Murder Is Bad Manners

by Robin Stevens

  “It isn’t true!” shouted Miss Lappet. “It isn’t—what I mean to say is, I was only out of the room for a little while. A very little while. And I only had a nip of something, the merest nip—I resent your implications. Resent them!”

  “Oh, do be quiet, Elizabeth,” hissed Miss Griffin.

  Miss Lappet flinched and pushed her glasses up her nose. The Inspector looked rather pleased with himself.

  “Indeed,” he said. “And with that, Miss Griffin, your alibi vanishes. Now, I believe that you met Miss Bell on the gym balcony. During that meeting, she threatened you with blackmail. You argued with her, and then you reached out and pushed her over the side.”

  Inspector Priestley stopped for a moment. The whole room was horribly, heavily silent, as though electricity were crackling round the edges and sparking from person to person. I could hear myself breathing and my heart pounding—I was terrified all over again.

  Miss Griffin sat glaring straight ahead, her jaw clenched shut and her fingers white on her lap, but everyone else stared toward her, like people at a tennis match after the last point has been played.

  “Nonsense,” she said, in an icy-cold voice. “This is all nonsense. You have no proof.”

  “Miss Bell asked to see you that evening,” said Mamzelle suddenly. “I remember now. It was in the teachers’ common room—I was there.”

  “Be quiet,” snarled Miss Griffin.

  “I certainly shall not,” said Mamzelle, offended. “What I said is true and I’m prepared to say so in court.”

  “And you think they’ll believe you? You’re not even French!”

  “I told you I liked Mamzelle,” I whispered in Daisy’s ear.

  “Shh—he hasn’t got her in the bag yet,” Daisy whispered back.

  “Quite apart from witness statements,” the Inspector was saying, unruffled, “I can have Miss Bell’s resignation letter and Miss Tennyson’s suicide note tested against your handwriting. My men are fingerprinting Miss Tennyson’s car and the gym cupboard wheelbarrow to match to your prints.”

  “I’ve destroyed the resignation letter,” snapped Miss Griffin. “And those prints could have gotten there at any time.”

  “The woman who runs Miss Tennyson’s boarding house has also identified you from a photograph as the woman who came to visit her on Saturday evening,” the Inspector went on.

  “No one can tell anything from a photograph—that’s common knowledge!”

  Despite myself, I was rather impressed by the way Miss Griffin was brazening it out. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to lie so quickly and well. She must, I thought, have had a lot of practice.

  “And your fingerprints have also been found on Miss Tennyson’s bottle of Veronal.”

  Miss Griffin made a most unladylike snort. “This is ridiculous. Are you expecting me to slip up and tell you that I was wearing gloves? Now, you can accuse me of what you like, but I don’t believe you could even bring this to trial. If you were hoping for a confession, I’m afraid you will be disappointed.”

  And she smiled. It was the most terrifying smile I have ever seen. It looked like it came from a person made out of clockwork.

  “Ah,” said Inspector Priestley. “But I do have one more piece of evidence that may sway you.” And he took out Verity’s diary.

  Miss Hopkins whispered, “Oh, what is it?” to The One, as though she were watching a play.

  Miss Griffin did not do anything at all, but her face went tight all over.

  “This diary,” said the Inspector, “is what Miss Bell intended to use for blackmail. It makes for astonishing reading—as I assume, Miss Griffin, you know. I assume you also know that, on its own, this is enough to have you removed from the school, to ensure that you never teach again, and even possibly to convict you of a previous crime. Its contents also provide the perfect motive for the two murders you have carried out. And that is my case against you.”

  When we talked about it afterward, Daisy swore that at the end of his speech, Inspector Priestley bowed, like a magician who has just finished a trick—but I think that is only what she herself would have done. At any rate, no one was looking at the Inspector then. They were staring at Miss Griffin. She had begun to shake, like a clockwork person coming unwound, and was making odd little hissing noises out of the side of her mouth.

  “How did you find it?” she asked jerkily. “How did you know . . . who told you . . . I have been looking for that diary everywhere!”

