I don't…I don't know if it started as a grayish purple, but it is a grayish purple now. And so this book has The Secret of the Old Clock and The Hidden Staircase, like, back-to-back. So she got, like, a book every month or so as a subscription service, which is very cool. And it smells like the nostalgic mustiness of the upstairs of my grandma's house, which does make it sound bad, but I like it. So I grew up reading that with her, and then she bought me one of the computer games on a CD-ROM, and I had never played a computer game before, full stop, so that was hard. And we didn't have internet, so I made my dad go to work and then use his work computer to, like, print out the entirety of each game tutorial so I could play the games. He was like, “I would like to do firefighting while I'm at work, but sure. I'll print thirty-nine pages for you.” What's, what's your history with Nancy Drew?

Meghan: My history is not quite as extensive as Colleen's, but the Nancy Drew books were one of the first series that I ever actually sat down and read in, like, mid- to early elementary school. ‘Cause I was good at reading, but I hated reading. I would just do the bare minimum that the teacher assigned. Like, you need to read this certain number of books by the end of the school year. And I would do that, full stop, no more. So it wasn't until I started reading the Little House on the Prairie books and I found out I actually loved reading. I then picked up the Nancy Drew books and they were so much fun. And that's when I realized, wait, reading is fun. And then after that, I just became obsessed with reading all of the Nancy Drew books that I could get my hands on, in order, because that's how I am as a person. 

Colleen: Yeah, I did not do them in order. 

Meghan: Yes. I very much enjoy all of my things being in order. But I really looked up to Nancy Drew when I was in elementary school. I loved all the detective stories, and I know I've shared this with Colleen in the past, but every time I would go get my hair cut, my mom would always make sure it got cut to the same length. That wasn't a choice. But I would always ask my like, little hairstylist to, like, curl out the bottom a little bit, so it, like, flared out like Nancy Drew, specifically because I wanted to look like Nancy Drew. And so I would get very excited about my Nancy Drew haircut from ages, like, eight to twelve. 

Colleen: Incredible. Incredible. The one thing she's known for is, for sure, her hair. 

Meghan: Definitely. We all, we all know what Nancy Drew hair looked like. 

Colleen: I mean, what I did learn is, they describe it as “titian,” but I was like sounding it out and it's “T-I-T-I-A-N,” and I was not saying it the right way. 

Meghan: I can guess how-

Colleen: Can you extrapolate?

Meghan: Yeah, how you might have pronounced that. 

Colleen: And it just means, like, strawberry blonde. So my mom always loved Nancy's moxie, which also is not a word I've ever used outside of describing old-timey people, but whatever. And she was like, “She's driving around. She's got a convertible. She's picking locks. That's a crime. That's fine. Whatever.” But, like, Nancy's very independent and that's very cool. And then my mom got me into, like, Veronica Mars, and all these things that referenced Nancy Drew because they have girl detectives and Nancy's a girl detective. 

Meghan: And Colleen subsequently got me interested in Veronica Mars, which I never watched when it was on. 

Colleen: For example.

Meghan: For example. And I also never played any of the Nancy Drew computer games as a kid or a teenager. 

Colleen: So I made you play one of those. 

Meghan: Yes. So I have played, I think, two of them now. 

Colleen: Two of those. Yes.

Meghan: Two of them. Oh my gosh. Such a great time. I wish that I'd had them growing up.

Colleen: They're fun. They're very fun, especially because we did not, like I said, we did not have internet. So, like, this is all in one disk, or in the case of the very first, this is the Secrets Can Kill CD-ROM that actually took place across two disks just for, like, storage space because of the time in which it was made. So I checked it out of the public library. So already this has been pre-loved, it’s a little scratched up. The disks are not in perfect condition. So that's already an issue. But then when you go from one of the buildings to the other building in that first CD-ROM game, you have to take out one disk and put in the second disk to, like, go to the diner or go to the high school. 

Meghan: Wait, just to go to a different building? 

Colleen: Just to go to a different building. Yes. You're like, I'm walking down the street from the school to the diner. Let me, like, laboriously take out Disk One and insert Disk Two. 

Meghan: Oh my goodness. Wow. 

Colleen: It's not great. It was, like, a physically arduous task. If you forgot, like, one clue at the diner, too bad. You have to, you know, take out the whole disk, put the whole disk back in. And then they remastered that one. Which I don't know- 

Meghan: Is that…that's the one we played on Steam? 

Colleen: You played, yes, you played the remastered one. And I don't know if I showed you because they changed it. It was 2D. Like, the characters were kind of, like, more cartoon-y, and then they, like, made them into 3D animated versions. And they also changed the ending, I believe, when they remastered it. But you never saw the original, I don't think. I'm going to have to show you a picture. The guy who works at the diner got such a “glow-down.” I know that's not really a term, but, like, he goes from this little happy teenage guy and then he turns into this blonde horror that is ostensibly still sixteen years old. He is at least thirty.

Meghan: Oh wow. Wow. 

Colleen: I don't know if you knew that the diner guy was a teenager because he doesn't look like it. 

Meghan: No, don't think I knew that. 

Colleen: It’s bad. 

Meghan: That is like a middle-aged man.

Colleen: Yes, yes, and that's fine. You're allowed to work at the diner when you're a middle-aged man, but we're supposed to be finding, like, clues regarding the high school students, and he's one of them. He got held back, like, twenty years, I think. 

Meghan: Hmm. Hmmmm.

Colleen: It’s unfortunate. So Meghan, how do you know your co-host Colleen? 

Meghan: So I met my co-host Colleen about five and a half years ago when I became their co-worker at an elementary school we both worked at. And when we first met, we were trying to figure out if we were gonna be rivals or friends. Because we very visibly had a lot in common, including a ridiculous wardrobe with very colorful dresses. 

Colleen: I would say fabulous wardrobe. 

Meghan: Yes, fabulous wardrobe, very colorful. 

Colleen: I have cooler earrings, though.

Meghan: That is very true, very true. 

Colleen: Well, honestly, it's more that I have more earrings. I have way too many earrings, but I've kind of switched from the dresses with weird patterns to more, like, button-downs with weird patterns since I came out as nonbinary, but, like, I obviously have my Ms. Frizzle dress still. That's still in the closet.

Meghan: Of course.

Colleen:  And of course the rainbow octopus skirt with pockets that someone super cool made for me. Yeah. 

Meghan: That was me! I made that! 

Colleen: That was you! That was you. You made that. ‘Cause you're cool. Did it have a matching mask? 

Meghan: It did have a matching mask. For the pandemic. 

Colleen: Yes. Very fun. 

Meghan: So, like, as we were kind of getting started at-well, I mean, you were already working at that school, but. We were both, I think, very, like, jealous of each other's, like, personality and wardrobe and style. And we were both interested in theatre and things. So everyone was trying to encourage us to start a drama club together. I was like, “Oh, I had wanted to start a drama club, but sure, I guess we, we can start a drama club.” 

Colleen: Same!

Meghan: And then as we started to kind of feel each other out, we were like, “Wait a second.” I think it was-it might've actually been Nancy Drew that brought us together. 

Colleen: Was it? Oh my gosh.

Meghan: There's a few different things. You know, we spent a lot of time on similar parts of the internet. It was inevitable.

Colleen:  We just grew up in the same part of Tumblr at the same time, is what you mean. 

Meghan: Yes, yes. So we have very similar senses of humor. And then the pandemic hit, that first school year that I was working there. 

Colleen: Right. 

Meghan: Weirdly, even though we weren't able to see each other, the pandemic brought us closer together. 

Colleen: I don't know how, but yeah. 

Meghan: Yeah. Yeah. We didn't, like, see each other in person for, like, six months. But after that-

Colleen:  That was the magic of the internet.

Meghan: -best friendship. Yes. Best friendship ever since. 

Colleen: Yes. 

Meghan: And now we are, unfortunately, no longer coworkers, mostly because I moved over an hour away. Makes it a little tough for the commute. 

Colleen: Difficult commute. Yeah. 

Meghan: Yes. Yes. But we were each other's bridesmaids. So that's very exciting.

Colleen: Yeah, my brother called you the diversity hire for being the only straight person in my wedding party. 

Meghan: Yes I'm the token, the token straight from the wedding.

Colleen: It was nice! Thank you for representing in this trying time. Okay, enough about us. Let's get to know our fearless detective, Nancy Drew.

Meghan: Yeah!

[Sound Cue: Synthesized pentatonic scale underneath the spoken words “Drew Haiku”]

Meghan: In this segment, we will each recap the book through the poetic form of haiku. For those of you who may not know, a haiku is usually in Japanese and it is usually about nature. And it's a poem. But the American elementary school teacher version is just in English and it can really be about whatever. But the rules are that the first line has five syllables, the second has seven, and the third has five. And that's it. 

Colleen: Okay, great. So let's recap this book. This is my extremely helpful Drew Haiku of Secret of- Sorry, The Secret of the Old Clock. The Ohio State University would be very, very mad at me right now. Okay. [clears throat dramatically] “Nancy finds a clock / with hidden will inside and / distributes the wealth.”

Meghan: Ooh, yay. 

Colleen: Do we do snaps after the haiku to indicate that we're poets and/or beatniks? Snaps? 

Meghan: Yeah! [snaps fingers]

Colleen: Your turn.

Meghan:  Okay, here is my haiku. “Nancy Drew's first case. / Where there's a will, there's a way. / Gotta find the clock.” 

Colleen: Whoa, see, that was clever. That was much cleverer than mine. I like it a lot.

Meghan: Well, yours actually summarized the story. Mine just kind of summarized the premise. 

Colleen: No, but I liked it. It had, like, a double meaning with the “Where there’s a will, there's a way.”

Meghan: Oh yeah. We're looking for a will and a clock at the same time, because for some reason they're, they're connected. 

Colleen: They're obviously connected. How could they not be? They are two separate nouns.

[Sound Cue: Clock ticks underneath the spoken words “Thirty-Second Recap”]

Meghan: In this segment, we will each attempt to summarize the entire book within thirty seconds without limiting ourselves to a specific poetic form. That way you, the listener, have an idea of what happened in this book. 

Colleen: Are you saying the haikus weren't helpful? 

Meghan: Okay. No, they're great. They're great. But I don't know if they really fully summarized what happened in the book for those of you who didn't just read it.

Colleen: All right, you get thirty seconds. Tell me about this book. 

Meghan: Okay. Go. [clock ticks underneath the book summary] Nancy Drew is an eighteen-year-old girl, and her dad is a lawyer. And she likes to solve mysteries, probably. But she's actually never done one by herself. And she finds all these different people in this little town who are, they're all very sad because they don't have any money. And they're really, really good people. And Nancy is appalled at this. And she finds out that their cousins inherited, probably, no, no, no, they're going to inherit all this money from this guy who was really nice and he was also friends and neighbors with all these people. Oh gosh. [ticking stops, clock bongs] I didn't even look down at the clock because I knew it was going to stress me out.

Colleen:  I was like, “Ooh, she's giving a lot of setup and details. I wonder how she'll fit all the plot in.”

Meghan: And then I just didn't. It's your turn. Okay. Maybe, maybe you'll get some more, more story in there. 

Colleen: We'll see.

Meghan: All right. Your turn. Ready, set, go. 

