Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery (13 page)

‘I don’t mind Deportment,’ said Daisy hollowly from within her bucket.

‘I know you don’t.
I
do,’ I said, and heaved again.

But even missing Deportment was little comfort. I heaved for hours, all the way through tea and dinner, without wanting them at all. My stomach felt as though it had been turned inside out.

‘I must say, this is rather worse than I remembered,’ gasped Daisy. ‘What I wouldn’t give to stop so I could have a bun.’

The thought of that made me heave again, and then Daisy heaved too. It was all very miserable, and I decided in the middle of a particularly nasty retch that after this we deserved to find some really excellent clues.

‘The two of you had better stay the night, I think,’ said Minny, coming in to look at us. ‘I’ve some things you can use to sleep in. Goodness, you did eat something that disagreed with you, didn’t you?’

At last, after hours of being ill, the heaving stopped, and I was able to get up and put on the pyjamas Minny had left out for me. They managed to be both long in the legs and tight in the waist, and I saw in the San mirror that I looked like an enormous, ill baby, with a pale round face and ugly damp hair. Daisy’s pyjamas, of course, fitted her perfectly, and being sick had only made her cheeks pink and her eyes bright, like a nice china doll.

I dragged myself into my cool white-sheeted San bed. I felt as though someone had squeezed me through a mangle. All I wanted to do was sleep, for years and years.

Daisy, though, had different ideas.

‘As soon as Minny’s asleep we can begin,’ she whispered to me from the next bed, sounding not at all like someone who had just been sick for six hours straight.

‘Yes, Daisy,’ I said, and I turned over and went to sleep.

3

It only seemed a moment later that I was woken up by someone shaking me hard. I opened my eyes to see Daisy’s shadowy face looming over mine.

‘Get up, you lazy thing!’ she hissed. ‘It’s time!’

Grumbling, and still feeling mangled inside, I got up and pulled on the dressing gown that Minny had helpfully laid across the foot of my bed.

‘I already have Jones’s spare keys,’ said Daisy, dangling them before me. ‘I went and picked them up while you were waiting in the cloakroom. He never notices they’re gone – I’ve taken them heaps of times before.’

‘How nice for you,’ I said. I was still struggling not to argue.

‘Sourpuss,’ said Daisy, sticking out her tongue. ‘Don’t be. Let’s get on with it.’

It was quite easy to escape San. We unlocked the main door and crept out, holding the torches that Daisy had hidden for us in the bottom of her bag.

‘Where do we go now?’ I glanced about the dark corridor and couldn’t stop myself shivering. For the moment it was empty, and we were alone, but what would we do if the murderer – made nervous by Daisy’s rumour – appeared?

‘We’re off to the Gym, of course,’ said Daisy. ‘Scene of the crime. Careful – keep your torch low. We can’t afford to have someone notice the light.’

I shivered again, but off we went.

4

The skin on the back of my neck prickled. We were heading towards the Gym, to the place where the murder had happened. In the dark night, it was not only the murderer I found myself afraid of – all my silly, babyish fears appeared again, stronger than ever. Verity’s ghost still lurked in the Gym, and who knew whether Miss Bell’s had joined her? I stayed just behind Daisy and did not look round. I kept my eyes fixed on the little puddle of moving light cast by her torch, because I was terrified that it was too bright. Would someone else notice it?

At last we arrived at the door to the Gym, but instead of going out onto the floor, Daisy turned right and started up the steep flight of wooden stairs that led to the balcony. Soon the empty Gym was stretched out below us.

I didn’t like it. I am not fond of heights at the best of times, and the Gym at night was a horrid place. It was dim and murky, and black shadows crouched at its edges. This was how Miss Bell had seen it, I thought, just before she fell. The ground suddenly seemed very far below me, and the narrow balcony with its rows of wooden benches swayed in front of me.

‘Why are we up here?’ I asked, clutching the railing.

‘Don’t be slow, Hazel,’ said Daisy. ‘We’re going to reconstruct the crime.’

‘But we know what happened,’ I said. ‘Someone pushed Miss Bell off the balcony. You – you don’t want . . .?’ For one dreadful second I actually thought that Daisy was asking me to jump off the balcony while she watched.

‘Don’t be a chump, Hazel,’ said Daisy. ‘We’re not actually going to push anything off. Goodness! I want you to go downstairs and show me exactly where you found Miss Bell. I’ll stay up here and look.’

