The Poisoned Arrow

by Simon Cheshire

  Wait a minute.

  ‘Say that again,’ I said.

  ‘I said I can see the car,’ replied Izzy.

  ‘No, before that . . . Good grief, that’s the answer!’

  I hadn’t wasted two hours of my life sitting through that rubbish movie after all. Suddenly, I had the key to the whole Hardyman mystery! It revolved around three vital elements:

  1. Blood Beasts of Mars,

  2. Dr Shroeder needing a wee last Monday morning, and

  3. A bottle of nail polish.

  How much of the puzzle have you pieced together?

  At nine a.m. the following morning, eight people gathered in Dr Shroeder’s office at the university – there was me, Dr Shroeder, Nat Hardyman and his mum, Deborah Ashworth, Matt, Jack and Anil. I’d also asked Dr Shroeder if he could invite along whichever police officer it was who’d dusted for fingerprints on the morning of the theft. But they hadn’t arrived yet.

  ‘What’s this about?’ said Deborah Ashworth. ‘I’ve got an exam to revise for. Why aren’t the rest of the advanced maths group here?’

  ‘Everything will be clear in a few minutes,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not even supposed to be on campus,’ said Nat. ‘The head of department said I was banned until further notice.’

  ‘You won’t be for much longer,’ I reassured him. He didn’t look reassured one little bit. If anything, he looked extremely nervous and uncomfortable.

  ‘Perhaps you could get on with saying whatever it is you’ve called us here to say?’ suggested Dr Shroeder.

  ‘OK,’ I began. I a-hemmed, feeling rather nervous myself.

  I was taking a leap in the dark. I had good reasons for thinking that my deductions were correct, but there were still some parts of the mystery I couldn’t be certain about. If I was wrong, if I’d made a mistake in my investigations, I was about to make myself look like a complete and utter idiot.

  ‘OK,’ I began again. ‘I’ll start by saying that Nat Hardyman, whatever he might say, and whatever his three friends here might say, is innocent of the crime.’

  I could see that Nat was about to say ‘No, I’m not’, but then thought better of it. He glanced around the room, at the others, then dropped his gaze to the floor.

  ‘So who is guilty, then?’ said Dr Shroeder.

  ‘We need to reconstruct what happened last Monday morning,’ I said. ‘You arrived here, Dr Shroeder, at your office, as you normally would. You got out your new computer, but then you realised you needed to go to the loo. So off you went.

  ‘Students often call to see you at that time in the morning. Monday was no exception. While you were gone, a student turned up. You weren’t here. Now, under normal circumstances, they might simply have waited for you to return. Or they might have come back later. But on Monday, that student spotted an unexpected opportunity and gave in to a sudden temptation. They picked up your computer and walked out with it.’

  ‘Yes, it was Nat,’ said Matt.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t Nat. But Nat was here. Or rather, Nat was outside, in the corridor. By chance, he’d also come along to see Dr Shroeder. What it was about, I don’t know. I don’t know what the thief originally came here to ask either, but I guess that’s something that can wait until later.

  ‘Nat happened to come through the door at the end of the corridor, just as the thief was leaving this room. He saw who it was. He saw the guilty look on the thief’s face, he saw the laptop, and he remembered something he’d just heard a fellow student mention.

  ‘At this point, I should say, I’m having to make one or two logical leaps. I don’t know how Nat heard what he heard a fellow student mention. He’ll have to tell us that himself.’

  ‘So who was this thief?’ said Deborah Ashworth. ‘I think we’d all like to know.’

  I paused for a moment. ‘All the way through this investigation,’ I said, ‘I’ve been wondering who could possibly have forced Nat to admit to a crime he didn’t commit. And after I saw a really soppy film yesterday, the truth suddenly dawned on me. The truth is, he forced himself.’

  ‘Himself?’ said Mrs Hardyman. ‘How? He’s such a good boy. Are you saying he bullied himself into a false confession?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘As you’ve said, Mrs Hardyman, Nat’s never been in trouble in his life. He’s not exactly used to hatching plots, so he did it all rather clumsily. His aim was to stop the thief being found out. He was willing to get into serious trouble and risk his entire future to protect that person.’