Colleen: [clock ticks underneath the book summary] So Nancy is in her blue car thinking about her dad, a lawyer who does mysteries. He solves them. He solves mysteries. He does not make the mysteries, usually. And then she helps him. And then she's like, “Oh my god, there's all these poor people and I wish I could help them. Oh my god, there's maybe a will from this rich guy. Let me find it.” And then, oh my god, while she's talking to this poor person, she mentioned that he liked to hide things in weird places, like perhaps a clock. “Oh my god, there's movers. No, they're con men. Oh my god, there's a clock. Ahhh, I'm speeding! Is there a cop? Great. Oh my god, the will gives money to all these people and we all lived happily ever after except for the bridge guys.” The end. Did I-? [ticking stops, clock bongs]

Meghan: You did it. Wow. You did it perfectly. 

Colleen: I perfectly said “Oh my god” a lot. There were a lot of “oh my god”s in there. I got stressed. I do like how you phrased how Nancy's appalled to find poor people. I know you meant, like, she's sad they have no money. But I thought she was appalled that they exist. 

Meghan: She’s appalled that they have no money and she thinks they should have money because they're good people and they work hard.

[Sound cue: High-pitched whistle-like note descending in pitch underneath the stretched-out, also-descending-in-pitch spoken word “Cliffhangers!”] 

Meghan: In this section, we will each share our favorite cliffhanger in the book. So one of the things that Nancy Drew books and the Hardy Boys and I think mystery books in general do is incorporate a good cliffhanger, so that you want to keep reading the book. So I wanted to share my favorite cliffhanger from this book, which was the first one that I noticed, though I was reading it rather quickly.

Colleen: They always make it the last line of the chapter though, so you have to keep reading. 

Meghan: Yeah, so you make that promise to yourself like, “I'll just finish this chapter and then I'll go to bed. Oh my gosh, I can't go to bed yet!” Okay, anyway, so my favorite is at the end of Chapter Four. Nancy's driving in her convertible and the roof is broken and it won't go up and it starts pouring rain. She sees an open barn and she's like, “Oh my gosh, a barn. I'm gonna go in there." And she drives as fast as she can and it says, “Nancy headed straight for the building and drove in. The next moment she heard a piercing scream!” 

Colleen: Wait, did you think she ran somebody over?

Meghan: Yes!

Colleen: Oh my god. 

Meghan: Or ran something over, someone's screaming about it. 

Colleen: I just assumed the scream was unrelated. I'm, like, used to these cliffhangers being more dramatic than the actual plot point would deserve. I love this though, this alternate universe where she drove in and ran someone over.

Meghan: Okay, well, this is, like, the first Nancy Drew book that I've read probably since elementary school. So I know for a fact, I read this one in, like, third grade. So it's been a long time. And yeah, like, a piercing scream! Very dramatic. 

Colleen: Incredible. I love the ones that end on exclamation points that don't really deserve an exclamation point. 

Meghan: Yes. So when I got this exclamation point, I needed to know, like, who was screaming. 

Colleen: You got to keep reading. That's how they get you. There's one chapter, though, where the ending line, I think it's phrased as if it's a dramatic ending, but it just ends with her eyes sparkling. Her eyes sparkle constantly. It must be exhausting. I think my favorite cliffhanger is at the end of Chapter X…I…I, that's twelve. I did that math in my head. 

Meghan: Very good. Good job. 

Colleen: Thank you. I'm an educator. So she got locked in the closet that she was snooping in. And then they did not give her any food because why would you? And she goes, “‘They left me here to-to starve!’ she thought frantically.” So that was my favorite cliffhanger. 

Meghan: I love it.

[Sound cue: Ocean waves crash underneath the spoken words “Ship of the Week”]

Meghan: In this segment, we will be looking at relationships, also known as ships, for those of you unruined by the 2013 Tumblr era of the internet. And so when you ship two people, usually in a fictional story-hopefully in a fictional story! Don't do that to people in real life. But it's where you have two characters that you hope that by the end of the story will end up in a relationship. So you might hear phrases like, “Oh, I ship them,” to show that you want, like, two characters to get together. Or “That ship has sailed.” You'd say that when two characters did actually get together in, like, canon, the show or book or whatever piece of media. Or you might say the opposite, like, “The author sunk my ship.” So, like, if you were hoping that Character A and Character B get together, but then Character A actually gets with Character C, the author sunk your ship, because in the canon of the story, the text that the author has come up with, the author said that your wishes about those two characters are unfortunately not true. 

Colleen: That's “canon” with one “N.” Well, one “N” in the middle. Not with two “N”s in the middle. 

Meghan: Yes. 

Colleen: I guess a cannon with two “N”s would sink a ship. That's not where that came from, right?

Meghan: I don't think so. 

Colleen: I don't think so. I just had to check. 

Meghan: Yeah. And so if the ship has sailed, then that means you got what you wanted and your two characters are in a relation-ship. 

Colleen: They live happily ever after.

Meghan: Yes. we will each choose a ship to support from the text that we're covering. Often, I'm pretty sure the ship doesn't sail for whatever we choose-

Colleen: Yeah.

Meghan: -but that's okay. Nancy Drew is not a romance. It is a mystery. So we honestly might not ever find out whether our ship has any sail-ability. 

Colleen: And that's okay! So Meghan, who did you ship from The Secret of the Old Clock? 

Meghan: All right. I'm very passionate about my ship. 

Colleen: I can't wait. 

Meghan: I would like to ship the Turner sisters with the Matthews brothers. 

Colleen: Okay. Okay. There’s the two old ladies. Okay. 

Meghan: Yes. Yes. I have the family tree. 

Colleen: Of course you do.

Meghan: So there's a lot of cousins. And I color-coded it too! The orange is only the characters who are in the book. And it's specified how they are related to each other via, like, implications in the text, using our context clues. And if you would like to see a copy of my beautiful handwritten family tree jotted on a piece of loose-leaf paper, based on The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene, go ahead and check that out on our Patreon. 

Colleen: Yeah, yeah, you don't have to be a patron to look at it. We're going to post anything we talk about that's, like, a visual component, if there's an illustration in the book or if Meghan brings her loose-leaf notebook paper, we're going to post those with no paywall so you can just see them. I should put the guy from the computer game, where he gets a “glow-down.”

Meghan: So hopefully by this point, we've given you enough time to pull this up on Patreon if you really want that visual. So on this side, we have the Turner sisters who were at one point possibly actually engaged to the Matthews brothers. Now you might say, “Excuse me, if they're both on this family tree together, aren't they related?” No, no, they are not. 

Colleen: You would not say this if you're not looking at it. But if you were looking at it, you might say this. 

Meghan: Exactly, yeah. Because I mean, usually we only get people on the family tree that are related. But not necessarily in this case. The Turner sisters and the Matthews brothers are both separately related to Josiah Crowley. And Josiah Crowley is the guy with the will. The Turner sisters are related to Josiah on his father's side. Whereas the Matthews brothers are related to Josiah on his mother's side.

Colleen: Okay, so there's no, like, shared genes between the two sets of siblings.

Meghan: Exactly. 

Colleen: I mean the brother is related to the brother and the sister is related to the sister, but the sisters are not related to the brothers.

Meghan: The Turner sisters are not related to the Matthews brothers genetically. 

Colleen: Okay. 

Meghan: So my text evidence for supporting-I mean, my text evidence for my family tree is extensive, but my text evidence to support my ship! There are lots of like, blushes from the Turner sisters when they talk about the brothers. And my main reason I support this ship is because it would turn this family tree into a circle. 

Colleen: That's what we all want in a family tree. 

Meghan: I mean, that's what I want. That's what all family trees should look like. 

Colleen: So did you design this ship before you made this family tree? 

Meghan: A little bit. Yeah.

Colleen: Okay, you were just like, “You know what will make this good?”

Meghan: Okay, well, because I wanted- I was trying to figure out what was going on with the Turner sisters, because they're like, “You have to talk to the Matthews brothers, because they're supposed to inherit stuff.” And they talked about how they maybe were engaged before.

Colleen: Do you want to give any context about who the Turner sisters are? Because they're like some of the poor people Nancy encounters, and Nancy's like, “Oh my god, they're so nice and they're so poor.”

Meghan: Okay, yes. And they're actually the first people that she encounters. So the first people we as the reader encounter outside of Nancy. 

Colleen: Besides Nancy herself, because Nancy almost runs over their daughter. Like not really, but they think that she did. This is different, this is different from the time that Meghan thought Nancy ran someone over. 

Meghan: No, that's not their daughter. 

Colleen: This is just some random girl? 

Meghan: No! Oh my god. It's not a random girl. Please look at the family tree.

Colleen: Oh my god. 

Meghan: Okay, listen. 

Colleen: Sorry for not looking at the family tree.

Meghan: The Turner sisters, they had a sibling. We don't know the gender of the sibling. That sibling had a daughter that the Turner sisters adopted when the parents died. Okay, so they adopted this child's mom, but then the mom also tragically died in a boating explosion.

Colleen: Oh, I forgot about the boat explosion. Never go on a boat!

Meghan: Yes. And her husband also died in the boating explosion, leaving the child, Judy. 

Colleen: Judy. 

Meghan: So Judy is their great-niece. So the Turner sisters are the great-aunts of Judy, who Nancy almost ran over. 

Colleen: But did not! But did not run over. I forgot about the whole Turner lore. So the Turners took in their niece, niece got married, had a kid, niece got boat-exploded. 

Meghan: And no, they married- 

Colleen: -the husband, right.

Meghan: Yeah, everyone got boat-exploded. 

Colleen: Everyone got boat-exploded. You hate to see it. 

Meghan: Yes. Yeah. So this means that the Turner sisters are Josiah's first cousins once removed.

Colleen: OK, I've never known what the once-removed and second cousin things mean. So thank you for the illustration. I feel like they really should have put this in the book. I feel like Game of Thrones or those kinds of books have a family tree in them. This could have been helpful. 

Meghan: Yes, I agree. I agree. That's why I had to make my own. Okay, so anyway, then the Matthews brothers on the right side of the family tree. 

Colleen: I see. 

Meghan: They are Josiah's first cousins on his mom's side as opposed to the dad's side. 

Colleen: It's weird to me when a set of siblings dates like a different set of siblings. 

Meghan: Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. 

Colleen: But, they're not twins. 

Meghan: No, they're not twins. But I needed, I just needed to understand while I was reading, like, why were these two sets of siblings engaged to each other, but also they're both set to inherit? And even though they're, you know, they're all described as older, however, the Matthew brothers, while having gray hair, are “unlined and cheerful-faced.”

Colleen: Oh, thank god they're unlined. 

Meghan: You know, you can find love at any age! And I think these people have gone through a lot of trauma and tragedy and they've got that in common. 

Colleen: But they still blush when they talk about these boys they used to be engaged to, these many, many years ago. 

Meghan: Yes. So the feelings haven't gone away. And there's been so much tragedy, especially in the Turner sisters’ lives. And then all of them lost Josiah

Colleen: Their shared family member. Right.

Meghan:  And then they're almost cheated out of the inheritance that was promised to them! An inheritance that would have changed, like, all of their lives and so, yeah, I think they have a lot of similar things going on in their background. And additionally, I think they would make cute couples. And then also, they make my family tree a circle. 

