First Class Murder: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery

by Stevens, Robin

  ‘My spirit guides!’ whispered Madame Melinda. ‘Welcome!’

  I thought to myself that I would not welcome those voices anywhere, and gave up trying to hold Daisy’s hand lightly.

  ‘Spirits, we are here to contact one of the newest of your number, known in this sphere of existence as Georgiana Daunt. We would speak to her – is she there? Bring her forth!’ Madame Melinda’s head rolled, and the whites of her eyes shone. Strange noises came from her throat – groans and half-howls – and around us the knocking became a frenzy, until the whole air seemed to snap and shake.

  Next to me, Daisy shivered. I squeezed her fingers tighter. That even Daisy should be afraid! She leaned her head against mine, trembling – and whispered two words: ‘Ouija board.’

  And of course, then I knew that Daisy was not frightened at all. She was not shivering. She was laughing. Ouija board meant, for us, the way Daisy had faked a ghostly presence to announce Miss Bell’s murder to the school. Her trick with the Ouija board counter had been so clever that for five horrid minutes I had believed in the ghost. What Daisy was trying to tell me was that Madame Melinda was faking the knockings and spirit noises in exactly the same way that Daisy had faked Miss Bell. Nothing I was seeing or hearing was real; Daisy was reminding me of what had happened so that I should stop being afraid, and begin to be a detective. Again, I peered through the darkness at Sarah, and saw her shaking with terror.

  ‘Spirits!’ shrieked Madame Melinda, rolling her head from side to side like a spinning top coming to rest. ‘Speak!’

  All at once, everything stopped. The carriage was bathed in another electric silence. And then a voice growled, ‘SHE IS HERE.’

  It did not seem to come from Madame Melinda’s mouth, but from the empty air in the middle of our circle.

  ‘She cannot speak for herself,’ the voice went on. ‘She is still too weak. She has not yet come into her full spirit powers. I, Baliostra, must translate.’

  Mr Daunt snorted loudly.

  ‘Baliostra!’ muttered the Countess. ‘Ridiculous name.’ She clearly did not believe in the séance either – she did not seem afraid in the slightest.

  Dr Sandwich, however, looked excited. ‘What does she remember about the night of her death?’ he asked. ‘What did she see?’

  But it seemed that the spirits could not be hurried. Baliostra, speaking in very low growls (I worried rather about the state of Madame Melinda’s throat), told us that Mrs Daunt was at one with the light. She felt no more pain; only love towards those who loved her best. I suspected that this was a dig at Mr Daunt. But then: ‘She wishes William to know that all is forgiven. The bonds of family love are strong – strong – and rise above earthly disagreements. But – oh! – when they are broken! That is the cruellest thing! When trust is betrayed – when family ties are disregarded . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ cried Dr Sandwich, tightening his grip on Mr Strange. ‘Go on!’

  ‘In a place of light, she cannot speak of such dark matters,’ said Baliostra – but what was unsaid was left hovering in the air. My heart began to beat faster. There were no spirits. There was no Baliostra. There was only Madame Melinda. So why was Madame Melinda, so full of anger at Mr Daunt, still pointing the finger at Mr Strange? Was it because she had been swayed by the planted clues, and really believed he was guilty?

  ‘She merely remembers . . . a knock on her door. Unhappiness in her soul. A figure – a figure from her earliest life, one she knew so well . . . and words that have no place in the spirit realm. Oh! Something flashing in the dimness! Oh! Her jewels ripped from her neck!’

  ‘And after . . . after she was called into the light?’ asked Dr Sandwich eagerly. ‘How did the murderer escape?’

  ‘A cunning trick,’ moaned Baliostra. ‘Wicked – I cannot see – my eyes dazzle. The killer fled, to hide in plain sight . . . Oh, wickedness. Foul crime! Oh!’

  And the carriage was pierced through with the most dreadful shriek. It filled our ears – it seemed to come from all around us, bouncing off the walls of the dining car and making it feel horridly small and claustrophobic. We all dropped hands in horror; the Countess exclaimed; Mr Daunt jumped to his feet and Mr Strange slumped backwards in his chair, trembling with horror like a figure in a ghost story. Sarah was screaming. Was this her guilty conscience at last?

  ‘Rather impressive,’ said Il Mysterioso. His eyes were glittering with professional interest. ‘Still up to her old tricks, I see.’

