First Class Murder

by Robin Stevens

  Quite a few people gasped. My brain swam. It was true. I had seen Mr Daunt break the door down, and I had also seen Madame Melinda unlock the connecting door. But if they had both been locked from the inside, how had the murderer escaped? And how had they relocked the door behind them? Daisy and I exchanged a glance, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. Was this really a locked-room mystery, just like the ones we had read about in Daisy’s books?

  ‘WHAT IS GOING ON?’ Mr Daunt bellowed at Jocelyn.

  ‘Sir,’ gasped Jocelyn, ‘I do not know – this is impossible. No master keys have been reported missing – I must ask my men, but I do not think—’ Then he rushed away towards the dining car and the rest of the train, shouting, ‘Keys! Attendants! Show me your keys!’

  Mrs Vitellius wailed, and fainted very dramatically against the door frame – and as she did so she pushed out with her hand, so I was knocked away from my vantage point. I should not have been surprised that Mrs Vitellius did not want us investigating this either. She must think that it was the work of the spy.

  But . . . was it? I wondered. Or was this something else entirely?

  ‘Ow!’ said Daisy, and I could tell that Mrs Vitellius had shoved her as well. I looked up and caught them glaring at each other, just for a moment, and then Mrs Vitellius was having hysterics again, and Daisy was busily wringing her hands and looking every inch the innocent girl caught up in a dreadful disaster.

  My father said sharply, ‘Hazel! Daisy! Come away from there!’

  He caught my wrist and dragged me backwards – and although I knew I ought to be gathering clues, I was glad to be taken away from that horrid sight. I had a fierce moment of struggle with Daisy, and then she went limp, and allowed herself to be pulled away from the door as well.

  Mr Strange stepped into the space we had left, peered into the compartment, and then staggered backwards, looking quite bleached with horror. ‘My knife!’ he gasped. ‘But how . . .? I had it before dinner, I swear I did!’

  The Countess sniffed at him. I could tell that she was not the sort of person to be upset by murder after the initial shock. She blinked at the blood, and the body.

  ‘Lord above,’ she said. ‘Where is the necklace? Where is my ruby?’

  9

  Jocelyn returned with a great jingling pile of Wagon Lit master keys in his hand. ‘None are missing!’ he said wonderingly. ‘None!’

  As well as the keys, he had a doctor – a passenger who happened to be travelling in the Calais–Athens coach, beyond the dining car. He looked very young to be a doctor, but he walked confidently with his chest puffed out. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done,’ he said, bending down over the body and brushing Mrs Daunt’s hair away from her cheek.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ barked Mr Daunt. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Edinburgh, my good man,’ said the doctor, clearing his throat proudly. ‘Got my degree last year. Now I’m off to see the world.’

  ‘Scots!’ said Mr Daunt dismissively.

  ‘Her throat has been cut,’ the doctor went on. ‘In these circumstances, there is very little I can do. All I can say is that the injury is recent – inflicted no more than half an hour ago.’

  ‘She has gone!’ wailed Madame Melinda, who seemed to have recovered from her faint, and was back crowding up the corridor with the rest of us. ‘She has passed on, but she will return! Oh, I feel her spirit now, watching over us!’

  Mr Strange still looked sick. He hugged his arms about himself and groaned. ‘It can’t be . . .’ he muttered to himself. ‘It can’t . . . I swear . . . that knife – it must have been stolen.’ He seemed upset – but more about the knife than about his sister.

  My father was silent. I think he was in shock as well. You see, he loves his world to be controlled, and a murder quite ruined that. He looked somehow smaller as he leaned against the wall, and with amazement I realized that, for once, I was the expert and he was only an onlooker. It was a very strange feeling.

  Mr Daunt was shouting again. ‘I demand that you summon the police!’ he cried hoarsely. ‘Someone has killed my wife! Where was the conductor? You! Why were you not at your post?’

  ‘I – I was . . .’ gasped Jocelyn. ‘Many apologies – I was with the conductor in the next carriage, discussing an important matter—’

  ‘Disgraceful!’ shouted Mr Daunt. ‘Your negligence has caused my wife’s death! If you had been here, the killer would not have been able to escape her compartment unnoticed! Your superiors will be hearing about this. And I want everyone questioned! I want that charlatan woman to tell us where she was just now!’ He pointed at Madame Melinda accusingly.