Colleen: As all family trees should be, according to Meghan. Everyone write that down. Okay. Okay. So I had, like, a little trouble deciding on my ship. Because I like Nancy and Helen, but I think that they're, like, bosom friends, à la Anne of Green Gables. And the way that it's written in these older books, as a modern reader, I would read it as a crush. But I don't know if that's actually canon or just, like, a very close female friendship. And we'll discuss this in a later segment, but I can't tell if they're friends or if it's, like, “Oh my god, they were roommates,” like a Glinda/Elphaba situation. So I wasn't sure about that particular ship, so I'm actually instead going to read you a small segment about Mr. Carson Drew. This is Nancy's dad. He's a lawyer. Nancy's getting all up in, like, Josiah Crowley's posthumous business, and Nancy goes, “Well, there's gotta be a second will. You know, these rich girls from my class who are mean can't have inherited everything, blah, blah, blah.” Okay, so here's the actual quote. That was not the actual quote. The actual quote is, “‘Dad, don't you-’” …I don't know why she talks like that. “‘Dad. Don't you believe Josiah Crowley made a second will?’ Nancy questioned suddenly. ‘You sound like a trial lawyer the way you cross-examine me,’ Mr. Drew protested, but with evident enjoyment.” So I think my ship this week is more of a conceptual ship and it is Carson Drew and being put in the anti-lawyer chair. There's gotta be a better name for that. Please help. 

Meghan: Um, uh…

Colleen: The, not the lawyer. Witness stand! Witness stand. I think he's like-

Meghan: Yes. 

Colleen: So he's, like, “My daughter’s, you know, she's coming into her own. She's asking these tough questions. Usually I only get this on the stand, but like, I'm so proud of her. This is great.”

Meghan: Oh my god. I love this. 

Colleen: So it's not like an inappropriate, like, “I love my daughter.” Like, that's not what I'm going for here. I just ship Carson Drew and then, like, the concept of being cross-examined in his spare time. 

Meghan: And he does get cross-examined often in this novel! 

Colleen: He does. He's like the town's best lawyer. It is unclear how many lawyers the town has, so this might be a very small pool to choose from. 

Meghan: Okay. You can see not all our ships are going to be actual characters with other characters. Sometimes they may be a character with a characteristic or action. 

Colleen: Yes. I am sorry to go conceptual immediately. It's just, I saw the quote, “evident enjoyment” right on the page and I had to. 

Meghan: Yes. 

Colleen: You need that in a good relationship.

Meghan: Yes, and I always love text evidence. 

Colleen: Yeah! Because I have a degree in library. So I like getting good grades in text evidence, something that's normal to want and possible to achieve. 

Meghan: Yes, exactly, exactly. 

[Sound Cue: Kitchen tools clink underneath the spoken words “Cooking Corner”]

Meghan: In this segment, we will look at all the food featured in this novel. 

Colleen: So something my mom always loved about the Nancy Drew books and pointed out to me was the food. And I probably would not have noticed how specific the food descriptions were if she had not pointed this out, because I was the kind of kid that was like, “I have consumed the book. I looked at every word. Could I tell you an effective summary of the book the next day? No, but I looked at every word. And at the time of reading, they even made sense.” So I was, like, just churning through them. But my mother was like, “Yeah, but there's, like, a lot of snacks and meals that aren't plot-relevant.” Like, it's not like, “We had a chocolate cake and someone tasted almonds and oh my god, it was cyanide.” It's just, like, setting the scene. It's cozy. So the stereotypical meal/snack that they had that I always associate with Nancy Drew, and I was thrilled to see show up in this very first book, is hot chocolate and cinnamon toast. So Hannah Gruen is Nancy's housekeeper and maternal figure, and she always makes her a cozy little treat, and it's often hot chocolate and cinnamon toast. Like, “Oh, come in from the cold, you've done your mystery solving, get your little treat, tell me about your day.” It’s super cute. And like, I'm pretty sure my mom and I had a Nancy Drew snack day, because I remember having, intentionally because of Nancy Drew, cinnamon toast and hot chocolate and similar stuff like that. And I remember that being very fun. She did a lot of creative things like that. I remember having, like, an Alice in Wonderland Mad Tea Party and we could eat the cups because she had made them out of white chocolate using muffin tins. 

Meghan: Awwww.

Colleen: Very fun. Very creative. Bringing the books to life. Also having snacks. All of my goals in life. It's so sweet. So what did you notice in her snacks and meals in this book? 

Meghan: Okay. The very first food that is mentioned in this novel is a delicious apple pudding that Hannah makes for breakfast. And I had no idea what an apple pudding was because I was thinking, like, “Well, I've heard of banana pudding and like vanilla pudding and chocolate pudding, but I don't know.” There really aren't that many pudding flavors, are there? 

Colleen: There's not. I could think of, like, butterscotch and then I'm tapped. I got nothing. 

Meghan: Yeah. Like there's lots of Jell-O flavors, which are in the same section in the grocery store. But like, I don't think of fruit and pudding you know? 

Colleen: No. Yeah. Jell-O and fruit, and then- you're so right. Is this a thing of the past that I don't know about?

Meghan: I looked up the recipe because I was like, “What does it entail? Can I buy it? Can I make it?” And it's not anything that we'd really modern-ly call a pudding. It's more solid than that. Okay, so it's got flour and sugar and baking soda. Honestly, it's almost like a crustless apple pie, but it's all mixed together. Actually, most of the directions were “Do not mix it.” Like, “Put the butter in and melt it. Put the stuff on top. Don't mix it.” 

Colleen: “Just look at it.” 

Meghan: “Cut up the apples, put the apples there. Don't mix it!” 

Colleen: Why did it say that so many times? 

Meghan: Then- and then you make it! 

Colleen: Do you just have, like, a pile of burnt flour when you're done? Like near some apple slices? 

Meghan: No, no. The flour stuff is like mixed with some things. You mix, like, that part separately, and then you, like, pour it into the dish. Like, I don't know. There was a lot of not-mixing in the instructions on this recipe, but that was the one that really spoke to me because it was something I didn't recognize and it inspired me to do some research and I always love that.

Colleen: Yeah. So you sent me a picture of this and it looked like it would be delicious, like, warm out of the oven with vanilla ice cream on it. I'm really just getting apple pie vibes off of this. Does pudding just mean dessert in British? 

Meghan: In British? 

Colleen: In British. I'm pretty sure that's how the Queen says- the King says it. Sorry. My bad. 

Meghan: Yes. British English. 

Colleen: No, no, no. Just British. You- you lived there for a while. You know about British. 

Meghan: Of course, of course. Okay. I'm looking up pudding in England. No, you're totally correct. That word, while it can mean either sweet or savory in Britain, it's used in the UK the way “dessert” is in America. 

Colleen: Okay. Notably, Nancy is not in Britain, though. Thoughts? She's in the nebulous town of River Heights and we never get a state, but it's for sure America. I don't-

Meghan: True. Isn't it, like, Connecticut? 

Colleen: No. It's vaguely Connecticut vibes, so I think New England, but we never get it, like, confirmed. So the recipe is called Apple Dessert. I do like dessert for breakfast. Okay. So one of the foods I noticed is when Nancy meets some other poor people- she spends the whole book meeting strangers in her town or, like, the next town over. I don't think she ever goes, like, super far away from home, but she's like, “Oh my gosh, I have new instant bosom friends.” It's these two, they're Allison and Grace Hoover. So this is a different set of sisters. They are not on the family tree, right? 

Meghan: They are neighbors of Josiah.

Colleen: And these are younger sisters too. They probably have very unlined faces, so jot that down. And then it's mentioned they have like a chair and a table and, like, curtains that are clearly made from something else, à la Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. Yes. I think I'm- did she have, like, a feed sack dress? 

Meghan: Yeah. 

Colleen: Or, like, underwear? 

Meghan: Yeah!

Colleen: And she was really embarrassed about it. So these young sisters have, like, this genuinely actually very pathetic birthday event. And this is not meant to be like poor-shaming or anything. But Nancy's like, “This is the best birthday I've ever attended.” And it says she genuinely meant it. And the birthday is exclusively a homemade cake. And then Alice sings a really sad ballad about an English lass. Like, it says it was tuneful, but it's a ballad. And I don't, I don't sing a ballad at my birthday because it sounds very sad and depressing, but you know, you do you. But like, the cake itself is this golden yellow cake with some frosting. And I just love that image. And then later they have strawberries and waffles. That's a different time. I thought it just sounded yummy. But then my other one I wrote down was that- so Nancy meets just another person that she becomes instant best friends with, as you do. 

Meghan: Mmhmm, mmhmm.

Colleen: And this is the one who told Nancy about the will that would probably be in a weird hiding spot, like, for example, secretly inside of an old clock. If I had to, you know, just put a name on that. So this woman is disabled. She's living on her own, nobody's taking care of her, which is already bad, but it's made worse because prior to his death, Josiah Crowley specifically said, “Hey, you will be taken care of financially by my will.” And then it's not in the will that they find prior to this book. So this woman is like, “Yeah, this kind of sucks. I have no food. I did fall down the stairs recently. Anyway.” So Nancy sets up that everyone starts bringing her food and Nancy adds, like, a jar of homemade beef broth. And I just can't get the image out of my head of Nancy showing up to this woman's house. She's, like, had no support in her life for, like, the last unknown amount of time. And you're just this little rich girl with a convertible being like, “Here's my miscellaneous meat jar. Do you like it?” 

Meghan: Yes, beef. She brings beef broth. And then at one point there's a mention of, like, chicken casserole. But later when Nancy eats her food with her, it's just beef broth and crackers. 

Colleen: Nancy came and ate the food she brought this poor woman? She has nothing. She can't cook for herself. She has, like, a sprained ankle. That's so rude.

Meghan: Maybe she felt pressured, you know, like she's being hosted at the house. She brought her food, like, now she's got to partake in the food, you know, breaking bread with your friends.

Colleen: I mean, I guess it proves it's not poison. That's good. 

Meghan: True, true. So that concludes our cooking corner. Be like Nancy Drew. Eat someone else's crackers for them.

[Sound Cue: European-style emergency vehicle siren sound plays underneath the spoken words “Fashion Police”]

Meghan: In this segment, we take a look at the fashion surrounding Nancy Drew, so any outfits or fashion statements that are awe-inspiring, confusing, or noteworthy in general. Did you have any fashion pieces that really spoke to you, Colleen? 

Colleen: I had two good ones and one bad one. So the first one I noticed was Nancy with her yellow sunback dress. I love a yellow dress. Yellow is the best color. My five-year-old niece and I agree on this, and, I need to be so clear, my niece's favorite color used to be purple, and then she heard that mine is yellow and ever since then, she makes a point of telling me we have the same favorite color, “because you like yellow and I like yellow.” It’s adorable. 

Meghan: Awwww.

Colleen: I'm an influencer. I did have to google what a sunback dress is, but it's, I mean, it's what I guessed in my brain. The back's, like, cut out. You can get the sun on your back. But my favorite part of googling it is, I typed in the phrase “sunback dress.” I did not even type in “yellow sunback dress.” I didn't mention Nancy Drew. And the first, like, ten results were the quote of this exact sentence in Nancy Drew. So nobody else is talking about sunback dresses anymore. Then the other outfit I really liked belonged to Judy. She's the great-niece being raised by these older sisters. She has this hand-embroidered teddy-bear-patterned pink play suit, very cute. And then it goes on to say that she looks very cunning in it. And what I think they intended was, “She looks smart and fashionable.” With this modern reading, I chose to read that as “A tiny child looked evil while wearing a handmade teddy bear jumpsuit.” I will not read it any other way. I will not hear notes on this. And then of course the worst outfit is Nancy wailing, “‘Oh, why didn't I bring a raincoat?’” when her convertible doesn't work and it's raining.

