‘Er,’ I said again. ‘No. I just wanted . . . to say hello.’
‘Hello.’ He smiled at me. ‘Bearing up, are you?’
I nodded. ‘I’ll – er – go back to Daisy now,’ I said, and only remembered then that the connecting door was locked. ‘Er, through the main door. It’s . . . a sort of game we’re playing. Goodbye.’
I glanced back as I went out, and saw my father giving me a very concerned look. I could tell that he was worried that I was behaving strangely again. ‘Leave the door open,’ he called after me.
Daisy clapped me on the back as soon as I slipped into Maxwell’s compartment. ‘Excellent!’ she whispered. ‘You see? I have faith in you, even if you haven’t. Really, you are much better than you think. We’ve proved that it could be done, and quite easily! That’s one question answered: the locked-room trick isn’t impossible after all. Now, another question: where was the blood?’
‘Oh!’ I said. I remembered all that blood – on Mrs Daunt, on the carpet . . . So why was it that no one in the corridor – not one of our suspects – had blood on their clothes? I remembered them all, clearly lit by the chandeliers: everyone had been quite unspotted. I thought for a bit, and wrote:
Daisy added her comment:
‘Cloak!’ I whispered. ‘Do you think—?’
‘It could be,’ Daisy whispered back. ‘Put that together with the locked room – it really could be . . .’
I nodded. It was funny – sitting hunched over this casebook with Daisy, snatching the pencil between us and writing over each other’s words, I suddenly felt very safe and close to Deepdean – although we were miles away, in a quite alien place, surrounded by strangers.
I paused to think. Then I answered:
My head was spinning.
And that was when we heard voices coming from behind our heads in Il Mysterioso’s compartment.
8
Il Mysterioso’s compartment, you see, is one along from Maxwell’s. They back onto one another, although they do not share a connecting door, and so, leaning our heads against the wall, we could listen in quite easily.
‘Excuse me?’ said Alexander’s voice. ‘Mr Mysterioso? Dr Sandwich and Mr Buri would like to see you in the dining car now.’
There was a pause. ‘Thank you,’ said Il Mysterioso – and was it my imagination, or did I hear anxiety in his deep voice? ‘I am just coming. Wait outside.’
The compartment door closed, and then there was a brief flurry of movement – a creak, a shove, as though someone were standing on the seat and shoving something onto the luggage rack – and then the door opened again and we heard Il Mysterioso’s voice once more, out in the corridor this time.
‘Here I am,’ he said. ‘Do your worst.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Alexander, and then the compartment door closed, and they were gone.
Daisy and I stared at each other. We had to seize the moment somehow – but was it more important to search through Il Mysterioso’s room, or eavesdrop on his interview?
‘You – dining car!’ hissed Daisy. ‘I’ll go to his room!’
‘No!’ I whispered. ‘I need to stay close to my father. If he finds us gone, I can stall.’
‘No!’ said Daisy automatically. ‘Oh – well – bother, Hazel, all right. But search thoroughly!’
I very nearly rolled my eyes at her, but decided at the last moment that it would be simply too Daisy-ish of me. Instead, as quietly as I could, I slid off the seat, its plush surface prickling my legs, and tiptoed towards the door, Daisy padding after me. In the other compartment, the voices still droned on about business.
I eased open the main door and turned left. Daisy followed me, as softly as a cat, and I tried to mimic her – no crashing, or galumphing, or unladylike movements. I do not think I did so badly. I slipped across the corridor carpet and pushed, very carefully, on Il Mysterioso’s door, thanking everything that Jocelyn had asked for all doors to remain unlocked. It opened and, breathing in, I slid inside.
The blind was down, and the room was hushed and dark and hot. It was also chaotic: shirt fronts and collars and suit jackets lay strewn everywhere. Since the bed had already been folded away, Il Mysterioso must have made the mess very recently. Below the mirror sat a selection of wicked little blades – I was quite horrified for a moment, until I realized that they must be beard trimmers. Next to them was a collection of square glass bottles that gave off a heavy, dangerous smell, just like Il Mysterioso himself.
