‘Oh, well done!’ said Daisy, excited. ‘Bunbreak privileges for you tomorrow morning, Betsy, I promise you that! Detectives, we are beginning to gather important information. Now it is your mission to discover what else was overheard on Tuesday.’
That was the beginning of our run of good luck. We spoke to all the younger years – Daisy worked her magic on them, and they melted. There was general agreement that the Five had been behaving even more badly than usual last night. Margaret had shouted at a first-form shrimp, just after we had seen her snap at Astrid. Una had given two third formers detention for pushing out of their line, just as the fireworks were beginning. But we also spoke to plenty of girls who said that the Five were not merely cruel, but upset. Lettice, handing out sparklers, had had tears in her eyes, and before that she had been storming about, full of angry energy and snapping at everyone she passed – we had this from several people. Enid had been distracted, muttering to herself and not even seeing the third formers pretending to fence with their sparklers, although they did it right in front of her.
Each of the Five had been seen speaking to Elizabeth before the fireworks – it seemed as though she had never left her comfortable position near the bonfire. To our sighting of Margaret, and the third formers’ of Lettice, were added three more. A second former had seen Enid pausing with a load of wood in her arms to speak with Elizabeth next to the fire, just after everyone had arrived and been greeted. Elizabeth was speaking crossly to her, telling her off, and then Enid walked away again to collect more firewood from the pavilion. The second former thought that this was quite probably what the argument was about: Enid having to collect firewood. ‘She’s always so busy with her books, she looked as though she hated being away from them!’ she said. She was replaced by Florence. Elizabeth had turned and told her (so said the second former, who was feeling very important by now, at having fourth formers listen to her so intently) to be careful collecting firewood, because it might be too heavy for her. This did not seem very likely to us. Everyone knows that Florence is strong as an ox and can stride over hurdles in the most terrifying way (women cannot compete at hockey at the Olympics, you see, so she has chosen hurdles as her sport, though during term time she is quite obsessed with hockey). But the second former was very insistent. ‘It’s what I heard!’ she said indignantly. I wrote it all down, frowning rather, but knowing we could not discount information just because it seemed unlikely. We had done that before, to our cost.
Una had spoken to Elizabeth just before Miss Barnard’s speech. We’d had to consult one of the fifth formers for this information, no one else had been close enough to the fire at that moment to hear, but apparently Elizabeth had replied crossly to her. It was something about Una’s father, the fifth former thought, and Una had been furious – but of course, she’d had to whisper, so as not to disturb Miss Barnard, so the fifth former could not hear properly.
Binny’s friend Martha was still spreading her story about seeing a man running away towards the woods, just before the fireworks began. We cornered her on the way up to House after school, and she blushed and said that, no, she had never said she had seen a man – only a figure – and it had been very dark, so perhaps …
We had plenty of information, but nothing that we could point to and say that it ruled out any of the Five. In fact, everything we had discovered made all our suspects look equally likely. What we did know for certain was that the murder must have happened after the fireworks began. Lettice had been talking to Elizabeth just before, so that made her a strong suspect, but the others were all in the right area too, and they had all argued with Elizabeth. Now what we had to do was discover why. There were hints, indications, and now we had to seize on those threads and follow them through to the truth.
1
Two more secrets came to light at dinner, on two more bits of paper. One was found by a third former, on the walk up to House, and another was found by a first-form shrimp just outside House. One of them we already knew: that Alice Murgatroyd (the fifth former who helped Daisy last year, now a Big Girl) smuggled cigarettes; and one we did not: that Sophie Croke-Finchley had only got a merit in her last piano exam, and her father had paid to have it promoted to a distinction.
Whispers and giggles rushed through the Dining Room. Alice was sitting with her arms crossed, trying to look don’t-care, but next to her was a space where Heather Montefiore ought to have sat, and next to her, Astrid Frith had her hair hidden under a contraband hat. Nervousness flowed from the Big Girls. They were the subjects of nastiness now, the ones who it was done to.
