Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery (15 page)

I kept silent. I was already too worried to feel overwhelmed as well. After a moment the coats rose up in a mountain and Daisy’s head burst through them to stare at me accusingly. ‘You still don’t believe that it’s Miss Tennyson, do you?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. Despite the evidence of the shoe, I simply could not imagine Miss Tennyson actually pushing Miss Bell over the Gym balcony, no matter how much she might want the Deputy Head job. ‘There are so many other possible solutions! What about The One and Miss Parker’s row? What about Miss Hopkins sneaking back down to school? And what about Miss Parker? She lied about her alibi and she’s been acting ragey all week. What if she lied because she argued with Miss Bell and then killed her? Miss Tennyson fits the facts, but so do three other people! We can’t be sure!’

Daisy sighed. ‘I didn’t think you’d be so jealous about this,’ she said. ‘Just because I worked it out before you did, and I’m the President and you’re only the Secretary. Honestly, Hazel.’

‘No!’ I cried. ‘This is important, Daisy. We can’t make a mistake.’

‘Look, Hazel,’ she said, standing up. ‘I’ll give you more proof, if you like. When Miss Tennyson moved Miss Bell’s body out of Deepdean on Tuesday evening, she must have used that ugly little rattletrap motor car of hers. I’ll bet you there’s still evidence in it. That’s what I want to investigate while we know that Tennyson’s stuck in Prep. Oh, come on! Why won’t you get up?’

I was still sitting there because I was suddenly stingingly furious at Daisy. I know I’ve said that there is no point being angry at her, and there is not, but I resented what she had said about her being the President, and me being only the Secretary. After all, there was no reason why Daisy should be a better detective than me. We were looking at the same clues, weren’t we? Daisy liked rushing headlong into things and triumphing, and I liked waiting and thinking – but why should that make her right and me wrong?

But Daisy was staring at me appealingly, her big blue eyes wide, and so I clenched my teeth, stood up with a jerk and went to inspect Miss Tennyson’s blasted automobile.

It was parked beside the North Entrance gate, a little blue car all scratched and peeling paint, and quite covered in dirt.

‘She really does look after it disgustingly,’ Daisy commented. ‘Just look at that crankcase. I know they’re dreadful on these old Sevens, but still!’

‘Daisy,’ I said, ‘how—’

‘My uncle,’ said Daisy briefly, as though that explained it. She went up to the car and peered inside. I climbed up on the running board to stand beside her.

‘If anyone asks us,’ said Daisy without looking at me, ‘we’re looking for our exercise books. Miss Tennyson thought she might have left them here so she sent us down to see.’

I stared into Miss Tennyson’s car. It was very like Miss Tennyson, I thought – odd and shabby and rather tragic. I didn’t know what Daisy was looking for. As I said, I don’t know much about cars – and even less about the inside of Daisy’s mind.

Daisy had pulled a hairpin out of her plait and was fiddling with the door handle. Suddenly she said, ‘Aha!’ thumped the handle and pulled the door open. I wondered how on earth we would explain ourselves if one of the mistresses noticed what we were up to, but Daisy was already burrowing inside. She wriggled almost her entire body into Miss Tennyson’s car and her legs, poking out from the bottom of her pinafore, waved around in the air as she searched.

‘Hazel, do come here,’ she hissed in excitement. I was reluctant. The car seemed very full of Daisy. But when I finally stuck my head in after her, she rolled over and gestured triumphantly at something on the back seat.

It was a stain on the leather as large as my face. It looked as though someone had tried to clean it – the leather was all scratched up and whitish around it – but the stain had soaked in.

‘That,’ said Daisy to me smugly, ‘is blood.’

‘It might be anything,’ I protested, though I knew that she was right. It looked dark and rusty, exactly like the stains I had found on that gym slip. ‘It might be from anything. Perhaps she cut her hand six months ago, Daisy! We can’t be sure.’

Daisy snorted. ‘Lord!’ she said. ‘You’re difficult. All right, then, I’ll find
more
evidence.’

