From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

The taxi drives up Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler’s long, tree-lined driveway. Jamie wonders aloud if Mrs. Frankweiler owns this “highway,” and the driver tells him this is Mrs. Frankweiler’s driveway—“this dame’s loaded.” When they pull up, Jamie thinks her house resembles a museum. Claudia points out that, in that case, they’ll feel at home. Jamie gives all their remaining money to the driver for a tip, and the kids worry briefly about being broke—they’ve “traded safety for adventure.”

Jamie rings Mrs. Frankweiler’s doorbell, and the butler, Parks, answers. Claudia gives their names, and after a long wait, the butler returns to say that Mrs. Frankweiler doesn’t know them. Claudia insists that they would like her to know them and explains that they’ve come looking for information about the Italian Renaissance. After another long wait, Parks ushers the kids through several rooms filled with antique furniture and Oriental rugs. After all that, Mrs. Frankweiler’s office comes as a surprise.

Saxonberg has always told Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler that her office looks more like a laboratory than an office. That, she says, is why she calls her work research. It’s furnished with steel, Formica, vinyl, and fluorescent lights—and rows and rows of filing cabinets. When Parks brings Claudia and Jamie in, Mrs. Frankweiler is sitting at a table wearing her “customary” white lab coat and her baroque pearl necklace. After Parks announces the children, Mrs. Frankweiler lets them wait for a good while. She pointedly goes on with her research, even when Jamie gives two obviously fake sneezes.

Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler doesn’t like wasting time. When she finally turns around, she demands to know whether Claudia and Jamie are the children who’ve been missing from Greenwich for the past week. (She notes that Saxonberg must admit she has a “finely developed sense of theatrics” when necessary.) The kids have become used to going undiscovered, so they’ve forgotten they’re runaways. They’re in shock.

Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler says they don’t have to tell her—she already knows the answer. In answer to the children’s questions, she explains that she found out about them from the newspaper and, no, she didn’t call the police. She tells them to sit down and start talking about the Italian Renaissance. She also hands them newspapers they’ve appeared in from Hartford, Stamford, and Greenwich—they made the front page in Greenwich.

When the kids keep asking questions, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler warns them that if they keep talking this way, she’ll get bored and call both the police and their parents so she can be rid of them. They humbly agree to stop. When Mrs. Frankweiler asks Jamie if he finds her frightening, he says she’s “not so bad looking,” and Mrs. Frankweiler rings for Parks to bring her a mirror—she rarely thinks about her appearance nowadays. When Parks brings the mirror, she studies her reflection in silence for a long time and concludes that she simply looks like she’s getting older, but that perhaps she should get a permanent wave for her hair—she normally has Parks cut it.

Mrs. Frankweiler tells Claudia that she never really looks past her eyes, since that way she always feels pretty. Claudia steps closer and tells Mrs. Frankweiler that her eyes are beautiful, but her intent gaze makes Mrs. Frankweiler uncomfortable, so she changes the subject. She commands Jamie to speak, and he stammers that they want to find out about the statue. Once they’ve explained which statue they’re talking about, she pulls out a file containing newspaper clippings about the auction and the exhibit. Claudia asks why she sold Angel, and Mrs. Frankweiler says she doesn’t like to donate things.

Claudia proclaims that if she owned such a beautiful statue, she’d never sell or donate it—she’d love it like a family member. Mrs. Frankweiler retorts that this isn’t saying much, considering how much trouble Claudia has caused her family. She tells Claudia that if she had actually read the article about her disappearance, she would have known that her parents are frantic with worry, and that Claudia’s letter apparently didn’t reassure them.

Claudia explains that she can’t go home until she knows the truth about Angel’s sculptor. Mrs. Frankweiler says that’s her secret and asks where the kids have been hiding all week, and Claudia says that’s their secret. Mrs. Frankweiler cheers at this reply and decides she likes these children. She sends the children to wash up for lunch, and Claudia relishes washing up in Mrs. Frankweiler’s beautiful marble bathroom with gold fixtures. She can’t even resist taking a bath in the black marble tub, which is the size of a small swimming pool.

