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. ‘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 29th of October, and now it is the 18th 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 round the banisters, and there are great trays of biscuits and cakes coming out of the kitchen. The dogs keep trying to eat them, which makes Daisy’s mother quite cross.
Last term was really finished on the day that I have just described. For a while we all thought that Deepdean might be over too. After what we saw in the music room, Daisy and I were given a police escort back up to House. 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 second formers had seen the handcuffed Miss Griffin being led away to a police car, so – as much as the masters and mistresses 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 came out, everyone began to accept that it must be true.
From that day onwards all the grown-ups seemed to forget about us – even Matron was busy giving her statement to the police – so meals came at odd times and we were left to hang about doing nothing. We played rounds and rounds of cards in the House 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 any more.
When we first heard all this, at the end of November, we really did think that Deepdean might be over for ever. ‘After all,’ said Kitty, ‘we’ve no mistresses left, so if we do come back next term 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 form.
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 mistresses, 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, term 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 House 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 House, with just ugly old Matron for company over Christmas, do you?’
Matron gave Daisy the telephone, grumbling rather but wanting very much to be rid of us, and I stood by while Daisy asked the operator for Fallingford 123. 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 any more . . . 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. Goodbye, 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 bricks. Utter bricks. 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 knew that she couldn’t have done it to herself, but if she hadn’t . . . I hoped it was an accident. I mean, Miss Griffin!’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Daisy feelingly.
‘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 knew 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 Fallingfo
rd 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 Library corridor that evening, all bloody, and Miss Griffin had offered Miss Tennyson the Deputy 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 and Miss Tennyson’s murders had not been mistakes at all.
Miss Griffin is in prison in London, and her sentencing will be some time 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 that 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.
Every book I write is really for my parents. For my father, for teaching me to love language and putting every book that matters to me into my hands when I was a child, and for my mother, for faithfully reading every word that I wrote as a result (even the bad ones). Murder Most Unladylike would not exist without them.
I began to write this book in 2011, for NaNoWriMo. Most of the first draft happened in the break room of the Oxford branch of Blackwell’s Bookstore – so thank you, so much, to each one of my amazing and talented colleagues there, and especially to Rebecca Waiting, children’s bookseller extraordinaire.
Thank you also to my early readers, most especially Rebecca Stevens, Boadicea Meath Baker (who also supplied me with extensive period detail and a historically accurate writing soundtrack), Fleur Frederick, and Moniza Hossein (who courageously read all 85,000 words of the first draft while sick with flu). I salute them all, and I hope it’s better now.
Many thanks to my large and lovely family, every last one of you, and to my friends, who bear with me wonderfully and who all played a part in Murder Most Unladylike (even though they probably don’t know it). Alice, Alison, Amy, Ana, Damien, Emily, Emma (all of you), Jeff, Julia, Laurence, Max, Owain, Priya, Richard, Sarah (ALL of you), Scarlett, Zara and everyone else. Thank you especially to Matthew, for being surprisingly willing to live with me and love me even though my head is full of books, and to the whole Smalley family, for making me feel so welcome.
I have been very lucky in my publishers. Thank you to the fantastic Natalie Doherty, Annie Eaton and the whole team at Random House, who have made my publishing process feel like a dream. My books could not have found a better or more enthusiastic home. Thanks also to the delightful Kristin Ostby and the team at S&S US, for welcoming Hazel and Daisy to America in such style. And of course, to my other publishing family at Orion, especially Amber Caravéo and Fiona Kennedy, huge thanks – they have taught me so well, and they have been so willing to harbour an author in their editorial ranks.
This book, and I, though, would still be lost if it were not for one marvellous woman: my agent, Gemma Cooper. She fell for Hazel and Daisy and she changed my life. There aren’t words to express my gratitude. There never will be. Thank you.
Robin Stevens, Cambridge and London, 2013
About the Author
Robin Stevens was born in California and grew up in an Oxford college, across the road from the house where Alice in Wonderland lived. She has been making up stories all her life.
When she was twelve, her father handed her a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and she realised that she wanted to be either Hercule Poirot or Agatha Christie when she grew up. When it occurred to her that she was never going to be able to grow her own spectacular walrus moustache, she decided that Agatha Christie was the more achieveable option.
She spent her teenage years at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, reading a lot of murder mysteries and hoping that she’d get the chance to do some detecting herself (she didn’t). She then went to university, where she studied crime fiction, and now she works at a children’s publisher, which is pretty much the best day job she can imagine.
Robin now lives in Cambridge with her boyfriend and her pet bearded dragon, Watson.
MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE: A WELLS & WONG MYSTERY
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 19315 8
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2014
Copyright © Robin Stevens, 2014
Map and illustrations copyright © Nina Tara, 2014
First Published in Great Britain
Corgi Childrens 9780552570725 2014
The right of Robin Stevens to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery Page 18