I opened The Baffle Book (Daisy and I have solved its puzzles so many times that it feels like an old friend) to get at this casebook, which lay inside it – and then slammed it shut again as my father came through the connecting door.
He stared down at Daisy and me, sitting on the plush seat, and I was sure that he must be able to see straight through the pages of The Baffle Book and realize that we were disobeying him. But he only pushed his glasses up his nose and said, ‘Good, you are settling in. Now, there are papers I must work on this morning – will you be all right here? Maxwell and I will be just on the other side of this door.’
‘Yes, Father,’ I replied.
‘Yes, Mr Wong,’ said Daisy, with a dazzling smile.
My father went back into his compartment, leaving the door ajar. A moment later we heard him say to Maxwell, ‘Now, the Darlington letter. Further to his correspondence on the twenty-seventh of last month . . .’
‘I think you’ll agree that we have a new nemesis,’ said Daisy, quiet as a breath. ‘Dr Sandwich. What an . . . an amateur! We must prove ourselves better than him!’
‘Shh!’ I mouthed, and in the other room my father raised his voice to ask, ‘Are you all right, girls?’
I opened The Baffle Book on my knee with my casebook inside, and, nudging Daisy, wrote:
Daisy frowned. Then she seized the pencil from me and wrote:
I nodded, and the quietest ever meeting of the Detective Society began.
I paused. Daisy immediately snatched the pencil from me and wrote:
I shrugged at her, amazed. She pointed to her wristwatch and rolled her eyes. Of course – as soon as she heard the scream, she must have checked her watch. It was an utterly Daisy-ish thing to do.
Again, I knew that only too well. I thought of the blood, all over Mrs Daunt and the floor and her lovely dinner dress. What I had seen in that compartment was so horrid that, after the initial shock, it hardly seemed real. The doorway had been a sort of frame that separated me from what was happening inside. Mrs Daunt had looked, not like a human, but a doll, the blood comically red, as though it had been spread about by someone playing a joke. And all the shouting around me had seemed like lines being spoken in a radio play, very loud and dramatic but not really meaning anything.
I found a body once, almost a year ago. There was not much blood at all, and no screaming; only someone lying very still in the half-dark – but it is in my mind as the worst horror there could be. It still makes my skin crawl.
Daisy snatched the pencil again and wrote:
I could see that she agreed: Mr Strange was a very likely suspect.
Daisy scrawled:
I nodded at her. I remembered Il Mysterioso’s trick for the policemen the afternoon before. In light of what had happened to Mrs Daunt, it did not seem so innocent any more.
Daisy pinched me appreciatively at that.
Those were the five suspects that I was certain of. Now we came to the one who concerned me.
I looked at Daisy to see if she really thought that Mrs Vitellius might be responsible.
She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. Then she wrote,
I had not thought of that. Surely not even Mrs Vitellius would be allowed to kill someone in the course of her job . . . But although I did not believe it, we could not discount her until we had proved to ourselves that she had not done it. That was part of our Detective Society code.
So there were our six suspects, and there were their motives. But how were we to rule five of them out? I shrugged at Daisy, as if to say, What next?
She rolled her eyes at me again – I rather resented that – and took up the pencil.
I raised both eyebrows at that list. I did not see how we were to accomplish 2 and 3 – and even 4 and 5 seemed very hopeful.
Despite Daisy’s optimism, I felt that we really were stuck.
And then someone knocked on my father’s door.
5
We heard it through the half-open connecting door, and the wall (they really were very thin, the partitions between compartments).
‘Come in!’ called my father.
‘Oh, Mr Wong!’ said Mrs Vitellius in her sweetest voice. My heart jumped, and Daisy and I stared at each other. What did it mean? ‘Good morning. I’m so sorry – did I disturb you?’
‘Not at all,’ said my father. ‘How may I help you?’