I knew I had to be quick. My heart was pounding. Il Mysterioso seemed so menacing – I hated to even imagine what he might do if he found me in his room. I combed through his clothes, looking for suspicious specks of blood, but they were all quite clean. Then I looked for anything that might have provided a covering to a murderer, but although Il Mysterioso seemed to have a marvellous collection of long silk cravats and cloaks, none of them were stained. I could not see the missing necklace, either.
Then I remembered those noises we had heard, and looked at the mess again. There was something to find in this room, and I would find it. I climbed onto the folded-away bed and, on tiptoe, reached for the luggage rack. I was too short to be able to look up into it, so I had to go on the evidence of my fingers.
A large suitcase . . . a smaller one . . . a briefcase . . . and, pushed back into the far corner, a small square box that did not seem to have any hinges or openings at all. Intrigued, I lifted it down. It was a magic box – the sort that is impossible to open unless you know the trick, with a pattern of vines and fruit wriggling across the lid. It was really clever, as hiding places went – a policeman might struggle away at it for hours without making any headway at all.
However, my father has a collection back home in Hong Kong, and he used to test me on them, holding up his pocket watch and saying, ‘Ten minutes, Hazel . . . eleven minutes – you’re slipping . . .’ If there is one thing I know about, it is magic boxes. This one looked quite ordinary, as magic boxes go: I pressed its edges and tapped its side, and with a satisfying pop! it sprang open. Inside was a crackling packet of papers.
I squinted at them in the gloom, holding my breath and trying to hold my nerve. Were these the plans we had been looking for? Was this the final piece of proof we needed to show that Il Mysterioso was not only Mrs Vitellius’s spy, but Mrs Daunt’s murderer as well?
But it was very odd. The papers did not look like plans stolen from the British government. They were not even in English. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me at first – but the letters really were all mixed-up – not Chinese, not French, not anything I could read. Geburtstag, I read on the first sheet, stumbling. Charakter. Religion. Abstammung. Charakter I could guess at, but I was not sure I was guessing correctly. Religion seemed straightforward – but was it one of those lying words, like pain in French, which means bread instead of hurt? I flipped through the pile of papers on my knee, and saw that they were all very similar: a kind of form, with different words inserted in the spaces. One word, though, came up again and again: Katholisch. Katholisch. Katholisch.
I sat still, reading and not understanding, and cross with myself for being so ignorant. I ought to. These were words, and words were what I was good at. Daisy would be furious at me, but I knew I could not take any of the papers with me, in case Il Mysterioso knew exactly how many there were in the packet. I was far more afraid of him than I was of Daisy Wells. I would just have to remember what they said. But how could I remember so many consonants, all jumbled together like nonsense?
As quickly as I could, I clambered up and shoved the box back where I had found it. I listened carefully at the door . . . No noises outside. So I crept thankfully back into the corridor, blinking in the bright light, and slipped into Maxwell’s compartment once more. Daisy was not back yet, and I held my breath – had my father noticed that we’d gone? But when I slid the bolt quietly back and pushed open the connecting door a little way, I heard his voice carrying on, threaded through with Maxwell’s queries. It
was just as though I had never put myself in dreadful peril at all.
It was so strange – the difference between what my father thought I was doing and my real life – that I had to pop my head round the door and stare in at them. My father looked up over his glasses and gave me a brief, reassuring smile, like a touch on my shoulder. I smiled back, and felt as if I were being pulled in two.
‘Hello again, Hazel,’ he said. He was sitting in a high-backed chair that must have been specially brought in, and Maxwell was on the folded-away bed, taking dictation. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll just be a few more minutes – and then why don’t we all do a crossword together?’
‘Yes, Father,’ I said, hoping desperately that Daisy would come back soon.
Then my father turned back to Maxwell and said, ‘And the property to be sold . . .’
‘And the property to be sold,’ muttered Maxwell, ‘currently owned by the aforementioned Mr Diaz, must be—’
‘Auctioned,’ said my father, ‘auctioned on the—Apologies, Hazel, I’ll be with you soon.’
