‘You mustn’t be so careless with your possessions,’ Miss Parker told her crossly while she scribbled scarlet correction lines across her work. ‘You are a wickedly negligent girl sometimes. As it happens, I left school at the end of lessons on Monday, so I wouldn’t have come across it.’
She turned to give Beanie a telling off (she was gnawing her plait and staring despairingly at a page so covered in scored out numbers it was almost solid blue), and I spun round to Daisy in excitement. Kitty, however, got there first. She nudged Daisy, grinning.
‘Gosh, what a filthy liar she is!’ she whispered, glancing carefully over at Miss Parker, who was now shouting at Beanie. ‘What she said about leaving at the end of school’s a load of tosh. I saw her when I was walking back towards Library corridor after Cultural Soc ended. She was sitting in one of the empty form rooms, her face all angry scarlet. And her hair was in such a state! I’d bet anything that she and Miss Bell had been arguing again— I say! I wonder if she’s a secret agent for this Russian crime ring that’s kidnapped Miss Bell! Wouldn’t that be exciting?’
‘Hum,’ said Daisy, looking across the room. ‘If I were a Russian crime lord and wanted a secret agent’ – Miss Parker was holding her head in her hands and groaning in frustration as Beanie gave her a fifth wrong answer to the same question – ‘I wouldn’t choose Miss Parker. She’d refuse to do anything and then run off in a rage.’
‘Very true,’ said Kitty, and giggled.
I nudged Daisy, extremely impressed by her evasive tactics, and she winked back at me. We both knew that we were getting somewhere. Miss Parker’s alibi was becoming weaker and weaker – we now knew that she had been near the Gym, alone, close to the time when Miss Bell’s murder must have taken place, and she had lied about it. Had she really argued with Miss Bell again? If so, why was she trying to hide it? It was like a plot from one of Daisy’s books.
But all the same, I couldn’t help wondering whether Miss Parker could really kill someone. She was a very angry person, and we all knew it – but so is Lavinia, and for all her shouting she is really mostly harmless. It’s as if all that yelling and kicking gets the rage out of her and she has none left to do worse things. Was it the same for Miss Parker?
‘But what if Mamzelle was the kidnapper?’ asked Kitty as we were walking between lessons. Evidently she was still thinking about what Daisy had said in Maths; about secret Russian agents abducting Miss Bell. ‘She’s been behaving awfully strangely lately – Sophie, tell them what you told me yesterday.’
Sophie Croke-Finchley, who is in the other third form dorm and is a musical prodigy, grinned. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘It was terribly odd. I had my lesson with The One—’
‘When?’ asked Daisy, cutting her off.
‘Oh, four twenty to four fifty, same as always,’ Sophie said, blinking a bit. ‘But anyway, I stayed on in the Music room afterwards, practising, and I noticed after a bit that someone else was in the small practice room next to me, and they were making the oddest sounds. Garglings and yellings – not music at all! I thought for a while that there were two people in there, speaking in tongues, but then I realized that it was Mamzelle, talking to herself in English and then repeating it in French! She carried on for ages – until almost five forty-five, when I had to go – and then just as I was leaving she came out of her practice room, and saw me. She looked awfully frightened, for some reason, and then she hared down the hall towards New Wing. Isn’t that odd?’
Daisy and I agreed that it was. But all I could think was how we finally had a proper alibi for one of our suspects.
3
In Div., we found another alibi.
Mr MacLean, who we had seen lurking so promisingly next to the Gym on Monday evening, certainly looks a bit like a murderer. He wears filthy, egg-stained jackets, his hair is greasy, and in Prayers he leers at us over the lectern. It would have been very easy and satisfying if he had been Miss Bell’s killer, but it was not to be. Mr MacLean began telling us all about the confirmation training we would be taking next year, when we got to the fourth form. ‘The girls enjoy it so!’ he said, beaming at us with his nasty yellow teeth. ‘Why, the class I took on Monday was so fascinating that we managed to overrun by nearly half an hour! In the end I had to tell them to hurry so as not to be late for dinner!’