‘Well . . . you see, I have just had some elevenses delivered to my compartment, and it really is rather enormous. Much too much for me! And I thought, why, perhaps I could invite your two girls in to help me eat it? What with the awful things that have happened, I thought it might be nice to give them a little distraction.’
‘How kind of you!’ said my father. ‘But—’
‘Oh, we’ll be perfectly safe,’ said Mrs Vitellius. ‘It will take their mind off things, I’m sure. We can talk about dresses – it will be such fun!’
‘Hmm,’ said my father. He does not approve of me thinking about clothes too much – he says that it distracts me from important things like history and sums. I’m sure I can think of both. But I heard the note in his voice that meant he was about to agree. ‘Very well, then. They are through that door, in my secretary’s compartment – and no doubt listening in. But keep a close eye on them, won’t you? It’s been . . . Well, you know what has been happening.’
I heard the sound of Mrs Vitellius’s high-heeled footsteps, and then she popped her head round the connecting door, in her tangerine dress, even more striking than yesterday’s.
‘Girls!’ she said. ‘How should you like to come with me and eat cake?’
Daisy and I were ushered along the corridor. I felt horribly prisoner-like, even when we went into Mrs Vitellius’s compartment and saw what was waiting for us there: in the middle of the room, on a handsome wooden stand, was a great silver tray, piled high with creamy cakes and little fruit tarts and iced fancies. Three china cups stood ready next to an enormous silver jug, which steamed deliciously. Mrs Vitellius had obviously been expecting us.
We sat down, and she poured, flooding the whole room with the spicy smell of chocolate. It was hardly hot chocolate weather – the compartment was already warm, with the sun pouring in through the window – but I did not mind. It looked glorious.
Mrs Vitellius leaned forward and took the plumpest, creamiest cake, absolutely oozing with jam. ‘Go on, girls,’ she said, winking at us. ‘I know how you like your bunbreaks.’
‘Is this a trick?’ asked Daisy, folding her arms.
I folded my arms too, in solidarity with her, and tried not to gaze at the cakes. I knew what Daisy would say: that a good detective must never put personal comfort before the needs of an investigation. But they did look excellent.
‘This,’ said Mrs Vitellius, ‘is a discussion. Is that all right with you?’
‘No,’ said Daisy, sticking her chin out. ‘I don’t like it. Before we go any further I want you to show us your official letter from him – the person we shall call M. Just so we know that you really are doing what you say you are, and it’s all right. And you can give us your alibi as well.’
Mrs Vitellius glared at us, all jolly pretence dropped. ‘You girls!’ she began. Then she sighed, reached into her fashionable little clutch bag and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘From M himself, officially confirming that I am here to do the business of the British government – and not murder anyone, in case that was what you were thinking.’
I craned over Daisy’s shoulder, and we read the letter together. It was typed on thick cream paper with a beautiful lion and unicorn crest.
‘Well,’ said Daisy. ‘That all seems to be in order. And your alibi? If we’re not satisfied, I warn you, we can scream terribly loudly.’
‘Daisy, don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m not! I’m not the person on a top-secret mission which could be compromised at any moment.’
‘Very well,’ snapped Mrs Vitellius. ‘As you no doubt
already noticed, I left the dining car last night with Madame Melinda, who is in the next compartment to mine. Tiresome woman. She saw me to my door, and when I went in I heard her muttering away to herself. It was so loud that I knocked to quiet her – and a moment later I heard the scream. I ran out of my compartment at the same moment that Madame Melinda came out of hers. Happy?’
Daisy frowned. ‘It sounds plausible,’ she said. ‘We shall have to compare your story with Madame Melinda’s before we accept it absolutely, of course, but it will do for now.’
I agreed with her. We would have to hear from Madame Melinda in order to be utterly sure, but if she confirmed the story, it seemed as though we could rule out not only Mrs Vitellius, but Madame Melinda as well.
‘Did you hear anyone running past your compartment after the scream, by the way?’ asked Daisy.