The other fourth-form dorm surrounded Sophie protectively, daring us with their eyes to even mention what we had heard. Kitty curled her lip at Clementine, and Clementine glowered back. The feud between them was clearly as bad as ever. I ought to have felt worried by it, but somehow I did not. I was thinking about Alexander again, about what he would say about all our new evidence, and somehow that made me feel light, but all the same full up before I even ate a bite. I found I could not manage the last few bits of my rabbit pie, and Lavinia had to eat them off my plate.
‘Whatever’s wrong?’ asked Beanie, concerned. ‘Are you ill?’
I shook my head, and avoided Daisy’s stare.
‘Frith!’ said Una. ‘Headgear off in the Dining Room! Or do you have something to hide?’ Astrid simply stood up with a gulp and ran out of the room. Una caught Florence’s eye, and smirked, and I felt indignant. Why, if it was our year in charge, we should never be so dreadful … but then I noticed that Kitty was drumming her fingers on the table. No, not drumming, playing, as though she was at a piano. Sophie made a gasping sort of sob and covered her face with her hands. Clementine was seething. Beanie looked upset, and I winced. Not even we were above the nastiness.
‘Clementine,’ said Daisy suddenly. ‘How many goals did we lose to Headley House by last weekend?’
For a moment I thought that Daisy was joining in with the cruelty, and reached out to pinch her under the table, to stop her. But then I saw the look in her eyes. Daisy, as usual, did not mean a word she said. She was merely up to something.
‘Two,’ said Clementine, turning her head. ‘Why?’
‘And how many goals did you let in?’ asked Daisy.
Clementine turned pink. ‘You know perfectly well,’ she snapped. ‘Oh, don’t be such a sourpuss, Daisy. It’s not my fault the team’s losing matches. I heard Florence talking about it with Elizabeth just after we arrived on Tuesday evening, next to the fire. Someone’s not properly fit – I didn’t catch all of it, but I know that things are about to change.’
‘I bet it’s you who’s not fit,’ said Lavinia loudly.
‘Rudeness!’ said Clementine, blushing brightly with rage. ‘You really are a disgusting cad, Lavinia Temple, not a lady at all! No wonder, when you don’t even have a father about to teach you manners!’
Lavinia gave a roar, and lunged at her.
Up jumped Lettice at the end of our table (her food was untouched again, I saw) and shrieked, ‘Temple! Get up to your dorm at once! Detention!’ I saw her hands shaking, the bones of them awfully red and thin, and I wondered about her again.
Lavinia shrugged. ‘Don’t even care,’ she said, then she pushed back her chair and rushed out of the Dining Hall up to the dorm.
Beanie jumped up to race after her, so we all had to follow. The way the Dining Room was that day, no one bothered to stop us.
As we hurried up the stairs, I wondered exactly what Elizabeth and Florence had been talking about on the evening of the fireworks, when Elizabeth had said that the firewood might be too heavy for Florence. Clementine must have overheard the same conversation as that second former, but more of it. And what she had heard was odd. Elizabeth had not been particularly sporty, or much interested in that side of Deepdean life. Why would she suddenly bother with the hockey team on the last evening of her life?
2
When we came into the dorm, Lavinia was sitting on her bed.
Her eyes were raw at the edges. ‘I’m all right,’ she said gruffly. ‘But when we find who did this, I shall … eat them.’
‘Don’t do that!’ said Beanie.
‘She’s speaking metaphorically, Beans!’ said Kitty.
‘Am I!’ said Lavinia.
Daisy sighed. ‘Metaphors are not important. What happened at dinner—’
‘What happened at dinner?’ asked Beanie.
‘Florence,’ Daisy and I said together. I felt the click between us and I knew, just then, that she was thinking the same thing as me. ‘Clementine heard her talking to Elizabeth about the hockey team. What if that’s connected to Florence’s secret? She might be hiding something to do with the team, or her hurdles training.’
‘Yes, but … how are we supposed to know for sure?’ asked Lavinia. ‘We can guess all we like, we still won’t rule anyone out.’
‘But their secrets must be written down on bits of paper, like the other girls’!’ said Beanie suddenly. ‘All we need to do is find them.’