  Madame Melinda groaned and raised her head. ‘What happened?’ she asked in a kitten-weak voice. ‘Did I see anything? Did I help?’

  I was waiting for the Countess to mention the necklace – and so, quite obviously, was Alexander. He looked nervously at her, but all she said was, ‘This really is quite enough. I refuse to put up with this any longer. Take us to Belgrade immediately.’

  My stomach lurched. Was she silent now because she was finally feeling guilty for having stolen it – or because Madame Melinda had reminded her what had happened when she took it from Mrs Daunt? Up to this point, I had not particularly cared about any of the suspects in this case, but helping Alexander had made me remember that, as always, real people were involved – people who mattered, people I liked.

  ‘My lady, you need have no fear,’ said Dr Sandwich grandly. ‘As soon as we receive word that it is safe to proceed, we will do so – and we will do so having cleared up this unpleasant business. I think I can say that my suspicions about the death of Mrs Daunt have now been confirmed. The murderer is, without a doubt, Mr Strange.’

  1

  Mr Strange slumped down in his chair. His thin face looked more pinched than ever, weak and unpleasant with terror, and he put his hand to his neck as though shielding it.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Look here, I didn’t—’

  ‘There’s no need to deny it any longer, Mr Strange,’ said Dr Sandwich, puffing out his chest in triumph. ‘We know everything. Your books haven’t been selling well, have they? You needed money. You followed your sister, Mrs Daunt, onto this train – using the last of your dwindling royalties, I assume – and begged her to help you. And almost everyone agrees that they saw you walking up and down the corridor brandishing a knife—’

  ‘It’s a letter opener!’

  ‘A knife which you then pretended was stolen just before dinner last night. Very opportune, I must say. Did you believe you would get away with that? Then the murder. You left your table at dinner and went to your sister’s compartment. You covered your white shirt front with this cloth’ – like a rather second-rate magician Dr Sandwich pulled the bloodstained handkerchief that had been found in Mr Strange’s luggage out of his pocket – ‘you took out your knife and you attacked her. Poor lady, she only had time for one scream before the end. Pulling the necklace from around her throat, you ran from the compartment, locking the connecting door behind you with a cunning trick.’

  ‘What trick?’ snapped Mr Strange, rallying slightly. ‘I’m not a magician – unlike some people on board!’

  ‘There will be time enough to discover that later,’ said Dr Sandwich, and I gritted my teeth at how very unrigorous he was being. ‘I’m sure a crime novelist would have no trouble concocting something. We shall get to the bottom of it, never fear. As I was saying, you dashed back to your own room, only to join us again in the corridor a few moments later.’

  Hearing that, I knew again that his explanation of how the murder happened could not be true. There was simply not enough time for any murderer to have done all that!

  ‘Meanwhile, how do you explain that handkerchief? It was found in your luggage, after all. And those rather unpleasant stories we discovered – the ones about cutting a woman’s throat—’

  ‘Those are stories! I am a writer, an artist. I would never— Look here, man, it’s fantasy. There’s a vast difference between writing about a woman’s throat being cut and actually doing it. The doing is far quicker, for one thing.’

  It was a very unfortunate joke
. ‘DISGUSTING!’ bellowed Mr Daunt. ‘Take him away at once. Georgie’s own brother!’

  ‘Wicked, wicked man!’ said Madame Melinda. ‘I’m only glad I helped bring him to justice.’

  ‘You?’ said Mr Daunt. ‘That penny trick of yours . . . help? That was a show, and a very bad one. It’s the evidence that got him. We’re in the twentieth century, not the sixteenth.’

  ‘We heard of his guilt from the lips of the spirits themselves, from dearest Georgie! How can you say such ignorant things! The ways of the spirits are the future; much is still to be revealed . . . Why, one day I believe that we shall live side by side, gleaning knowledge from each other equally.’

  While she was talking, Mr Strange was led out of the room by two attendants; he was still protesting weakly.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Il Mysterioso, ‘how Mr Strange had time to lock that door behind him, and how he left no trace of his method of doing so? I am not sure even I could do it.’ Then, before Dr Sandwich could say anything, he turned on his heel and, with a red swish of cloak, disappeared through the door. He certainly knew how to make an exit. I caught Daisy looking after him admiringly, and suspected that, next time she was taken to her dressmaker, she would develop a most mysterious interest in capes.

