8 Top Marks for Murder

by Robin Stevens

  ‘First things first,’ said Daisy, when Kitty had returned, bubbling with second-hand gossip from the Big Girls about the horrid incident they had witnessed, and we were all seated in a circle on the floor. ‘Cut me a slice of cake, if you please, Kitty … Excellent. Now, I shall call this extraordinary meeting of the Detective Society to order. Present, Daisy Wells, Hazel Wong, Kitty Freebody and Lavinia Temple. Absent on Society business: Rebecca Martineau. To discuss: the poisoning of Mrs Rivers, and the continuing mystery of the murder in Oakeshott Woods. Hazel, will you give me the new facts of the case?’

  I took a deep breath and said: ‘Victim: Mrs Rivers. Time and place of crime: Deepdean School Hall, during the gala dinner on Saturday night. The victim was carried away at 8:42 p.m. We don’t know if she’s dead yet – or if anyone else will be affected – but Daisy and I have seen this before. It’s arsenic poisoning … it has to be.’

  ‘Indeed, it looks like it. And, really – good grief! I must admit that I was not expecting someone entirely unconnected to the investigation thus far to be poisoned.’

  ‘At least you’re admitting you don’t know everything, for once,’ said Lavinia.

  ‘Oh, do stop it!’ said Daisy. ‘I could hardly say anything else. This has thrown the whole case on its head. Why on earth was Mrs Rivers poisoned this evening? Does it have anything to do with what Beanie saw in the woods? Is this the same mystery, or quite another one?’

  ‘It has to be another one, doesn’t it?’ said Kitty.

  ‘But the suspects we were watching were both on Mrs Rivers’ table!’ I said. ‘Mr Turnbull and Mr Stone. That’s too much of a coincidence. I know we need to wait to see if anyone else in the Hall has been poisoned before we jump to conclusions, but … it’s not likely, is it? I mean – it’s not the simplest explanation.’

  ‘This is very true,’ said Daisy. ‘Life is extraordinarily odd, but the fact is that usually, when several crimes occur together, they do so because one single person or group of people is behind them. So, Detectives, give me some suggestions that would fit all our facts.’

  ‘What if Mrs Rivers saw the same thing Beanie did?’ suggested Lavinia. ‘She might have been walking in the woods, and seen the strangling – or the murderer … seen him dragging the body! And the murderer might have found out. So she might have died because she knew too much.’

  ‘Mr Stone was staring at her oddly all the way through dinner,’ I said. ‘And Mr Turnbull looked terribly upset at something she said to him – I think it was about Mrs Turnbull not being there. What if she said that because she wanted to needle him, because she knows that he killed Mrs Turnbull yesterday?’

  ‘Good,’ said Daisy. ‘Excellent, and very true. This could be the answer. Except that … when we heard Mrs Rivers talking to Mr Turnbull in Deepdean town this morning, she didn’t sound as though she was suspicious about Mrs Turnbull yet, did she? Bother! It doesn’t quite fit.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said suddenly. I had suddenly got a creeping feeling all up and down my back. So many things did not quite fit, not unless … ‘I’ve had a thought. I think you’re right, Daisy, that this must be connected to what Beanie saw, but … what if what Beanie saw wasn’t actually what she thought she did?’

  Everyone stared at me.

  ‘Explain,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Beanie saw a man strangle a woman on the ridge. We went up it and looked, and we proved that the man and woman were there, that they struggled, and that the man carried the woman away. But – what if she wasn’t dead when she was carried down the hill again? What if she was only unconscious? The green hat we found had dark hairs on it, didn’t it? Mrs Rivers is dark-haired. Well … what if the woman Beanie saw was Mrs Rivers? And what if the murder she thought she saw yesterday didn’t really happen – until this evening?’

  2

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Daisy.

  I felt trembly with all the thoughts dashing through my brain. This – at last – made sense. ‘Mrs Rivers has been wearing high-necked dresses,’ I said, remembering. ‘It might have been to hide the bruising!’