  ‘Protect who?’ gasped Dr Shroeder.

  ‘Do you want to tell them, Nat?’ I said. ‘Or shall I? She knows what you’ve done and she doesn’t seem to care. She’ll let you take the blame. You owe her nothing.’

  Nat shifted uneasily. A couple of times, he seemed about to speak. At last he said, in a faltering voice, ‘No. I won’t say anything.’

  ‘Who is this “she”?’ said Dr Shroeder. ‘Who is he protecting?’

  I waited a few seconds. Just in case she felt like doing the right thing and owning up. Hmm, apparently she didn’t.

  ‘Deborah Ashworth,’ I said.

  She hooted with laughter. ‘Oh, that’s ridiculous. Why would I steal Dr Shroeder’s laptop? I’ve got an identical one myself!’

  ‘You did have,’ I said. ‘At the weekend, you accidentally tipped nail polish into it.’

  ‘I fixed it!’ Deborah protested.

  ‘According to my friend, Muddy, that would be very difficult. Beyond his capabilities. And, to be quite honest, if something technical is beyond my friend Muddy, it’s beyond just about everyone. Yet, apparently, you not only fixed it, you fixed it almost overnight.’

  Deborah pulled the laptop from a bag at her feet. ‘This is my computer. There’s no way you can prove otherwise.’

  ‘Wait, I don’t understand,’ said Mrs Hardyman. ‘Why would Nat cover up for this girl?’

  ‘Because he loves her,’ I said. ‘That’s where we come back to that soppy film I saw yesterday. Some people will do the craziest things for love. In this case, Nat was willing to be thrown out of university, maybe even end up with a police record, to show Deborah how much he loves her. He thought he might be able to change her mind about him. He thought that, just maybe, she’d stop thinking of him as a nerd if he did something like that for her sake, and that she might fall in love with him too.’

  ‘Nat?’ said Mrs Hardyman in a quiet voice. ‘Is this true?’

  Nat seemed to be looking in every possible direction at once, except at us. He ran his hands through his neatly combed hair, pulling at it sharply.

  ‘Outside this building,’ he said, barely above a whisper, ‘on Monday morning, I was talking to a couple of the girls on my course about what we’d done at the weekend. One of them told me about Debbie’s accident with her computer. I knew it couldn’t have been fixed. When I came inside, as soon as I saw the one under her arm, I knew it had to be Dr Shroeder’s.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ said Deborah sharply.

  ‘She looked at me,’ said Nat sadly. ‘Straight at me. Both of us knew what was going on, just from each other’s faces. I said, “I won’t tell.” She walked away.’

  I looked across at Nat’s three friends. They looked almost as agonised as Nat himself.

  ‘So why did these three back up his story?’ cried Mrs Hardyman. ‘Some friends they are!’

  ‘They backed up his story because they’re his friends,’ I said. ‘He asked them to.’

  ‘I told you it was a stupid idea, Nat,’ grumbled Matt. ‘I said it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘Nat thought that, if he went to the police and owned up to the crime, then he’d be charged and that would be that,’ I said. ‘But once again, Mrs Hardyman, because he’s a good boy who’s never been in trouble in his life, he didn’t realise that the police would want more than a simple confession.

  ‘So, after they let him go late on Monday, he called his three friends from home. He asked them to co
me forward as witnesses. And so, on Tuesday morning, bingo, out of the blue, there were suddenly three people backing up Nat’s version of events. My guess is that they were very reluctant to go along with Nat’s idea – as shown by the way they didn’t want to talk to anyone but the police about it – but they did it out of loyalty to their friend. They knew how much Nat loves Deborah.’

  ‘And we told him she wouldn’t care,’ said Anil. ‘The girl’s got a heart of stone.’

  ‘Listen,’ cried Deborah, ‘this is all lies. This computer belongs to me!’

  ‘We’ve no way of proving otherwise,’ said Dr Shroeder. ‘Miss Ashworth has had one of these laptops for a while. I can’t see that there would be any difference between mine and hers.’

  ‘Oh yes there is,’ I said. ‘Miss Ashworth, would you put the computer on this workbench and raise its screen?’