Meghan: Okay, well in Nancy's defense, she thought she would be in a car that had a roof. So that's not really on her.

Colleen: But she's like, “Wow, I'm the worst. I wasn't prepared.” And like, sure, but you're right. That is mostly the car's fault. 

Meghan: I mean, I understand that though, feeling like it's your fault for not thinking through every possible thing that could go wrong. So I respect Nancy. in this moment and also in many moments. So my favorite description of fashion was the pale blue dance creation. 

Colleen: Yes. 

Meghan: With a chiffon- is that how you say it? Chiffon? 

Colleen: I think so.

Meghan: Cheeiff-in? 

Colleen: Cheeiff-in. Yeah. 

Meghan: Whatever! So I'm fairly well known in my personal life for my many dresses. I don't like pants. 

Colleen: Correct. 

Meghan: I just, I don't like them. I'm against them.

Colleen: She's against pants. 

Meghan: Morally. Morally against pants. 

Colleen: She wishes women never got the vote or bloomers, and you can quote her on that. 

Meghan: No, no, no, please don't quote me on that. That is inaccurate.

Colleen: And she wants all family trees to be circles.

Meghan: Anyway, so I would really love to get to just see or even wear this pale blue dance creation. I imagine it spins a lot when you twirl. And I do love, like, some vintage fashion. So I feel like this dress for the dance would, like, have a really nice silhouette. This outfit was, like, a little bit more important, not, like, important to the plot, but, like, it featured in the plot, because she runs into those mean girls from her high school in this dress shop, and this is the dress that gets ripped. And then Nancy ends up getting it for fifty percent off because it's ripped. Nancy didn't rip it. And I also love a great deal on a dress. So even though it's ripped, the seamstress is like, “Oh yeah, I'll get that all fixed up for you, and fifty percent off because you're Nancy Drew.” 

Colleen: Love that. It's another good character moment for Nancy, too, because these random girls- they're not random. We'll talk- I think we’ll talk about them later, but I think they're from her high school and the girls are fighting over this dress and they rip it and step on it. And it's like the animated Cinderella movie where they rip up her dress so she can't go to the ball. It was truly, like, exactly that moment. 

Meghan: They really do have those evil stepsister vibes. 

Colleen: They do. And the sales clerk is like, “Oh my god, they're going to take this out of my paycheck.” And Nancy's like, “That's usually not how it works. Like, they'll probably just mark it down. You're probably fine.” 

Meghan: So instead of just being a terrible person like these other girls, she, in contrast, comes off as the nicest person in the world, and is like, “But I do think it would look good on me” and offers to buy it to, like, get it off the shelf so the sales clerk doesn't have to worry about it anymore.

Colleen: It was a fun little moment. 

Meghan: Yeah. Ten out of ten dress!

Colleen: Excellent choice.

[Sound Cue: Synthesized harp plays descending notes under the spoken words “Blast from the Past”]

Meghan: In this segment, we will look into the past, comparing either the way technologies were then and how they are now, such as different things that maybe would have made the investigation go faster if Nancy was solving it today, and then we will also be on the lookout for some things that maybe haven't aged so well, whether that's socially, or phrases that maybe we wouldn't use in our current times, or we'd use it in a different context and so on. So where do we want to start on that? 

Colleen: Page one. 

Meghan: Oh my. 

Colleen: So as you mentioned earlier, these are not romances. And yet on page one, sentence one, we start with “Nancy Drew, an attractive girl of eighteen.” Like, that's a wild start. That would not be in a modern book, or if it would be, I don't think I would continue reading. It's a weird vibe to start with. I think it's intended like, “Oh she's nice. She's got pleasant facial features,” as Lemony Snicket would phrase it, but from a modern perspective, it feels weird, right? How about you?

Meghan: Okay, so a lot of things that I noticed tied back to our fashion segment. In the aforementioned dress shop, she had an individual seamstress come and fit the dress specifically to her in the store where she bought the dress. And that's something I feel like we're lacking in modern times. 

Colleen: Yeah!

Meghan: We have a lot of this, you know, fast fashion now. Clothes just are built for the average person, which, you know, there is no average person. So the idea of getting this individualized outfit is very nice. It feels like something that would last longer than whatever you just, like, pick up off the rack, and I think that needs to make a comeback. 

Colleen: I agree. I think when I was reading that segment, I was looking at it from the wrong lens, because I was just thinking, “Oh, these shops must still exist. But I am not on the tier of wealth where I have been to one of those.” But you're right. I feel like they're probably not really a thing anymore. So what I noticed were just a lot of little phrases that felt out of place or, like, incorrect based on how I would have had that social interaction. I am not, you know, the king of perfect social interactions, to be clear. But the great-aunts think that Nancy has run over this four-year-old that they're in charge of and she asks, quote, “excitedly, ‘Did you run into her?’” Unquote. And I don't think of “excited” as a synonym for distressed, right? I think of “excited” as very happy, right?

Meghan:  So from context clues, the context is, “Did you just run over my four-year-old?!” We should be reading that as, like, emotionally instead of, like, excitedly, but, like, because now excitement is pretty much- it's emotional, but exclusively positive emotions. 

Colleen: Yes, exactly! Like, I understand that she's not thrilled about this possible vehicular manslaughter, but when you say “excitedly,” I'm like, “Whoop-de-doo! Did you run into my child? Very exciting!” What else did you notice? 

Meghan: I noticed some fun historical background details near the end of the story when they find the will. Spoiler alert. 

Colleen: Nancy does, in fact, solve the mystery.

Meghan: She solves the mystery and finds the will. So then at her dad's office, they decide that they need copies of this handwritten will. There's two different things that occur during the scene. One thing is that they ask for a photostat. And from context, I could kind of figure out what that meant. It is something to help them, like, make copies. So they're waiting for the photostat to be done. And it turns out that this is the specific name of a machine that would effectively make photocopies. The word photostat was used as a verb now in the same way we, or I mean, at least our generation talk about Xerox as an action. I don't know if younger people say that anymore. Probably not. 

Colleen: Probably not.

Meghan: But even if you're not necessarily using a Xerox machine, when you're making a copy, you're just xeroxing. 

Colleen: Like if you say, “Give me a kleenex.” I mean, it's not a verb, but it's become this catch-all term for any brand of tissue, which apparently brands hate. I had thought of that phenomenon as something like, “Oh, this is great publicity. When everyone thinks of tissues, they think of Kleenex,” but apparently it's more like the brand does not have as much heft.

Meghan:  Exactly. So instead of xeroxing, they're using the photostat to copy this handwritten will without having to just handwrite a bunch of additional copies. Okay. And then the other thing that happens in that scene is they ask Carson Drew's typist to type out the will as well. And I know there are still jobs as captioners and transcribers, but truly just typing things up from handwritten pages used to be like, much more of a job than it is today. Even just in the last few years, roles like this- 

Colleen: They've really phased out.

Meghan: Yeah. No, it's, it's crazy how much things have just changed within our lifetime-

Colleen: Truly!

Meghan: -let alone from the thirties- 

Colleen: The thirties!

Meghan: -to the fifties to now. It's crazy. 

Colleen: Yeah. I just had a couple more, like, quick throwaway comments, just things that I wouldn't necessarily phrase it this way today. So there's one, they're talking about this disabled woman and they're calling her the “invalid,” which is just, you know, the same spelling as “in-valid,” which I don't love. And I know that that's gotta be where that phrasing came from. Just seeing disabled people as not valid people, obviously not awesome. So this woman does end up getting taken care of and everything and not just with, like, Nancy's loose broth jars. She gets actual money, like the big money that Josiah promised her. And spoiler alert, she gets like a big part of the will. She gets taken care of. She essentially hires a home health aide. But it just- every time they're talking about her, it's like either “the old woman” or “the invalid.” And like, that sucks. I feel like I should put a link in the show notes of a mystery middle grade novel with a disabled protagonist to, like, kind of make up for it if that rubbed you the wrong way. ‘Cause, like, it's understandable if that rubbed you the wrong way. One that jumps to mind immediately is Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus. 

Meghan: Oh, that's a good one. 

Colleen: Yeah. It's really, really great. I would definitely recommend it as, like, a palate cleanser for this specific situation. Okay. And then earlier in the book, the characters are talking about the caretaker of this property. His name is Jeff Tucker, and they say he is the “tallest, skinniest man I've ever seen outside of a circus.” I was totally taken aback. 

Meghan: Okay, I must have glossed over that part because I do not remember that at all. It's not the worst way to phrase it, but it's so strange. like, I don't know, it feels like the opposite of body positive. 

Colleen: It's just like, “Wow, look at this circus freak of a man. Anyway, his name's Jeff.” Like dang, okay. And then at one point they're talking about this word puzzle that's written in Chinese, and then this guy in France, has no idea how to read this because he doesn't speak Chinese. So they quote, “ask a Chinese” unquote to solve the puzzle. We’re not- they didn't- not even “a Chinese person.” We're not only not doing person-first language, which is, like, its own discussion, but we're just not even doing person-language. 

Meghan: Oh my god, person-language.

Colleen: I don't like that. 

Meghan: Yeah. 

Colleen: But I guess it could technically be worse. Yeah. Here, I'll put another middle grade novel with, like, a cool Chinese girl, like Front Desk. Front Desk is so good. You've read this? Maybe? Possibly?

Meghan: I have not. I haven't even heard of it! 

Colleen: It's very good. It's this daughter who is a first-generation American. Her parents immigrated from China and started running this hotel. And there's a little bit of mystery too. It's got a lot of awards. It's really good. But yeah, if you want to read one where there's actual good representation of Chinese people, that could be one of them. 

Meghan: I love it. 

Colleen: Yeah.

Meghan: Okay, so I have one more. It's not nearly as insensitive as the last few. It was just confusing to me while I was reading it. It's a little bit of a red herring moment where Nancy almost gets attacked by a dog. And it kind of feels like the dog is going to be a little bit more important because they describe how this puppy is, like, stuck in the fence, and then it’s never mentioned ever again. 

Colleen: And it was a cliffhanger, too! 

Meghan: Yes! Okay. So the puppy is described as quote “Wedged between two stones of a broken wall was a police dog puppy whining pitifully.” And I was like, “How does she know it's a police dog puppy? Is this like a Paw Patrol puppy?” 

Colleen: I think probably no, ‘cause it's the fifties. 

Meghan: And yet, then it says “she saw a huge police dog, evidently the pup's mother.”

Colleen: Is “police dog” just, like, a breed of dog we're supposed to know about? 

Meghan: That's what I'm wondering! It does not specify what a police dog is. Like, is that the same way that we associate Dalmatians with fire?

Colleen: With the fire department? 

Meghan: No, no, just with fire. Yes. Yes, the fire department. 

Colleen: Do you know why that is? 

Meghan: I feel like I used to, but you probably know better than I do. 

Colleen: Because my dad was a firefighter? 

Meghan: Yes, because your dad was a firefighter.

Colleen: So I don't know if I actually learned it from him, or from a field trip, or what, but it would make sense if he told me. So you know how before fire trucks had engines, they were pulled by horses, right? And the horses have to run toward a fire, which is not something horses want to do. This is not good for horses. This is the one weird trick horses hate, and the trick is fire. Dalmatians were the best dog for keeping the horses calm, apparently. Like, not only just shepherding the horses toward the fire, but, like, giving calm vibes to the horses. Like, “Listen, I get it. It's a fire. We're gonna be okay, though. It's just you and me, buddy.” 