Daisy beamed. ‘Very true! And I believe I know the perfect place to begin the hunt,’ she said. ‘The Five’s dorm. If they have any secrets in their possession, they are most likely to have hidden them there.’
‘But didn’t we say the secrets were coming from a younger girl?’ asked Kitty. ‘This doesn’t make sense!’
‘Cases never make sense until you have made sense of them,’ snapped Daisy. ‘We must continue to investigate.’
‘Oh, I don’t want to go into the Five’s dorm,’ said Beanie. ‘It’s terribly dangerous. And against House rules!’
‘If you think it’s dangerous, then you needn’t have anything to do with it,’ said Daisy. ‘Hazel and I will deal with it together.’
My heart jumped. I had been thinking – well, that Daisy might have been able to tell how distracted I had been at dinner, and why. But now she was smiling at me, and I could feel myself smiling back. We lit up at each other, like an electrical circuit clicked into place.
‘You really do commit a lot of crimes, for detectives,’ said Lavinia.
‘I don’t commit crimes,’ said Daisy. ‘I catch the criminals. Don’t get confused.’
Lavinia rolled her eyes – but before she could say anything else, the Prep bell went, and we had to rush away without discussing exactly how Daisy expected us to get into the Five’s dorm.
During Prep, I wrote to Alexander again. Dear Alexander, I think we are making headway with the case … I wrote and wrote, my arm curled to hide the fact that what I was doing was not a History essay or a Maths problem at all.
I looked up once, and saw Daisy looking at me. Her lips were pursed, and she flicked her eyes from my face to the casebook, and then up again. I froze, and I felt my face giving me away. Did Daisy … know?
As always, one of the Five was taking our Prep, but luckily for me, it was Enid. As I have said before, Enid is our best hope for a university place this year (you see, not all of our Big Girls go to university. Most are only presented at Court and go on to marry Lords with no chins). She works without stopping, always head down in a book, and that means that you can get away with almost anything when Enid is on Prep. It did make my heart race, though, to be so close to one of our suspects. What if Enid was the murderer? What if she decided to hurt us too? I got shivers all over my body, thinking about it.
But then I looked at Enid with my eyes, instead of with my imagination, and saw how small she was, and how pale, and how her brow wrinkled as she read. Could Enid really lift that heavy rake, and bring it down on the back of Elizabeth’s head hard enough to kill her?
There was a History book in front of her this evening. I had heard her mentioning an important test earlier, and from her look she was concentrating hard on it. I frowned at her, and she blinked up at me with unfocused eyes and then looked back down at her page. Distracted, I thought, and then, by her work. And I felt a connection between us, for although I have learned to hide it at school, I do love to learn as well.
Then I felt a nudge in the small of my back. I put my hand out automatically and felt the bit of paper passed into it by Kitty’s hand.
Midnight feast, it said, in Daisy’s writing. Top Secret. You know what to do.
This was a cover, I understood at once. Daisy would not simply suggest a midnight feast at a time like this without good reason. But why had she not told me beforehand? What did it mean? I felt confused.
3
I went back to the dorm, and changed, and went to toothbrushes, but I could not think of anything but Daisy. I was still trying to understand why she had planned a midnight feast without telling me. Why would she do such a thing? It could not have anything to do with Alexander’s letter, could it?
At toothbrushes, Lettice and Florence were supervising, and I could feel the distrust in the air. There was so much that was not being said, and I understood as never before that every moment of unity between the Five was only a front. Behind that, they were divided.
‘Hurry up, you horrors, or you’ll send Lettice quite potty!’ said Florence, and Lettice flinched, then took a step backwards.
‘Don’t shout, Florence!’ she said in a furious, scratchy little voice. ‘You’ve got to be careful of yourself, you know.’ Florence cast an absolutely hateful look at her, and I felt thankful that we could escape to our dorm. But all the same, I wanted quite desperately to know what Lettice and Florence would say to each other when they were alone. And at that moment, as though the thought had jumped straight from Daisy’s head to mine, I knew what she was planning to do.