  ‘How dare you!’ she cried. ‘I was in my compartment! Mrs Vitellius can vouch that she left me at the door only a moment before the crime.’

  Everyone looked at Mrs Vitellius. She fluttered her hands. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Yes, I suppose it’s true. I heard her inside her compartment just before the scream.’

  Mr Daunt looked furious. ‘Her brother, then! Where was he?’

  Mr Strange’s mouth opened and shut like he was in a silent film. ‘I—’ he said. ‘I . . . was in my compartment as well!’

  ‘What nonsense! Why should we believe you?’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Mr Strange, gulping. ‘Really . . .’

  Wagon Lit attendants suddenly came rushing along our corridor in a confusion of blue and gold uniforms and moustaches.

  ‘Where are the police?’ shouted Mr Daunt.

  ‘Sir,’ said Jocelyn, for once quite without his usual calm air. ‘Sir, I beg to apologize, but there are no police currently on the train. We are in Jugo-Slavia. There are no police . . .’

  Next to me there was a sharp intake of breath. I felt the pinch of fingers around my wrist. ‘Compartment,’ hissed Daisy. ‘Immediately!’

  We began to edge away. ‘We’re going to bed,’ I whispered to my father, and he nodded at me.

  ‘Good girl,’ he murmured, and my stomach sank again.

  I wondered what Daisy had realized. It must have been something very important for her to willingly leave the scene of the crime. I could tell from her jumpy movements that she was on the scent, but I could not think what it could be. I knew by now, though, that I could not blame myself for being unable to guess. What I have learned from our last two real cases is this: sometimes Daisy sees things that I do not, and sometimes I understand things that Daisy would never be able to. We are no better and no worse than each other. We are simply different.

  ‘What is it?’ I whispered as Daisy pulled me into the compartment and shoved the door closed, so that the sounds out in the corridor became hollow and through-the-wall. She ignored me, and began to rootle through the things that Hetty had so carefully tidied away.

  ‘Something most important, Hazel! Something that proves . . . that this murder . . . was planned.’ She puffed and muttered to herself, throwing aside comics and puzzle books and tins of secret emergency chocolate supplies.

  ‘What do you think it means that the room was locked?’ I whispered, not wanting to raise my voice in case someone heard us. ‘How could anyone have killed her and then escaped? Daisy, what if this is one of Il Mysterioso’s tricks!’

  ‘That is certainly a strong possibility, but listen to me first. We have just heard a most important clue: that the murder took place in Jugo-Slavia! Aha, here it is! View-halloo, Watson – look!’

  Sometimes I think that Daisy’s whole brain must look like a half-unravelled jumper, everything barely holding together but connected to everything else. What she held up was the book she had been reading earlier that day, its title blazed across the front: Murder on the Orient Express.

  ‘Daisy,’ I said. ‘For the hundredth time, we aren’t in a book.’

  ‘Hazel, you must stop reading the classics and embrace proper fiction. If you had bothered to read this book, as I have been asking you to for months, you would know that in it the victim is stabbed, at night, in his compartm
ent. And where is he stabbed?’

  ‘In the heart?’ I guessed.

  ‘In Jugo-Slavia. Where there are no police on the train! You saw how the Italian police got on when we crossed the border? Well, they do that in every country – except Jugo-Slavia. I don’t think the police here are very good. Anyway, it’s a fact. And it’s a fact that anyone who’s read Murder on the Orient Express will know. That makes Jugo-Slavia the perfect place on the train line to commit a crime. Now, it is simply too much to say that a real-life stabbing on the Orient Express, in Jugo-Slavia, a year after Mrs Christie wrote her book, is simply a coincidence. Which means that it isn’t. The person who killed Mrs Daunt has read this book, just like me. They knew that this would be the best place on the line to murder her. Which means that this was planned. This was not a spur-of-the-moment murder at all. Add to that the locked room and the stolen knife – if it was stolen . . .’ Daisy’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, Hazel, we are up against an extremely cunning murderer – a worthy opponent for our third case! I have the feeling that this may be the Detective Society’s most exciting adventure yet!’

