by R. A. Spratt
About the Book
Who knew boarding school could be this perilous!
When Friday Barnes cracked the case of Highcrest Academy’s mysterious swamp-yeti, the last thing she expected was to be placed under arrest.
Now, with the law on her back and Ian Wainscott in her face, Friday is not so sure boarding school was the smartest choice. From a missing or not-so-missing calculator to the appearance of strange holes in the school field, she is up to her pork-pie hat in crimes – and she swears not all of them are hers.
There’s also new boy Christopher, who has taken quite a shine to Friday, to contend with.
Can Friday navigate the dangerous school grounds and decipher a decades-old mystery without getting caught in an unexpected love triangle?
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1: Wrongly Accused
Chapter 2: The Vagrant
Chapter 3: Deadly Beans
Chapter 4: The Real Culprit
Chapter 5: The Prodigal Detective Returns
Chapter 6: More Trouble
Chapter 7: The Deadly Pine Cone
Chapter 8: Mrs Cannon
Chapter 9: The Case of the Lying Roommate
Chapter 10: The Headmaster’s Ankle
Chapter 11: The Mystery of the Perfect Quiche
Chapter 12: The Quiche-Off
Chapter 13: A Secret in the Woods
Chapter 14: The Familiar Vagrant
Chapter 15: Mrs Cannon’s Assignment
Chapter 16: At the Library
Chapter 17: Kidnapped?
Chapter 18: The Open Window
Chapter 19: The Art of Dis-orienteering
Chapter 20: Proof
Chapter 21: DNA Results
Chapter 22: The Confrontation
Chapter 23: The Diversion
Chapter 24: All Is Revealed
Chapter 25: Denouement
About the Author
Also by R. A. Spratt
Copyright Notice
Loved the book?
To Mum and Dad
Chapter 1
Wrongly Accused
Friday Barnes and her best friend, Melanie Pelly, were sitting in the dining hall at Highcrest Academy, enjoying second helpings of chocolate cake. They’d had a long day solving crime and saving the school’s reputation so Mrs Marigold, the cook, felt they had earned an extra serving of dessert. But their calorie-induced bliss was about to be interrupted.
‘Barnes,’ snapped a voice from behind them.
Friday and Melanie turned around.
The Headmaster was standing next to a uniformed police sergeant.
‘What’s this?’ asked Friday. ‘Am I getting some sort of citizenship award for everything I’ve done for the school?’
‘No,’ said the Headmaster soberly, ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Friday Barnes,’ said the police sergeant, ‘I have to ask you to come with me.’
‘Why?’ asked Friday.
‘Because I’m arresting you,’ said the police sergeant. ‘You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say or do may be used in evidence. Do you understand?’
‘Not really,’ said Friday. ‘Not the situation anyway. But I do have a large vocabulary and as such have no trouble understanding the meaning of your words.’
The police sergeant had dealt with much more intimidating people than Friday resisting arrest, so he simply took the matter in hand. He pulled Friday’s chair back for her while she was still sitting on it, took her by the elbow and guided her to her feet.
Friday was mortified. She didn’t have to look up to know that everyone in the room was staring at her. This would be yet another reason for all her rich classmates to snigger and laugh at her. There was nothing she could do. She was the most exciting spectacle in the dining room since Mrs Marigold lost her temper with a vegetarian student-teacher and dumped a blancmange on his head.
‘If you’ll come with me,’ said the police sergeant, although Friday could barely hear him through the rushing sound in her ears. People always marvel that holding a seashell to your ear replicates the sound of the sea, but in the seconds before you faint, the movement of blood rushing out of your brain replicates the sound of the sea too.
Friday saw Melanie’s concerned expression, then movement made her look across. Ian Wainscott, the most handsome boy in school (also the most infuriatingly smug boy in school) was entering through the back door. Friday watched his face as he took in the scene. He seemed surprised for a moment, then he caught Friday’s eye and his face returned to its normal apathetic mask.
The police sergeant started pulling at Friday’s arm and the world seemed to return to normal speed. Her ears started to process sound again, just in time to hear the first murmurs of malicious gossip.
It was times like this when Friday wished she didn’t have a brain like a super computer. Having a photographic memory meant that the words, and the associated hurt, would be accessible in the long-term storage of her brain’s neural matrix forever.
‘Typical scholarship kid, probably been stealing,’ whispered Mirabella.
‘Maybe she’s being arrested for wearing those brown cardigans,’ said Trea. ‘She should get five to ten years for crimes against fashion.’
‘Plus another ten for the green hat,’ said Judith.
Now dozens of people sniggered. That was the last Friday heard of her peers as the dining room door flapped closed behind her.
A squad car with lights flashing was parked at the top of the school’s driveway.
‘The Headmaster is going to hate that,’ said Friday. ‘It’s a bad look for the school.’