Meghan: Aw, like an emotional support dog? 

Colleen: Literally yes, but for the horse. 

Meghan: Awwww.

Colleen: And then the reason that a lot of old fire stations have a staircase with a very sharp, like, ninety-degree turn or especially a spiral staircase in them is pretty much so that the horses don't get upstairs in the bunks. Like, specifically, if they smell the firefighters cooking dinner, they're like, “Hey guys, how's it going? I love food. Thoughts on sharing your food with me, a horse?”

Meghan: Oh my god. Incredible. 

Colleen: “If it helps convince you, I did run toward a fire today, which was very counterintuitive for me. So if you feel like sharing your chili with a horse, I'm right here.” So they don't want that. And I think stairs are supposed to be hard for horses, like, especially going down them because they have trouble seeing, like, where their feet should go. So let's just not have them go up in the first place. And then, like, speaking personally, I also don't want a horse in my kitchen. 

Meghan: Yeah, yeah. No horses in the hospital or the kitchen. 

Colleen: And they can't go up the fire pole. So that's not an issue. 

Meghan: Okay, so I'm wondering then, is this police dog thing somewhat connected? Not to insinuate that this was a tangent. 

Colleen: No, of course not. 

Meghan: Okay, so I'm trying to think. Like what dogs do I stereotypically associate with the police? 

Colleen: Chihuahuas. 

Meghan: That’s not where I would go. I was thinking more of a German Shepherd, but I don't know. Is it implying that they're, like, an intimidating dog? 

Colleen: It's gotta be. Okay, so, great news, I just googled “police dog 1930” and it was like, “German Shepherd police dog?” 

Meghan: Okay, see? 

Colleen: And then it says South London actually introduced two specially-trained Labradors, but that was, like, a new cool thing because it was always German Shepherds. 

Meghan: Okay, so. If I was reading this in the 1950s, would I instantly know what a police dog was? I've seen a lot of drug-sniffing dogs and bomb-sniffing dogs and yeah, I guess I've seen a lot of German Shepherds, but I've also seen labs and other dogs too. 

Colleen: And when they say police dog puppy, you can't have a puppy that's working as a K-9 unit, I don't think. So that's weird already. 

Meghan: Yeah. And they're on a farm!

Colleen: I literally forgot they're just on a farm! They're specifically so far away from a police station that it becomes an issue when Nancy has to go and get the police and bring them back to the farm. 

Meghan: So it's just a fun historical confusion for me. 

Colleen: Okay. Then, speaking of the police being far away- great segue. Good job. There were several times when, not only a cell phone obviously would have helped, but there's just not even a landline. She's in a public building, she's in all these different places, and she keeps wishing out loud that there's a phone so she can contact the police or whoever. 

Meghan: There aren't even telephone boxes for her to use. 

Colleen: Right, not a police public call box, nothing. She's trying to report a crime to the police. She looks around, there's no phone. 

Meghan: And she doesn't even know where to find a phone to call. Like, she can't look that up. She doesn't know how to drive specifically to the police station, which is her next step. The caretaker has to guide her to the police station in the next county since this isn't even where she's from. If there was a technology that would have really helped Nancy in this book besides the phones, I think Google Maps would be great for her. Or, like, just a GPS. 

Colleen: I mean, she doesn't even have a road atlas in her glove box. Like, that could, in theory, help her find a police station. She's just kind of guessing. 

Meghan: Oh, yeah. I guess an actual map would have helped too, right? 

Colleen: Just a literal map. 

Meghan: She has to stop for directions multiple times. 

Colleen: And it's in the middle of the night usually, and she's a woman traveling alone, and she has no way of navigating if even one thing goes wrong, which often does, because she's Nancy Drew. This is, I mean, kind of a disappointment, because I think of her as being very prepared. But if she doesn't start bringing like a road map with her, this is probably going to keep being a huge issue.

Meghan: And all of these distant relatives who are very distantly related to each other (please see my family tree) are just giving her, like, the vaguest of directions. They don't actually know how to get her to where, like, she wants to go. I feel like it just really slowed her down. 

Colleen: It did. And speaking of slowing down, this is my favorite way she thinks of to, like, get a police officer's attention quickly. So she can't find a phone. She doesn't know where the police station is. So in Chapter Two, she says, “‘I'm afraid I'm exceeding the speed limit, but I almost wish a trooper would stop me, and then I could tell him what happened.’” That's our best way to get someone's attention?!

Meghan: Commit a crime. 

Colleen: Commit a crime to tell them about a different crime. 

Meghan: Commit a crime and hope that the police show up. 

Colleen: Fingers crossed! And then I did find a spot in the book where she was actually hoping for older technology than she had access to. I was not expecting this. She is trying to follow tire tracks, and then it specifically tells us that both of the roads are paved, so she can't follow the tire tracks in the dirt. And this, like, really frustrates her. 

Meghan: Yes, because most of the roads she's on during this book are, like, the smaller roads and they're dirt roads or something similar. So it's much easier to, like, track a car or footprints. 

Colleen: I just thought that was interesting when Nancy's like, “Darn you, modern infrastructure! I'm trying to solve a crime here! And commit several other crimes in the process!”

Meghan: Exactly. Exactly. 

Colleen: Okay. Just one more in this section. I think it goes in this section. So this is just a weird bit of logic from Nancy here. So she's snooping on the bad guy. She's in a dusty closet. She sneezes, she gets caught, she gets locked in the closet. Very sad times. Then the caretaker, who's skinny like a circus man, comes by and then he thinks when he hears Nancy call for help, he thinks he's being fooled by criminals. And the caretaker says, he says it dubiously, “‘Say, you aiming to throw me off imitating a lady's voice? Well it won't do you any good, no sir! Old Jeff Tucker's not getting fooled again,’” which, like, sidebar, how often does this happen to him? Then it says, “Nancy decided to convince the man beyond doubt and gave a long, loud, feminine scream.” There we go. That's the only way. She screamed, and then in the timbre of the scream, the caretaker must've heard, like, the pain of too-small pants pockets. And so he knew that's a woman in that closet. It's just a vaguely gender-essentialist moment that I was not expecting, like, “Could a man scream like this?” It's just- and just a weird logical leap to “I'm trapped in a closet. Let me scream at this man who's my only chance of rescue. That will help.” 

Meghan: I mean, it will help. It's never not worked for me.

[Sound Cue: The spoken words “Wound Watch” are followed by a low voice exclaiming as if punched in the stomach]

Meghan: In this section we will take a look at any injuries that our Miss Nancy Drew has sustained during the novel. 

Colleen: My stereotypical understanding of Nancy is, she is getting chloroformed left and right, like, constantly. Does she even have any brain cells left? We just don't know. But she didn't get chloroformed at all during this book! 

Meghan: No! Okay, so we are keeping a running total and so far we have zero knockouts for Nancy. No chloroform in this book. She does get bleeding and bruised hands from attempting to break out of the closet that she's locked in, though. 

Colleen: By the crime-inals. 

Meghan: By the crime-inals. 

Colleen: She has also, on page fifty-six in my copy, an acute case of cobwebs in the brain. 

Meghan: Oh my goodness. 

Colleen: So I'm worried about that one. This is never followed up on. So as far as we know, this is a continuing issue for her. 

Meghan: Okay, zero knockouts and one case of brain cobwebs. 

Colleen: We hate to see it. But I do think the hands will probably heal up by the next book.

Meghan: I do also want to bring up that the entire time she's in this, like, summer house- it's not summer and no one's been in it for months. It's very dusty and she cannot stop sneezing. 

Colleen: She can't! 

Meghan: And I'm wondering if she needs to go to see an allergist because this is, like, becoming very detrimental to her crime-solving abilities, because it delays her ability to continue investigating the crime. And she ends up getting caught because of it! She gives away her location by sneezing! 

Colleen: Alerting the crime-inals to her presence. It's not good. 

Meghan: Yes, and then she gets locked in the closet. 

Colleen: I think it says she specifically suppresses a few sneezes until she couldn't hold it back anymore. There's just too much dust. 

Meghan: Yes, so I'm a little concerned. It is- 

Colleen: So I'm writing down- 

Meghan: Yeah, it's affecting her job. Isn't that what the doctors like to hear? 

Colleen: Exactly. “It's affecting my productivity.” So I'm writing down that she needs to go to the ENT and then go to whatever doctor takes care of brain cobwebs. Offhand I don't know that, which type of doctor that is. This could be like an old 1950s ailment. 

Meghan: Yeah, I think we have a vaccine for that now. 

Colleen: Good, that's good. I can't be dealing with brain cobwebs at my tender, tender age. So as I'm figuring out what doctors Nancy needs to visit before Book Two, I'm not saying the bleeding and bruised hands are great, but I think that she just needs some antibiotics, maybe a tetanus shot if she's not up to date. 

Meghan: Yes, honestly, like Nancy came out pretty good in this book injury-wise.

Colleen: Don't get used to it!

[Sound Cue: The spoken words “Drew’s Clues” are followed by the sound of the dog from Blue’s Clues barking four times in a recognizable pattern]

Meghan: In this segment, we look at clues that give us more information about, like, who Nancy is as an individual. Sometimes I feel like the character of Nancy takes a back seat to the clues of the mystery and the mystery itself. And in our podcast, we always want to make sure that we are keeping Nancy Drew in the forefront. I mean, she is literally the third person in our podcast title. So this is the very first Nancy Drew novel, the very first appearance of Nancy. We know she is an attractive eighteen-year-old. 

Colleen: It's important to note in the very first sentence. She's both eighteen and attractive. 

Meghan: Yes, yes, of course. And we know obviously she's very strong-willed and confident. 

Colleen: She starts off on page one by, like, talking to herself in her car, giving us some background of, “‘It was so sweet of Dad to give me this car for my birthday.’” And then she thinks about her dad and his lawyer cases. And then she says out loud to herself, “‘Dad depends on my intuition.’” A normal thing to say out loud, alone in your car as you drive. Like, calm down, Encyclopedia Brown, you're not solving police cases in, like, one conversation at the dinner table. Side note, I feel like there's some confidentiality breaches in Encyclopedia Brown, because isn't he, like, ten? And not employed by the Idaville police force? Anyway, back to Nancy Drew. She's confident, she talks to herself a lot. Hopefully not while she's snooping. 

Meghan: No, she just sneezes and then screams in a female sort of way. 

Colleen: Right, right, of course. 

Meghan: We also get some clues as to Nancy's political leanings in this novel. 

Colleen: Yes!

Meghan: We see her indignation at the state of poverty or almost abandonment that some of her neighbors are living in. Especially, I think of the scene with Abby Rowan. Abby is the disabled woman and Nancy is appalled to find out that nobody is checking in on her! She has no services, she has no food, she fell down the stairs days ago and is stuck on the couch. 

Colleen: That's another modern technology that could have helped her. Abby needs, like, a Life Alert necklace. 

Meghan: She does. And we obviously know Nancy's all about sharing the wealth, literally, in this novel. She's attempting to make sure that justice is done with this will. But even before the money from the will enters the pictures, she's taking care of Abby and the younger sisters that she meets. That's the ones with the sad birthday party. And she just really wants the little people to come out on top. 