  10

  In her enthusiasm, Daisy had been speaking quite loudly – and she had not quite closed the door after all. A moment later, and we would regret both things terribly.

  Our compartment door opened properly, and there, framed in the doorway, was Mrs Vitellius. Her face was set and cross – I realized that she must have heard every word. She knew that we intended to carry on detecting, despite what she had said to us. I was frozen, horrorstruck, and even Daisy’s, ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Vitellius. Are you quite all right?’ sounded rather thin and wobbly.

  Mrs Vitellius narrowed her eyes at us, and then she staggered backwards, fanning herself and crying, ‘Oh!’

  That, of course, got the attention of my father, and a moment later he was by her side. He still had the dazed, lost look I had seen in his eyes earlier, and I knew at once that Mrs Vitellius would be able to make him believe anything she liked.

  ‘Are you quite well, Mrs Vitellius?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, fluttering, ‘why, I was just passing the girls’ compartment, and I heard them saying the most dreadful things about poor Mrs Daunt. Why, it sounded as though . . . they were pretending that they were going to be detectives and solve her murder!’

  I hardly dared look up at my father – but then I did, and saw that his lips had gone very, very thin. That, I knew, was a very, very bad sign.

  ‘Mrs Vitellius, many apologies if the girls have upset you. I shall deal with this. Hazel Wong,’ he said coldly. ‘Up. Miss Wells, please leave the room. Now.’

  ‘Oh, can’t I—’ Daisy began, but my father merely said, ‘Out of the room, Miss Wells, if you please.’

  Daisy slunk out, the closest to cowed I have ever seen her, and the door closed after her. Inwardly, I was shrivelling up like a piece of burning paper.

  I glanced up at my father and he glared at me through his little round glasses. I could tell that whatever was coming would be very serious indeed. And so it was.

  ‘Hazel Wong, I have spoken to you about this before. You gave me your word that you would behave yourself on this holiday, and show Miss Wells how to behave as well – behave the way schoolgirls should. And that means no playing games with serious crimes.’

  ‘But—’ I began, before I could stop myself.

  ‘Quiet!’ said my father. ‘Hazel, I don’t like what has happened to you this year. I don’t like the way Miss Wells seems to be always dragging you into danger, instead of keeping you out of it.’

  I wanted to protest that it was me dragging Daisy into danger just as much as the other way round – but I knew when to keep silent.

  ‘Hazel, you are an extremely clever young lady, but crime – murder – is a dangerous, grown-up thing. It does not concern you, and I do not want you concerning yourself with it. What has happened to Mrs Daunt must be dealt with, but it is not up to either of you to do so. Now, until this business is cleared up I want absolute goodness and quiet. I shall ask Hetty to keep a much closer eye on you, and I shall be watching you as well. I cannot have you putting yourselves in danger. Is that clear? Hazel, it is all very well you being clever, but you can’t be clever if you’re dead. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ I said, my heart pounding. Crossness and shame and fear were all tangled up inside me, so that I could not tell which of them I really felt. But I did know, suddenly, that for once my father was not right. We were not playing at being detectives, we were detectives, and it was up to us to investigate the crime and put things right. Once again there was a murderer to bring to justice.

  That thought made me feel very odd. I am used to listening absolutely to my father. I have always thought he is the wisest person I know.

  ‘Now, will you be good and tell Miss Wells what I have said?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Father,’ I said again. But inside I was not saying yes at all.

  He opened the door to Daisy’s eager face, and ushered her inside again.

  ‘What a bother!’ said Daisy as the door closed behind him. ‘Is your father very cross?’

  ‘Very,’ I said. ‘He’s banned us from having anything to do with the murder.’

  ‘He’s not likely to forget at all, is he? Sometimes Daddy—’

  ‘No,’ I said gloomily. ‘He never forgets anything except Mother’s birthday, and I think that’s on purpose.’

  ‘Well, we shall just have to be extra careful, then,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Extra careful,’ I agreed. ‘You know my father doesn’t like to be disobeyed, Daisy. And he’s . . . a noticing sort of person.’