  Deborah glared at the rest of us for a moment, then with a huff and a shake of her head she did as I asked. ‘There! Happy?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Now, could you pull the two little catches that hold the keyboard in place and lift it out?’

  ‘What for?’ she said.

  ‘To prove whose computer this really is,’ I said. ‘Umm, Dr Shroeder, is that police officer going to get here soon?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dr Shroeder. ‘She said she’d be along as soon as possible.’

  Making a show of how good she was being by cooperating, Deborah lifted the computer’s keyboard, exposing a hole through which the machine’s innards could be seen.

  ‘Happy now?’ she said, frostily. ‘Standard components.’

  ‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘If everybody could make sure they don’t actually touch the computer now? Thank you.’

  I’d thought of a good way to demonstrate that this was indeed Dr Shroeder’s computer, based on something he’d told me the day before.

  Have you spotted it?

  ‘Dr Shroeder,’ I said, ‘you know more about these things than I do. Could you point out where the hard drive is?’

  Dr Shroeder frowned slightly, puzzled by my request. ‘It’s the small silver box on the right-hand side. The one with a white label on it. But why?’

  ‘Do you remember what you told me yesterday?’ I said.

  Suddenly, Dr Shroeder snapped his fingers and grinned. ‘I told you I’d upgraded the hard drive! Yes, I see! The thief wouldn’t have known that. That drive there is the exact model I installed.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Deborah flatly. ‘I also installed the same upgrade.’

  ‘You did? Yourself?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ snapped Deborah.

  ‘You didn’t get Dr Shroeder to do it for you?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘OoooKaaaay,’ I said. ‘So, when this police officer gets here . . . finally . . . we’ll be able to find out whose fingerprints are on that drive. If this is your computer, Deborah, then they’ll be your prints.’

  Deborah took a step back. Then another step. I knew she was going to make a run for it. I just knew. As soon as she bolted for the door, Mrs Hardyman was after her.

  ‘Oi! Get back here! I’ll teach you to break my boy’s heart, you nasty piece of work!’

  When they’d gone, Dr Shroeder turned to me. ‘Why did she do it? She’s such a good student, why would she steal my computer?’

  I shrugged. ‘Just to replace her own. Just so she wouldn’t look like a twit for ruining her expensive gear. Just so she could stay looking cool, with one of those trendy machines under her arm.’

  ‘Astonishing,’ said Dr Shroeder. ‘What motivated her was so feeble and shallow, and yet what motivated Nat was the strongest emotion in the world, a force powerful enough to overcome his reason, his common sense, his rational thought.’

  ‘I am still in the room,’ muttered Nat.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ said Matt, patting Nat on the back. ‘We’ll all go over to my place. I’ve just got Star Trek on Blu-ray.’

  He followed them out of the office, looking as miserable and bedraggled as a small furry animal that’s just fought its way out of a flushing toilet.

  Dr Shroeder sighed. ‘You can’t choose who you love,’ he said.

  The police officer arrived at Dr Shroeder’s office a couple of hours later, by which time I was back at my garden shed. She was able to confirm that Dr Shroeder’s fingerprints were on the hard drive. (Thank goodness. If they’d turned out to be Deborah’s, I don’t know what I’d have done!)

  Nat was reinstated on to the advanced mathematics course the following day, at about the same time as Deborah Ashworth was being questioned by the police. Once the situation at school was back to normal, Mrs Hardyman started giving me extra dollops of vegetable stew whenever she saw me in the dinner queue. I’d much rather have had an extra dollop of the chocolate pudding, but I guess she was just trying to be kind.

  Meanwhile, back at my garden shed, I flopped into my Thinking Chair and vowed that I would never let my heart rule my head. Dr Shroeder had been absolutely right about Nat’s motive.

  And this is where we get back to the point I was making way back at the start of Chapter One. Remembering all the crime stories I’d read, I was reminded that Sherlock Holmes had one or two things to say about love. Mostly rather grumpy things, I seem to recall. Emotions are funny things, certainly when it came to Nat Hardyman’s motive.

  I simply hadn’t seen it because I was concentrating on my role as a detective, on staying logical. Sometimes, I said to myself, I guess you have to take account of the illogical and the intuitive as well.