I pulled my head back. Once again, although my father was dealing with money and business and all those complicated things, it seemed as though he were the innocent one, and I the grown-up.
9
I waited and waited, but Daisy still did not come back. Whatever could she be doing? I became so twitchy that I could hardly stay in my seat. Had she been caught spying? Was she in trouble? Did she need my help?
I decided that I had to act.
‘Father!’ I called, putting my head round the door once more. ‘I’ve ripped my stocking. Can we go and ask Hetty to patch it up?’
My father looked up, concerned.
‘We’ll be perfectly safe,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I promise. We’ll come back if even the smallest bit of danger happens.’
‘Very well, then,’ said my father. ‘But be careful, Hazel.’
‘Yes, Father,’ I said, hiding a sigh. I knew that I had confused him by looking in on him so many times: he thought I was frightened, instead of spying, but sometimes I think parents don’t realize how old you really are, or how much you can do.
‘Come on, Daisy!’ I said brightly to the empty room, and then I walked out into the corridor, sounding as much like two people as I could.
It was empty again, all the doors closed. Although I could hear dim voices from the dining car, Daisy was not loitering outside, so I turned the other way, trying to guess where she might be. Then I heard a little scuffling noise coming from Mrs Daunt’s compartment.
I crept up to the door, as softly as I could, and inched it open.
‘Wotcher, Watson,’ whispered Daisy, looking up from where she was kneeling on the floor, over a dark stain that made me shudder. ‘Come in!’
‘How did you know it was me?’ I whispered back, wriggling through the gap and pushing the door closed behind me.
‘Hmph,’ she said. ‘I always know it’s you. I would know you out of every person in the universe. You roll your feet out when you walk, and you step with your heel instead of your toe. How did you know it was me?’
‘You weren’t near the dining car,’ I said. ‘And anyway, a grown-up would have been much noisier. I told my father that I’d ripped my stocking, and we were going to visit Hetty to get it fixed. What have you found out?’
‘Oh, Il Mysterioso is a dreadful witness,’ said Daisy, rolling her eyes in the gloom. ‘All he’ll say is that he was alone in his compartment, practising a new trick, and he was so engrossed that he didn’t hear the noise. He’s either perfectly innocent or lying through his teeth. It was all becoming very boring, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to investigate the crime scene instead. Did you find the necklace?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘And no bloodstains, either. I suppose he might have covered himself with something, the way we thought, and then thrown it out of the window after he’d finished killing Mrs Daunt.’
‘Indeed,’ said Daisy. ‘The only thing that could go out of those windows is clothes.’
‘I found documents, though,’ I said. ‘Hidden in a magic box. They look important – I think they must be what he’s going to hand over to the Germans!’
Daisy’s face brightened with excitement.
‘Where are they? Show me!’
‘I, er, left them,’ I said guiltily. ‘I didn’t want him to miss them.’
‘Hazel! You chump! Why ever did you do that? But what did they say?’
I felt worse and worse. ‘They . . . I think they were in German. I couldn’t read them. But there was something that looked like Character, and something about Catholics.’
‘Oh, Hazel!’ Daisy frowned. ‘They must be proof that he’s the spy. They might even prove that he killed Mrs Daunt . . . And you left them!’
‘Sorry,’ I whispered. I felt more and more guilty. I really ought to have taken one, but I’d been terrified that Il Mysterioso might realize, and come after us. I imagined him striding towards us, cloak flapping about him like a bat, beard terrible. He would surely not hesitate to hurt us, and if it came out that we knew his secret . . . I shuddered. If he was the murderer we were searching for, as well as the spy, he was our most terrible foe yet.
‘Well,’ said Daisy. ‘Although you have not behaved as a Detective Society Vice-President ought, there is still time to redeem yourself. Let’s decide on our next steps. As agreed in our Plan of Action, we must find Mrs Daunt’s will to confirm who really does benefit from it.’
‘But why would she bring it on the train?’ I asked. ‘Surely it’s more likely to be in a safe at her house, or in a bank?’