Colleen: I was kind of surprised it says outright that Nancy has enemies. It's the mean girls from the dress shop that went to her high school. It says, “through no fault of her own, she had made two enemies, Ada and Isabel Topham.” And then Ada is described as looking very ugly despite her nice clothes. So that's a helpful character detail, another evil stepsister characteristic. But like, I always think of Nancy as very happy-go-lucky. And for the most part she is. She's making friends with a lot of people. She meets these new people around her town and in the next town over, and she goes to their birthday parties, and compliments their beautiful singing, and she's very kind overall. But then she has these quote, unquote “enemies.” She doesn't even care that at the end of the book, these two girls are basically bankrupt because their parents spent money they didn't have. Because the parents knew that Josiah's will, as it stood prior to the end of this book, it said, like, a lot of money is going to these girls’ parents. But it turns out that's not the latest version. They find the latest version. It's hidden away. So that was very odd to me. Oh, and then, we don't even see- so when I think of Nancy Drew, like hand in hand with her, almost literally, I think of her best friends. We’ve got Bess and George. And then we've got her, like, steady, her love interest, Ned Nickerson. These three were not mentioned at all!

Meghan: Yeah, I thought they were mentioned in the first book, like, briefly, but they're not even, they're not even there!

Colleen: Not even in passing, no! So I remember her friend Helen having, like- I remembered that she was a recurring character, especially in the earlier books, which is interesting because she doesn't show up in, like, the modern Nancy Drew lore. She's not in any of the computer games. I don't think she's in the Nancy Drew Notebooks for, like, the younger kids. If she is, she's, like, a background player. But Bess and George and Ned are always in those. You can always call them on the phone in the computer games. They're always around. 

Meghan: Also, she's very upset about the increased cost of living and low wages in the very first chapter. I was like, “Girl, same.” 

Colleen: That has not changed! 

Meghan: Yeah, so that stuck out to me as well.

Colleen: She runs a lot of errands for her dad too. 

Meghan: She's very willing to help. Not only is she focused on solving this mystery, she's trying to help all these people out individually and like doing tasks and bringing food. She's just a very community-minded person, which I very much respect. 

Colleen: Yeah! Good work, Nancy.

[Sound Cue: Simple piano tune underneath the spoken words “Sleuthing Skills”]

Meghan: In this segment, we look at skills that are very clearly needed for you, the listener, to be a good detective and follow in the shoes of our dear Nancy Drew. All detectives need these. Some skills that Nancy demonstrates for us that are imperative to becoming a detective- 

Colleen: You shouldn't even enter detective school if you don't already have these skills.

Meghan:  Exactly. If you want to be a detective, you'd better start working on these skills. I'm sure you can get a book from the library or a nice YouTube tutorial to better yourself in these regards. So first we have changing a tire. Even if you hate doing it, as Nancy does, you need to know how to do it independently. You never know when your beautiful blue convertible is going to get a flat tire.

Colleen: Her car has so many problems in this book. 

Meghan: It does.

Colleen: Did we ever get the roof fixed so that it closes? 

Meghan: Nope. 

Colleen: Cool. Cool.

Meghan: Okay. You also must know how to set a sprained ankle. She does not set her own sprained ankle in this book, but she does set Abby's from when she fell down the stairs and can't afford to go to the doctor. 

Colleen: I feel that Nancy could set her own sprained ankle, but we haven't seen that in the text yet. 

Meghan: Exactly.

Colleen: So when you're a detective, you need to be a competent car mechanic and a nurse. 

Meghan: You also need to know how to drive a motorboat at a moment's notice and to fix the engine when it inevitably dies in the middle of the lake. 

Colleen: Approximately two pages after they say, “Sometimes the engine goes bad and dies at random times.”

Meghan: Nancy, like, just says, “You know what? I'll take this risk. I'm going to go into the lake and if it dies, I'll fix it.” I mean, it takes her hours to fix it, but she does. 

Colleen: She comes back covered in grease and everyone else is like, “What did you do?” 

Meghan: We also have a lot of tracking. You need to be able to track footprints and tire tracks in order to be a good detective. And the final skill that this book tells us that you need, and I feel like we'll see this in every Nancy Drew book, is to lie. You need to be good at lying. Nancy lies a lot during this book. 

Colleen: Constantly. Constantly lying. So these are just to start with. You'll get some more skills to work on for the next episode, but this is your homework for now.

[Sound Cue: Four distinct drum beats that mimic the opening of the song “Accidentally in Love” by Counting Crows, followed by the sung words “Accidentally Gay”]

Colleen: So in this segment, we've been talking already about some phrasing and language that has different meanings in today's world than in the 1930s or 50s world that Nancy's living in, but [now we’re] focusing specifically on it from, like, an LGBTQ+ lens. So if I was writing, today, a completely platonic friendship, I would probably not describe it the way that Nancy and Helen's bosom friendship is described, but the language that is used to describe this deep love that the friends have for each other is more normalized in these books of the past. And of course, books and writing of this time period are using “gay” to mean happy and “queer” to mean strange, which is why for a while after reading Alice in Wonderland as a child, I was running around my yard yelling to the world that I was queer. And my parents were like, “Hi, thoughts on the definition? Do you know what that means?” I informed them that I'm actually great at context clues and it means I'm strange. And I assume they were like, “For sure accurate, but you cannot be yelling it because there's other definitions that you're not old enough for yet.” I don't know. I don't remember the whole conversation. I just remember them being like, “Could we not be yelling this? Fantastic.” 

Meghan: Incredible. 

Colleen: And then what do you know? I ended up being both definitions of queer. So score one for Past Colleen. 

Meghan: Amazing. 

Colleen: Previously, I mentioned that she did come out of the closet, Nancy did, when she was done with her sneezing fit. So she was done with being locked in and screaming at tall, skinny men about it. And I found it very metaphorical that she wound up with bruised hands because of how hard it was to get out of the closet. Like, sometimes it can be a struggle, but she got there in the end and we're all proud of her. But also, okay, in general I had thought at first- this is not even like a joke or a headcanon that I was, like, wishing for. I genuinely thought that the Turner sisters that were raising the great-niece were a couple. 

Meghan: I did too! 

Colleen: Okay thank you! Because they were- I thought that they were not related. I thought they were just saying that they were sisters so that no one would ask any questions and it'd be, like, more convenient and more safe for everyone involved. I know that that's kind of, like, a trope with, like, older same-sex couples, especially in the past. Like, “We're living together and we're…sisters? Yes, sisters. We'll just call it that on paper so that no one asks any questions.” 

Meghan: Or cousins if you watch the American version of Sailor Moon from the 90s. 

Colleen: Cousins, yes, classic. So I genuinely did not realize. That one was not even a joke. I just was like, “Oh, clearly I see what's happening here.” “We're raising this little girl together, you know. We're gonna tell everyone we're sisters just to be safer.” But now I've seen the family tree. So I obviously do not ship them together anymore. I thought it was just a different situation. So. 

Meghan: Yes, I definitely thought that too. 

Colleen: Okay, glad it wasn't just me. Did you find anything that would fit in this category? 

Meghan: Oh yes. I mean, the word “gay” itself just shows up on, like, every other page. It feels- it's just, like, thrown around willy-nilly. 

Colleen: “‘I'll be there,’ Nancy declared gaily.” 

Meghan: Yes, exactly.

Colleen: That was nice of her to RSVP while actively getting an undercut. Like, I'm sure that's what it means to say something gaily. 

Meghan: And this was also my second possible ship of the week. My second choice, if I wasn't so focused on making my family tree a circle, would have been Nancy and Allison. Allison is one of the younger set of sisters that we encounter, the neighbors. And there's a lot of Nancy noticing Allison, noticing her attractive, lilting laugh. 

Colleen: Yes. So Nancy ends up acquiring singing lessons for Allison, finding a way for her to receive training after she hears her beautiful, sad, tuneful birthday ballad. And this girl, she does get money from the will, but currently as it stands, she has enough money for a chair and a table. And so Nancy's like, “I've got to get this for you. My best friend of one day.” They are just instantly so close. 

Meghan: Yes. And I mean, it does literally say on page forty-one in my copy, quote, “Nancy was attracted to both girls.” 

Colleen: To both girls! I flagged that too! It's talking about how serious the girls look, and how these sisters look like they've had to deal with more tragedy than they should have at this age. And then Nancy at this time is also soaking wet, because this is right after she gets caught in a rainstorm and her roof won't go up on her convertible. So she gets into these girls' house. She doesn't know them. 

Meghan: And she immediately strips. 

Colleen: She immediately strips off all her clothes! They also, they bail out the water from the car and she parks it in their barn. I'm sure the car’s upholstery smells fantastic now. Then she goes in the house, immediately strips. They dry her clothes, she's ironing her own clothes, she's standing in their house in this little robe. She's like, “This is fun. I don't know what I would have done without you girls.” And they're like, “This is fun for us too. Come over all the time!” And then they have Alison's birthday celebration while Nancy's just, like, hanging out in a robe. It's a great time. 

Meghan: I know. Oh my gosh. Further text evidence with just these same girls: One, their conversations at supper were quote, “gay and animated,” unquote. And two, near the end of the novel, she greets them both with kisses. 

Colleen: Oh, that's right! 

Meghan: And then Allison describes her as her dearest friend. 

Colleen: Nancy should be like, “Wow, you have so few friends. We met a day ago.” 

Meghan: She should. But Nancy is described as having “a deep blush.” 

Colleen: Oh, that's so sweet, though. Okay, so these are the Hoover girls, right? 

Meghan: Yes. 

Colleen: Okay, because later on, well, later on somebody else says Nancy has taken, quote, “such an interest in these Hoover girls,” unquote. And the context is she's looking to find this more accurate, more updated will of Josiah Crowley's, but she's, like I said, very adamant that- she's like, “I will get you these opera lessons, even if we can't find this money.” She's the one that introduces Alison to this opera singer, and he's overcome by Alison's talent, her singing’s so emotional, and Nancy's like, “I will get these for you, even if we can't find the will, I gotta make your dreams come true.” 

Meghan: She does so much for someone she just met one to two days ago. 

Colleen: It is incredible. I also really liked Grace and Allison's description of their Uncle Josiah. Wait, so he's their uncle? 

Meghan: No. No, he's not. They're not really, I think they just-

Colleen: Oh, like a, like an Auntie. 

Meghan: Yeah. Yeah. 

Colleen: “We're real close with this older guy. But in like, he's like family to us, but we're not literally [related].” But so, they're talking about their, you know, quote unquote “uncle,” and they say, “‘some people thought him queer, but you never minded his peculiar ways after you knew him.’” And I know it just means he's like a weirdo, but I also love reading it as, “Yeah, yeah, for sure everyone knew he was gay, and we loved him, so no one judged him for it.”

Meghan:  Everyone loved him!

Colleen: And then, with Nancy's bosom friend Helen, the narrator describes her as this “slim, attractive school friend of Nancy,” and the narrator's kind of sitting on Nancy's shoulder, right? Like it's in third person, but it's almost entirely, if not entirely from Nancy's perspective. So when the narrator calls Helen attractive, it feels to me like Nancy is describing Helen as attractive, right? 

Meghan: Yeah, yeah, I think so. 

Colleen: Wait, so that makes our intro to Nancy as an attractive girl even better. Love the confidence. 

Meghan: She knows herself. 