She withdrew from the depths of the car so quickly that she trod on my foot. Then she leaped down from the running board, and began to scrutinize the wheels and front bumper. She sidled crabwise around it, peering intently at every little bit of mud, and I watched her sourly, thinking that the mud looked very much like mud to me.

It obviously meant something more to Daisy. Halfway round the front left wheel, she gave a little shriek of excitement. ‘Look!’ she cried. ‘Look what’s stuck in this spoke!’

I looked. ‘It’s a leaf,’ I said.

‘It’s not a
leaf
, Hazel,’ said Daisy. ‘Honestly, didn’t you ever
see
the countryside before you came to England? It’s lichen, you silly, and I know exactly where it’s from. It’s that funny orange stuff that only grows at the edge of Oakeshott Woods.’

‘Only?’ I asked. It still seemed to me that lichen was lichen.

‘The only place for fifty miles at least,’ said Daisy. ‘The only place where Miss Tennyson might go. Whenever I go on hunts there, it gets all over my boots. Now, this stuff isn’t new, but it hasn’t been here long. I’d say two or three days – taking us back to Tuesday night. Oh, Hazel, what luck! Now we know where she’s hidden Miss Bell’s body! We’ve got enough to accuse Miss Tennyson now.’

‘But what if she drove over there on Tuesday or Wednesday to go for a walk?’ I protested.

‘Of course she didn’t!’ exclaimed Daisy in exasperation. ‘We know that after school on Tuesday and Wednesday she was helping Miss Griffin! She wouldn’t have been able to go out on her own before it got dark – and who goes for a walk after dark, unless they’re doing something nefarious? Look, the only thing we can possibly do now is accuse her. We’ve really and truly solved the murder!’

She was more excited than I had seen her in a long time. I knew that I ought to feel excited too, but I only felt sick to my stomach. To me, the evidence still did not seem conclusive. There were so many other explanations for everything we had found! I said gruffly, ‘Come on, let’s go up to House before we get caught.’

‘Oh Hazel,’ said Daisy, throwing her arms round me. Evidently she had forgotten all about our argument. ‘Isn’t everything wonderful?’

I wanted to tell her that I did not think things were wonderful at all.

1

All the way up to House, Daisy kept going on at me about her new plan to confront Miss Tennyson, until I could barely stand it any more.

‘We ought to do it soon,’ she said. ‘After all, we’ve got all the evidence we need. It seems quite wrong to let her off for any longer. If only we could get into her boarding house and surprise her that way.’

‘Isn’t that illegal?’ I asked. I knew what my father would say if he heard that I’d been caught breaking into someone else’s property.

‘I suppose so,’ said Daisy, sighing. ‘Isn’t it tiresome being a child? No one lets you do anything. I absolutely
long
to be twenty. I could befriend Miss Tennyson and lure her into a false sense of security, and then, in private, and when she was least expecting it, I’d spring the shoe print and the blood and the moss on her, and force her to confess.’

‘Perhaps it’s a good thing you’re not twenty,’ I said. ‘What if you did accuse her, in private, and she killed you too?’

‘Goodness,’ said Daisy. ‘Perhaps a public confrontation would be better. Yes, excellent work, Hazel!’ She seized hold of my arm so hard that I had a red mark afterwards. ‘
That’s
the right way to do it. And we can, if we’re careful. Today’s Saturday, after all.’

Saturday afternoon, you see, is when all the girls are allowed to escape House into Deepdean town for a few hours. There is an order to it, of course. Only prefects are allowed out for the whole afternoon. Matron leads the littlest shrimps in a crocodile, for an hour’s outing straight after lunch, on a nice reliable Saturday round of Debenham & Freebody’s, the stationer’s, the sweetshop and then back to House again. The rest of us are allowed out in pairs, for two-hour chunks. As third form, we go from three till five – enough time for the cinema if you’re smart about it; or the sweetshop, the bookshop and then a Lyons’ Corner House for tea and cakes, if you’re Daisy and me. I was hoping that Daisy’s plan, whatever it was, would still leave time for tea and cakes. I was dreading the confrontation with Miss Tennyson, and the thought of undertaking it hungry was even worse.