‘Well, you never know, do you? She brought the necklace on the train, didn’t she? Anyway, there may be something else useful to be discovered. Now, hunt!’
I was not sure – but all the same, I obeyed. Daisy went through Mrs Daunt’s drawers and patted down her dresses, while I lifted down her small attaché case and sifted through the papers in it. After what I had said, I was sure we would not find anything; but then, beneath a deed of sale – with an astonishing number of noughts at the end – and an insurance document for the ruby necklace, I found The Last Will and Testament of Georgiana Daunt.
‘Daisy!’ I whispered. ‘It’s here after all!’
Daisy gave a low whistle. ‘Watson!’ she said. ‘Why, you clever thing! I suppose I can nearly forgive you for leaving behind that crucial evidence before.’
I bit my lip and said nothing. We read the will together. It was quite simple, one page only. It had been drawn up only a month ago. There was £2,000 to Mr Robert Strange ‘in memory of Mama’, £5,000 to Madame Melinda Fox ‘in gratitude for her help in a difficult time’ (‘Good Lord!’ whispered Daisy, goggling. ‘That must have been a dreadful lot of help!’), and everything else went to ‘my beloved husband William Daunt’.
We stared at each other. ‘Well,’ said Daisy. ‘Two thousand pounds is enough to commit a murder for, especially if you’re hard up. And we know that Mr Strange is.’
I nodded. ‘So is five thousand, though.’
‘Yes – if only Mrs Vitellius hadn’t already given Madame Melinda an alibi! What a bother. Still, I think we’ve found some useful—’
And that was when the door opened again.
10
We stood there, frozen – and through it came Alexander. He was on tiptoe, and when he saw us he jumped.
‘What the heck are you doing here?’ he hissed.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Daisy, with great dignity. ‘We were here first.’
‘Yes, but . . .’ Alexander’s eyes narrowed as he looked at us, surrounded by papers. ‘Wait. Are you detecting? You told me you didn’t care about crime!’
‘We don’t!’ snapped Daisy. ‘We’re . . . tidying up. Girls tidy up. And I suppose you’re here because Dr Sandwich told you to come?’
‘Erm . . .’ said Alexander. ‘Not exactly. He doesn’t – precisely – know what I’m doing. He told me to take a break, but I thought
I’d just come in here first and . . . check some stuff out.’
Suddenly I wanted to laugh. Alexander was doing just what we were. For all that he was a boy, and American, underneath it all he was exactly like us. He was a detective too.
‘I know you’re detecting,’ he said. ‘You can’t hide it from me.’
‘You dare tell!’ hissed Daisy.
‘I won’t tell anyone!’ Alexander looked at her anxiously. ‘After all, you caught me at it too. You could drop me in it just as badly, so I won’t say anything if you won’t. Pax?’
Daisy pursed her lips and folded her arms. I knew she was about to refuse – and I made a decision. I stepped forward and held out my hand. ‘Pax,’ I said. ‘You’re right. We’re detecting too.’
‘Hazel!’ cried Daisy, scandalized.
‘He can tell us about the interviews,’ I said. ‘Oh, Daisy, don’t be like that! It’ll just be while we’re on the train.’
‘I’ll swap you,’ said Alexander. It was strange, I thought, how I could hear both American and English in his accent all at once. ‘The interviews for Mrs Daunt’s will.’
‘How do you know we know about Mrs Daunt’s will?’ Daisy asked. ‘You’re making dreadful assumptions.’
‘Because that’s what you were looking at when I came in,’ he said, raising his eyebrows at us. ‘Good thick paper, several signatures at the bottom, a lawyer’s crest – what else could it be?’
I had to admit that Alexander seemed like a rather good detective. Daisy scowled, which I knew meant that she had come to the same conclusion.
‘All right,’ she said, the words dragged out of her reluctantly. ‘Share and share alike. But only for this journey. You are not becoming a proper member of the Detective Society.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Alexander cheerily. ‘You can’t be a member of the Junior Pinkertons either. My friend George would kill me. Now, how d’you want to fix the rest of these interviews?’
First Class Murder: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery Page 10