When Jamie finds out what Claudia is doing, he declares it “boloney” and goes to start lunch without her. He explains his “nutty” sister’s fondness for baths and even tells Mrs. Frankweiler how they bathed in the museum fountain. He adds that Claudia did the planning and he managed the money, but now they’re broke. Mrs. Frankweiler suggests that they make a deal—maybe if Jamie gives her some details, she can give the kids a ride home in exchange. Jamie says she’ll have to work that out with Claudia, but he invites her to play a card game. Mrs. Frankweiler says she assumes that Jamie cheats, but she might play after lunch anyway—she loves a good game of cards.

When Claudia finally shows up after her bath, Mrs. Frankweiler can tell she’s annoyed that they didn’t wait for her. But she softens when Parks serves a fancy-sounding casserole, which turns out to be simple macaroni and cheese. Mrs. Frankweiler explains that she’s really just a plain lady at heart. Over lunch Claudia admits that she hasn’t been thinking about her family much—she doesn’t feel she can go home without knowing if Michelangelo carved Angel. Mrs. Frankweiler asks why that would make a difference and then answers her own question—because running away didn’t make a difference; Claudia still had to do the planning and keeping things in order, just like at home.

Claudia admits Mrs. Frankweiler is right. She adds that she enjoyed doing all the planning for running away, and that once they’d done it, it felt like living at home away from home. Mrs. Frankweiler asks what her favorite part was, and Claudia says that, eventually, it was Angel. But she doesn’t want to explain how Angel got involved. And that’s partly because, once she reveals where they were hiding all this time, she’ll feel that the adventure is over.

Mrs. Frankweiler says the adventure is over. Everything ends, except the part a person carries with them. It’s like going on vacation—some people spend the whole time taking pictures so they can show everyone they had a good time, and they forget to actually have a good time.

Claudia asks if Mrs. Frankweiler already knows where they’ve been, and she says yes. Then Claudia glances at Jamie and sees he’s hiding underneath his napkin. He meekly confesses that the truth slipped out—he’s not used to talking to anyone but Claudia. Claudia is distraught; the secret was all they had.

Mrs. Frankweiler tells her about the deal she discussed with Jamie. But even a ride home in a Rolls-Royce isn’t enough for Claudia—she wants to know about Angel. Mrs. Frankweiler feels grateful that she’s dealing with a spirited child instead of a stupid one. At the same time, she wants to help Claudia “see the value of her adventure.” It means Claudia is “tiptoeing into the grown-up world.”

Mrs. Frankweiler leads the children into her office. She points to the filing cabinets along the wall and explains that these are her “secrets.” In one of the cabinets is the secret of Michelangelo’s Angel. She’ll share it with them—but they must have a “handicap,” which is that they must find the file for themselves, within one hour. And they mustn’t mess up her files, because they’re in a special order that only she understands. Mrs. Frankweiler then sneaks into the large closet next to her office so she can watch everything the children do.

Jamie immediately starts tearing through cabinets, but Claudia yells at him to stop. She says that “five minutes of planning are worth fifteen minutes of just looking,” and begins making a list. She makes a list of 11 items, including “Michelangelo,” “Angel,” and “Metropolitan Museum of Art.” She and Jamie squabble briefly over who should get the evens and the odds, but then they get to work searching through the files. Though they find many folders fitting the listed categories, when there are just six minutes remaining, they haven’t yet found anything about Angel.

In desperation, Claudia asks Jamie what else they should search for, but when Jamie starts to say, “Look him up under…,” Claudia attacks his grammar. Jamie protests, “Oh, boloney”—and suddenly Claudia knows where to look. She remembers that Mrs. Frankweiler purchased Angel in Bologna, Italy. They race back to the cabinets and find a file labeled “BOLOGNA.” At once, they know they’ve found where the secret is kept.

Claudia sits down and starts carefully going through the folder. Inside is a very old piece of paper sealed between two glass sheets. On one side of the paper is an Italian sonnet. They can’t read it, but they recognize the signature—“Michelangelo.” On the other side is a sketch of an angel.

