Murder Is Bad Manners

by Robin Stevens

  Miss Griffin was following us.

  Daisy clutched my arm in panic, and I clutched at Daisy—and at that moment Miss Griffin realized that she had been seen. The most awful expression came over her face, like a cat about to pounce on two mice, and she began to stride purposefully toward us.

  “Quick!” hissed Daisy. “RUN!”

  And, ignoring all the rules of Deepdean, we ran like rabbits down the New Wing corridor.

  I have never been so terrified in my life. I remember galloping along in a sweating awful panic, hearing our feet on the marble tiles—and behind them, the click, click, click of Miss Griffin’s shoes as she came after us. My heart was burning and hammering in my chest and my ankle throbbed along with it.

  “Girls!” called Miss Griffin after us. “Come here at once! I want to talk to you! You are missing lessons without permission!”

  “Ignore her!” panted Daisy.

  I did not need to be told twice.

  But then we turned the corner into the Music Wing and almost crashed into Inspector Priestley.

  He was standing in the hallway, a sheaf of papers in his large hands, and at that moment he seemed like the Angel Gabriel or one of the godlike inspectors from Daisy’s novels, descended to earth to save our souls.

  “Help!” gasped Daisy, gesturing behind us. “Miss Griffin!”

  The Inspector acted at once.

  “Quick!” he said. “In there!” And he ushered us—or rather, almost shoved us—through the open door of the small music room, before slamming it shut.

  He was only just in time. As we leaned against each other, panting as quietly as we could, I heard the clicking of Miss Griffin’s shoes once again. They hurried closer and closer—and then stopped. She must have seen the Inspector, I thought.

  “Ah, Miss Griffin,” Inspector Priestley said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world that they should meet there. “You’re just in time for our meeting.”

  “What meeting?” asked Miss Griffin, sounding extremely ungracious.

  “Didn’t my sergeant let you know? I’m terribly sorry. I’ve asked several of the teachers to meet me here to discuss some developments in the case. In fact, now that you’ve arrived, we can begin. They’re all waiting for you in the music room.”

  “Inspector, I am busy. I am looking for two of my pupils. You didn’t see two girls pass by here just now, did you?”

  I tensed up.

  “Ah yes, I did,” said the Inspector. “They went out of the North Entrance in a terrible hurry. I think you’ve lost them. At least you still have the meeting to console you.”

  There was a pause.

  “Oh, very well then,” said Miss Griffin, with bad grace.

  I breathed a very quiet sigh of relief.

  There was the sound of a door opening and closing, silence outside in the hallway, and voices in the room next door to us.

  Now, Daisy and I had been shoved into the small music room. It is separate from the big music room, but the two rooms are connected by a door that is covered with a heavy velvet curtain on the big music room side. Between the door and the curtain there’s a narrow little space—just big enough for two girl detectives to squeeze into.

  I do wonder whether the Inspector had planned on us listening in. It may have just been a nice coincidence—he never said anything about it to us afterward—but all the same, Daisy and I opened the connecting door and slipped in behind the curtain. So we heard exactly what went on at Inspector Priestley’s meeting.

  Daisy and I positioned ourselves one at each end of the curtain, so that we could peep around it into the room beyond. I squashed my cheek against the shivery-cold stone of the alcove wall and had a splendid view of the music room—with its high, white ceiling and long, curved picture window that looks out onto the lawns and pond. The tall, severe policeman from the Old Entrance was backed up against the far wall, looking official, and several hard classroom chairs had been set out in a semicircle facing the big window. Miss Lappet, Miss Hopkins, The One, Miss Parker, and Mamzelle were sitting uncomfortably in these chairs, and standing in front of them just like a teacher in front of his classroom was Inspector Priestley. Miss Griffin was still being ushered into an empty chair by Rogers, the pimply policeman. She looked put out, and he looked frankly terrified of her. I didn’t blame him.

  “Is all this strictly necessary?” snapped Miss Griffin. “I do have a school to run, you know.”

  “I am quite aware of that,” said the Inspector. “However, it could not be avoided. I do promise that I’ll try to take up as little of your time as I can.

