Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery (14 page)

‘A man!’ I exclaimed. ‘The One, it must be! Didn’t I tell you he had something to do with it?’

Daisy looked at me pityingly. ‘Don’t you ever notice anything, Hazel? This print isn’t from a man’s shoe at all. Look at the heel, and the toe. Ugly as sin, but it’s made for a woman, and I know exactly which one.’

‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Miss Bell?’

‘Hazel,’ said Daisy, ‘that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard you say. I shall pretend I didn’t hear it. Haven’t you ever noticed those boats of Miss Tennyson’s?’

My stomach lurched. That was exactly what I had
not
wanted to find – real evidence to back up Daisy’s Miss Tennyson theory.

‘
Miss Tennyson?
’

‘Just you look at her shoes tomorrow. They’re simply enormous. She only has two pairs too. This is from one of her blue monstrosities.
You
know, the ones with the pointless bows.’

‘But – someone else might have put on her shoes?’ I suggested. I had felt so
sure
it must have been The One.

‘Oh, don’t be an ass, Hazel. That sort of thing is too silly to happen in real life. Unless you think they crept into her boarding house and stole her shoes just to wear them in a passageway that no one ever uses?’

I blushed. I felt like an idiot, and I was glad it was so dark.

‘We ought to get on,’ said Daisy, getting up and tucking the curl of string back into her pocket. ‘We can’t be away from San too long. Besides, we need something else to prove what happened. That footprint’s no good on its own.’

She started off down the tunnel again, walking carefully along the drag line in the dust, and I followed her.

That night, everything seemed to be going Daisy’s way. She wanted another clue, and she found exactly what she was hoping for. I heard her give an exclamation, and saw her flash her torch onto a little wisp of whiteness that had been caught low down on a rough part of the tunnel’s brick wall. It was a little scrap of white fabric, plain and coarse, and we both recognized it at once.

‘This is from the Bell’s lab coat!’ whispered Daisy. ‘Now we
know
she was left here for a while. Oh, and look!’ When she had rushed forward to snatch up the bit of coat she had stirred up the dust on the floor, and now something glittered in the torchlight. ‘An earring! A lovely long gold one. Clues rain down upon us!
This
isn’t from Miss Bell.’

Grudgingly, I shook my head. Miss Bell would never have worn a delicate gold earring like the one Daisy was holding.

‘It must be Miss Tennyson’s,’ said Daisy.

‘It might be almost anyone’s,’ I pointed out. Although Miss Bell didn’t wear earrings, almost all of the other mistresses did. This earring was a pretty gold double teardrop – I could quite well imagine Miss Lappet, Miss Parker or Miss Hopkins all wearing something like it, as well as Miss Tennyson.

‘It looks quite new,’ said Daisy, examining it. ‘Good quality too. You can’t prove it’s
not
Tennyson’s, and if you put it with the shoe, things begin to look awfully bad for her.’

I wanted to protest that she was still not being open-minded, but the sight of all that evidence kept me quiet. Daisy was right. I could
not
prove that Miss Tennyson was not the owner of the earring, while Daisy might well be able to match that string to the length of her shoes. I told myself that it did not matter who had done it, as long as we unmasked them, but I still had a nagging worry in the back of my mind.

We went down the rest of the tunnel, but found no more clues, and, much to my relief, no body either. Miss Bell had gone.

I wrapped the string, the bit of lab coat and the earring in the stained gym slip, while Daisy held the torches, and we began to creep back to San. I thought that the night’s adventures were over.

They weren’t.

We had just turned into Library corridor when something flashed away to our right, down New Wing corridor.

‘Daisy!’ I hissed. ‘Hold the torches down! They’re reflecting on something, look!’

‘Don’t be stupid, Hazel, I
am
holding— Hazel. Hazel,
that isn’t a reflection from our torches
.’

All the hairs on my neck stood up in horror. She was right. That light was not being made by us at all. It was from a different torch, being held by someone walking down New Wing corridor. There was someone else prowling around Deepdean in the middle of the night.

‘Oh Lord, Hazel,’ gasped Daisy, flicking off our torches, plunging us into darkness and making the other light seem suddenly much larger and more menacing. ‘Run!’