‘I did not,’ said Mrs Vitellius. ‘Which does not mean it didn’t happen, of course – the murderer could have removed their shoes – they wouldn’t have been heard on the carpet. I expect the murderer dodged into their own compartment, and then rejoined the crowd in the corridor once it was large enough. Now that I have cleared up the matter of my innocence, may I speak about why I called you here?’
‘All right then,’ said Daisy. ‘If you must.’
I picked up my fondant fancy at last and bit into it, letting the sugar melt against my tongue. Uncomfortable situations, I feel, are always made slightly less so by food.
‘I want to speak to you about the murder. It’s a dangerous business, girls.’
‘We know that!’ said Daisy scornfully.
‘Well then, it should be only too obvious that if you want to keep yourselves safe you must have nothing further to do with it,’ said Mrs Vitellius. ‘I know you’re cross with me for getting your father to prevent you detecting – but this is no place for you. Whether or not the murder is linked to the case I was ordered on to this train to investigate—’
‘Oh, do you think it is?’ asked Daisy brightly.
Mrs Vitellius glared at her before continuing, ‘As a representative of the British government, I must now investigate this murder of a British citizen, and I don’t want you dragged into it. I know you girls solved the Fallingford murder, but this is quite different.’
‘How is it different?’ asked Daisy heatedly. The wrinkle had appeared on the bridge of her nose, just as I knew it would. ‘Anyway, we’re part of it now. We were there when it happened! And we haven’t just solved the Fallingford murder. We have solved two murder cases. We are detectives. We have badges!’
‘I know, Daisy,’ said Mrs Vitellius, sighing again. ‘But I have to think about what M would want, and I know that although he trusts you—’
‘If he trusts us, then you should!’ cried Daisy, putting down her fondant fancy. ‘This simply isn’t fair of you! You’re being awful! You shouldn’t be stopping us detecting, you should be helping us. We can’t leave everything to that dreadful Dr Sandwich. We’re much better detectives than he is, and you know it.’
Mrs Vitellius sucked in a breath. Her nostrils pinched in and she drew her eyebrows together. ‘Daisy Wells!’ she said. ‘You are a very difficult child.’
‘I’m not a child, I’m a detective, and if you ban us from detecting I shall tell the whole carriage who you really are. I don’t want to, but I will if you make me,’ said Daisy, folding her arms again. ‘Heroes often have to do rather awful things to make sure that everything turns out all right in the end.’
‘Stay out of this case!’ snapped Mrs Vitellius. ‘If I catch you poking your noses in, I shall do my very best to stop you.’
They glared at each other, and I realized that if I did not say something we might be stuck here for ever. Neither of them was the sort to give in.
‘What if we promised to stay safe?’ I asked. ‘We don’t want to be hurt any more than you do.’ (This was not entirely true. Daisy does not mind the idea of being hurt simply because she does not believe in danger. She imagines herself the heroine of her story, and everyone knows that heroines cannot die.) ‘If we stay safe, and you don’t see us detecting – isn’t that enough?’
Mrs Vitellius opened her mouth to say no. But then she took a deep breath. ‘You’ll stay away from the spy?’ she asked.
‘Unless they turn out to be the murderer, yes,’ said Daisy grandly.
Mrs Vitellius pressed down on a piece of cake with her fork – so hard that it became a sort of paste on her plate.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You can be sure M will hear about this! You are dreadful.’
‘Only when someone crosses us,’ said Daisy cheerfully. ‘Don’t worry, you shan’t hear a peep out of us until we solve the case.’
‘Until I solve the case, you mean,’ said Mrs Vitellius.
They glared at each other again.
‘Well,’ Mrs Vitellius went on, ‘the one thing we can agree on is that it won’t be Dr Sandwich. The man’s a bungler of the first water. If it were up to him, the murder would never be solved.’
6
Now that we seemed to have almost reached an agreement, I took a fruit tart and nibbled at it thoughtfully. I wondered again whether Mrs Vitellius knew as much as we did about the spy. Ought we to tell her what we had seen in Milan, and what we suspected about Il Mysterioso? But no, Daisy would be furious with me.