  “Now, I have called this meeting because of certain developments in my investigation of the death of Miss Tennyson. But I have been made aware that this is not the only unfortunate event Deepdean has suffered recently. You are currently missing your science teacher, are you not?”

  I saw Miss Parker’s shoulders shake. I felt a surge of pity for her—she must have been nearly frantic with worry about Miss Bell.

  “I am not sure missing is the correct word,” said Miss Griffin acidly. “I received Miss Bell’s resignation on my desk last Tuesday morning in the proper manner. She has left the school, and I wish her good luck. Surely that has no bearing on Miss Tennyson’s unfortunate accident?”

  The Inspector sighed. “I am afraid,” he said, “that the whereabouts of Miss Bell have a great deal to do with this investigation. I am also afraid that those whereabouts are no longer in any doubt. Miss Bell did not resign last Monday at all. Nor did she leave school grounds of her own volition.”

  “What do you mean?” cried Miss Parker.

  “I mean,” said the Inspector, “that this afternoon my men discovered a body in Oakeshott Woods; a body that exactly matches the description I have of Miss Bell.”

  Miss Parker made a noise that sounded like all the air rushing out of a balloon. Her face had gone red and her mouth was open and gaping fishily, and she clutched at the sides of her chair until her knuckles went red and white in strips.

  “The discovery means that this is now a murder inquiry, and you are the suspects.”

  Beside me, Daisy made an appreciative noise. I could tell that she was enjoying the Inspector’s sense of theater.

  “I’m afraid, Inspector, that you must be mistaken,” said Miss Griffin calmly.

  “I’m afraid that I am not,” said the Inspector, who was just as calm.

  Miss Parker’s voice, when she spoke, came choking out of her in odd little bursts. “No,” she said. “No, she can’t be—we argued, I was going to tell her I was sorry—she can’t be dead before I’ve told her how sorry I am!”

  Oh, poor Miss Parker, I thought. Daisy sniffed. She did not sound sympathetic.

  The Inspector was carrying on. “The murderer must have been someone who knew her writing well enough to forge a resignation letter, and who had access to Miss Griffin’s desk—in short, it must have been one of the six of you.”

  “But this is preposterous!” exclaimed Miss Lappet. She was slurring her words again. “You have not the smallest bit of evidence against any of us.”

  “On the contrary,” said the Inspector. “I have plenty. There is a bloodstain on the gym floor and another one on the gym cupboard’s wheelbarrow. The disused tunnel under the school bears signs of recent use, including footprints matching Miss Tennyson’s shoes, and there is a bloodstain and moss from Oakeshott Woods on Miss Tennyson’s abandoned car. I can say with confidence that Miss Tennyson played a part in Miss Bell’s death and the disposal of her body. But she did not do it alone.”

  I could feel the atmosphere change in the music room, and despite myself I shivered.

  “Miss Tennyson’s death at first appeared to be an accident, but certain details did not make sense. There were signs of a struggle, and the body had been rearranged after death. Therefore I deduce that Miss Tennyson’s accomplice returned and killed her. Someone in this room is the murderer of two women.”

  But why
do you think one of us did it?” asked Miss Lappet, in a brief moment of clarity. “It might be anyone.”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Miss Hopkins, scandalized. “Besides, people like us simply don’t do that sort of thing.”

  “All of you were at school during Monday evening,” the Inspector explained. “And all of you had a reason to wish Miss Bell dead.”

  “Nonsense!” cried Mamzelle suddenly. “Not I, surely! I had no hatred for Mees Bell.”

  “Ah, well, that may be true. But you do have a secret, don’t you?” said the Inspector.

  “Whatever do you mean?” asked Mamzelle. Her chin had gone up, and her face was pale. Behind the curtain, Daisy pinched me in excitement. Whatever did the Inspector mean? Had we missed something else?

  “This afternoon I wired the school in France you gave as your reference, and they wired back to say that they had never heard of you. In fact, the French do not seem to have any official records of you at all. You aren’t Estelle Renauld, are you?”