I went back down extremely thankfully, but going into the Gym again made my skin crawl worse than ever. It was exactly the way it had been on Monday night – although, of course, without Miss Bell lying there. I went over to where I had found her and looked up to see Daisy peering down at me from the balcony. All I could see was her face with her blonde hair hanging down around it and her eyes staring at me. For a moment she looked horribly like my idea of Verity Abraham’s ghost. My heart jumped.

‘Are you ready?’ Daisy called. ‘How was she lying?’

‘Her arm was back, like this,’ I said, trying to demonstrate. ‘And she was a bit curled up—’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Daisy, ‘lie down yourself and show me. I’ll never be able to understand it otherwise.’

I did not like the idea at all. Pretending to be Miss Bell felt all wrong and quite horrible, but Daisy was glaring down at me and I knew there was nothing else for it. Reluctantly, I lay down on the wooden floor and stretched myself out in an imitation of Miss Bell’s position. I closed my eyes and Daisy’s torch flickered across my eyelids.

‘Is that all right?’ I asked after a while.

‘Perfectly,’ said Daisy from next to my ear. My eyes flew open. She was crouching down next to me, staring up at the wall and the edge of the balcony above.

‘This was exactly how she was lying?’ Daisy asked, peering at me.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘So?’

‘So, from the way she was lying, she must have gone over the balcony railing backwards.’

‘She was facing the murderer,’ I said, shuddering. I had a sudden image of a pair of hands reaching out and shoving Miss Bell off the balcony.

‘Exactly, Hazel. So, to continue with our reconstruction. You’ve just murdered Miss Bell. She’s lying on the floor, dead. What do you do next?’

‘Find somewhere to hide the body,’ I said.

‘Yes indeed. The fact that the body was still there when you came in does rather suggest that the deed had only just been done. And the fact that the body was gone when we came back again – well, that suggests that the body and the murderer were hidden somewhere very close indeed. They really
must
have been in the Cupboard, like we said – and, golly, that must have been where the murderer hid when you first came in too!’

My mouth went dry. I remembered running into the Gym. It had seemed so empty and quiet – and the murderer had been just a few feet away from me!

‘But the body couldn’t have
stayed
there!’ I said.

Daisy rolled her eyes. ‘Of course it couldn’t,’ she said. ‘The girls changing in there before first lesson on Tuesday morning would’ve noticed a
dead body
among the gym slips. But all the same, it
must
have been used as the temporary hiding place. Nothing else makes sense. And remember that smash-up yesterday? I’m sure I’m right that it was caused by that trolley, the one that Jones keeps in there. So all in all, the Cupboard is crucial to this case. We can’t put off looking inside it any more. Come on!’

She dug her fingers into my arm and dragged me, stumbling, across the floor towards the musty storeroom. I felt clammy and cold all over, as though I was going to be sick again. I did not want to look in the Cupboard.

But Daisy left me no choice. She threw open the door and flashed her torch about inside. I had to admit that it looked just the same as it always did – spiderwebbed white walls and piled-up mounds of fencing whites, badminton rackets, croquet mallets, calisthenics mats and gym slips – but all the same I was terrified.

Daisy leaped straight for the trolley, which was standing innocently beside the door, draped in discarded clothes, and began throwing things off it with frantic excitement. I turned away and dug through what I hoped was a harmless old pile of gym slips, of the sort that we hardly wear any more.

Unfortunately, the pile tipped over and spilled across the floor, and I saw that one of the gym slips had a long, dark smear all down its front. I shone my torch on it, and it came up rusty in the light. While I was still standing there, hoping that what I was seeing was not really true, Daisy gave a yelp.

‘View-halloo!’ she cried. ‘As suspected, blood on the trolley! I say, Hazel,
look
!’

I turned round, holding up the bloodied gym slip.

5

Daisy could not understand why I was not more excited.

‘Watson!’ she cried, poking me jubilantly in the ribs. ‘The game’s afoot! We’re closing in!’

I bit my lip. The Case of the Murder of Miss Bell was feeling far too real. Miss Bell really was dead and was never coming back. I was holding a gym slip with real blood on it – the gym slip that the murderer must have used to mop Miss Bell’s blood off the Gym floor – and Daisy had found the trolley the murderer had used to transport Miss Bell’s body to its hiding place.

