Daisy was off again, heading for our compartment – but of course she went on to the door next to ours and knocked on Sarah and Hetty’s door. Hetty opened it.
‘Is Sarah there?’ asked Daisy.
‘What do they want?’ called Sarah behind her.
‘We’ve found a scarf!’ said Daisy – before Hetty had the chance to shoo us away, as I could see she wanted to. ‘It’s red silk. Is it yours?’
Sarah popped her head round the door, and her face, unlike the Countess’s, did look worried.
‘None of your business,’ she snapped, and I could tell that this time her fierceness was put on. ‘Go away.’
‘We were only trying to help. You oughtn’t to be so rude. What would Mr Daunt say?’ asked Daisy.
‘He’d say that you shouldn’t be annoying me,’ said Sarah. ‘I may only be a maid now, but just you wait a few months and you’ll see who’s the grand lady then.’
‘Oh!’ I said, before I could stop myself. Hetty’s mouth was an O of surprise as well, and I saw a glint of excitement in Daisy’s eyes – though of course she was pretending to be quite offended. It sounded very much as though Sarah was expecting something concrete from Mr Daunt. But did she really think he would marry her? Servants didn’t marry their masters; it was terribly shocking – but, then again, Mr Daunt had been kissing her. It was only then that I realized how extremely odd that was. And so soon after Mrs Daunt’s death!
‘Perhaps you ought to go to your compartment, girls,’ said Hetty, making a face at us. ‘It’ll be time to dress for dinner soon.’
‘Yes, Hetty,’ said Daisy obediently. ‘Come along, Hazel.’
‘So,’ she whispered, as soon as we were back in our compartment with the door closed behind us. ‘Detective Society meeting, I think. It’s long overdue. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ I said, getting out this casebook.
‘Excellent. All right. Present – well, you know all that. Now, to the clues. What have we just discovered?’
‘That Sarah thinks she’s going to marry Mr Daunt,’ I said. ‘And that she and the Countess won’t tell us whether the scarf we found is theirs or not. I don’t think we should believe either of them when they say it isn’t.’
‘Mmm,’ said Daisy. ‘I quite agree. Both of them are untrustworthy – did you see the Countess without her cane?’
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘So we know that she might have been able to move quite quickly after the murder.’
‘That scarf, though . . .’ Daisy went on. ‘It’s odd. Now we’ve got that and the handkerchief from Mr Strange’s room. They’re both bloody, so which did the murderer use to cover their clothes? If it was both, why only get rid of one?’
‘I don’t know!’ I said. ‘There are too many clues, aren’t there?’
I had meant it as a sort of joke, but Daisy’s eyes suddenly went wide.
‘Hazel!’ she said. ‘Oh! I’ve just had a most interesting thought! We agree, don’t we, that this murder was planned in advance – it didn’t just happen.’
I nodded.
‘So, if you were planning a murder, wouldn’t you try to shift suspicion away from you, onto someone else?’
I nodded again, suddenly understanding where she was going.
‘And part of that would be to drop false clues, wouldn’t it? So we must assume that at least some of the things we’ve found were meant to be discovered. They’re not real, they’re only red herrings. So, how are we to know which is which? Well, in all my books it says that the planned murders are the ones where the murderer is most likely to slip on some little thing that they couldn’t possibly have foreseen. Therefore all we must do is work out what those unforeseen things were. Certain events have happened that can’t have anything to do with the murder, and if we consider those, then we begin to see all the places where the murderer’s clever planning went wrong.’
‘What things?’ I asked.
‘The bomb,’ said Daisy at once. ‘Even the very cleverest murderer in the universe couldn’t have known that rebels would plant a bomb on the line ahead of us. They would have known that the train would probably be stopped by someone panicking and pulling the emergency cord when the murder was discovered, but we ought to have been on our way again almost immediately. After all, if you have a body on a train the first thing you want to do is get it to a place where the police can look at it, and that’s Belgrade. So us still sitting here . . . that’s a flaw in the plan. Which means that the scarf we just found . . .’