‘The Headmaster will be grateful I’m taking you off his hands after what y–wagh!’ said the police sergeant as he was interrupted mid-lecture because he had fallen into a hole about one foot round and one foot deep.
‘Ow, that hurt,’ said the police sergeant, rubbing his knees.
‘I wonder who put that there?’ said Friday. She inspected the hole. It looked like it had been dug out by hand.
‘This crazy school,’ muttered the police sergeant. ‘There’s always something going on. Rich kids with their weird pranks or bitter teachers with their revenge plots. The sooner we get out of here, the better.’
Friday looked back at the main building. She had a lump in her throat and her eyes started to itch. She knew she wasn’t suffering from hayfever because it wouldn’t be spring for another six months.
Friday wasn’t terribly in touch with her emotions, but she was able to deduce that she was upset. Being forced from Highcrest Academy had affected her more than she would have imagined. The police sergeant was entirely right. Highcrest Academy was full of obnoxious children and strange teachers, but it had also become her home. She had friends … well, one friend. And she received three warm meals a day. So despite the gothic architecture and the even more gothic attitudes of the staff, this place had made her feel safe and needed – in a way her family home never had. As the squad car started to pull down the driveway, Friday hoped this would not be the last time she saw her school.
The police car wound its way through the rolling countryside to the nearest town. A female police constable was driving. They were heading for Twittingsworth, a fashionable and well-to-do rural area whose tax base owed more to the weekend homes of city bankers than the local farmers.
‘So what crime am I being accused of committing?’ asked Friday.
‘We’ll discuss all that in the formal interview,’ said the police sergeant.
‘Why, is it some sort of surprise?’ asked Friday.
‘It’s a very serious offence,’ s
aid the police sergeant. ‘We don’t want to jeopardise the case by deviating from correct procedure. We’re going to do this by the book. There will be a lot of scrutiny. The national counterterrorism squad has been alerted.’
‘Counterterrorism!’ exclaimed Friday. ‘But I haven’t done anything.’
The police sergeant snorted. ‘Save it for the interview.’
The police station was an old stone building, built back in the day when pride had been taken in the appearance of official institutions.
Friday had not been handcuffed. No doubt there were rules about handcuffing children. She also thought it unlikely that her own thin, spindly wrists could be contained by the same handcuffs that would be needed to restrain a fully grown man.
It was the lady police constable who led Friday into the building, taking her through to an open-plan office area where there were half-a-dozen desks and mountains of paperwork cluttered everywhere. There was one separate office partitioned off at the end of the room. No doubt for the sergeant.
Everything inside the police station had been painted grey-green except for the cheerful posters on the wall, featuring famous athletes urging citizens to be respectful of women’s rights.
Friday was underwhelmed. She had imagined the inside of a police station to be a more exciting place, but she supposed they could not put up gruesome crime scene photos on the wall. As a result the police station looked like an average boring office.
Friday sat down on a wooden bench outside the interview rooms. The bench reminded Friday of the one outside the Headmaster’s office, although on the whole it was more comfortable. Plus the police station had less of an air of impending doom than the Headmaster’s office.
On the far end of the bench sat a man who looked like a vagrant. But a strangely large and athletic vagrant. It was hard to gauge his height because he was sitting down, but he must have been well over six feet tall. He had thinning blond hair and a rough beard. His clothes were old, worn and crumpled. And Friday noticed that he smelled quite distinctly of mould, even though she was trying her very best not to breathe through her nose. He was handcuffed to the bench. Friday felt like she had been put next to the lion enclosure at the zoo.
The lady police constable bent down to speak to Friday, in what she clearly hoped was a comforting fashion. ‘We’ve left a message for your mum and dad,’ she said, ‘so they should be here soon.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Friday. ‘They never check their messages. They only have an answering system because they find it less irritating than letting their phone ring.’
‘How do you get in touch with them then?’ asked the lady police constable.
‘I don’t,’ said Friday. ‘I suppose I could send an email to one of my mother’s PhD students and ask them to speak to her in person. That’s what I did the time I broke my ankle on a geology excursion.’
‘You did?’ asked the lady constable.
‘Yes,’ said Friday, I needed to let her know I wouldn’t be home because the rescue helicopter couldn’t pick me up from the cliff face until daylight. But I haven’t done that for ages, because we’re not allowed to have email access at Highcrest Academy. They have a strict anti-technology policy. They’re frightened students will use handheld electronic devices against the staff.’
‘Really?’ said the lady police constable.
‘Yes,’ said Friday. ‘But students find ways around it. I know a girl who only took art so she could sketch incriminating drawings of her history teacher and post them to her lawyer.’
‘This is a problem,’ said the lady police con stable. ‘We can’t interview you until a family member is present.’
‘By “interview” you mean browbeat me into confessing, don’t you?’ asked Friday.
‘Well, um …’ began the lady police constable.