We crept back to our dorm almost unnoticed (the other fourth-form dorm were having a row about Sophie’s exam results), and turned off our light.
‘What do we do now?’ whispered Beanie.
‘Wait!’ hissed Daisy. ‘Wait until things go quiet!’
So we waited. I heard the House hum around me, pipes and shouts and thumps as doors slammed and windows were hauled open (as I have said before, Matron is very fond of fresh air, even in winter). It made a living rhythm, and I was soothed by it.
The House sighed, one more door hushed shut, and there was quiet. ‘All right!’ hissed Daisy, and she sat straight up in her bed like a rocket. Kitty sat up too.
‘Ooh, is it time for the feast?’ whispered Beanie, bouncing into a sitting position and clicking on her torch enthusiastically.
‘It is indeed,’ said Daisy. ‘Or at least, it is time for you to provide cover for me. You shall be holding the midnight feast while I am detecting. I am about to put myself in terrible danger for the good of this investigation.’
‘Ooh!’ said Beanie, digging through her tuck box and unearthing an enormous box of Sharp’s creamy toffees and another of Turkish Delight. ‘On your own?’
‘Oh, I don’t want to put any of you in danger,’ said Daisy, and there was a funny flicker in her voice.
My heart stuttered. What was Daisy doing? First she had not told me about her plan, and now she seemed to be deliberately leaving us – me – out of it. Earlier today, Daisy herself had said that we would handle this bit of the investigation together. What had changed?
‘But what if I want to put myself in danger?’ I asked. ‘I’ve been in at least as much danger as you have. Let me come with you.’
There was that funny flicker again. And then … ‘Oh, if you must,’ said Daisy quickly. ‘You can stand at the window and watch for me.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘I want to come with you, all the way up to the Five’s dorm. That’s where you’re going, isn’t it?’
Daisy scowled. ‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘I’m going to climb up to the Five’s dorm. I’m going to spy on them. I’ll bet anything they’ve been waiting all day to talk to each other safely. Now is the perfect time, and I mean to be there to hear it.’
Beanie gasped, and even Kitty’s mouth fell open a little way.
‘You know I ought to be there,’ I said. ‘I know shorthand, after all, a
nd you don’t. I can take notes.’ I am proud of the fact that I have become quite good at shorthand over the last few months.
‘True,’ said Daisy. ‘But … I’m not sure the drainpipe will take two.’
I felt that jibe. I know I enjoy bunbreaks, but so does Daisy, only she shows it less.
‘Well, I shan’t fall,’ I said.
‘I shan’t either,’ said Daisy, rather stiffly. It was very odd – it almost felt as though we were arguing. Where had that come from? ‘Now, are you ready? You three, get out your midnight feast things at once. We are relying on you to provide cover. If any of the other girls come in, tell them that we’re off creating a prank, and if it’s Matron, she’ll be too busy confiscating things to notice that we’re gone. We’ll be back as soon as we can.’
4
We eased up the window. The night was very dark and rustling. Behind us, Beanie was arranging the midnight feast things on the rug, dropping them nervously and saying, ‘Oh! Sorry. It’ll go back together again … look—’
‘Beans, that fruit cake’s Fortnum’s!’ said Kitty reproachfully. ‘It’s from Granny, you can’t just drop it.’
I stuck my face outside, into the cold breeze, and wished very much that I could go and sit down next to Beanie and eat that cake. I would not even mind the little bits of floor dust on it. But Daisy, hair done up in fresh plaits and socks rolled down, was putting her hand on my shoulder and hoisting herself up onto the sill. She crouched there for a moment, legs bent and fingers still gripping the cloth of my pyjamas, and wobbled, so I gasped and put out my hand to steady her.
‘Do let go, Watson,’ said Daisy sharply. ‘I’m quite safe. I’ve done far worse than this before. Why, last year I climbed to the very top of the Secret Tree. Not even Bertie’s ever done that and he’s supposed to be good at climbing. You know he’s joined some sort of midnight climbing society at Cambridge? Why, he’s not half as good as I am. Just because he’s a boy!’
Jolly Foul Play: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery Page 7