  “I’m afraid I’m not in the habit of revealing my sources,” said the Inspector.

  Miss Griffin stared around her, as though she was looking for the first time—at Miss Lappet, who was shivering in her seat like a jelly wobbling, at Miss Hopkins, clutching The One’s arm for protection, at Miss Parker, who was slowly turning purple with rage, at Mamzelle, who looked as though she had found something nasty on her shoe. Then she turned her head to stare at the velvet curtain we were hiding behind. I swear she looked straight at me.

  I jerked back into the stuffy dark, making the edge of the curtain move, and she must have seen it, even if she had not been sure before.

  “Chump!” gasped Daisy. She did not stop watching, of course. It would have taken more than that to make Daisy stop looking at something so interesting.

  From the room beyond I heard a voice that sounded barely human, shouting something. It took me a moment to make out the words, “WELLS! WONG!”

  Something banged on the floor, there was a scuffle, the sound of voices and a thump, and then I heard the Inspector, very close to our curtain, saying, “I am arresting you for attempting to assault an officer of the law, and also for involvement in the deaths of Joan Bell, Amelia Tennyson, and Verity Abraham. Come quietly and I shan’t have to do anything I might regret later.”

  There was a pause, and then, “He’s got her,” breathed Daisy ecstatically. “Isn’t that spiffing?”

  And that was the end of Miss Griffin.

  * * *

  It’s odd to think that this is so nearly over. I found Miss Bell in the gym on the twenty-ninth of October, and now it is the eighteenth of December and Christmas is next week. I am at Fallingford, Daisy’s home. Paper chains are being put up everywhere, great big spicy branches are being hauled in from outside and wrapped around the banisters, and there are great trays of cookies and cakes coming out of the kitchen. The dogs keep trying to eat them, which makes Daisy’s mother quite upset.

  Last term was really finished on the day that I have just described. For a while we all thought Deepdean might be over too. After what we saw in the music room, Daisy and I were given a police escort back up to the dorm. The tall, stern policeman took us, as Inspector Priestley was busy arresting Miss Griffin. The tall policeman told us not to breathe a word to anyone on pain of death (I think he was joking, but I am not sure), but by the time school ended on Tuesday afternoon, everyone already knew that Miss Griffin had been arrested for murdering Miss Bell and Miss Tennyson.

  Some seventh-graders had seen the handcuffed Miss Griffin being led away to a police car, so—as much as the teachers tried to hide it—the cat was well and truly out of the bag. Quite a few people refused to believe she had committed the murders at first, and there were lots of conspiracy theories about sinister gangs, but in the end, as more bits and pieces seeped out, everyone began to accept that it must be true.

  From that day onward all the grown-ups seemed to forget about us—even Mrs. Strike was busy giving her statement to the police—so meals came at odd times and we were left to hang around doing nothing. We played rounds and rounds of cards in the dorm common room and gossiped about the murders. I knew that Daisy was dying to brag about our part in the case, but because we had promised the Inspector, she bit her tongue, and we both did very good impressions of people who knew no more about it than the next girl.

  In a way, I can still hardly believe it. That episode in the music room really has become a sort of film scene in my head. Perhaps it stops me from feeling
so frightened about the events that led up to it. Daisy, of course, thinks that’s silly.

  Miss Hopkins is leaving Deepdean. She is going away to Derbyshire to live with The One after they are married. Miss Parker is going away, too, to teach in London. I think it is too painful for her to be here anymore.

  When we first heard all this, at the end of November, we really did think that Deepdean might be over forever. “After all,” said Kitty, “we’ve no teachers left, so if we do come back next semester we shall be teaching ourselves.” Mothers came down in droves that week to take girls away. Beanie went, and Kitty, and half of the rest of our class.

  Then Miss Lappet made her announcement. She called all those girls still at school down to the hall and told us that Mamzelle was going to be the new deputy headmistress. Miss Lappet herself will help Mamzelle hunt for a new headmistress, and new teachers, during this holiday, and in January the school will reopen for everyone who wants to come back. Mamzelle, by the way, is still Mamzelle, French accent and all. Miss Lappet seems smaller and sadder, but she no longer has her strong after-dinner smell, and when she looks at you both her eyes focus on your face.