I did not need to be told twice. We ran, scuffling and bumping into each other, our bare feet slapping on the marble tiles. I was shaking. The murderer was here, in Deepdean, now! Because, of course, it
had
to be the murderer. Had they seen our light? Worse, had they seen
us
? I’d thought we were in danger before, but it was nothing to the danger we were in now.

We ran all the way back to San, as though the murderer was panting at our heels, and when Daisy dragged the main San door to and locked it, my knees gave out beneath me, and I slumped down on the floor. It was only then that I noticed that my ankle was hurting fearfully again.

‘Up!’ said Daisy firmly. ‘Wash! Or Minny will smell a rat.’

So we went to the washroom to scrub off our filthy hands and feet, and then we crept back to our beds. I thought I should never get to sleep. I thought I might never sleep again. I said so to Daisy and she said, ‘Lord, I know!’ and then began to snore. Even though I was frightened, somehow I must have slept as well, because the next thing I remember was Minny knocking on our open door and saying, ‘Rise and shine, girls! How are we feeling this morning?’

6

We sat up, and Minny felt our foreheads and looked down our throats with that flat stick nurses always have. Then she told us we seemed far better today.

It was Saturday. At Deepdean, we have lessons on Saturday morning – really, we do – but luckily Minny did not let us out of San until the morning was halfway through. Daisy managed to wangle us a perfectly heavenly San breakfast before we went, too – three slices of toast instead of two, strawberry jam instead of marmalade
and
a mug of cocoa, and we were let out of San just in time for bunbreak. It was almost enough to make me forget what had happened the night before.

Almost, but not quite.

‘Oh!’ Beanie squealed when she saw us, moving back so we could slip into the biscuit queue. ‘I was so worried!’

‘She was sure you were dying,’ said Kitty, putting an arm round Beanie’s shoulder.

‘I was not!’

‘Jammy of you, getting out of Latin like that,’ said Lavinia as she pushed the shrimp in front of her out of the way. ‘Some people have all the luck.’

‘We missed Deportment, though,’ said Daisy regretfully. ‘Oh, I wish those shrimps would hurry up! I’m starving.’

Once we had collected our biscuits – only squashed fly on Saturdays, which I think is hardly worth it, though Daisy loves them – Daisy and I shook off the rest of the third form and went in search of Jones, to make certain that our night-time quest had gone undetected, and to return the borrowed keys. We found him out by the flowerbeds, telling off one of the gardeners.

‘Hello, Miss Daisy – and . . . ah,’ he said when he caught sight of us. ‘Feeling better today?’

‘Nothing ever gets past you, Jones,’ said Daisy in her best admiring voice. ‘However did you know we were ill?’

‘Who do you think mopped up after you? Nasty mess you made. Feels like I’ve been cleaning up messes all week, though, so yours wasn’t so much of a bother.’

‘Oh, have you?’ asked Daisy. She sounded terribly sympathetic, but I could feel her arm tense up next to mine. Had we left dirty footprints behind us?

Jones huffed down his nose. ‘Indeed. Those smashed windows were the worst of it, but all week I’ve been finding little things out of place. This morning I come in and everything’s a mess in New Wing, the Gym cupboard’s all untidy and these flowerbeds have been turned over. Look at them! All scratched up and the flowers ruined. We only put the new winter beds in on Monday too. If it
is
those shrimps, they need a good talking to.’

‘Poor Jones,’ said Daisy. ‘How awful for you. Here, look, you’ve dropped your keys.’

‘It is awful,’ said Jones forcefully, taking them from her without even looking. I admired Daisy’s cunning all over again. ‘Not that anyone else thinks of me. I complained to Miss Griffin again this morning and she told me it was nothing to worry about. Nothing! I ask you.’

The bell rang as he said that, and we had to run. We left him still scowling at his dirty flowerbeds.

‘Good,’ said Daisy, as soon as we were out of earshot. ‘He doesn’t know it was us.’

‘But Daisy,’ I said, ‘it
wasn’t
us. Not all of it! We messed about in the Gym cupboard, but we weren’t anywhere near New Wing last night, were we? And we never went outside, so the mess in the flowerbeds wasn’t us either. It must have been the murderer . . .’

Daisy stopped suddenly, her mouth open. ‘Lord, I know exactly what they were doing to make that mess! That earring we found – I bet they discovered they’d lost it, so they’ve been coming back in the evenings to hunt for it.’

