The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #77: The Bluebeard Room (1985)

Nancy, Bess, and George are in NYC to spend some time with her aunt Eloise. While at a garden party, Bess finds out that this huge rock star named Lance is there, and George comments on all the chicks waiting to dance with him. Nancy gets a note from Ms. Hardwood, her former neighbor from River Heights. She needs to talk to her about something vitally important.

Ms. Hardwood has a daughter, Lisa, who married a wealthy nobleman named Hugh. They moved back to his hometown in England. Ms. Hardwood shows Nancy a picture of Lisa and asks if it's possible that her husband might be poisoning her. She keeps showing all the classic symptoms and doesn't seem like herself anymore. The older lady then asks if Nancy might possibly go to London and check on things herself.

Before she can make a decision, she notices an arrowhead. Hardwood explains that it fell out of the envelope, and Nancy thinks it looks ancient. The woman then asks if she wants to meet Lance and offers to introduce them. All the other girls at the party are totally jealous when he comes over to see her. Nancy abruptly changes her mind, says she has no interest in meeting him, and storms off.

As it turns out, she just thought he was a little too big for his britches and that he wasn't very nice to the women at the party. He later finds her and chats with her for a bit, which she tells the girls the next morning. They do some shopping, and Nancy meets with Nigel, an archaeologist from England who now runs a bookstore in NYC, to show him the arrowhead. He tells her it's actually a black magic tool that dates back from the Mary Queen of Scots days.

When they get back, they find three front row tickets to Lance's concert that night. At the show, Nancy meets Jane, the band's handler. Jane acts like she's a groupie before seeing that Lance left a special note for them to invite them to the after party. Lance himself acts like a dick and reveals that he didn't send the tickets. Nancy then realizes that Lance is treating her like a groupie and gets all embarrassed. She finds something in her purse and tells the girls that they need to leave.

The next morning, she shows them that someone slipped a baggie of white powder in her purse and calls the cops. A sergeant comes to Eloise's apartment and tells Nancy that it's cocaine and a high grade cocaine at that. He also says that the police got a hot tip the night before about drugs at the party. They raided the place and found nothing. If they caught Nancy there with the drugs on her, she would have been in big trouble. She then makes plans to head to London.

When she gets off the plane, she discovers Lance is there too. He and Jane offer her a ride to her hotel, and he makes plans to see her later. They wind up going out to lunch and then make dinner plans. Jane comes to see her and tells her not to get too comfy because she and Lance plan to marry. While Nancy is upset, that doesn't stop her from going out to dinner with him and then out dancing. He says that he sought comfort in Jane before but that it was never serious.

They also meet up again the following day for lunch but get interrupted with news that his band mate Ian went off the rails. Nancy goes with him to check on his friend, and they learn that the man went crazy, which most suspect was due to drugs. She finds a car from someone named Eustace who came to see him and takes Lance to see the guy. He claims that Ian came to him with news that he saw a sculpture similar to a famous one based on a witch. There were rumors that the artist made a second but no proof that it ever existed.

Nancy leaves to go see Lisa, remember her?, but Lance promises to come see her soon. Lisa meets her at the train station and seems pretty down. Even though things are fine with Hugh, she hates living in the old town. No one will ever talk to her. When they get to the castle where she lives, they hear someone scream. Ethel, the only woman from town who actually talks to her, fell off her bike while trying to deliver a letter to Nancy, and no one can find the letter.

Lisa gives her a tour of the castle and shows her a room with a heavy wooden door. She claims that Hugh always keeps it locked, which makes Nancy think about the story of Bluebeard. Since Lisa avoids going into town, she lets Nancy go on her own. Nancy has a run in with the constable and comes back to find the missing letter, which was from Lance. An arrowhead falls out on the ground, and while she thinks it's weird, she decides to take a tour of the castle and do some thinking. Hugh catches her outside the locked room and practically screams at her to stay away and never even attempt to open it.

Things get a little strange when the papers begin reporting about Nancy and Lance, especially articles written by this guy named Alan. The papers play things up like they're not and heavy and not like they just met. Ethel comes over with an herbal drink and asks Nancy to give it to Lisa. She does but also sends a sample to Dr. Carradine, Lisa's doctor. The doctor finds that it's just herbs and vegetables.

One night, when she can't sleep, Nancy heads outside and catches Lisa sleepwalking. She manages to save her, and Hugh thanks her about a billion times. Since she thought she saw a light off in the distance, she investigates and finds an old mine shaft filled with joint butts and dirty syringes. When she tries to walk back to the castle, she gets caught in quicksand, but Alan, the reporter, comes to her rescue. He claims he was just investigating a story about drug use.