  After all that news, the semester was officially over. Letters were sent out to parents explaining things as nicely as possible and asking them to take the rest of us away. I didn’t know what I was going to do. At the beginning of the year my father had arranged for me to stay at the dorm over the holidays, but under the circumstances that now seemed rather unlikely.

  I was still worrying about it when Daisy got a telegram that said:

  DARLING SO GLAD YOU ARE NOT DEAD COMMA MUST YOU REALLY COME HOME NOW THOUGH HAD PLANNED GOING LONDON MOST INCONVENIENT STOP KISSES MUMMY

  Daisy read it and sighed. “Mummy thinks telegrams are very now,” she said, “only I can’t make her understand how they ought to read. I suppose I shall have to telephone her—she’ll be very awkward about it if we simply turn up.”

  “We?” I asked.

  “Of course, we. You don’t think I’d let you rot in the dorm with just ugly old Strike for company over Christmas, do you?”

  Mrs. Strike gave Daisy the telephone, grumbling a lot but wanting very much to be rid of us, and I stood by while Daisy asked the operator for Fallingford one-two-three. The phone rang, and was picked up, and Daisy said, “Hello Chapman, is Mummy there? It’s . . . yes . . . could you . . .? Mummy? Mummy, it’s Daisy. Yes . . . I know . . . Mummy, you simply must send O’Brian to collect us, they won’t have us here anymore . . . Mummy, the school is closing . . . Yes, I know I’m perfectly all right, but Mummy, listen . . . Oh, us? My friend Hazel, she’s coming to stay over Christmas. She can sleep in the nursery with me . . . Oh, Mummy, honestly, you can still go to London if we’re there, just send along O’Brian now and you can have him tomorrow . . . Yes . . . yes . . . oh, good. Good-bye, Mummy.”

  “Mummy,” said Daisy after she had put the phone down, “is sometimes quite difficult to manage. O’Brian will be here in an hour.”

  After that, we had a frantic rush gathering all our things together. It didn’t work out perfectly—I came away with Kitty’s school hat and Lavinia’s history book—but when O’Brian pulled up in the drive an hour later we were sitting on our trunks waiting for him. We drove away down Oakeshott Hill, past the closed-up doors of Deepdean—and that, really, is the end of this story.

  * * *

  There are just a few more things to say.

  The first is that, last week, we had a visit from King Henry. As I said, she lives not far from Daisy, so Daisy’s parents were not at all surprised when she came for tea. I’m not sure how they would have reacted if they could have heard what King Henry told us, once Hetty the maid had brought in the tea things and left the room.

  “I wanted to say—well, that I think you’re both swell. Utterly swell. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Did you know?” asked Daisy, spinning her teacup in its saucer excitedly.

  King Henry shook her lovely curls. “No,” she said. “I never knew, exactly. I only guessed—and how I hoped I was wrong! When Verity died, it was so awful—” She broke off and had to take a sip of tea to calm down. “I didn’t know what to believe. I hoped it was an accident. I mean, Miss Griffin!”

  “Oh, I know,” said Daisy, with feeling.

  “I felt terribly bad, taking the head girl post when she offered it to me, but because I wasn’t sure, of course there was nothing I could say. Then Miss Bell disappeared, and I had the most dreadful feeling, as though it was Verity all over again. I guessed that Miss Griffin had something to do with it, but of course I had no proof. Then Miss Tennyson asked me to meet her in the Willow, and said that she had something to tell me. I was terrified, but I went—and then I saw you, and I simply lost my nerve. When I heard on Monday that she was dead too, I nearly fainted. I was sure I’d be next. Honestly, when I heard from that nice Inspector about what you did, what you proved—I realized that you simply saved my life.”

  “Oh no, it was nothing,” said Daisy, preening.

  “It certainly was something. On behalf of the whole of Deepdean,” said King Henry, ignoring her, “I salute you.”