If that was true, it gave Mr MacLean an alibi for the time of the murder. When we got back up to House for lunch, Daisy made enquiries – and Mr MacLean’s impossibly perfect alibi turned out to be entirely true. He had let his class out at 5.45, which meant that he would not have been able to go to the Gym, murder Miss Bell and be back in Library corridor talking to Mamzelle and Miss Tennyson by the time we saw him there on Monday evening.
Daisy and I looked at each other in amazement. We had managed to get rid of two suspects in one morning.
It was time to update my suspect list.
4
Ruling out Mr MacLean and Mamzelle in one fell swoop (both of them had seemed so promising!) was oddly disappointing, but what happened after lunch very nearly made up for it. First thing on Wednesday afternoon is Dance in the Gym, and that means an hour of torturously bobbing about in circles while Miss Hopkins watches us, her brown hair bouncing out of its clips, and says, ‘Straight backs, girls! Straight arms, straighten those legs!’ If we all turned into boards she would still not be perfectly satisfied with us.
She is particularly displeased with me. She pokes at my waistband and says, ‘Perhaps a little more dancing might help with this, Hazel? Now, for heaven’s sake stand up straight.’
Well, if I upset Miss Hopkins, Miss Hopkins certainly upsets me. I think she is horrible, and I do wish Daisy wasn’t so obsessed with her.
That lesson, though, I almost had too much to think about to mind being in Dance. It was the first time I had been back in the Gym since it happened, and although it was tidy and ordinary, the floor polished to a shine by Jones the handyman, I still found myself shivering and twitching with nerves. When I walked through the doorway at the beginning of the lesson, I stumbled, and Daisy had to clap me on the back and whisper, ‘Buck up, Hazel!’ to get me moving again.
We began to dance. One-two-three, one-two-three, round in circles I moved, staring about me at the great big glassy windows and balance beams, and feeling amazed that nothing in the Gym had changed at all.
Round and round we danced, faster and faster, and then I looked over towards the balcony and caught sight of that little dark stain on the floorboards. Jones had obviously tried to scrub it away, but it was still there underneath the polish. Suddenly I remembered how Miss Bell had looked lying there, and how her head had rolled away from me in that awful, sloppy movement.
Forgetting Daisy’s command to buck up, I turned my head in fascination and bumped into Beanie. Beanie squealed and grabbed at my gym tunic, I tripped against her and we both went crashing to the floor.
The fall was painful, but Miss Hopkins’s response to it was extremely surprising. Instead of bawling at us, she merely came over to where we were lying (I flinched automatically) and said, ‘Goodness, girls, how careless of you. Come on now, get up.’ It was a miracle, I thought. Or – wait, was this suspicious behaviour? Was this the sort of thing those detectives in Daisy’s books would make a note of? I peered up at Miss Hopkins, and decided that there was definitely something wrong with her. She was looking at me and smiling.
Still wondering what it could mean, I tried to get to my feet. Then I yelped and hurriedly sat back down again. My ankle was in agony.
‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Hopkins, still with that same bewilderingly cheerful look on her face. ‘You’ve twisted it. It’ll be quite all right in a while, but don’t worry about finishing the lesson. Come along, Beanie, you’re not hurt. Up you get. What is it, Daisy?’
Daisy, of course, had come running over as soon as she saw me fall down.
‘Miss Hopkins, can I take Hazel to San?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes, why not,’ said Miss Ho
pkins. Now, I know that Miss Hopkins adores Daisy almost as much as Daisy adores her, but that sort of request from anyone ought to have made her suspicious. It didn’t. What on earth had happened to Miss Hopkins? ‘Thank you Daisy. All right, the rest of you, back to work!’
And just like that, Dance carried on without us. It was nearly the most surprising thing to happen all week – apart from finding Miss Bell’s dead body, of course.
5
Daisy pulled me to my feet, and we hobbled three-legged out of the Gym.
‘Daisy!’ I gasped, partly from amazement and partly from the pain in my ankle, which was awfully bad. ‘Something’s up with Miss Hopkins! She’s behaving extremely strangely! Did you see her just now? I think it might be suspicious behaviour.’
Daisy scowled at me. ‘Hazel,’ she said, ‘you must stop accusing mistresses who we know can’t be suspects.’