Colleen: So she meets Helen. Like, she already knew Helen. She meets up with Helen. Helen's like, “Oh my god, I want to go to camp, but I can't because I gotta sell these charity ball tickets, blah, blah, blah. But when I go to camp, it's going to be great.” And then Helen says, quote, “‘Why don't you come along? It's not expensive and there's room for lots more girls. We have loads of fun,’” unquote. And I'm like, “Oh my, loads of fun, lots of girls. How many pillow fights are there? Can I go to the camp? Thoughts?” Because they're all adults. It's not like summer camp, like, for girly-girls. It's like, “Hey, we're just hanging out at camp.” Do we do, do adults do this? In modern day? Do we have summer camp for adults? 

Meghan: I don't think so, sadly. 

Colleen: I would like to. 

Meghan: We need that.

[Sound Cue: Scribbling as of a pencil on paper underneath the spoken words “Miscellaneous Mysteries”]

Meghan: In this segment, we kind of have any last thoughts on the book, any things that don't really fit into the other categories, but we wanted to make sure that we left some space for. 

Colleen: Yes, holding space for these tiny mysteries. I really love, and I think the Hardy Boys do this too, but I've read more of the Nancy books. Usually on the last page, it will tell you the title of the next book in italics as part of the text of the current book. This is not, like, an ad in the back. This is part of the last couple of paragraphs. So the last page goes, “‘This is the first mystery I've solved alone. I wonder if I'll ever have another one half so thrilling.’ As Nancy stood looking wistfully at the old clock, she little dreamed that in the near future she would be involved in,” italics, “The Hidden Staircase,” unitalics, “mystery, a far more baffling case than the one she had just solved.” Like, okay, it's not that I was totally immersed in this book, but it for sure would break my immersion if I was.

Meghan: And on that note, just because we're talking about the last page, it was, like I said, it's been a long time since I read Nancy Drew. But I love that they just give her the clock at the end?

Colleen: Yeah, there's no reason for that! It's not yours!

Meghan: Like, this is a memento of your mystery. And so I'm, like, imagining her starting a collection, because I would. 

Colleen: This collection is going to quickly get out of hand. 

Meghan: Yeah, so I'm very much looking forward to in the next novel what she gets to keep. I hope she gets to keep the staircase. She gets to take that home with her to put in her mystery collection. 

Colleen: Her dad hates her collection. He's like, “You need a new house. You can't be living here and bringing home souvenirs that are staircases, multiple feet tall.”

Meghan: Honestly, if she does not get a gift at the end from the people who she helped-

Colleen: She might! It just can't be the stairs!

Meghan: I know. But if she doesn't, I'm going to choose an object from the novel for her to have, if she isn't gifted one. 

Colleen: I like this. 

Meghan: Because I want her to have a small museum, even if it's not text-based. 

Colleen: No, I love that. And then, like, you have a little legend on the wall and follow along to learn more about the case.

Meghan: Yes, yes. 

Colleen: Just one tiny memento from each of the six hundred and thirteen books that Nancy has been in. 

Meghan: Yes, and how old is she now? Like a hundred? Almost a hundred? 

Colleen: She's... In her late nineties? ‘Cause she came on the scene in 1930. 

Meghan: Okay. Or older if we add eighteen years to that, right? 

Colleen: Right. Right. Depends on how you're counting that. 

Meghan: So then when she eventually retires, she can donate it to, like, a Nancy Drew museum or something. 

Colleen: A Drew-seum? 

Meghan: Yes. A Drew-seum, of course. 

Colleen: Excellent. I would cross-stitch the heck out of that. In, like, kind of a shadowbox sort of way, where there's little cubbies for each item. 

Meghan: Yes. 

Colleen: Wait. Okay. What if we had a sticker for patrons for each episode for each of the items that she keeps, and they can follow along on a poster at home with all the souvenirs?

Meghan: Yes.

Colleen: And then I really do want to cross-stitch this. So what if I sent out the cross-stitch pattern so we could do a long distance stitch-along? Like, that could be fun. 

Meghan: Yes! I love that. 

Colleen: I do want her to keep the staircase though. It has to be the titular item. So she's got to take home the whole haunted carousel, take home the whole mansion, keep it inside of Carson's home. 

Meghan: Yes. Oh my gosh.

[Sound Cue: Upbeat synthesizer chords reminiscent of a game show introduction play underneath the spoken words “Gumshoe Game Show!”]

Meghan: In this segment, Colleen asks me, Meghan, five questions related to a completely insignificant detail from the text that we just read.

Colleen: All right. Are you ready for your Gumshoe Game Show?

Meghan:  No. 

Colleen: Yay! Great! So I want to quiz you, like NPR-Wait-Wait-Don't-Tell-Me-style. We’ve got a few questions themed around one teeny tiny detail of the book. It's not related to most of it. And of course listeners can play along. So, specifically a part of this book that stuck out to me, and I have mentioned it a few times already, is the tuneful old English ballad about a lass, that you sing on your birthday. So you lived in England. You must know many tuneful old English ballads, yes? You sing them every day instead of saying the Pledge of Allegiance. That's, you know, you sing a different one every morning and then you can pick the best one when it's your birthday. That's my understanding of the school system. 

Meghan: Oh my God, am I going to be, am I going to have to sing an old English ballad? 

Colleen: No, no, no, no, no. 

Meghan: Oh, thank god.

Colleen: I was just asking if you know them, because you're going to get asked trivia questions about them. 

Meghan: Yeah, of course. Yeah, I know all of them. 

Colleen: Good, good. 

Meghan: I had no idea what this game show was going to entail. I was just hoping it was going to be like a quiz about the book. I'm really good at that. 

Colleen: Yeah, like I'm checking your reading comprehension? 

Meghan: Yes! Like what color was her jacket in the first chapter? I was, I was ready. I was so ready. 

Colleen: You would be very good at that. So obviously, I couldn't do that. I had to pick something else. I did not, I did not prep her at all. Okay. So there are five questions and they're multiple-choice. 

Meghan: Well, what do I get if I win? 

Colleen: A staircase. Nope. A clock. 

Meghan: Yes. Yes. 

Colleen: This clock right here. I have a stylish yellow timer that I bought to help with my ADHD. And then I put it in a drawer and forgot it existed. 

Meghan: Oh my goodness. Yeah. I want that clock. I want it. 

Colleen: Okay. Question One. In the ballad “Bonny Barbara Allan,”- 

Meghan: Uhhhhhh…

Colleen: No, don't panic. No, I had never heard of these prior to researching this game show. Do not panic. You were not expected to know these. 

Meghan: Oh, thank goodness. Okay. Okay. 

Colleen: All right. In the ballad “Bonny Barbara Allan,” perhaps the best known of the popular ballads after Sir Patrick Spens-

Meghan: Of course. 

Colleen: According to ballad.com or wherever I looked these up. 

Meghan: Ballad.com?! 

Colleen: Or wherever. So why does Bonny Barbara Allan refuse her master's love for her prior, of course, to his untimely death (because it's a ballad)? (A) She has read Jane Eyre and didn't like the ending. (B) He slighted her in front of his aristocratic friends because she was born of lower class than he was. (C) He poured out the tea she made him onto the floor, for it was too bitter. Or (D) Despite his ample wealth and access, he refused to dress in a way that befitted his station. Why did she turn down her master's love for her right before he died? Walk me through what you're thinking.

Meghan: Oh, this is so hard. Okay. Okay. I feel like (A) is not correct. 

Colleen: Correct. Correct.

Meghan: No Jane Eyre. Okay, what was the second one? 

Colleen: (B) is he slighted her in front of his aristocratic friends because she was born of lower class than he was. 

Meghan: That sounds like it could be right. And then one was, was the tea, right? 

Colleen: The tea was poured on the floor ‘cause it was too bitter. And (D) is he ain't dressing right. 

Meghan: Oh. I want to say (B), the aristocrat? 

Colleen: It is (B)!

Meghan: Yes! 

Colleen: Yes! Yes, he slighted her. Very, very good. Okay, yeah. 

Meghan: I want this clock. Hope it's got some secrets in it. 

Colleen: It's got the secret of “Why can't I manage my time?” All right, Question Two. In the ballad “The Unquiet Grave,” why is the dead young woman unquiet? (A) She wishes her bereft lover to cease his mournful pining and find joy in life again. (B) She is too committed to her handbell choir and, hashtag, can't stop, won't stop- 

Meghan: Not that one.

Colleen: -thus remaining unquiet. (C) Her husband has taken a new lover, which displeases her greatly as the new lover is wearing the dead one's clothes. Or (D) Her home has been invaded and she shrieks to scare off the armed forces as they sleep in her bed.

Meghan: Hmm. So she, okay. I know it's not, it's probably not (B). 

Colleen: It’s not the handbells? 

Meghan: Not the handbells. 

Colleen: Why not?

Meghan: That's too obvious. Can't be that one. 

Colleen: I was in a handbell choir. Yes. Yes. That's why- 

Meghan: Were you really in a handbell choir? 

Colleen: I was in a handbell choir! When I was, I was a music intern at a church in college, and I learned handbells and I could do six in hand, which is great. 

Meghan: Oh my god!

Colleen: Well, it's four in hand and I was in charge of seven, actually. So I could have four at a time, and then I was in charge of seven, like, all the accidentals. And you would, you know, switch them out in between, and I felt great about that because I picked it up pretty quickly. But the girl one octave up from me had been doing it since she was literally a child, because her mom was the music minister, and so she could do- she was in charge of an entire octave, and I was like, “Well I’ll never be as good as her, I must be trash,” and that's not actually how it works. 

Meghan: You're already leaps and bounds above everyone else-

Colleen: She could do a whole octave though! Oh everyone that’s not in a handbell choir? 

Meghan: Yeah, yeah. I’ve never held a handbell!

Colleen: Here’s the thing, though! Here's the thing. Unlike playing piano or the other things I play, on its own, it's not that great a skill. I can't just pick up my seven handbells and be like, “Okay, here's one-third of a song. You have to imagine the higher notes.”

Meghan: I could, I could see that. Oh my gosh. Okay, wait, to go back to the question, (A) was about, what was it? 

Colleen: (A) is stop being depressed. 

Meghan: Stop being depressed. Oh her husband, she wants her husband to stop being depressed?

Colleen: Yes. 

Meghan: (C) is new, new wife? 

Colleen: New lover wearing my clothes. 

Meghan: And then the other one is her house is full of the armed soldiers. 

Colleen: She wants her Third Amendment rights. “Don't be in my house, I'll yell at you.”

Meghan: I kind of want to say the most dramatic one sounds like (C) and I want that one to be right. 

Colleen: Unfortunately, it is telling your husband to stop being depressed. Just get over it. 

Meghan: No. 

Colleen: That is what she wants. It's nicer than that. It's like, “Oh, but the wind is so beautiful, and, like, go out to the meadow,” and it's really nice. Like, “Yes, I love you too. But, like, you have so much life left to live.” It’s not actually just “Stop being depressed.”

Meghan: That does sound nice. 

Colleen: But unfortunately you did not- I'm happy that you fell for my dramatic false answer. 

Meghan: They're tough. You're very good at coming up with false- I mean, one of them was very obviously false, but the other ones are very convincing. 

Colleen: Thank you. Thank you. All right. Question Three. In “The Wife of Usher’s Well,” we all know this one, obviously. 

Meghan: Yeah.