Claudia starts to cry, hugging the glass frame. Finally she tells Jamie that Michelangelo himself touched this paper over 400 years ago. Then Mrs. Frankweiler emerges from her hiding place. She explains that the rest of the papers in the folder are her research on Angel. Michelangelo actually sculpted Angel in Rome, she adds, but she files the research under Bologna to make it more difficult to find.

Mrs. Frankweiler has known for a long time that Michelangelo did this statue. She’s had the sketch since right after the war. She got it from an Italian nobleman. The kids jump in with speculations about how this happened, but it turns out to be simple: the nobleman was a bad poker player, and Mrs. Frankweiler is a good one. But, she tells Jamie, she didn’t cheat.

Jamie asks Mrs. Frankweiler why she didn’t sell the sketch, too. She explains that she needed the secret more than she needed the money. Jamie looks puzzled, but Claudia understands and thanks Mrs. Frankweiler for sharing the secret with them. Jamie wonders how she knows they’ll keep the secret. Mrs. Frankweiler says that a boy who cheats at cards should know. Jamie’s face lights up—she’s going to bribe them. He demands details.

Mrs. Frankweiler laughs and says the deal is that they will tell her the story of their running away, and she will give them the sketch. Jamie wonders how she knows he won’t accidentally give her secret away, like he gave away the secret that they hid in the museum. Amused, Mrs. Frankweiler explains that she’s going to leave the sketch to the kids in her will. If they reveal her secret, she’ll simply write them out of her will. She knows Jamie is excited about how much the sketch will be worth. Claudia, she knows, will keep the secret for another reason—the secret will let her return to Greenwich “different.”

Mrs. Frankweiler goes on that she knows Claudia doesn’t really want adventure. She loves things like baths and being comfortable. Instead, Claudia likes the kind of adventure that secrets offer. They make a person different “on the inside where it counts.” Meanwhile, Mrs. Frankweiler will keep the details of their story in her files—she collects such secrets. Jamie marvels that if secrets make a person different on the inside, then Mrs. Frankweiler must have the most “mixed-up” insides anyone has ever seen.

Mrs. Frankweiler can see that Claudia is surprised—she’d expected Angel’s secret to be “a loud bang, not a quiet soaking in.” She also knows that, unlike the secrets of running away and hiding in the museum, this secret won’t come to an end. Claudia will get to carry it around with her. She’ll be a heroine to herself.

Mrs. Frankweiler knows Claudia is happy. “Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place,” but Claudia still feels unsettled about one thing—shouldn’t Mrs. Frankweiler give the sketch to the museum? Mrs. Frankweiler says of course not, though the kids are free to do that after she dies. She’s thought about it a lot, but she knows that if she does give them the sketch, the museum experts will “make a science” of establishing the sketch’s authenticity. There’ll be a big debate, and in the end, a minority will still doubt.

Mrs. Frankweiler, on the other hand, has no doubts, and she doesn’t want to see doubt thrown on something she’s sure about. Claudia asks if Mrs. Frankweiler wouldn’t prefer to have any lingering doubts cleared away, but Mrs. Frankweiler says no—she is, after all, 82 years old. She’s “not in the mood to learn anything new.”

Claudia is troubled. She thinks it’s important to learn something new every day. But Mrs. Frankweiler disagrees. Learning is very important, of course, but she thinks there are days when it’s more important to let what’s already inside you “swell up […] until it touches everything.” If you don’t, then you’ll just accumulate a bunch of facts that “make noise” but are just hollow in the end.

The kids consider this. Mrs. Frankweiler explains that the facts she’s gathered about Michelangelo and Angel have grown inside her for a long time. There’s just one new thing she’d like to experience, but it’s impossible. Claudia insists nothing’s impossible, but Mrs. Frankweiler tells her that when one is 82, one knows some things are impossible. She goes on to say that she’d like to know how the kids’ mother feels.

Claudia doesn’t understand why Mrs. Frankweiler would want to be “frantic” like their mother probably is right now, but Mrs. Frankweiler says it’s part of a bigger experience she wants. Claudia figures out that she means that she wants to be a mother, and Jamie whispers awkwardly that Mrs. Frankweiler can’t be a mother because her husband is dead. At this, Mrs. Frankweiler changes the subject—it’s time for the kids to tell her their story.