‘I’m not accusing her! I only—’
‘Miss Hopkins was up in the Pavilion Monday evening. She couldn’t possibly have done it. All that’s happened is that you’ve given us a lovely excuse to wander round the school and do some detective work.’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said, a bit cross that she was ignoring what I had said. ‘But can I at least see Minny first for my ankle?’ By Minny I meant Nurse Minn in the school sanatorium, our little sick-bay; girls go there with anything from a cut knee to pneumonia. You can pop by to get bandaged up or stay there for days if you’re really ill. San sounds like a horrid doctor’s office, but it is much nicer than that. Nurse Minn is lovely, with the kind of comfortable plumpness you want to bury your face in, and she gives out cups of tea and sweets even if your fever is only the made-up sort.
I thought that visiting Minny would have nothing to do with our investigation, but as it turned out, it gave us our next important lead.
When we got to San, there was already someone in Nurse Minn’s consulting room. Daisy and I had to hover in the little hallway, waiting, and I realized that the person being looked after was King Henry herself. We could not help overhearing what she and Minny were saying – although Daisy did bump me closer and closer to the half-open door so as not to miss anything.
The first person we heard properly was King Henry. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me, it’s perfectly – augh – all right.’
Minny tutted. ‘Oh my love, your poor foot!’ she said. ‘Jones is dreadful for not getting it tidied up quicker.’
‘Oh, he’s been so terribly busy lately!’ said King Henry. ‘But he’s working on it now. I only stepped on a stray piece of glass.’
‘Hmm,’ said Minny. ‘What did he say happened, again?’
‘He thinks it was burglars,’ said King Henry. ‘It must have happened last night. They didn’t steal anything, though.’
‘Oh dear, don’t look so worried!’ cried Minny. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t, and even if it was, Miss Griffin will sort it all out in no time. New Wing corridor, was it? Yes, well, no harm done. None of us really liked those windows, did we?’
Daisy jabbed me in the ribs, and when I turned round, she was staring at me, eyes wide with excitement. ‘Hazel!’ she hissed. ‘A clue!’
I did not see why a window broken on Tuesday night had anything to do with Miss Bell being murdered on Monday evening, but I learned a long time ago not to say anything when Daisy gets that look on her face.
‘This could be important,’ said Daisy. ‘I must go hunt it down. Say hello to Minny for me!’ And before I could say anything she had rushed away down the stairs in a fearful hurry. By the time King Henry came out into the corridor, limping on her newly-bandaged foot, I was all alone.
While I was having my ankle bound up by Nurse Minn – which was not a very nice experience – and eating a biscuit – which was – Daisy was running through Deepdean looking for Jones.
Jones, as I have said before, is the Deepdean handyman. He lurks about in overalls, scowling at everyone and threatening the shrimps, who he seems to think of as a breed of larger and more troublesome mouse. He has been here for as long as old Miss Lappet, and is as much a part of Deepdean as Miss Griffin, though a part that gets tidied away on open days and whenever benefactors are about.
It was perhaps lucky that I was not with Daisy, since I make Jones nervous. Whenever he speaks to me he uses a very loud voice, as if I were slow, and looks at my left ear. This is particularly odd, since he has one eye that points right at all times. Daisy, on the other hand, is one of Jones’s favourites. I think he sees her the way I used to, as the perfect English Miss, so he gives her slightly pocket-squashed sweets and bashful smiles whenever she passes him in the corridor.
Daisy found Jones exactly where she knew he would be. Just where New Wing corridor turns into Music Wing, there is a carved wooden archway with painted glass panels set into it. The panels show the nine Muses, in white nightdresses with drooping Pre-Raphaelite hair, dripping bundles of flowers. They all look a bit like Miss Tennyson. An artistic benefactor, who is also an Old Girl, painted the Muses onto the glass herself, which means we all have to be very polite about them and not mention that Clio, the Muse of History, has six toes and only one arm.
Or at least, she used to. Daisy arrived to find that several of the Muses were no more. Something had smashed into the lower panels, hard. Six-toed Clio was gone, and what had been a painting of Terpsichore being attacked by blue lilies was now just a jagged hole. Jones had started to hammer bits of board over the archway.
‘Hallo, Jones!’ said Daisy.
‘Hello, Miss Daisy,’ said Jones. ‘Not in lessons, then?’