  Behind the curtain I gasped, and Daisy kicked me on the ankle so hard that when I inspected it afterward I could still see the print of her shoe. All the other staff stared up at Mamzelle in shock. She looked around at them and suddenly burst out laughing.

  “The things one will do to get a job,” she said, in a very different accent to her ordinary French one. “It seemed such a little deception when compared to the reward.”

  “You aren’t French?” shrieked Miss Hopkins.

  “I’m from Leicester,” said Mamzelle. “Down on the official records as Stella Higgins, if you must know. I trained as a science teacher, but there were no jobs going for a public school girl from Leicester. Then I read about this position. I spoke French, after all. My mother was from Toulouse. I thought, why not give it a try? It was the sort of place I’d dreamed about teaching at all my life, but I knew I’d never get there as Stella Higgins. So I made a little alteration to my records—taking my mother’s maiden name and changing the spelling of my first name. One of my mother’s cousins rewrote my reference so that it came from a school in Provence, and I became Mademoiselle Renauld. But if you think that Miss Bell found out and I killed her to shut her up, you’re quite wrong. I had nothing to do with her death, or Miss Tennyson’s—I might have changed my name to get a job, but I’d never kill anyone to keep it. And if I’m fired for this—well, you’re fools. You must admit, I’ve been good at my job.”

  That must have been what Mamzelle was doing when Sophie heard her in the music practice room, I thought. Practicing her accent! It had only been a very small mystery, but it was lovely to have it solved.

  “Good heavens,” said Miss Hopkins faintly.

  “Well,” snapped Miss Griffin. “We’ll deal with this later.”

  Inspector Priestley nodded. “Thank you for clearing that up,” he said to Mamzelle. “For the moment I shall assume that you are innocent—or rather, that you are guilty of nothing more serious than identity fraud—and move on with the problem of who killed Miss Bell and Miss Tennyson.”

  Everyone went very quiet again.

  “I didn’t do it,” said Miss Parker at last. “I swear I didn’t. Joan and I argued horribly that evening but that’s all. I didn’t want to tell anyone that we’d had another argument—I was embarrassed, so I’ve been lying about exactly when I left school that day. I was here until nearly six, but I swear I had nothing to do with her being murdered. And I thought Joan was alive until just now—didn’t I?” she asked The One pleadingly, turning to look at him with huge staring eyes.

  The One gulped. “Miss Parker is telling the truth,” he said. “Ever since last Tuesday morning she has been asking me to tell her where Miss Bell is. I found it impossible to make her believe that I had no idea, or that I had nothing to do with Miss Bell’s resignation.”

  I felt pleased again at that. I had guessed right!

  “I see,” said the Inspector. “But why should Miss Parker think that you had something to do with Miss Bell’s disappearance?”

  “Because Miss Bell told me that she was going to go back to him,” growled Miss Parker, glaring furiously at The One.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” Daisy whispered to me. “Just like the end of one of my novels!”

  I thought it was more like being at the pictures. After all, there we were in the dark, watching grown-ups weep and shout and accuse each other of dreadful things.

  The One went very red. His Adam’s apple gulped up and down in his throat, and at first I thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all. But then he seemed to decide something. He swallowed once more, and then reached out and put his hand over Miss Hopkins’s.

  “Miss Bell,” he said unsteadily, “did come to see me on Monday evening. But, er, I could not possibly give her what she was asking for. You see—when she came in, I was with Arabella. She, er, surprised us together.”

  “And what were you doing with Miss Hopkins?” asked the Inspector, although of course he knew perfectly well.

  “Er,” said The One sheepishly, “I’d rather not say, exactly. You see, we are engaged.”

  Miss Griffin gave a hiss of rage. “After all I’ve done for you!” she said to Miss Hopkins. “To waste it by getting married!”

  All I could think was, They deserve each other.

  “We’re going to be married in the spring,” said Miss Hopkins. “Isn’t it blissful? He asked me at lunch last Friday and I said yes. We knew”—she nodded at Miss Griffin—“that we had to keep it a deadly secret. I couldn’t wear the ring he bought me, so he gave me these earrings as . . . well, as a token of his love. They are just like the ones Miss Griffin has, which I’d admired. I was so excited about it on Monday that I slipped away from the after-school hockey practice halfway through and went down to his office to see him.”

