Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery (5 page)

I gave up on the rest of Tuesday’s lessons. I spent all my lunch break scribbling case notes, and then tucked this casebook into my French textbook and carried on writing. Daisy, sitting next to me, covered for me beautifully (and only nudged me when she didn’t agree with what I was writing). She was stewing away at the problem too.

Usually Daisy takes care to dawdle over her prep, and sigh, and look puzzled, and pass notes to people about the second part of question four. That evening, though, she flew through it and then sat gazing raptly at a chip of paint on the wall until Virginia Overton who, unluckily for us, was taking Prep that evening, snapped, ‘Wells! Nose back in your book.’

After that, Daisy bent her head over her exercise book and spent the next fifteen minutes pretending to write. On my other side, Beanie was stuck in the tortures of her French assignment, her face screwed up and the end of her plait jammed into her mouth. Beyond her, Lavinia was plodding angrily through a Latin exercise. From behind us, Kitty kicked Beanie’s chair and passed up a note. Beanie looked at it and squeaked with laughter, and the noise made Virginia look up – just in time to see Daisy slip a folded up piece of paper onto my desk.

‘Wells!’ said Virginia. ‘
No passing notes
, you know the rules. If it’s so important, you can jolly well come up here and read it out to all of us.’

Daisy did not look alarmed by this at all. She stood up, took the paper back from me and walked to the front of the prep room. At Virginia’s desk she turned to face us all, opened up the piece of paper and, in a solemn voice, read out, ‘
I wish Cook would give us something other than sprouts for dinner; they disagree with me awfully.
’

‘Wells, you little beast!’ cried Virginia as we all squealed with laughter. ‘Give that to me!’

She snatched the page from Daisy’s hand and read it through, her face flushing with annoyance. ‘Oh, go and sit down, and if I hear anything more from you this evening I shall report you to Matron. And be quiet, the rest of you little horrors! Shush!
Shush!
’

Daisy, triumphant, gave her audience the slightest of curtseys and then took her seat again amidst general delighted chaos and furious shushings from Virginia. As she sank down next to me, though, she leaned her head against mine for a moment and whispered, ‘Meeting in the airing cupboard tonight after toothbrushes to talk about you-know-what.’

I went back to pretending to write an essay on the failings of George III. Classic Daisy, I thought. It was just like her. Then my stomach squished as I thought about what she had just said. Were we really ready for our first murder case?

6

Later, when all the prefects on duty were running about chasing shrimps who should have already been in bed (there were a great deal more of them than usual that evening, and I suspect that Daisy may have been behind it), I slipped out – with my casebook stuffed up my pyjama jacket and clutching my toothbrush for cover – and tiptoed down to the airing cupboard on the second-floor corridor. A moment later Daisy padded into view, in her slippers and regulation pyjamas, looking extremely casual. She peered up and down the dim corridor, then, satisfied that there was no one else in sight, seized my arm, more or less dragged me into the airing cupboard and pulled the door shut behind her.

The air inside was thick and damp and very dark – I stumbled against Daisy and she said, ‘Ow, Hazel, you clod.’

There was a ripping noise and a snap, which made me jump. I said, ‘What’s that?’ and Daisy said, ‘Our cover. Oh, do stop flailing about . . . Here—’

With a
pop
the electric light came on.

Rows and rows of wooden racks piled with grey school clothes came into view, as did Daisy, who was leaning back against the racks and glaring at me. I saw that one of the buttons on her pyjama jacket had been ripped off, leaving the fabric poking through.

‘Well,’ said Daisy, ‘sit down.’

I perched myself on a grey pile of games knickers. This made the wooden slats of the shelf creak dangerously, and I jumped off again.

‘All right,’ said Daisy, leaping up onto a rack with a cheerful bounce, and swinging her slippered feet as she spoke. ‘This meeting of the Detective Society is hereby called into session at ten minutes past eight on this, Tuesday the thirtieth of October. Present are Daisy Wells, President, and Hazel Wong, Secretary. Tonight we will be discussing the Case of the Murder of Miss Bell. Any objections?’

‘No,’ I said, writing busily.

‘Excellent, Watson,’ said Daisy. ‘All right, the order of the meeting is as follows: first, the facts of the case. Second, the suspect list. Third, the current location of the body. And fourth, our plan of action.’

‘Do we
have
any facts of the case?’ I asked, pausing and looking up at Daisy. It seemed to me that we were starting off without any of the things that detectives usually take for granted. The body had vanished (and even though I had seen it, I had been too busy behaving like a frightened little shrimp to pay proper attention to it), and what was left of the crime scene must by now have been tidied away by Jones the handyman on his rounds. We had no photographic snaps to look at, no police interviews to read and no coroner’s report to look at either. To me, the situation seemed rather bleak.

‘Of course we do!’ said Daisy. ‘Come on, Hazel, don’t give up before we’ve even started. We know there was a murder because you found the body. We know
who
was murdered – Miss Bell – and how she was murdered too.’

‘By being pushed off the Gym balcony!’ I agreed.

‘We can also make a jolly good stab at
when
it happened. Look – the last lesson of the day ends at four fifteen p.m. – which on Mondays happens to be second-form Dance. You went to the Gym—?’

‘At five forty-five,’ I said.

‘That means that Miss Bell must have been killed some time between four fifteen – after all, one of those second formers would have noticed the body if it was there during Dance – and five forty-five. There, you see? That’s
what
,
who
, where
how
and
when
. That wasn’t so difficult.’