‘I came to see you, Jones,’ said Daisy in her most friendly voice. ‘I heard there was a burglary and I wanted to help.’
Jones frowned. ‘Ah, but I don’t think it was burglars now,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s missing, you see. There’s just chaos everywhere. And poor Miss Henrietta’s hurt her foot! I blame those shrimps.’ And he launched into a long complaint about the state of the school during the past few days. ‘But when I spoke to Miss Griffin about it, she told me not to worry! Not worry, I ask you! The only consolation is this – come and look!’ He beckoned Daisy over to one of the panels. ‘See this?’ he asked her. ‘This says to me that whatever vandal did it is already getting their comeuppance.’
He pointed, and Daisy bent in to see. There, on a bit of blue glass, was a long rusty stain.
‘Blood!’ said Jones triumphantly. ‘They cut themselves good and proper. Well, I hope it hurt, because I shall be cleaning up their mess all day at this rate.’
It was at this point that Miss Griffin came striding down New Wing stairs, her neat pale legs encased as usual in her silk stockings and grey tweed skirt. She was coming from her office, which is on the upper floor of the wing, and she looked very annoyed when she saw Daisy standing there.
‘Daisy Wells!’ she said, pausing majestically halfway down. ‘Whatever are you doing out of lessons?’
‘Taking a message to Mr Reid,’ said Daisy promptly. ‘From Miss Lappet. She wants to know if he could take her second-form class next lesson, because she has to cover Science now that, you know, Miss Bell has gone.’
Miss Griffin was not impressed. ‘Well, you had better not waste any more time talking to Jones, had you?’ she snapped.
‘Yes, Miss Griffin,’ said Daisy, then, ‘No, Miss Griffin. Sorry, Miss Griffin!’
‘Run along then,’ said Miss Griffin, waving her hand like the Queen. Daisy ran along.
If there is one thing that makes Daisy such a good liar, it is that when she lies, she lies thoroughly. By the time she came back to where I was waiting for her in San – with my left ankle well wrapped up and two extra biscuits from Nurse Minn in my pocket – The One had agreed to Miss Lappet’s phantom request, and five minutes after I hobbled into our History lesson Daisy had Miss Lappet convinced that she had actually asked Daisy to take the message in the first place. ‘You are a treasure, Daisy,’ said Miss Lappet, folding her arms over her massive bosom (her cardigan had been
buttoned up wrong that day, and it made her look even more misshapen than usual) and blinking down at Daisy through her little glasses. ‘Whatever would the school do without you?’
‘I don’t know, Miss,’ said Daisy primly. ‘I’m sure everyone would manage somehow.’
6
‘I don’t understand,’ I said to Daisy, on our way up to House at the end of the day (slowly, because of my ankle), ‘what Jones’s broken window has to do with the murder.’
‘Well,’ said Daisy, stepping aside to let Lavinia rush past after a second-form shrimp, – ‘first of all, it’s out of the ordinary. And isn’t the first rule of detection to consider everything out of the ordinary as potentially important?’
I thought of Miss Hopkins, but I knew that even if I reminded Daisy of her odd behaviour, it still wouldn’t count.
‘And secondly, there’s what hasn’t happened. No one apart from King Henry has gone to Minny’s with a cut that could have been caused by that glass.’
‘How do you know?’ I objected.
‘Hazel,’ said Daisy, ‘have you ever known Nurse Minn to hear about something and not tell the story ten times over? If someone had come in earlier, with exactly the same sort of cut, King Henry’s injury would have reminded her of it. If she didn’t tell you about the amazing coincidence—’
‘Which she didn’t,’ I admitted, thinking this was exactly why Daisy was the President of the Detective Society, and I was only the Secretary.
‘—then it certainly didn’t happen. Which means that whoever cut themselves hasn’t reported it, and that means they were too afraid to. And we know it must be someone from school – if it had been robbers, Jones would have found other signs of a break-in from outside, and told us about it. What I think is this: last night the murderer came back to move Miss Bell’s body out of the school from wherever it had been hidden since Monday evening. They used the Cupboard trolley again, crashed it into the archway, smashed the glass and cut themselves.’
Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery Page 5