At lunch time Daisy held a royal audience with her shrimps. As well as Betsy North, she has a trio of identical second formers who are loyal to her. Their names are Marie, Maria and Marion, but we all call them the Marys. They run about in a giddy pack, and seem to add up to one complete person. They have a sort of collective pash on Daisy, and think everything she does is marvellous. She gets the most gorgeous boxes of chocolates from them, and awfully soppy cards which she pretends to appreciate for the sake of the chocolates. When she told them she wanted their help, they nearly went into a collective faint.

‘You see,’ Daisy told them, ‘I’ve got a sort of bet going with Kitty – you know Kitty, of course.’ (The Marys did. Once, last year, Kitty had told one of them to Scram! in the presence of Daisy. The slight had never been forgotten. Daisy knew this perfectly well.) ‘Well, Kitty and I were talking about old Tennyson’ – the Marys drew in a breath, delighted by this disrespect – ‘and that ugly old flat hat she always wears out. I said that it’d be an absolute gift to the world if someone took it off her, and if no one else volunteered, then I’d do the deed myself. Kitty said that I’d never dare, of course, and now I mean to prove her wrong.’

The Marys went pink with shock and excitement. ‘Now,’ said Daisy, ‘you mustn’t tell anyone else about this, but when you go out this afternoon I want you to find Miss Tennyson and watch her wherever she goes. Report in to me when you get back to House. And,’ she added as an afterthought, ‘if you do
especially
well I’ll let you carry my book bag about on Monday.’

The Marys almost swooned.

‘You can’t have them
all
carrying your things,’ I said to her afterwards.

‘Yes I can,’ said Daisy, leaning her head on her arm and staring dreamily at the gluey remains of her shepherd’s pie. ‘They can each carry a book and someone can take my coat and hat.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ I said crossly, reaching out with my fork and scooping up the rest of Daisy’s pie. I always feel rather bad for Daisy’s shrimps. She does use them so, and all because she happens to be beautiful.

It really is unfair, Daisy’s beauty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with a spot, while all the rest of us are simply covered in them. I have had one particular one on the side of my nose for weeks and weeks. It sits there and refuses to go away. I look at it in the mirror sometimes and want to weep. Meanwhile, Daisy glows, not too pink and not too pale, flawless as a girl in a painting.

I try not to believe the Daisy Wells myth, since I know how much of it is simply nonsense, but I also know that it would not take much for me to end up as silly as the Marys.

2

After lunch, while I was writing up my case notes on our midnight adventure and Daisy’s deductions, the first formers filed away obediently behind Matron for their hour’s shopping. An hour after that, the Marys waved to Daisy as they trotted off on their own shopping trip, and Daisy waved back like the Queen.

Even though she had sent her minions off to work, Daisy was twitchy. ‘What if Miss Tennyson decides to run away?’ she asked, pacing up and down the common room with a little crease appearing at the bridge of her nose. ‘What if she bolts in her car?’

‘She won’t,’ I said automatically, although really she might very well have done. She would have had the whole afternoon to get clear away. She might be missed on Saturday evening, if there was a curfew at her ladies’ boarding house, and she would certainly be missed at Sunday chapel, but she would have a start of hours and hours. Whenever girls run away they do it Saturdays, because of that head start. One Saturday last year Lavinia ran away; she had been missing for six hours before they found her on a bus to Rugby. It was nearly a record.

I suppose, though, that the idea of running did not occur to Miss Tennyson: the Marys came back giddy with pride at having sighted her going into the Willow Tea Rooms.

We were lucky it was November. When we leave school grounds we are supposed to wear our uniforms, but of course it is no good trying to go anywhere grown-up wearing your pinafore and school tie, and the Willow is certainly grown-up. In summer you have to put on your mufti, then your school clothes over the top (breathing in so Matron doesn’t notice the difference), and as soon as you’re out of school, wriggle out of your uniform. In winter, though, you can get away with just wearing your school coat and hat out of House and bundling them into a bush as soon as you’re out of sight down the hill. Of course, once you’ve done that, you have to grit your teeth and freeze in your pullover, unless you have one of those ultra-fashionable lightweight silk mackintoshes. That day, Daisy wore her mac. I froze.