But Daisy was still galloping on, as excited about this case as she had been about The Case of The Mysterious Tuck Box Thief – as though Miss Bell was just another missing bag of bull’s eyes. ‘We’re close!’ she cried. ‘We’re very close! We’ve got the scent, and now we must run with it. Here’s the trolley, and a bloodied gym slip, and here
isn’t
Miss Bell’s body. So, where was she moved to? The murderer must have stowed the Bell somewhere at school between Monday evening and Tuesday night, when they came back to move it to a safer hiding place, away from the school. So now we need to be clever; we need to put ourselves into the mind of the killer. If you had a body to hide
in
Deepdean, what would you do with it?’

‘I wouldn’t kill anyone in the first place,’ I said.

‘All right,
don’t
be clever,’ said Daisy. ‘Think. It needs to be somewhere safe, and it needs to be somewhere secure.’

‘That doesn’t sound much like anywhere in Deepdean,’ I said. Honestly, I couldn’t think of a single place that would fit. A safe and secure place in Deepdean? If I’d been in a rude mood – instead of feeling frightened – I’d have said,
Not likely
.

Daisy frowned. ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t, does it? Not for years, anyway.
Years!
Ever since they closed up the—’

She froze. I could see an idea occurring to her, like a firework going off in her head.

‘Hazel! We’ve been the most utter chumps! Imagine us not thinking of
that
! Oh, I could kick myself!’ And without any more explanation, she took my hand and dragged me out into the Gym again, so that I had to gallop after her or fall over.

‘Of what?’ I asked, gasping as we jolted along. ‘
What?
’

‘You’ll see!’ shouted Daisy. ‘Come on, come on, quick!’

She towed me out into the corridor, then immediately dragged me left into a little passageway behind the Hall. When Deepdean was first built there used to be an underground tunnel between the Hall and Old Wing, so that when it rained girls could go to Prayers without getting wet. It was bricked up long ago, though, when Library corridor was built, and now that little passageway only leads to a locked door.

At last I understood where Daisy was taking me.

‘Oh!’ I said, stopping so quickly that Daisy nearly jerked my wrist off before she noticed.

‘
Now
do you see?’ asked Daisy, wheeling round and letting go of me. ‘It
has
to be! There’s nowhere else even half so perfect.’

‘But no one can get into it!’

‘Jones can, and anyone who knows the school at all could take his spare keys, just like I did. I think this is really it, Hazel! We’ve found it!’

I thought of Miss Bell again. ‘You’re sure she’s not still down there?’ I asked uncomfortably.

‘I’ve told you she isn’t. She’s been moved out of the school by now,’ said Daisy. ‘But even if she is – well, I’ve seen lots of dead animals and they’re not so bad. They just lie there.’ I nearly reminded her that I had seen Miss Bell’s body quite recently, and it had not been like a dead animal at all. But Daisy was already trying Jones’s keys in the door. I thought it would be difficult to unlock, but when Daisy found the right key it turned with a neat little well-oiled
click
and the door swung inwards.

‘See?’ asked Daisy smugly. ‘Someone’s been here recently.’

She flashed her torch into the open doorway and we saw brickwork, broken bits of cobweb and steps going down into darkness. They were dusty, but instead of lying in a smooth layer, the dust had been scuffed up and smudged about, and in the middle it had been rubbed away altogether in a sort of snaky track.

Daisy took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back. Her palm was cool and dry, and I remember being terribly worried she might notice how much I was sweating. She said nothing, though, and we went down into the tunnel hand in hand, both of us shining our torches into the dark.

‘Do look at this floor,’ said Daisy, stepping daintily through the dust. ‘That drag mark must be from Miss Bell.’

She sounded so casual about it! I flashed my torch around the scuff mark, trying to avoid it, and that is when I caught sight of the sideways print of a shoe, just clear of the track. ‘Oh!’ I said, pointing, and Daisy sprang at it with a yelp of excitement.

Drawing a bit of string and a pencil from the pocket of her dressing gown, Daisy crouched down over the print. I knelt next to her, shining my torch at it while she laid the string over the print and deftly marked it off with the pencil. It was the print of a flat shoe, and it was very long. When Daisy held up the string in the glare of my torch, it looked longer than ever.