  “And what time was that?” asked Inspector Priestley.

  “Oh, about five thirty, I should think,” said Miss Hopkins. “We were there together until just before six.”

  The One nodded. “At one point there was a noise in the corridor and I put my head around the door to see who it was. Miss Tennyson was there, and Mam—er, Miss . . . er . . . oh, you remember seeing me, surely?” he asked Mamzelle. She nodded.

  “You see?” said Miss Hopkins. “So we both have alibis. And anyway, there was no reason for either of us to want silly old Miss Bell dead, was there? Not once we were engaged. She might have gotten upset about it, but she couldn’t do anything to us. It would have been perfectly foolish to kill her.”

  “Murder is always foolish,” said the Inspector. “If people only murdered each other rationally, I would be out of a job. Now, what about Miss Lappet and Miss Griffin?”

  Miss Lappet twitched back in her seat. “Miss Griffin and I,” she said faintly. “were in her office, working on administrative matters. All evening.”

  I saw Miss Griffin look at her sideways. What will she say? I wondered.

  “Yes,” she said after the slightest of pauses. “Miss Lappet is quite right.”

  “How convenient,” said the Inspector politely—not, of course, meaning to be polite at all. “Thank you. Well, taking all of those statements into account, shall I put forward what I believe happened on Monday evening?”

  The room went very still. Daisy bounced silently next to me—I could tell she was holding her hand over her mouth to stop herself from squeaking.

  “As I said before, I believe that whoever was responsible for Miss Bell’s death was also responsible for Miss Tennyson’s—to solve one murder is to solve the other. The crucial person in all this, therefore, is Miss Bell herself. Why would someone have wanted to kill her in the first place?

  “Rivalry for the deputy headmistress job seems the obvious motive—that would be you, Miss Lappet, as well as Miss Tennyson. Then there is the rather knotty love life of Mr. Reid”—I very nearly giggled at that—“which involves Mr. Reid himself, as well as Miss Parker and Miss Hopkins.”

  “I see that I am not
included in this little list,” said Miss Griffin frostily. “Since I am obviously not a suspect, may I be permitted to leave?”

  “Certainly not,” snapped the Inspector. “Two of your teachers have died in the past week. If nothing else, as headmistress you should take responsibility for their welfare.”

  “Come now, Inspector,” said Miss Griffin. “It is rather hard to run a school with no teachers. I hardly think it would be in my best interests to kill my own staff.”

  “Indeed,” said the Inspector. “For a headmistress to kill her own staff, she would have to have a very good reason.”

  “Exactly,” said Miss Griffin, sitting back in her chair.

  “Exactly,” the Inspector echoed. “So, did you have a very good reason for doing it?”

  Suddenly the rest of the teachers began to catch on to what was happening. They all whipped their heads around to stare at Miss Griffin, like people at a tennis match.

  “Certainly not!” It was almost a shout.

  “It seems to me,” the Inspector went on smoothly, “that Miss Bell must have been a rather desperate woman. She needed money, did she not? That’s why she was performing secretarial duties for you. After she was rejected by Mr. Reid, that deputy headmistress job must have become even more important to her. If she had known anything that could have swung the appointment in her favor, or given her more power at Deepdean, I suspect she would have used it. So, did she know something about your past that you might want to keep hidden?”

  “Do—not—be—ridiculous,” hissed Miss Griffin. “As I have told you, I was in my office all Monday evening with Miss Lappet.”

  “I think you’ll find that it was Miss Lappet who told me you were meeting in your office all evening—a tale, incidentally, that I find suspiciously convenient and not particularly likely. I suggest that after a very brief meeting in your office, Miss Lappet left—witnessed by several of your students, I might add—and then spent much of the evening in another room, perhaps with a bottle to keep her company. Leaving you on your own.”

  Oh! I thought. Of course, that made sense. If Miss Lappet had been off somewhere drinking, she would not want anyone to know about it. That was why she had made up the story about being with Miss Griffin all evening. And of course, it had suited Miss Griffin to play along with that.