Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery (9 page)

But as she read I noticed – as did Daisy, though she did not show it – that Miss Tennyson was being more than usually weepy.

‘
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid
,’ read Daisy in appropriately funereal tones. Miss Tennyson turned pale. In fact, every reference to graves or dead people (there are lots in Gray’s ‘Elegy’, in case you have not been forced to read it yet yourself) had Miss Tennyson twitching like a science experiment. When Daisy reached the lines,

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Miss Tennyson began shaking so hard I thought she might fall off her chair, and after the last line she sat in silence for so long that we all started looking at each other in real concern.

‘Are you all right, Miss Tennyson?’ asked Beanie nervously at last.

‘Perfectly, Beanie dear,’ said Miss Tennyson, dabbing at her cheeks with her handkerchief. ‘I thought Daisy’s reading was
so
lovely that I wanted to give us all time to contemplate it.’

I could tell it was an excuse, and a weak one. Not even Miss Tennyson cared about poetry
that
much.

That was when Daisy pounced. ‘Miss Tennyson,’ she said, putting up her hand, ‘may I ask you something?’

‘Is it about Gray’s “Elegy?”’ asked Miss Tennyson.

‘No,’ said Daisy. ‘It’s about Miss Bell.’

Miss Tennyson dropped the book of poems she was holding. It clattered onto the desk and the third form all stared from her to Daisy and back again.

‘I need to ask Miss Bell something, but now she’s resigned I don’t know where to write to her. I don’t suppose
you
know where she’s gone to, do you?’

‘Why would you think that
I
would have any idea where Miss Bell has gone?’ asked Miss Tennyson, so quietly it was almost a whisper. She had turned as pale as one of Gray’s poetical gravestones.

‘Oh,
I
don’t know,’ Daisy said breezily. ‘I thought she might have said where she was going. It was only a hope.’

Miss Tennyson turned red, a specklish flush that broke out all down her neck and into her high-collared blouse. ‘Daisy Wells!’ she said. ‘This has nothing to do with poetry. I’ll thank you to keep on topic for the rest of the lesson. Otherwise – otherwise you will be doing extra composition for me in Detention.’

We all gaped at her. We had never heard Miss Tennyson make that kind of threat before. Even last term when Lavinia said
King Lear
was idiotic, Miss Tennyson had only sighed and looked wounded. This threat was quite out of character, and it had come because Daisy had mentioned Miss Bell.

Miss Tennyson did not want to talk about Miss Bell, and a poem about graves was making her upset. She had just moved to the very top of our suspect list.

3

In the afternoon we had Games, which meant I had to stand shivering on the playing field while Daisy and the rest of the sporty girls galloped around and screamed at each other. That day my ankle gave me an excuse to be in defence (although I was not allowed to skip Games altogether – that would not be the Deepdean way), so at least I could shiver in peace while the ball was hammered to and fro in front of me.

Unfortunately, being in defence meant being next to Lavinia. If it is possible, she is even worse at Games than I am, which makes her terribly sulky. Miss Hopkins has given up on her entirely, so Lavinia just lumps about near goal, glaring at everyone.

It was a very English afternoon. The air was full of water droplets that clung to our faces and weighed down our clothes, and the grass had turned into a particularly slimy sort of mud. I wrapped my arms round myself and shivered. It was the sort of weather that Daisy loves. She rocketed about the pitch, skirt flapping, and winged the ball at goal so hard that we had to dive out of the way to save ourselves. Miss Hopkins cheered and waved her hockey stick in encouragement. She was still in an astonishingly happy mood.

I was trying to observe her when Lavinia began to speak to me. ‘Daisy’s
annoyingly
brilliant, isn’t she?’ she said as she watched Daisy tackle Clementine.

‘Daisy’s not annoying!’ I said. ‘She’s just
Daisy
.’

‘Well, you would say that,’ said Lavinia. ‘You’re practically her slave.’

‘I am not!’ I said furiously. ‘Daisy’s my best friend.’

‘Huh,’ said Lavinia. ‘Some friend. She uses you – haven’t you noticed? And she only took an interest in you because you’re an Oriental. Her uncle is a spy – that’s why foreigners interest her.’

Now, if it is bad form to show your emotions in England, it is even more so in Hong Kong, so I know I should feel most terribly guilty about what happened next. Unfortunately, I do not feel guilty at all.