  So, in a way, I suppose that Daisy and I did get our praise.

  * * *

  The Inspector came to visit us at Fallingford a few days later, to tell us more about the case. He even let us read a copy of Miss Griffin’s confession. It was very odd, seeing Miss Griffin’s words down on the page like that. Miss Tennyson had been dragged into it because she had caught sight of Miss Griffin in the Library corridor that evening, all bloody, and Miss Griffin had offered Miss Tennyson the deputy headmistress job in return for not ratting her out. The confession also said that it was a mistake, her pushing Verity, which made me feel sorry for her. Daisy told me to stop being soft about it, especially since Miss Bell’s and Miss Tennyson’s murders had not been mistakes at all.

  Miss Griffin is in prison in London, and her sentencing will be sometime early next year. I don’t think I want to go, although Daisy does, of course. I don’t like to think of what is waiting for Miss Griffin at the end of it all.

  Daisy says it should not upset me. It is no more than Miss Griffin deserves. I don’t know if I agree with her.

  After the Inspector left, Daisy’s mother came in. She was dressed for dinner in an arsenic-green silk gown and a real mink wrap. She looked very glamorous, and just like Daisy, only much older and much more vague.

  “What a handsome man,” she said. “Why ever did he come?”

  “I have told you, Mummy,” said Daisy reproachfully. “He was that policeman from the case. He came by to make sure we were all right. They’re visiting all the girls.”

  I still can never believe how Daisy can lie to her parents like that, bare-faced and not even blinking.

  “How kind of him,” said her mother, yawning and adjusting her pearls. “I’m glad it was only that, you know. I wouldn’t like to think of you mixed up in one of those nasty police investigations. He really was quite criminally handsome, though. Do you think he’ll come back again anytime soon?”

  “I do hope so, Mummy,” said Daisy, at her most virtuous. “He really is a very interesting sort of person.”

  And her mother wandered out of the room and left us alone, in fits of giggles.

  Daisy’s

  * * *

  Guide to Deepdean

  * * *

  Hello. Hazel has asked me to write a dictionary explaining particular words in her case notes. Honestly, I don’t think much of the words she has chosen, but I have done it—and I’ve added in some useful information for any girl who wants to get on at Deepdean.

  Big Girls—the oldest girls, in the highest grades.

  Brain—a girl who tries too hard at lessons. It is very important not to be one if you want to be someone at Deepdean.

  Bunbreak—this happens every school morning at eleven o’clock. We are each given two cookies and allowed to run about outside for ten minutes. The
best bunbreak food is quite definitely raisin cookies. Hazel doesn’t like them, which is proof of how often Hazel is wrong. It is important not to be at the back of the bunbreak queue, otherwise there might not be any of the best cookies left.

  Canoodling—a grown-up sort of kissing behind closed doors.

  Card—a girl who is amusing. You should be a card exactly the right amount of time, but not more. I am a card three times a day, and twice on Sundays.

  Chump—an idiot. Sometimes Hazel can be this. You should try to avoid it.

  Clubs—after-school clubs. There are clubs for history, drama, and English, and it is very important to join one if you want to get on.

  Common room—a room where people go to enjoy themselves. The teachers have one, and we have our own up at the dorm. (Of course, the teachers’ is better.)

  Confiscation—this is a nice word for having something taken away from you by the teachers or by Mrs. Strike because you are not supposed to own it. It is very annoying. If you have something illegal, you should always keep it in a very clever hiding place.

  Deputy headmistress—the headmistress’s second-in-command. Not as important as she is, but more important than the other ordinary teachers.

  Dorm—the building where girls sleep. You also have smaller dorm rooms inside it. When you are shrimps you sleep all together with all the other girls in your class, but as you become a bigger girl you are allowed to pick your dorm mates.

  Fool—a girl who is no good at lessons, no matter how hard she tries.

  Head girl—the most important of all the girls, she is the leader of us all. She is always chosen by the headmistress from the highest grade.

  Headmistress—the most important of all the teachers, the headmistress runs the school.