She looked delighted. I still felt horrified at our narrow escape.

‘Well, it’s a good thing we got to it first,’ said Daisy, making the best of things as usual. ‘This is getting quite exciting, isn’t it? Now come on, we’ll be late for Prep.’

Saturday Prep is a Deepdean institution, something that is meant to be good for our character, like boiled vegetables and Games. We go into our form rooms and struggle away at all the week’s undone work, which of course none of us except Daisy could ever finish – and she makes sure not to.

As luck would have it, we came into Prep to see that Miss Tennyson was taking it that day. I froze in the doorway, and Daisy had to kick me from behind to get me to move.

I realized that Miss Tennyson was staring at me. I also realized that we were so late that the only two seats left were the ones directly in front of her desk. I slid into the left-hand one, feeling as though her eyes were burning into the middle of my forehead. Was she really the murderer? I didn’t want her to be. But there were her big blue shoes, peeping out at me from under the desk. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach, as if the ipecac sickness was coming back.

I tried to focus on my Latin translation.
The queen was in the woods
, I wrote. But, almost as though they were not under my control, my eyes kept sliding up off my work to stare at Miss Tennyson.

The third time I did it, I found her staring back at me. It gave me a nasty shock. Was Miss Tennyson remembering seeing our torchlight by the Gym? Did she know it had been us, and was she plotting to kill me and Daisy, as she had Miss Bell? I shuddered. But then I really looked at her, and what I saw surprised me. For a moment she did not look like an evil murderer at all, or even a mistress, but just someone who was terribly, terribly afraid. She had dark rings under her eyes, which were red-rimmed as though she had just been crying.

Was this what a guilty conscience looked like?

But just then there was a scuffle, a scraping noise and something thumped against my leg. I glanced down and saw – Daisy. She was wriggling across the wooden classroom floor between the desks, her hair in disarray and her arms outstretched. The marked bit of string was clutched in them, and she was inching determinedly towards Miss Tennyson’s feet.

I looked up at Miss Tennyson in horror. What if she noticed that Daisy had gone from her desk next to me? What if she glanced down and saw what Daisy was doing? But she didn’t. Her eyes were on the book she was reading, and she was crying again. Her tears scattered across the pages.

Meanwhile Daisy had reached her goal. The piece of string was stretched out against one of Miss Tennyson’s shoes. It was exactly the right length. Daisy squirmed round triumphantly to look at me, and as she did so her hand bumped against Miss Tennyson’s leg. Miss Tennyson jumped.

‘Good grief!’ she said, looking down at last. ‘Daisy! Whatever are you doing?’

‘Oh, Miss Tennyson—’ said Daisy awkwardly, from the floor. ‘Oh, Miss Tennyson – I’m feeling, er, most dreadfully strange. I think I might be sick. Hazel and I were frightfully ill last night, and I don’t seem to be quite over it. Can I go back to San?’

I was terrified that Miss Tennyson would work out what Daisy had been doing, but she only put a hand over her eyes.

‘Whatever you like,’ she said wearily. ‘Hazel, take her. Just go to San, both of you.’

7

We did not go to San.

‘Why did you do that?’ I whispered to Daisy once we were safely out in the corridor. ‘What if she
is
the murderer, and she realizes that we’re on to her?’

‘How on earth would me writhing about on the floor with a piece of string make Miss Tennyson realize that we’re on to her?’ Daisy whispered back scornfully. ‘Don’t be silly, Hazel. You’re always worrying.’

I didn’t think that was fair at all. I was perfectly right to worry. We were on the trail of a killer. How could Daisy be sure that we were safe?

‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘Miss Tennyson’s given us the most perfect opportunity. This is our chance to do some detecting without her around.’

‘What sort of detecting?’ I asked. It sounded as though Daisy had dreamed up another one of her ideas, and after the ipecac I was beginning to be suspicious of those.

‘Can’t talk here,’ said Daisy. ‘Come on – cloakroom.’

Once we got there, though, Daisy did not seem very eager to tell me the details of her new plan. She lay down on one of the benches and pulled the coats down around her, until she was buried under them with only her feet waving about outside.

I sat down next to her. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

‘Hazel,’ said Daisy from under the coats, ‘I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help feeling a bit overwhelmed. After all, we’re about to catch a
murderer
. That’s quite serious, isn’t it?’