Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery (16 page)

We walked down the steep hill, slipping a bit on gummy old leaves, past pairs of second formers still straggling back up to House and a bundled-up old lady with a bundly little dog. If it weren’t for Miss Bell’s murder, I suddenly realized, Daisy and I might still be watching people like that lady, making little case notes about her height and hair colour and suspicious actions. It all seemed rather silly now.

The day was already beginning to fade away and the electric lights illuminated the shop windows of Deepdean Town as we crept into the most overgrown bit of the park. We shook out our plaits, pinned our hair up under our hats (Daisy has the most beautiful berry-coloured cloche that I covet painfully), and shoved our school coats and hats into the middle of a rhododendron bush. I felt awfully regretful as I did it. It is all very well deciding that you are going to sacrifice warmth for the good of detection, but taking off your coat outside in November is not amusing.

Without our uniforms, and with our hair up like grown-ups’, there was no way to tell we were Deepdean girls, but we still had to be careful in case we came across a master or mistress.

Daisy was in high spirits. ‘I’ve been working things out in my head,’ she said to me as we walked along arm in arm, ‘and it’s quite clear now. The motive, of course, was the Deputy position. Tennyson wanted it, and thought that if she got Miss Bell out of the way, Miss Griffin’d give it to her instead.

‘So Miss Tennyson lured the Bell onto the Gym balcony on Monday evening and shoved her over the side. She might have still been up on the balcony, but more probably she was down checking on the body when she heard you coming in, so she hid as quick as she could. She knew you’d run for help, so once you’d gone, she dragged Miss Bell’s body into the Cupboard before you came back with me and Virginia. She waited, and when the coast was clear she ran for Jones’s spare keys – or she might have got hold of them earlier in the day, I suppose – loaded Miss Bell onto the trolley from the Gym cupboard, and pushed her down to the tunnel. She faked that resignation note from Miss Bell and left it on Miss Griffin’s desk on Tuesday morning, then crept back at night to take the body right out of the school. She smashed the New Wing corridor window on the way, of course – she
is
terribly clumsy – then put the body in her car, and drove it out to the woods to hide it for good.’

A series of vivid images went dancing through my mind. I saw Miss Tennyson – who was afraid of creepy crawly creatures, and very afraid of the dark – dragging Miss Bell’s body into the storeroom, and wheeling it down into the dark tunnel on her own. It simply did not seem possible. But what if Daisy was right?

Daisy was still talking.

‘You know, if her conscience hadn’t begun to play up, we might never have properly suspected her, not when Miss Parker seemed so promising. Really, Miss Tennyson managed a rather neat murder. She didn’t make the mistake of trying to be too clever. It’s always the clever ones who get found out easy as anything. My uncle says so.’

When Daisy laid it out like that, it all seemed to make sense. I wondered if I were really just jealous of Daisy. Was I being a bad member of the Detective Society in not agreeing with the President? I was very confused.

Just then we reached the Willow Tea Rooms. Unlike Lyons, the teashop where Daisy and I usually go, which has waxy potted palms and stacks of brightly iced cakes displayed behind its enormous glass shopfront, the Willow has little windowpanes shyly half covered with chintz curtains and a blue front door with a tinkling bell. It is a polite place, all draped in cloth, and the dainty little sugared cakes which arrive on matching blue-and-white patterned plates are so small that you can hardly get a proper bite of them.

I paused on the doorstep. Even after being friends with Daisy for nearly a year, I still feel a guilty lurch in my stomach whenever we go somewhere we’re not allowed. Daisy, though, was cool as a cucumber about it. Things like that don’t worry her at all. She walked in as though she was going into the Dining Room at House.

Miss Tennyson was sitting alone at a table near the door, her thick-waisted out-of-fashion tweed coat on her lap and her ugly old flat-brimmed wool hat crumpled up next to her plate. The chair next to her was empty. When we came in, she started and half turned round on her seat. Her eyes flicked over us, but I could tell that she wasn’t really seeing us at all.

Daisy, very chic in her cloche hat and lipstick – which Kitty had swapped her for a diamond pin that looked very nearly real – managed to get us the table next to Miss Tennyson and order tea and a plate of sugar cakes. She was speaking loudly, but Miss Tennyson was so wrapped up in whatever her thoughts that she still did not notice us. I think Daisy was a bit cross about that. She made a great clattering of her spoon against her saucer, dropped her hat at Miss Tennyson’s feet, and at last cleared her throat, turned round on her chair and said, ‘Miss Tennyson!’