Colleen: How do the wife's- In “The Wife of Usher’s Well,” how do the wife’s three sons return to her after being sent away to school? (A) Triumphantly bringing forth the corpse of a mighty dragon they have slain (B) Sadly and with dunce caps upon thine heads as they have flunketh all of thine classes.

Meghan: Okay. 

Colleen: I think I did not use “thine” correctly. 

Meghan: No.

Colleen: They failed your classes. 

Meghan: But that's okay. 

Colleen: Love that for us. (C) Returning in various states as one has suddenly found a wife, one became a mighty knight, and the youngest is head pupil. Or (D) They return as ghosts.

Meghan:  Well, it's a ballad. I feel like they didn't return with the dragon. That seems too happy for a ballad. 

Colleen: But sad for the dragon. 

Meghan: Yeah. “The Wife of Usher’s Well.” I feel like- the third. So again, the second one is probably false. 

Colleen: Why? Just because I said “thine” wrong? 

Meghan: Yep. Yep, that was the giveaway.

Colleen: I looked it up, but I couldn't find a way to say, like, “his” that sounded old-timey enough, but also, like, parsable. 

Meghan: Yeah, yeah. So I'm debating between (C) and (D). Which is them coming back in various states, that could be it. And then also them all coming back as ghosts really tracks for a ballad. I really want the clock! I want to get it right!

Colleen: You can do this. I believe in you

Meghan: And I don't like, I like, I like getting As. What am I going to do? I’m gonna go with (D), the ghosts. 

Colleen: Correct. 

Meghan: Yes. Oh, thank goodness. I was worried about that one. 

Colleen: I could tell. All right. Question Four. Of five. We're almost done. 

Meghan: Okay. So I've got two right and one wrong. 

Colleen: Correct. 

Meghan: Okay. Okay. Oof.

Colleen: You got this. 

Meghan: Okay. 

Colleen: About whom is the ballad “Mary Hamilton,” which ends in an untimely death for Mary and her child? (A) Mary Seacole. That is S-E-A-C-O-L-E, not the bird, seagull. (B) Mary Magdalene. (C) Mary, Queen of the Scots (Asterisk: Not Mary, Queen of Scots. There were a lot of Marys that were Queens of the Scots.) (D) Mary, the lady-in-waiting to Mary, Queen of the Scots (Asterisk for the same reason).

Meghan: Oh my gosh. 

Colleen: I'm so sorry. This one's really hard, I'm sorry. 

Meghan: So many Marys. Okay. 

Colleen: I almost put E, “Mary, Did You Know?” But I thought that would be rude.

Meghan: At least I would have been able to eliminate that one. 

Colleen: No, I would just add extra problems for you.

Meghan: Okay, Mary Magdalene seems incorrect to me. Only because I keep thinking of the ballads like old English ballads. Mary Magdalene seems a little old. Older. 

Colleen: Wrong time period?

Meghan: Wrong time period. However, I mean- 

Colleen: Wrong place also. 

Meghan: Everyone loves to write about whatever they want. So like, who knows? Maybe they're talking about her. But for now, I'm gonna eliminate that option. Mary, Queen of the Scots, but not the Mary, Queen of Scots that I would be thinking of that was like- 

Colleen: Correct. Not the one you read The Royal Diaries about.

Meghan: Yeah, okay. All that, and that doesn't eliminate anything. There are so many Marys. Oh my god. 

Colleen: And there's so many queens. And! So many Scots. 

Meghan: And who's Mary Seacole? I have no idea who that is. 

Colleen: She might have a ballad about her. She might not. 

Meghan: She might! 

Colleen: Hard to say. 

Meghan: I'm gonna have to take a random stab in the dark at this one, I think. 

Colleen: Probably what happened to Mary. 

Meghan: Stop. For some reason I'm going…yeah, I don't know. Mary, the lady-in-waiting. No, no, that one can't be right. The lady-in-waiting. Could it, though? Mm. This is so hard. I just want to get it right. Okay. I'm going to go with, I'm gonna go with (D). 

Colleen: It is the lady-in-waiting. Very, very good. 

Meghan: Oh my gosh! Ohhhh. So stressful!

Colleen: I could tell! Not for me, though, so that’s great. A little peek behind the curtain there, so, the reason she and her child died is the child is hers and the king's. So not a great thing. 

Meghan: So dramatic!

Colleen: Right, so the queen's like, “Not only is that the king's illegitimate child. Not great. But that's like my husband, bro. We're, like, close. We're tight. Literally, you tighten up my corsets every day and then you are having affairs. I don't care for it.” Mary Seacole is a super cool Jamaican woman who worked as a nurse in the Crimean war and, like, broke a bunch of social rules and prejudices to travel the world and help, like, people in need in very dangerous places. 

Meghan: Awesome. Good for her. 

Colleen: Totally wrong timing. That's the- she started, well, I guess it could be the right timing. I don't really know when these ballads are made. I’ve got to go back to ballads.com or whatever. But she was born in Jamaica in 1805 and then she lived in London for a while, so. 

Meghan: Amazing. 

Colleen: Anyway. All right. We got one more. And you get bonus points if you don't need the multiple choice. 

Meghan: But I already won, right? 

Colleen: You did already win. 

Meghan: Yes! Okay.

Colleen: I’m just letting you know. 

Meghan: Okay, okay. 

Colleen: You got three out of five. 

Meghan: Okay. 

Colleen: So this should be less stressful.

Meghan: Okay. Thank goodness. 

Colleen: I'm going to describe a ballad to you and you’ve got to give me the name of the tuneful English ballad. Okay. Okay. So our protagonist, the titular maiden of the ballad lives in a holy place. She works there for no pay, just for a place to stay. She cleans up after others her entire life. She is named in the song, but it is clear she has almost no personality, at least that others see, almost to the point of facelessness. Later, she perishes alone in this same parish. No one mourns her or comes to the service. She remains as blank in memory as she was in life.

Meghan: “Eleanor Rigby.” 

Colleen: Yeah, it is, in fact, “Eleanor Rigby.” 

Meghan: I started so confused, but I was very confident.

Colleen: Why? Are you saying this is a different time period than the other English ballads? 

Meghan: I mean, yes. But you know, I'd consider it an English ballad. It’s one of my favorite Beatles songs

Colleen: I mean it’s sad! It’s English! It's tuneful! It is my favorite Beatles song. 

Meghan: Yeah. No, but the more- the titular maiden of the ballad, I was like, “Oh God, oh no, already!”

Colleen: Uh-huh. “It’s gotta have somebody's name in it. I'm gonna go with Mary.” Mary's, I mean, that's a pretty good guess. 

Meghan: Catherine? That's another good English name. 

Colleen: Catherine or Mary. Incredible. Well, you win this clock. Enjoy putting it into your own desk drawer and forgetting about it forever.

Meghan: Yes, I'm so excited! Those were hard. You're a good test maker. I'm impressed. 

Colleen: Yeah, thanks so much. You did a great job though. I saw your test-taking strategies there, where you eliminate the BS one.

Meghan: Thanks, I used to teach test-taking strategies, so I'm pretty good at it. 

Colleen: Yeah, I mean that's what education is. Do you want to know what the options were that you could choose from?

Meghan: For the last one? 

Colleen: Yeah, for “Eleanor Rigby.” Yeah, yeah. Once I gave you multiple-choice and then one of them's “Eleanor Rigby,” it's obviously “Eleanor Rigby.” 

Meghan: What are the others? 

Colleen: I had some other ones. Some other ones, when I was looking up the ballads, I found others that weren't about maidens, so they didn't really fit the theme, but I just thought they were cool. So we have- I almost put in The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, but we have-

Meghan: That would have been good.

Colleen: “The Twa Corbiess,” which was renamed to “The Three Ravens.” And then we have one called “Get Up and Bar the Door.” Then the other one was “The Ballad of Chevy Chase,” which is from this time period. 

Meghan: I…huh.

Colleen: It is “one of the most celebrated border ballads set in the chase or hunter's ground of the Cheviot Hills.” “The Ballad of Chevy Chase.” 

Meghan: Did they name Chevy? Did Chevy Chase get named after this?

Colleen: It has to have been! Because the order in which these existed is this ballad was here and then later a dude named Chevy Chase was there. That just cracked me up.

Meghan: Let's see. “For other uses, see ‘Chevy Chase (disambiguation).’ Chevy Chase, American comedian or actor. ‘Chevy Chase’ may also refer to Chevy Chase, Maryland, or a parcel of hunting land or chase in the Cheviot Hills on the border of Scotland and England.”

Colleen: And that's what the ballad is about. But I was just so caught off-guard because I thought it was a dude. But then I also have seen it, just- I mean, I didn't live in D.C. But when I went to college in Kentucky (where I learned handbells), there was, like, a shopping mall called Chevy Chase. 

Meghan: Chevy Chase, Lexington! 

Colleen: Yeah, that's where I was! 

Meghan: “A neighborhood in southeastern Lexington, Kentucky, United States.”

Colleen: Yeah, I passed it on my way walking thirty minutes uphill both ways to go student-teach. So, there's a lot going on here. 

Meghan: Crazy. Wow. 

Colleen: If I'd known about that ballad, it would have changed my whole commute!

Meghan: I learned so many things today. 

Colleen: Oh yeah. So that's our Gumshoe Game Show. It's educational. 

Meghan: I love it!.

[Sound cue: Same eerie piano tune reminiscent of the Nancy Drew PC game soundtracks that played at the top of the episode, now extended to play underneath the rest of the episode.] 

Meghan: Thank you so much for joining us on our first episode of Me and You and Nancy Drew and hopefully playing along with our Gumshoe Game Show or, you know, I dont know-

Colleen: Listening to Meghan's distress. 

Meghan: Listening to me try and parse out the answer. Join us for our next episode where we will be reading the 1959 edition of The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene, which takes place almost immediately after the events of The Secret of the Old Clock. 

Colleen: And you'll never believe what's hidden in this book. This podcast is lovingly dedicated to the memory of my wonderful mother, Char, World's Best Mom, and the woman who got me hooked on sassy female detective stories. I also want to thank my brother, Ben, for creating most of our sound and music cues for this podcast. Thanks, Ben.

Meghan: You can check out our website, MeAndYouAndNancyDrew.com, for show transcripts, links to our social media and our Patreon, where we'll post any images that we described during the podcast. Those will be visible to anyone, without a paywall, so that we're not describing nebulous images that you can't see at home. But if you'd like to become a patron, there are various perks there, including outtakes or things that got cut for time, stickers and cross-stitch patterns to create your own Drewseum at home, and more. 

Colleen: Thank you, Meghan, for editing the podcast, doing a lot of research about podcast creation, and adding a few additional sound cues as needed.

Meghan: Thank you, Colleen, for also editing the podcast, for transcribing it, and for helping create our logo. 

Colleen: Thank you to our partners for all the support and love, and especially for lending us their microphones that they bought for a completely different purpose but said we could borrow once in a while.

Meghan: Thank you to libraries everywhere for giving access to Nancy Drew books and all the other books that we mentioned today, and just media of all kinds to people everywhere for free. 

Colleen: And finally, thank you of course to Carolyn Keene for independently writing each of the Nancy Drew books from 1930 to modern day. We couldn't do this without you and your six hundred and thirteen individual novels. 

Meghan: And don't forget the moral of this episode:

Colleen: “‘I'm afraid I'm exceeding the speed limit, but I almost wish a trooper would stop me!’”