‘. . . oughtn’t to have been found at all!’ I finished. ‘It was meant to be lost in the woods somewhere, not caught on the coupling for us to find while the train was stopped. Oh, I see! So we were supposed to believe that the stained handkerchief Dr Sandwich found in Mr Strange’s room was what the murderer used to cover themselves.’
Daisy nodded. ‘Whether it was planted by the killer because it was supposed to lead the police to Mr Strange, or whether it was a cunning double bluff set up by Mr Strange himself, we don’t yet know – but we must consider that as the planted clue, and the scarf we found this afternoon as the real one; the one the murderer never meant us to find.’
I had to admit, it was one of Daisy’s cleverer moments.
‘What about the other clues?’ I asked. ‘The knife?’
‘The knife must have been planted as well,’ said Daisy. ‘It was wiped clean of prints, remember? Alexander told us so. If the murderer had enough time to wipe it after they used it to kill Mrs Daunt, they had enough time to dispose of it too – yet they didn’t. Why leave it with the body unless that was all part of the plan?’
‘That’s a clue that leads to Mr Strange as well,’ I pointed out. ‘We all saw him carrying it about before the murder, didn’t we? So when we saw the knife next to Mrs Daunt . . .’
‘. . . we were bound to think of him at once,’ said Daisy, nodding again.
My heart was racing. Suddenly a pattern was building up – the two planted clues, so obviously implicating Mr Strange. Had we stumbled on something important? But then I remembered . . .
‘The necklace!’ I said glumly. ‘That doesn’t point to Mr Strange at all, does it? It was in the Countess’s compartment.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Daisy. ‘We can’t tell whether that is a planted clue or a mistake. Yes, it’s terribly suspicious, but we know, because Alexander said, that the Countess is the sort of person who simply doesn’t care about the law. Whether or not she is the murderer, she wanted that necklace – which means that there are three options. First, she is the murderer, and she simply couldn’t imagine that she’d need to hide the necklace properly once she’d made the other clues point to Mr Strange. Two, she is not the murderer, but the real murderer knew that she would be an excellent second suspect, if Mr Strange was ruled out for some reason. And third—’
‘Third, the necklace was planted in Mr Strange’s room by the murderer along with the other false clues, but the Countess went hunting for it, and pinched it from there while the interviews were going on!’ I said. ‘After all, the compartments weren’t locked, and Jocelyn wasn’t guarding the corridor then either, because he was in the dining car. Anyone could have gone to his compartment without being noticed.’
‘Exactly!’ said Daisy. We looked at each other, terribly excited. ‘So if we take away the clue of the necklace, what we’re left with is this: the planted clues definitely lead back to Mr Strange. He’s Mrs Daunt’s brother and he needs money, which we know he’ll get from her will. He really is the perfect scapegoat.’
‘So if we’re sure they were planted, then Mr Strange has to have been framed!’ I said.
Daisy nodded. ‘And framed very well, considering he’s locked away at the moment, under guard. Oh, Hazel, well done to us! We’ve gone and ruled out a most important suspect! We’re down to . . . two – Sarah and the Countess – and either of them could have done it. All we have to do is work out which.’
‘And how they did it . . .’ I s
aid slowly.
Daisy frowned at me.
‘Think about the knife,’ I explained. ‘We know that the murderer wiped it – but how was there time? The Countess might be able to move without her cane, and Sarah might be quick on her feet, but Mrs Daunt screamed as her throat was cut. How could either of them have had time after that to steal her necklace, wipe the knife, lock the main door, set up the trick with the connecting door and leave through Mr Daunt’s compartment, taking the scarf on the way, and hiding it and the necklace? All those things must have happened – we know they did – but how? And why didn’t anyone see the Countess or Sarah coming out of Mr Daunt’s compartment?’ The questions kept on tumbling out of me. I suddenly saw what a tangle everything was in. ‘Nothing makes sense!’
‘It doesn’t yet,’ said Daisy, ‘but it will. I still say that we’ll be able to clear up this murder before tomorrow!’
I couldn’t agree with her. Something was wrong – terribly wrong – with our deductions.