This all leads up to a big town party. Nancy meets this woman named Diane who warns her that she's stirring up trouble all over town. Other people want to talk about the matching sculpture, but most people seem uncomfortable even talking about it. She then spots Lance and kind of guys off on him. Nancy makes it clear that she doesn't like being in the limelight and that she isn't just another one of his groupies.

Alan takes her to a pub to get something to eat and to help her calm down, which is pretty sweet. When she gets back, she decides to break into the locked room but finds that someone already tried to break inside. The butler tells her that Lance is on the phone for the third time, and she tells him to just tell him to stop calling. Lisa then makes her do a séance with Ethel, who swears she saw a black figure with horns. To make things worse, Lisa sleepwalks again.

Nancy and Hugh catch Lisa before she walks off a conveniently placed cliff. Lisa seemingly has no memories of what happened, which makes Nancy wonder if she faked sleepwalking to get her husband's attention. The next morning, she meets Alan for breakfast. He tells her that Hugh's uncle was a troublemaker and that there were rumors he was mixed up in witchcraft. One of his older ancestors had a connection to witchcraft too.

Since Nancy vaguely saw something on the water the night before, she asks Alan if he knows how she can check it out. It just so happens that his family loves boating, so he takes her out on the water. They find a cave hidden near the water and a piece of a boat called the Undine. He explains that pirates were pretty common in the area back in the day. She asks one of Carson's friends to check on the shipwreck for her and makes plans to see Alan that night. Nancy also learns that Ian was once arrested for drugs.

When he picks her up for their not a date, he announces that he's taking her to Lance's concert. Lance throws a fit when he sees them, and Nancy barely remembers a thing about the show. Alan tells her he took her there to find out if she still had feelings for the other man. He then says he really likes her and kisses her, which kind of comes out of nowhere.

Nancy finds out that the Undine was an old ship carrying something of important archaeological significance. The ship wrecked with only one survivor ever found, a woman named Phoebe Hardwood. She starts putting things together and decides to do a little scuba diving to see if she's right. When she goes to rent equipment though, she runs into Lance. He says seeing her with another guy made him realize how much she means to him and begs her to take him back. He then pretty much invites himself along on her trip.

They head out to the water near where the shipwreck occurred and find a weird looking contraption in the water. The contraption winds up hiding a door, which they open and follow down a hallway and eventually to the Bluebeard room with the matching sculpture on display. There's also a portrait of Hugh's old ancestor who people thought was a witch. Nancy tells Lance that townspeople once worshiped her as a witch and later became drug smugglers. Seriously? Oh, and they recruited Ian, but then he got super addicted to drugs.

Dr. Carradine and another guy from town show up to stop them. It turns out that he drugged and hypnotized Lisa into sleepwalking, which served as a distraction for Nancy. Ethel was in on it too and used her herbal drink to drug Lisa. They knew her reputation as a detective and didn't want her to stumble on them. Hugh then wanders into the room and seems shocked at all of them being there. Ethel shows up too, which causes all hell to break loose.

Actually, there's a fight that ends when Alan pops up in scuba diving gear that he rented to follow Nancy. He and Lance hold the guys down while Hugh calls the police. Nancy gives him a kiss and then gives Lance one too when he complains. Hugh reveals that his uncle told him everything about his little cult and that Hugh promised not to tell anyone if they agreed to stop, which they obviously didn't do.

In the end, Lance and Alan come to see her. They tell her that she never told them which one she picked. Nancy just smiles, kisses them both, and says she needs more time to decide. Ugh.

*Lance wears a white silk suit with a lavender silk shirt, which is so totally 80s that I had to laugh.

*You can tell this is one of the older books because George willingly goes shopping with Bess at Bloomingdale's and even comments on how much fun she had.

*I love that NYC cops in the 80s had nothing better to do than investigate an anonymous tip about a rock band partying with cocaine!

*According to Nancy, she and Ned started feeling like they took their relationship for granted and decided to see other people, which is why she can flirt with Lance in this book. However, she still calls him her boyfriend though, which is a little confusing.

*Lance is a huge dick and basically a rock star who uses women and has a line of women who want him. Nancy wavers between hating him and liking him. She keeps saying he's a jerk but then cries when she hears he's engaged to someone else. It's all kind of bull.