The ball was coming down the field again, with Daisy pounding along after it while Kitty whacked at her stick and tried to trip her up. I watched the ball jump and roll over tufts of muddy grass towards us. Lavinia had not noticed it. Daisy gave the ball one more whack and it arced up in the air and landed just next to Lavinia’s right foot.

That was enough for me. I launched myself at Lavinia, whirling my hockey stick, and crashed into her as hard as I could. For the second time in a week, I fell down in a tangle of legs and arms and games knickers. ‘Oh!’ I shrieked, sounding as horrified as I could manage.

Then I scrambled up, making sure that my stick dug into Lavinia’s middle and my knee squashed into her thigh. My shoe scratched down her leg, leaving it streaky with mud. Lavinia kicked back, hard, on my ankle, and I toppled over again.

‘Beast!’ panted Lavinia, and scratched me.

The game had stopped, and Miss Hopkins was running over to us. It turned out that her cheerfulness only stretched so far. ‘HAZEL, NOT AGAIN!’ she bellowed.

‘I was trying to get the ball,’ I said. ‘I tripped.’

Lavinia dragged herself to her feet and pulled me up with her. ‘We both tripped,’ she said, breathing hard. ‘It wasn’t Hazel’s fault.’ That’s the good thing about Lavinia. She can be foully mean, and she’s vicious in a fight, but at least she doesn’t hold grudges afterwards.

‘I can see perfectly well that that’s a lie,’ said Miss Hopkins, sighing. ‘Hazel, in this country we do not fight. We are
civilized
. This is the second time you have knocked over a classmate this week. Go and get changed back into your school things, and if I ever catch you doing something like this again I shall send you to Miss Griffin. Lavinia, play on. Hazel,
go
!’

It was not really a punishment, or at least not one as bad as Miss Hopkins would usually have given out, but it still stung. Cheeks burning, I turned and marched off towards the pavilion. I felt swollen up with anger. I couldn’t see why Lavinia wasn’t being punished as well. She had fought back, after all. And she had been so horrid about Daisy! It was not true that Daisy was only friends with me because I was from Hong Kong. She was not like that at all, I told myself. But all the same, there was a bit of me that was worried. Could it really be true?

I changed back into my school things, my heart rocketing about inside my chest like a dynamo. My ankle was aching again, but I ignored it. I had hardly finished pulling my socks on, though, when the door of the changing-room banged open. I crouched down, thinking that it might be Miss Hopkins. But the person who stuck their head through a row of pinafores and grinned at me was not Miss Hopkins at all, but Daisy.

Her golden hair was stiff with mud and there was mud on one of her cheeks too. As she burrowed through the clothes and wiggled her way out onto the bench opposite me, she left quite a lot of mud behind her, but she didn’t seem to mind.

‘Wotcher, Watson!’ said Daisy. ‘I’ve come to join you, even though you
were
rude to Miss Hopkins. I thought this would be a good opportunity to hold a Detective Society meeting.’

There was Daisy, adoring Miss Hopkins again. I decided to ignore it. ‘What did you do to get out of Games?’ I asked.

‘I told Hopkins I had the curse and she let me go.’ Daisy said this without a blush, as though it was the easiest thing in the world. Perhaps it was; for her.

‘Daisy,’ I said. ‘Do you know what Lavinia said to me?’

‘No,’ said Daisy. ‘What awful lies has she been telling this time?’

‘She said . . . that you were only friends with me because I come from Hong Kong.’

There was a pause. ‘What utter tosh,’ said Daisy. ‘As you know perfectly well, I’m only friends with you because you were so persistent about it that I couldn’t refuse.’

‘
Daisy!
’ I said.

‘All right. That’s nonsense. I’m friends with you because you are the cleverest person in this whole school.’

I blushed. It was one of the nicest things she had ever said to me.

‘Apart, of course, from me.’

Daisy couldn’t bear not having the last word. ‘Well, now that we’ve cleared that up, can we get on to the real business? We won’t have another opportunity like this all day. Ready, Watson?’

‘Ready,’ I said, pulling my casebook out of my bag and trying to put my mind to Detective Society business.