  ‘He has a point,’ said Mrs Vitellius into the silence. ‘How did he?’

  ‘Mystery writers . . .’ said Dr Sandwich, waving her away. ‘They’re cunning. He’ll have come up with a clever way, and we’ll get it out of him, never fear.’

  ‘And he ran the length of the corridor without being seen or heard afterwards, to emerge from his compartment again!’ Mrs Vitellius went on. ‘Heavens, he must have been clever. I feel quite frightened to have been near him. Oh!’

  ‘He ran very quickly, I’m sure,’ said Dr Sandwich, evidently not interested in the discussion. ‘In his stocking feet. They do it in all the books.’

  And just like that, I knew for certain that Dr Sandwich was wrong – not just about Mr Strange, but about how the murder had been done. What he was saying . . . it could not be. And that meant . . . that meant that we were looking at everything wrong. But how? I could not think. It all seemed very real, but underneath it must be as faked as the séance.

  I suddenly knew that I’d had a most important thought.

  ‘Father,’ I said, trying to breathe calmly and hide my excitement, ‘can Daisy and I go to bed?’

  2

  There was no time. There simply was not enough of it for the murder to work.

  It was impossible, but we had believed it because it had to be true. But what if . . . it was not true after all?

  ‘What is it?’ Daisy asked, as soon as we were back in our compartment.

  ‘Daisy – what if neither the Countess nor Sarah did do it? What if we’ve been looking at this all wrong? What if it wasn’t just the locked door that was a trick? What if everything was?’

  Hetty came in then, to help us get ready for bed, and we had the most horrid pause. I was shivering with the effort of pretending to be normal, and Hetty said, ‘Are you all right, Miss Hazel? You can’t really be cold!’

  She turned out the light and closed the compartment door, and quick as a flash there was a rapping on the bunk: W-a-i-t.

  O-K, I rapped back, though it almost hurt to agree. I closed my eyes and tried to calm my whirling brain. We waited until we heard Hetty going into her compartment next door, and then I heard a rattle – and almost shrieked when up onto my bed, like a serpent bursting out of the sea, came Daisy, eyes wild, hair flying.

  ‘Hazel!’ she breathed, so close that it made my nose tickle. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think – I think I’ve worked something out!’ I whispered.

  ‘Go down and see if it’s safe to talk,’ hissed Daisy.

  I clambered carefully down, crept over to the door and popped my head outside. It was a warm night, almost sticky, and the night-lights were on. The corridor was empty, although at the other end Jocelyn was sitting at his station, eyes drooping, his usually jolly face crumpled in a frown. He looked as unhappy with Dr Sandwich’s explanation as I was, but he seemed almost asleep. I closed our door again – it gave a tiny thump – and climbed back up the ladder.

  Daisy had wriggled down to the foot of my bunk, sitting up very straight. She picked up the torch and flicked it under her chin, so that light fanned out over her face and the gold of her hair. She looked slightly mad, and utterly fascinating.

  ‘What is it?’ she repeated. ‘Oh, do hurry up, Hazel. I don’t like waiting!’

  I took a deep breath. ‘The timings don’t make sense,’ I said. ‘We’ve proved that. So we have to listen to ourselves. There simply isn’t enough time for the murderer to have got out of Mrs Daunt’s room to safety. No one could have killed Mrs Daunt the way we all think they did and got away with it.’

  ‘So?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘it must have been done another way entirely, at a different time. And if that’s true, it means that everything – the scream, finding Mrs Daunt’s body – was faked. It was all a trick, not just the locked room!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Daisy, and I could tell that she had understood. ‘So you think the scream—’

  ‘It can’t have been the sound of Mrs Daunt dying!’ I said. ‘We can’t prove it was, after all. We heard a scream, and we ran out into the corridor and saw Mrs Daunt dead in her compartment. We assumed that Mrs Daunt had screamed, and then died – but what if it was the other way round? It sounds impossible, because dead women don’t scream—’

  ‘Only they do, Watson,’ said Daisy, and she began to grin like a rat-trap, ‘when Madame Melinda makes them.’

  I wanted to hug her. ‘Yes! That ghastly wailing noise at the end of the séance was just like the one we heard after dinner. No one realized what that must mean, because we were too busy thinking that it was a communication from the spirits. But of course, we know that Madame Melinda was controlling the séance, so if there was a scream, she made it.’