  I jotted down some notes and sat in my Thinking Chair mulling over the strange and peculiar things that grown-ups do. It was only later on, as I placed my notes into my filing cabinet, that I realised I still hadn't done my science homework.

  Oh poo.

  Case closed.

  CASE FILE TWENTY-ONE:

  THE FINAL PROBLEM

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  I MEANT TO GET MY science homework done on time. I really did. But I got distracted.

  I was in my garden shed, or my Crime HQ as I prefer to call it. I had my science homework open on the desk. I’d read through the questions carefully and I had my pen poised over my workbook, ready to begin.

  And then there was a knock at the shed door.

  For the tiniest fraction of a nano-second, I thought about pretending I wasn’t in. This science homework needed doing and it needed doing right now. But when you’re a brilliant schoolboy detective, like me, a simple knock on the door can mean the start of something big.

  Hmm. Science homework, or the possibility of an important new investigation? Hmmmmmm . . .

  ‘Come in!’ I cried.

  Two people entered the shed. The first was my great friend Isobel ‘Izzy’ Moustique, that well-known genius and St Egbert’s School’s Commander-in-Chief of All Research Data, whose talent for finding information has played a vital part in many of my case files.

  The second was Jeremy Sweetly, a boy who’s also in my class at school, and who happens to live across the street from me. He’s a nice guy and we all like him, but he’s a bit . . . weeeeeell, I don’t want to sound unkind, but . . . he’s a bit weedy. A bit wet. A bit of a drip. (You may remember him from my earlier case file The Mark of the Purple Homework.) I was relieved to see that he hadn’t brought his horrible great slobbery dog Humphrey with him. I hate that dog.

  ‘Hello, you two,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘We’ve got a bit of a problem,’ trembled Jeremy.

  Izzy noticed the workbook on the desk. ‘Oh, you’re doing your science homework. We’ll come back later.’

  ‘No, that’s OK, come on in,’ I said, gratefully flipping the workbook shut.

  Jeremy gasped. ‘Haven’t you finished your science homework yet?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Jeremy gasped again. ‘That should have been done ages ago.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

&nbs
p; ‘Aren’t you worried you’ll be in trouble?’ He gawped at me like a startled goldfish.

  ‘Yes, no, yes, oh I dunno,’ I grumbled. ‘Anyway, tell me about this problem.’

  ‘You tell him,’ said Jeremy to Izzy. ‘I’m still too upset to get it straight in my head.’

  Izzy, who was wearing her usual out-of-school gear (brightly coloured everything with added glitter), flicked a hanky across my desk to dust it down.

  ‘What’s the matter with boys?’ she muttered. ‘All live in pigsties.’ She parked herself on the desk and turned to me.

  ‘Jeremy and I are half of the St Egbert’s team in the Brain Boom Schools Quiz Challenge,’ she said. She tutted and shook her head. ‘Sorry, I’m forgetting, you already know that.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I definitely already know that.’

  The whole of St Egbert’s School definitely already knew that. Izzy and Jeremy, along with two kids from Mr Nailshott’s class, had been specially picked for the team. The Brain Boom Schools Quiz Challenge was a general knowledge knockout competition that some-education-department-or-other was running with one of the nearby radio stations, Vibe FM.

  They’d started with sixteen schools. The St Egbert’s team had battled their way through three rounds and had now qualified for the grand final. (Round one had been quite tricky, but Izzy and co had absolutely wiped the floor with their opponents in the quarter-finals, while the semi-finals had been a real nail-chewer.)

  Our team was the Head’s pride and joy at the moment. She seemed to be spending all day skipping up and down the corridors and accidentally-on-purpose mentioning the team to visitors and reminding Izzy and co to eat plenty of fresh fish and get enough sleep.

  ‘So, when’s the grand final?’ I asked.

  Izzy and Jeremy glared at me, pop-eyed. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been listening to it all on the radio?’ grumbled Izzy.

  ‘I heard the ones you two were in, obviously,’ I said, ‘but I’ve been very busy working on a case. I thought I might write it up as The Adventure of the Twisted Sparrow.’