‘All we need to do is re-create the crime,’ Daisy went on. ‘Just as I said earlier. We’ve been guessing about timings, haven’t we? Let’s find out for sure. You have to be Mrs Daunt.’
I sighed. Some things never change.
Daisy went to stand by the door, pushing the bolt home. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘As soon as I touch you, begin timing with your watch.’
I took out my wristwatch, and looked at the second hand. Daisy stepped towards me, and as she reached out her hand I shivered. But all she did was draw it across my throat in a sharp movement. I opened my mouth, in a pretend scream, and began to count. Daisy pulled at my neck, as if she were unclasping a necklace (fifteen seconds). She stepped back, brushed something off her front (twenty seconds), and then used it to wipe something in her hands. She made a dropping motion – the knife – and hissed, ‘On the floor!’
I lay down on the carpet (twenty-five seconds) and watched her step over towards the connecting door, fiddling with it (thirty seconds), pretending to push it open (thirty-five seconds) and then closed again (forty seconds). She mimed stepping through it (forty-five seconds) and then turned to me and asked, ‘How long?’
‘Forty-five seconds,’ I said, propping myself up on my elbows. ‘At least. Daisy – how can it be? We must have made a mistake. It only took us a few seconds to reach the corridor, and I remember Sarah and the Countess were already there!’
Daisy frowned. ‘But it must have happened,’ she said. ‘We know it did.’
‘I know!’ I said, frustrated. ‘Oh – perhaps we’ll find out more this evening. What do you think Dr Sandwich is thinking, letting Madame Melinda hold the séance?’
‘He doesn’t know what he thinks,’ Daisy said. ‘He has no logic or method. He’s an infernal bungler and he is confusing everything. However, even the world’s greatest bungler may do something useful by mistake, and I think this séance will be useful to us. We must just watch Sarah and the Countess – will they try to direct proceedings towards Mr Strange’s guilt? Will they “remember” something that isn’t possible? One of them has to be guilty.’
‘I know what we’re looking for, Daisy,’ I said – a bit crossly perhaps, because I was trying not to worry about what we had just discovered in our re-creation. I have been detecting for just as long as Daisy, and if I did not know how to watch suspects by now, I would not be a worthy Vice-President at all.
‘I never said you didn’t,’ said Daisy, holding her hands up. ‘Goodness, Hazel, you have got forceful this holiday.’
I turned away from her angrily and began to write up everything that had happened, but I felt as if I was only going in circles around the problem. How would we ever move forwards? Both Sarah and the Countess might have done it, but there was nothing to choose between them; no way of knowing which of them we should point at and say, It was you! What if we never understood what had happened – and what if, when we arrived at Belgrade, the police believed all the murderer’s red herrings, and arrested Mr Strange officially? He would never escape once he had been arrested, even though he’d protested that he would. Even though I did not particularly like Mr Strange, everything in me knew that it was wrong for an innocent person to be punished for something he did not do. It was not justice – and that was the point of being a detective, wasn’t it? To make sure that justice was done.
6
At dinner Madame Melinda talked rather a lot about spirit energy, and Mr Daunt took the bait. They had another of their furious arguments – it was absolutely clear that they despised each other, and both blamed the other for Mrs Daunt’s death. The rest of the passengers tried to pretend that they weren’t listening.
After we had finished we were sent back to our compartments. When we returned to the dining car, it had a very different atmosphere. The curtains were drawn, and the candles were just little soft pulses, like red hearts. The electric wall lamps had been turned off – Madame Melinda explained that bright light interfered with the vibrations from the spirits, and I felt Daisy’s silent huff of amusement against my hair.
‘I’ve gotten these!’ Alexander whispered to us as we all filed in. ‘Papers from Mr Strange’s compartment – there were lots. No one noticed me taking them!’ He was so proud of himself that my heart sank. He was not to know that we had narrowed down our suspects again, and proved that Mr Strange could not be one of them. These papers must be just notes for his new crime novel.
‘We don’t have much new,’ I whispered back, feeling dreadful, as Daisy folded them away in her little bag. ‘No one’s claiming the scarf.’