  ‘Goodness, Hazel, I never thought I’d hear you being sceptical about ghosts! But you’re right, you’re exactly right! Why mightn’t she have thrown her voice from her compartment into Mrs Daunt’s last night? Their compartments are next to each other, after all, and we know from Mrs Vitellius that she was in her compartment at exactly the moment when the scream happened. And didn’t Il Mysterioso tell us earlier that she used to perform in music hall shows? We thought that he meant acting or singing, but what if he meant that she was a ventriloquist?’

  Suddenly I saw a flaw. ‘But . . . Daisy, why would she? She liked Mrs Daunt. Why would she kill her? And anyway, we know that she was in the dining car all evening; she left it with Mrs Vitellius, and then she was in her compartment from that point until the moment the scream happened – so there was never any opportunity for her to actually commit the murder. Madame Melinda can’t have killed her!’

  ‘No, Hazel, you’re not thinking quite widely enough. She can’t have committed the murder – but she must have been helping whoever did. And she had a very good reason: Mrs Daunt’s will. Five thousand pounds, Hazel! It’s enough to turn anyone’s head— Oh, don’t argue, anyone unless they were as nice as you.’

  ‘But who was she helping?’ I gasped.

  ‘Mr Daunt, of course,’ said Daisy. ‘Who else could it have been?’

  3

  There was a sudden shaking all around us. The compartment began to rock and judder, and the jug and glasses beside our basin made little jingles, over and over and over again. We were on the move!

  I stared at Daisy in horror. If we were moving, we had a few hours at most before the train pulled in to Belgrade. Once again we were racing against time – we had to unravel the mystery as quickly as we could. Was Daisy right in what she said?

  ‘W-wait,’ I said, stammering. ‘No – no, it can’t be him – he hates Madame Melinda and he loved Mrs Daunt! And he was at dinner the whole evening until the scream—’

  Except the
re I stopped. Because Mr Daunt had left the dining car, hadn’t he? Yes, he had been in his seat at the moment of the scream, but earlier, just after he and Madame Melinda had argued and Mrs Daunt had fled to her room, hadn’t he gone to look in on her? He had come back a few minutes later shaking his head and asking Sarah to see what her mistress wanted, as if he had tried to get into his wife’s compartment and been sent away – but how did we know that was what had happened? Sarah had gone to see Mrs Daunt later as he had asked – we knew that – and we had also heard her tell Hetty that she had knocked on Mrs Daunt’s door and got no answer. Could it be that Mrs Daunt had given no answer, not because she was cross, but because she was already dead?

  Mr Strange had also said that he had knocked on Mrs Daunt’s door and not heard anything, hadn’t he? Again, we had thought that this was because Mrs Daunt was cross with him, or, worse, that he was lying, and he had gone in and killed her – but what if he was speaking the truth too? What if Mrs Daunt’s double silence was not a coincidence, but a pattern? What if . . . what if . . . what if . . .?

  My brain was suddenly filled with what ifs, questions sizzling through it and turning my face hot with horror and amazement.

  ‘But they hate each other,’ I whispered again.

  Daisy looked at me pityingly. She was in control of the dénouement once more.

  ‘Partners in crime always pretend to hate each other,’ she said. ‘It’s in all my books. The more two people argue in public, the more likely they are to be making plans in private. Unless they’re not, of course. But this is not one of those times.’

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘if they did do it—’

  ‘They did,’ said Daisy, ‘and here’s why. First, Mrs Daunt was rich. She had pots of money from her mother, and we saw her will – most of it was going to Mr Daunt. And even though he behaved as though he was rich as well, we know that was down to Mrs Daunt’s money. She saved him when they married – it must have been her money he spent on the necklace, really. I know that he behaved as though he adored her when they were in public, but we heard them arguing when they thought they couldn’t be heard, didn’t we? She was so silly and spoiled – I’ll bet he was sick of her. And that’s why she was so upset all the time: because he was being cruel to her in private. When we saw Mr Daunt kissing Sarah, we thought that it was a motive for her, but it’s also really a motive for him. If he was in love with Sarah and he divorced Mrs Daunt, he’d lose all her money – so why not kill his wife? That way he could keep her money and have Sarah as well.