Miss Tennyson jumped as though someone had shot her.

3

Miss Tennyson’s eyes flicked over Daisy’s face and she spoke in a small creaky voice that was quite unlike her usual one. ‘Daisy! What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to see you,’ said Daisy meaningfully.

‘Whatever for?’ asked Miss Tennyson. ‘Daisy, this is not a place for children. Does Matron know you’re here?’

Then she caught sight of me for the first time. ‘Hazel,’ she said blankly. ‘What is this?’

‘We’re here,’ said Daisy, pausing to enjoy the moment, ‘because
we know what you’ve done
.’

Miss Tennyson’s large bony hands, pressing tightly down on the flowery tablecloth, twitched. Then she clenched them together so hard her knuckles turned white. I could see the bones right through her skin. ‘Daisy,’ Miss Tennyson whispered, ‘whatever do you mean?’

‘We know!’ said Daisy, speaking very quickly. ‘We know you killed Miss Bell! We’ve seen the blood on the Gym cupboard trolley, and your footprints in the tunnel, and the blood in your car, and then there’s
this
 . . .’ And she stuck out her hand and seized Miss Tennyson’s left arm in its shapeless knitted pullover.

Miss Tennyson yelped in pain, so that the waitress turned and stared at our table curiously. The arm Daisy had taken hold of showed the faint lines of a bandage tied under Miss Tennyson’s pullover.
No!
I thought.
Oh no!

‘The evidence against you is damning,’ continued Daisy. (I thought she might be drawing on her murder mysteries a little too heavily.) ‘And I haven’t even shown you the best bit – I mean, the most important piece of evidence – yet. Look!’ She put her hand in her pocket, drew out the earring and brandished it in front of Miss Tennyson’s trembling face.

Miss Tennyson burst into tears. She put her face in her hands and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. My heart sank. I really had hoped that she would deny everything, but as a sign of guilt, this was unmistakable. I had to believe Daisy now.

Through the sobbing, Miss Tennyson was trying to say something. ‘Sorry,’ we heard. ‘So sorry – I wish—’

‘At least she isn’t denying it,’ whispered Daisy to me over our willow-patterned plate of cakes. ‘I think this is going rather well, don’t you?’

I did not.

At last, Miss Tennyson sat up in her seat and stared at us both. She was looking extremely unlike a mistress by then. Her eyes were swollen and red, and her nose was red as well. I knew Daisy was thinking what an absolute fright she looked.

‘It’s utter hell,’ Miss Tennyson said quietly. ‘I’ve been in hell. The last few days – it’s all been a blur. I can’t think any more. How did you find out? No, no, don’t tell me. I can’t bear any more. I’m just so bloody
tired
.’

It was the first time I had ever heard a mistress swear. It’s silly, but until then I had simply assumed that they must not know how to. Miss Tennyson saying
bloody
gave me the most dreadful shock.

Daisy, of course, was thinking more practically. ‘You must give yourself up,’ she told Miss Tennyson sternly. ‘To the police, immediately. If you don’t go, we will.’

Miss Tennyson was squeezing and squeezing that old hat of hers, as though she was trying to crush the life out of it, but her face had gone very calm. ‘I shall,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else to be done, is there? It’s funny – I’ve read so much about guilt, and I always thought I understood it, but this – I can’t bear it any more, it’s as simple as that. Confessing is the only way to—’ Suddenly the peaceful look fell off her face and she looked terrified again. ‘But girls – you mustn’t be mixed up in all this. Don’t tell anyone you were here. If I go to the police, they won’t need your evidence; you won’t be dragged into it. Do you promise?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I promise.’ Then I looked at Daisy. She was obviously in the grip of a terrible personal struggle.

‘I promise,’ she said at last, rather sulkily. ‘But if you don’t go—’

‘I will!’ said Miss Tennyson sharply. ‘I will. Now leave, girls.’

‘We shall,’ said Daisy. ‘And
you
may pay our bill,
if
you please.’

It was an utterly Daisy exit to make. In any other circumstances I would have laughed, but something was niggling away at me. Why had Miss Tennyson been so desperate for us to leave? Was it simply that she did not want us getting mixed up with the police, as she had said? Or – I remembered how she had jumped round in her chair as we had come in – had she been
waiting
for someone? Was she meeting someone in the Willow that she did not want us to know about?