I realized she was right.

‘So, we do have some facts after all,’ Daisy went on. ‘And that brings us rather neatly to our second point: the suspects. Who might want to do away with Miss Bell – or rather, considering what’s happened this term, who wouldn’t?’

‘Do you really think it has to be a master or mistress?’ I asked.

‘I think what we’ve worked out already practically proves it,’ said Daisy. ‘The resignation note, left on Miss Griffin’s desk, in handwriting that looked like Miss Bell’s – only a master or mistress could have done that, after all. And we’ve worked out that Miss Bell was killed after school hours, by someone strong enough to shove her over the side of the Gym balcony. I’d say that was all quite conclusive. So, which of them could have done it?’

‘Well, Miss Parker,’ I said. ‘Because of what happened with Miss Bell and The One.’

‘The jealousy angle,’ said Daisy. ‘I like it. Think of all those rows they’ve been having!’

I thought about Miss Parker in one of her legendary rages, dragging her fingers through her short black hair and shrieking, and decided that she was a very good suspect indeed.

‘Who else?’ Daisy asked.

‘What about Miss Hopkins? She might have been afraid The One would jilt her for Miss Bell.’

‘Now, that’s a silly suggestion,’ said Daisy. ‘For one thing, it’s a terribly weak motive. For another, I happen to know that Miss Hopkins was up in the Pavilion talking tactics with the hockey lot on Monday after school. They’ve got that match against St Chator’s this weekend, you know – they’re terrified about it, so the Hop was helping them prepare. She couldn’t have killed Miss Bell. And for a third – well, Miss Hopkins simply wouldn’t do a thing like murder. She couldn’t. She’s – she’s
pukka
.’

It was my turn to sigh. Daisy is quite obsessed with Miss Hopkins, and I felt that she was ruling her out unfairly. But I couldn’t argue with such an alibi.

‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘Miss Lappet and Miss Tennyson. They both want the Deputy Head job, don’t they, but we all know that Miss Bell was about to be given it. What if one of them thought they’d get it by clearing Miss Bell out of the way?’

‘
Much
better,’ said Daisy, pleased. ‘Neither of them have alibis that I can think of – and we know that Miss Tennyson was around school at the right time, don’t we? After all, she took us for Lit. Soc yesterday, and societies all finish at five twenty. And then we saw her outside Mr MacLean’s study shortly after you discovered the body, not far from the Gym at all. So . . . who else? I suppose Mamzelle and Mr MacLean, because we saw them near the scene of the crime at the right time too. Though I can’t think of a motive for either of them, can you?’

I shook my head. ‘Shouldn’t we add The One, for the same reason?’ I asked. ‘He was there – I saw him stick his head out of his cubby as we were going past.’

‘Very true,’ agreed Daisy, nodding. ‘Though, again, why ever would he kill Miss Bell? It’s not as though he’s even interested in her any more. Really, it ought to have been
her
killing
him
, and of course that didn’t happen.’

‘Rage?’ I suggested. ‘Blackmail? Remorse?’

‘Hmm,’ said Daisy. ‘Not yet proven. But lovely work otherwise. Just look, we’ve got six suspects for our list! Write them down, do. Then we can cross them off later as we discover their alibis.’

I wrote them down.

‘All right, excellent work,’ said Daisy. ‘Now we must consider the matter of the body.’

I did not like the sound of that at all. In fact, it gave me the shudders. There we were, back again to the horrible idea that the murderer might still have been in the Gym when I arrived.

‘Where did it go?’ asked Daisy, not noticing the look on my face. ‘How did the murderer move it? They wouldn’t have had long, after all. If you left the Gym at five forty-five and came back with me and Virginia at, well, let’s say five fifty-two – that seems about right – then they wouldn’t have been able to get far. Bodies are extraordinarily heavy, my uncle says.’

I wished Daisy hadn’t said that. It might have been a joke, but it made my chills worse than ever.

‘I’d say that it was more than possible that your suggestion about the murderer hiding in the Cupboard is correct,’ said Daisy excitedly, sounding more and more like something from one of her detective novels. ‘And he or she could have dragged the body in there too! Imagine – you, me and Virginia, just a few steps away from the killer and the victim. But if it
was
there at that moment, where was it moved to afterwards? Since no one using the Gym today noticed a body, it must have been moved somewhere else after we left yesterday evening. Perhaps the murderer used the trolley that Jones stores in the Cupboard, to move it more easily. Anyway, that’s another of our tasks, to discover the current location of Miss Bell’s body.’

‘Ugh,’ I said, shivering. I didn’t want to see Miss Bell’s corpse ever again, and I couldn’t bear the thought that both it and the murderer might have been nearby when I returned to the Gym with Virginia and Daisy. Daisy, however, rolled her eyes at me. Things like that do not bother her at all. I don’t think she sees them in her imagination in quite the same way I do.

‘I think investigating the body’s whereabouts will involve more careful planning than we can manage right now. We can’t just go nosing about the school looking for a corpse, after all. I’ll have to think about that. But – Hazel, write this down – the plan for tomorrow is as follows: we must establish alibis for the masters and mistresses on our suspect list. We can try asking them directly, of course, but it may be easier simply to ask other girls. However, remember that this mission requires constant vigilance! Any answer may lead to the truth.’

‘Yes,’ I said, fighting down my nerves. ‘I know. But – I still can’t believe that one of
our
masters or mistresses could have committed a
murder
.’