‘It’s all right,’ Friday assured her. ‘As a fledgling detective I’d enjoy seeing professionals at work. Will you do “good cop, bad cop”, or are you doing it already and that’s why you’re being nice to me?’
‘Well, er …’ said the lady police constable, blushing a little at having been caught out by an eleven-year-old.
‘This is exciting,’ interrupted Friday. ‘Call my Uncle Bernie. He’s an insurance investigator. I’ll write his number down for you. He’ll come right away. I can’t wait to get started.’
Chapter 2
The Vagrant
Friday knew it would take some time for her uncle to get to the police station. His office was two hours away, and he might actually be doing something important that he couldn’t stop the moment he got the message. So Friday reasoned that she had between two-and-a-half and four hours to fill.
She took out a lollipop and stuck it in her mouth, then looked about the room. She could ask for a crossword, but she was very good at those so it would probably only fill up five or six minutes.
Friday could ask if she could read the police files, but she suspected there’d be some privacy law preventing the officers from showing them to a child. Also, it’d probably rub the police up the wrong way if she read through their files and solved all their cold cases for them.
Friday glanced at the vagrant at the far end of the bench. He didn’t look like the chatty type. He looked more the ‘hit you over the head with a rusty iron bar’ type. Friday decided to leave him alone. She pulled out a paperback from her back pocket and started to read. She’d only been reading for a few minutes when she realised the vagrant was watching her. He hadn’t turned and stared, but he was definitely watching her out of the corner of his eye. Friday looked up at him.
‘Good book?’ asked the vagrant.
Friday hadn’t expected the vagrant to engage her in a literary discussion. ‘It is actually,’ said Friday. ‘It’s E.M. Dowell’s The Curse of the Pirate King, the story of a privileged boy who defies his family’s expectations and runs away to be a pirate, then becomes enormously successful sailing the high seas and winning sword fights with people who are even more dubious than himself. We have to read it for English.’
‘They let you read that at school?’ he asked. ‘In my day it was all Shakespeare and Dickens.’
‘The school is particularly proud of this book because it was written by the great, great grandson of the school’s founder, Sebastian Dowell,’ explained Friday. ‘E.M. Dowell is one of the few ex-students to become rich and famous without violating insider-trading laws.’
‘Okay,’ said the vagrant.
‘It’s very exciting. We’re all dying to know how it ends,’ continued Friday. ‘There’s one more book to go in the series. Legend has it that E.M. Dowell came up with the idea for the whole series while he was at our school and he wrote the last chapter first, and then hid it. Like it was pirate treasure.’
‘Sounds like a weirdo,’ said the vagrant.
‘Yes,’ agreed Friday. ‘Although, the literary biographies phrase it differently. Their euphemism is “eccentric recluse”.’
The vagrant snorted a laugh and went back to staring into the middle distance. Now that she knew he wasn’t dangerously terrifying, Friday was curious.
‘What have they busted you for?’ asked Friday.
‘What’s it to you?’ asked the vagrant.
‘I’m up on terrorism charges,’ said Friday.
The vagrant raised an eyebrow.
‘I didn’t do it,’ said Friday. ‘I’m wrongly accused.’
The vagrant snorted again.
‘Look, I know I look like a child, mainly because I am only eleven years old,’ said Friday, ‘but I am actually a successful private investigator. I’ve solved a bank robbery and thwarted a bird smuggling ring, as well as lots of smaller cases. Why don’t you tell me your story? Perhaps I can help.’
The vagrant didn’t look at Friday but he didn’t look away either. He was clearly thinking about it.
‘I’m waiting for my uncle to get here so I can be interviewed,’ volunteered Friday. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Their computer to identify my fingerprints,’ said the vagrant.
‘So you’re refusing to tell them who you are?’ asked Friday.
The vagrant shrugged. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, so why should I help them?’
‘Interesting tactic,’ said Friday, admiringly. ‘But aren’t you worried that you’ll make them angry by being unnecessarily uncooperative?’
‘Cops are always angry whatever you do,’ said the vagrant. ‘They have an awful job dealing with horrible people all day long. Time-wasting is the least of their worries. In fact, they quite like it because it increases their chances of getting overtime.’
‘Come on then,’ said Friday. ‘Since we’re both stuck here for the next couple of hours, give me something to do. Tell me the details of your case.’
The vagrant sighed. He was obviously weighing up his options. He seemed to be the type of man who preferred to remain silent when possible.
‘They say I stole a blue sapphire bracelet,’ said the vagrant.
‘Did you?’ asked Friday.
‘No,’ said the vagrant.
‘So why do they think you did?’ she asked.
The vagrant shrugged. Then he looked down at his clothes. ‘Look at me, I’m a bum.’
Friday nodded. She sucked her lollipop as she thought about it. Truth be told, she wasn’t dressed much better herself. But it is a fact of life that some people can wear unironed earth tones and look like an eccentric academic, and some people can look like a bum who has been sleeping rough for a week.