‘Daisy,’ I said, turning to look at her as we stepped through the door outside, making the little bell chime as we did so, ‘do you think—’

And then the rest of the sentence was knocked right out of me as I thumped straight into someone coming the other way down the street. I yelped and the other person exclaimed in annoyance. Then I gave a gasp of surprise. I was staring up at the chestnut curls and regal nose of King Henry.

As soon as she saw us, she spun on her heel and marched away up the street again – but I was sure that she had been about to go into the Willow. What if – what if she was the person Miss Tennyson had been waiting for? And if she was, that meant that there was more to this mystery than Daisy’s solution. I had been right all along.

‘Daisy!’ I said. ‘I think King Henry was about to go into the Willow!’

‘So?’ asked Daisy.

‘
So
, I think she was going to meet Miss Tennyson! Daisy, I think she’s mixed up in this somehow. There’s something going on that we don’t understand yet!’

‘No there isn’t,’ snapped Daisy. ‘Don’t be stupid, Hazel! We’ve solved the murder and that’s that. Leave off, can’t you?’

‘No, I can’t,’ I said. ‘We
haven’t
solved the murder. King Henry as good as proves it. I tell you—’

‘Oh, DO BE QUIET!’ shouted Daisy. ‘I don’t want to hear another word about it. I’m thinking, can’t you see?’

All I could see was that Daisy knew she had been wrong, and was being a terribly bad sport about it.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘be like that.’ And I stormed back up to House without saying another word to her.

4

Things were still cold between us when we arrived back at House. We were greeted by the Marys, who mobbed Daisy to ask if they had helped.

‘Wonderfully,’ said Daisy acidly. ‘Although the hat remained elusive. You may carry my coat if you like.’ She flung her school coat and hat at the Marys, who bore them off to the cloakroom in raptures. I do not think they knew what
elusive
meant.

We were not talking, and for a while I was glad about it. I decided that I was not going to speak to Daisy until she admitted that I had been right all along. When Kitty, Beanie and Lavinia came back from town, they asked Daisy to make up a fourth for cribbage and I was left sitting alone in an armchair in the common room, writing up my case notes and thinking about Daisy and me. It is difficult being best friends with someone, especially if that someone is Daisy Wells. She hates being wrong. It is infuriating. But every time I want to simply give up being the sensible one, and shake her, I remember that before Daisy and I became friends I was even worse off.

You see, as I’ve already suggested, my time at Deepdean did not begin well. When I first came here I raised my hand every time I knew an answer, just the way my father had taught me. In return, though, I got cold little looks from the other girls, who inched their chairs away from me, as though I had an illness that might be catching. Girls who were meant to walk back to House with me would duck away and go running to where their friends were waiting, and when I sat down at the table for dinner, everyone pulled their trays back very slightly and bent their heads together, looking at me from out of the corner of their eyes.

I thought I had to grin and bear it, but that was before I understood about the secret side of Daisy. When I did, though, I realized that if the great Daisy Wells could play a role, I could play one too. I could behave like a don’t-care girl on the outside, but inside I could still be me. The important thing about fitting in, I realized, was to
look
the part. And so I decided to do just that.

Some things, of course, were beyond me. When I let it out of its plait, my hair will always fall straight down to my shoulders without any fetching natural waves in it at all, and my eyes will always be brown, instead of large and blue. So I saw that I would have to go about camouflaging myself another way.

In a quiet moment in the dorm one day, when most of the second form were at hockey practice and the rest were in the common room, I filched Lavinia’s penknife from her tuck box and made a careful cut in one of my shoelaces. I tugged it and wiggled it about until the end snapped off entirely, leaving behind a satisfyingly authentic-looking frayed shoelace. Then, offering up a silent apology to my father for what I was about to do, I picked up my hockey stick, gripped it in both hands and whacked it as hard as I could against the side of my school bag. It hit home with a surprisingly heavy
smack
and the books inside of the bag thumped about against each other under the canvas. I had the uncomfortable feeling I had just hit something that was alive. I managed one more
thwack
before I completely lost heart, but that was good enough – my books were now bent about as though I had been mistreating them for months. I felt dreadfully guilty about the books, but I told myself firmly that it was worth it.