The room was very warm now, what with the hot chocolate and the three of us crammed into it. I looked at the window and wished it would open properly. Everything on this train was so close – it was really horrid to think how near the murderer must be, only separated from us by a few doors, and none of them locked.
That made me think of the locked-room mystery, of course. If Daisy was right, the murderer we were up against this time had planned what they had done, quite carefully – could we really be safe if we tried to unmask the culprit? How long would it take for them to realize that we were on their track?
I jumped when there was a knock on the door. ‘Come in!’ called Mrs Vitellius, and the door opened to reveal Hetty. She was shifting from foot to foot, looking most concerned. I suddenly realized how odd this must be for her. Luckily, she is very good in odd situations.
‘Good morning, Mrs Vitellius,’ she said. ‘I’ve been sent by Miss Wong’s father to collect the girls from you.’
‘We were having a lovely time, weren’t we, girls?’ said Mrs Vitellius. ‘Thank you, Letty – oh, no, Hetty.’
‘Yes, madam,’ said Hetty, dead-pan. ‘If I may, madam . . . Come along, girls. You’re to come back to Mr Wong’s compartment.’
It was an order – yet another one – from a grown-up who meant well but who was hampering our efforts to investigate the case. I glanced back at Mrs Vitellius as we left, and I thought she looked rather cheerful. She knew that she had the head start on us – how could we hope to solve the case before she did?
7
We sat down in our old places in Maxwell’s compartment. I was still struggling to understand how the murder had happened at all. How could the murderer have locked both Mrs Daunt’s main door and the connecting door, then somehow manage to get out of the room and escape without anyone seeing or hearing them? Even though Jocelyn had been in the Calais–Athens coach when the murder had happened, surely one of the other passengers would have seen the murderer? Only a few moments had passed between Mrs Daunt’s scream and everyone in the dining car rushing along to her compartment. It seemed like a magic trick, or something from a murder mystery novel – but was the fact that we had a magician and a crime writer amongst our suspects important, or just a red herring?
Daisy seized the casebook and wrote, crossly:
I nodded and wrote:
‘Yes!’ said Daisy. We both automatically looked up at the connecting door to my father’s compartment. Just like the one between Mr and Mrs Daunt’s compartments, each side had a shiny silver bolt – it could be locked by either person, or both at once. There was no way for anyone on one side of the door to push back th
e bolt if it was locked on the other side. Madame Melinda had been able to open the door the evening before because only Mrs Daunt had pushed her bolt home – on Mr Daunt’s side it was unlocked.
So could someone have set it up to allow them to close the bolt from the other side? If they had tied a bit of string to the bolt, perhaps, closed the door and tugged on the string to pull the bolt home?
I stood up, the better to peer at the connecting door’s bolt, and Daisy came to stand next to me. I pointed at the bolt, and mimed tying on a bit of string – I saw that it could be done: there was a handle on the bolt to attach it to. Quick as a flash, Daisy was kneeling down to undo her shoelace. She wrapped it round the bolt in a clever little knot, and then handed the other end to me with a nod. I realized what she wanted me to do. I stepped through the doorway, lace tucked into my hand, and pulled the door closed behind me. Maxwell and my father looked up, surprised.
‘Hello,’ I said, rather weakly, and gave the string in my hand a sharp tug. The bolt caught, and I tugged again – and there was a click. I had done it.
‘Are you all right, Hazel?’ asked my father.
‘Er,’ I said. ‘Yes. I just wanted to come and see you.’
Daisy’s knot was not coming undone. I pulled at it once more, and stepped into the room, to put even more pressure on it. At last I felt it give, and it slipped through the door to hang from my fingers. I balled it up in my fist and said, ‘Mrs Vitellius was very nice. She gave us cake.’
‘Good, Hazel,’ said my father, eyebrows raised. ‘Do you need anything?’
First Class Murder: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery Page 9