  ‘Well,’ said Daisy, ‘so’s Mrs Vitellius, and yet we managed to discover the spy under her very nose today. This will only be more of the same. We must just imagine ourselves in enemy territory, under surveillance by particularly cunning foes. We can’t give up.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. I really did. Detective work is frightening, but what happened at Fallingford has made me realize that terrible things happen whether or not you want them to. You must make a choice: to turn and look them in the eye, and see the terrible things for what they are, or to hide away and pretend to yourself that they are not real – and if you choose the second, there is always a moment when you can’t pretend any more. Last term, I decided that I was not going to be the kind of person who pretended. I would square my shoulders, and be, if not heroic (I have explained before that I am not someone who can ever be heroic, really), then at least very brave.

  ‘We’re going to find the murderer,’ said Daisy. ‘We’ll just have to be very clever about how we do it, that’s all.’

  11

  There was a brisk, Hetty-shaped knock on the door, and then Hetty herself popped her head round it. Her cap was on slightly askew, and her cheeks were pink with emotion. She looked afraid, and hectic, and secretly excited – just the way I felt.

  ‘Mr Wong came looking for me,’ she said, ‘to tell me to watch over you. Oh, Miss Daisy, can’t you ever stop poking your nose in?’

  I wondered again why people always assumed that it was Daisy, not me, who caused all the trouble.

  ‘I’m to make sure that you get into bed and don’t listen to all the nasty stuff in the corridor. Miss Hazel, your father’s fuming.’

  ‘This is all most unfair!’ said Daisy, the picture of injured innocence.

  ‘Oh, it is not,’ said Hetty, grinning and tucking a stray strand of red hair up into her cap. ‘I know you, Miss Daisy. You brought this upon yourself.’

  ‘Hetty, you won’t really stop us from looking into things, will you?’ asked Daisy. ‘It’s so dull, following the rules all the time.’

  Hetty looked uncomfortable. ‘If you want to get up to mischief, I won’t enquire, but I can’t help you do it. While I’m on this holiday I work for Miss Hazel’s father. I’m sorry, Miss Daisy, but that’s the way it is.’

  It was not fair! I thought as Hetty called in an attendant to
fold down our bunks, and then tidied away our things while we changed into our nighties.

  I climbed up to the top bunk (Daisy says she needs the bottom bunk, in case anything happens that she wants to investigate) and Hetty tucked the sheets in around me. Her thin hands were rough, and reminded me of our family’s mui jai, back in Hong Kong. I smiled at her.

  ‘Hetty,’ said Daisy below me, and I heard her sit up. ‘Sarah must be upset about what happened to Mrs Daunt.’

  ‘Is that a question?’ asked Hetty.

  ‘Of course not!’ said Daisy. ‘But she is, isn’t she?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Hetty, climbing back down the ladder with one final smile at me. She vanished from sight, and I had to wriggle round a bit to bring the room back into view below me. ‘Some people don’t show their emotions on the outside, you know that.’

  ‘So she’s not upset?’

  ‘She’s busy, Miss Daisy! Mr Daunt needs looking after, and Mrs Daunt . . . Well, I heard she wasn’t the best of mistresses. Never gave Sarah anything by way of perks. Not that I think Sarah should take things from her—’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Oh, only little trinkets – I shouldn’t have told you that. No using it in your investigation!’

  ‘Hetty, will you watch her?’

  ‘Miss Daisy!’ said Hetty. ‘Don’t! Miss Livedon won’t like it. I’ve seen her looking at you.’

  So Hetty had noticed who Mrs Vitellius really was.

  ‘Hetty!’ said Daisy, propping herself up on her elbows. ‘This is really most important – we’ll keep mum about Sarah and the stealing, but you mustn’t say anything to anyone about where you’ve met Miss Livedon – Mrs Vitellius – before! She’s on a really top-secret mission.’

  ‘I never would,’ said Hetty. ‘Although not for her sake.’

  Hetty, as I have said, really is an utter brick.

  ‘Now, lights out, girls. I’ll be back in the morning – and I shall be listening hard tonight. No talking!’