We all sat down in a slightly awkward circle, arranged around two tables pushed together, so we had to stretch out our hands across the white tablecloths. I looked at them all clasped together – my hand in Daisy’s on one side (rather loosely, to show that although we were Detective Society for ever, I had not quite forgiven her for her earlier comments), and my father’s on the other. I had thought my father would refuse to allow us to take part, but he had looked at me very searchingly over his glasses and said, ‘If it is going to happen, then in the spirit of scientific enquiry we ought to watch it. It is important to know about the things that go on in the world.’
I thought then that there were many more things going on in the world – and in our train carriage – than he knew. He might be good at business, but this holiday he had not been so good at seeing what Daisy and I were up to. Then I felt guilty. He had been busy with work; the work he needed to do to look after me and my mother – and my two little half-sisters and their mother, my father’s concubine – and all the people who made our wedding-cake house in Hong Kong run as smooth as silk. I felt full of remorse, so I stared at my father’s rather square, short fingers, with their deep knuckles and clean nails, and felt very fond of them. Once this adventure was over, I told myself, I would be a good daughter again, the very best there could ever be.
But only when this was over. For now, there was a murderer to be caught, and Daisy and I could not stop until the thing was done.
I looked up again, and around at the dim room. Beyond Daisy was Alexander, then the Countess, Mr Daunt (looking very crossly at Madame Melinda), Mr Strange (he had been let out of the guards’ van, and Dr Sandwich was hovering proprietorially behind him), Il Mysterioso (everyone else still giving him a wide berth), Mrs Vitellius, Madame Melinda, Maxwell, and then my father again. Hetty and Sarah hovered at the edge of the room. Daisy and I had agreed that I should watch Sarah while she watched the Countess.
My hands tingled – with excitement, I reminded myself, not because of spirit energy. I very determinedly did not let myself get carried away by Madame Melinda’s words. Auras, knockings, smells and lights – they were all so many lies; magical red herrings to pull your eyes away from the real trick. This is what Daisy had told me firmly; and as was so often the case, Daisy was right.
Dr Sandwich, though, was very enthusiastic. I could not tell whether he truly believed that Madame Melinda would be able to call
back Mrs Daunt’s spirit – but he certainly wanted to see her try.
Madame Melinda cleared her throat, and we all looked at her. ‘Good evening,’ she said, her rich deep voice like treacle. It seemed to ooze like treacle too, all the way into my head and down my spine. I shivered. I wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not. Mr Daunt snorted rudely, and Madame Melinda glared at him.
‘We are here tonight, together, to commune with the spirits, and to call back from beyond the curtain the soul of our dear departed friend Georgiana Daunt. Spirits, we would know of you whether Georgiana now exists with you in joy – but we would also know of you whether she has darker memories, to help us discover the truth of her last few moments. Pitiful as they are, painful as they are to recall, we would ask you, spirits, to help us understand, to show us the way – spirits, are you there?’
As she said this, she raised her head, and half raised her arms, so that Mrs Vitellius and Maxwell had to lift their hands too – and on around the circle the jolt went, each of us carried along with it without even meaning to be.
Then there was silence; a silence that buzzed with anticipation and made my hairs creep. Nothing would happen, I told myself – and then there was a hollow rap. It seemed to come from the tabletop itself, but I looked around at all the hands and saw them stretched out and touching, absolutely innocent.
Another rap, this time from – I could have sworn – the other side of the table; and then a perfect volley of them, so we all looked around in half-panic (though the grown-ups tried to hide their fear, and Daisy was only pretending). Off to the side, Sarah squealed, and I glanced through the dimness at her and Hetty. She did not look so much guilty as terrified.
‘The spirits are here!’ cried Madame Melinda, lifting her face up even further – it seemed to glow in the darkness, and I blinked, for of course that could not be. ‘The spirits are here!’ and then – and this made my skin crawl with horror – her mouth opened again, but the voice that came out was not Madame Melinda’s at all. ‘We are here,’ she moaned, high and shrill. Then, deeper, ‘We are here,’ and, ‘We are HERE!’ cried a voice so hard and heavily accented I could not tell where it came from.
First Class Murder: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery Page 15