‘Excellent,’ said Daisy. ‘Now, we’ve already made some really important discoveries, but before we go any further we need to talk about suspects. We’re agreed that we’ve narrowed our suspect list down to four: Miss Parker, Miss Tennyson, Miss Lappet and The One. The others all have good alibis – and although in books they might have done it by constructing a dastardly longrange missile out of a trombone, three plant pots and the Gym vaulting horse, in real life that sort of thing does seem beyond the bounds of possibility.’

I nodded. Daisy was right.

‘So, the top of our list is Miss Tennyson,’ I said. ‘She wanted the Deputy job. She was down at school for Lit. Soc, but that finished at five twenty. We saw her by the Gym half an hour later, but we have no idea where she was in between those times. And what about today’s English lesson!’

‘Wasn’t that a sight?’ agreed Daisy. ‘She certainly
behaved
guiltily.’

‘And then there’s Miss Parker. We know that she lied about her alibi. She was at school when Kitty saw her just after socs finished, and so she had the perfect opportunity to commit the murder. She has a motive too – jealousy about Miss Bell and The One – and she has been raging about the school all week. That could be her guilty conscience. So that’s two who seem promising, and don’t appear to have alibis. What about the others? Let’s see – The One, and Miss Lappet.

‘The One first. We know he stayed down after school to teach Sophie Croke-Finchley piano that evening, but the lesson ended at four fifty. After that, he was free, and we saw that he was in his cubby at five fifty – again, near the Gym at the correct time. We shall just have to watch him.’

‘Miss Lappet,’ I said, looking up from my casebook. ‘Like Miss Tennyson, she wanted the Deputy job. She went to Miss Griffin’s office at four thirty, but we don’t have an alibi for her after that. Although – do we know when she came out again? If she stayed there until after the time of the murder, that’d give her an excellent alibi. She’d have had Miss Griffin watching over her all evening.’

‘Oh, good work, Watson,’ said Daisy. ‘We should look into it at the first opportunity. You know, I’d say we were doing rather well. Down to four suspects already! Our next plan of action should be more of the same – we keep hunting down alibis, or lack of them, and we watch our four like hawks while we’re at it.
Constant vigilance
. Oh, and about that other thing – I’ve come up with a really excellent idea that will give us time to hunt round for where the murderer hid Miss Bell’s body, in between killing her on Monday and moving it out of the school on Tuesday.’

She said it so casually that I thought she must be joking. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘You can’t have done. There’s always someone around the school watching us, no matter what time of day it is.’

‘Exactly,’ said Daisy. ‘That’s why my idea’s such a corker. I can’t tell you what it is yet, though, in case it goes wrong.’

‘Daisy! Why not?’

‘Don’t argue, Watson! Aren’t I the President of the Detective Society? That means that I’m allowed to have a plan without telling you.’

I opened my mouth to say that I couldn’t see why, but then shut it again crossly. I knew there was no point. Arguing with Daisy about things like that is like arguing with an avalanche when it is already on its way down the mountain. It was no good wanting to know anything about Daisy’s mysterious plan. She would tell me when she wanted to, or not at all.

I was still trying not to be furious about it when the changing-room door banged open again and Kitty, Beanie and the rest of the form rushed in. Daisy began loudly talking about Amy Johnson’s daring flight to Cape Town, so I took a calming breath and joined in.

4

Considering Lavinia, and what she said, it’s funny to remember what I used to think of Daisy. Last year, when I first came to Deepdean, she was exactly in the middle of our form, neither a swot nor a dunce. Her English essays were utterly dull, her French hopped tenses like anything, and she mixed up the Habsburgs and the Huns. The mistresses were fond of her, but – ‘Daisy dear,’ said Miss Lappet one day, peering down through her little glasses, ‘you are a charming girl, but you are certainly not cut out for an academic life.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Daisy in reply. ‘I don’t want to be a Bluestocking. I shall marry a Lord.’ The whole second form squealed with laughter and Miss Lappet folded her arms over her cushiony bosom but looked amused. In fact, as we all knew, Daisy had no need to marry a Lord. Her father already was one, a real one with ermine robes and a country seat in Gloucestershire.

It was this sort of thing that made Daisy so fascinating. Almost all the younger shrimps had pashes on her. (A
pash
, in case you haven’t heard the word before, is school talk for something that is rather difficult to describe – I suppose it’s being in love, but different somehow, and so quite all right with everyone.) I was as much taken with the Honourable Daisy Wells as anyone else, and so things might have gone on if it were not for something that happened halfway through my first term at Deepdean.