  ‘That is … Why, that is an entirely elegant solution, Watson! It requires us to alter some of our thinking, but it fits perfectly. If you are right, we are still looking for a man who is attending the Deepdean Anniversary, but his victim is no longer a mystery to us. That means … that means that even if Mrs Rivers does die of poisoning this evening, there has only been one murder thus far, not two!’

  I was still working through everything. It all fitted – all of it – except …

  ‘But if it was Mrs Rivers Beanie saw being strangled, why didn’t she come forward to say what happened?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t she tell the police?’

  ‘That’s not hard to work out,’ said Daisy. ‘I assume the man threatened her. After all, he almost killed her.’

  ‘Yes, but why wouldn’t she just go to Miss Barnard’s office, or speak to the Inspector at the exhibition matches?’ I asked. ‘She’d feel safe at Deepdean, since she used to go here when she was a girl.’

  ‘Hazel, you are being difficult,’ said Daisy, with narrowed eyes. ‘There are lots of ways to threaten someone. You can do it with just a look or a word at the right moment. And he might know a secret of hers – something that would be ruinous to her if it came out.’

  ‘We know Mrs Rivers’ husband is dead!’ said Kitty. ‘Barny said so yesterday, didn’t she? Ooh, what if Mrs R murdered him!’

  ‘How very sensational of you, Kitty,’ said Daisy. ‘But, yes, that is the sort of thing I mean. Now, if Mrs Rivers believed she was in danger, she could have been taking care not to go about on her own. If so, it would explain why she was always seen with Miss Barnard. But in a crowded room, at one of the Anniversary events, she would have felt safe enough to let her guard down. Of course, we now know that she was not safe at all!

  ‘I think it makes sense to suggest that Hazel is correct in her assumptions, and that the woman strangled in the woods and the woman poisoned at dinner tonight are one and the same. We only have one victim! So, what do we know about Mrs Rivers? And why would someone try so hard to bump her off?’

  ‘She’s on the school Council, of course,’ said Kitty at once. ‘She’s Barny’s sister – er, the headmistress’s sister – and she used to go to Deepdean too. And she used to have a husband, but he died.’

  I remembered something else Miss Barnard had said in Deepdean town that morning. ‘When her husband died, she took charge of his company,’ I added.

  ‘What is the Council, by the way?’ asked Lavinia. ‘You keep on talking about it, but I’ve no idea what it is. What do the Council members do?’

  ‘They are a fearfully important group!’ said Daisy. ‘They decide things like where our fee money goes, who works at Deepdean, and who is allowed to attend it. And when girls do truly awful things, it’s the Council who decides that they can’t be at Deepdean any more.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ said Lavinia.

  ‘That’s life!’ said Daisy. ‘It happens everywhere. So that’s Mrs Rivers – or, at least, the beginning of understanding her. An old Deepdeanite, a powerful member of the school Council, a widow, the sister of the headmistress. But we certainly must discover more about her, at our earliest opportunity. Write that down, Hazel.

  ‘Now, the next question is who? Who could have murdered her this evening?’

  ‘Anyone in the Hall, of course,’ said Kitty. ‘Or anyone in the kitchen!’

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘That’s not true. Daisy and Beanie and I were watching the whole dinner, from the moment they all sat down. The way the food and drink was served – the wine was all from bottles and decanters, the first course and main courses were handed out at random on plates, and the rest of the main course was served on platters by Beryl and Nancy. The poison couldn’t have been in anything sent out from the kitchen – there was no way of knowing who would get what.’

  ‘Hazel is quite right,’ said Daisy. ‘I recall di
stinctly that, during the first two courses, the only people who approached Table Four were Nancy and Beryl, the maids on dinner duty – and members of Table Four itself. Mr Stone and Mrs Dow were the only two people who got up from their places and went past Mrs Rivers. Apart from them, no one came near her. So the only people who might have been able to pass her something, or put something into her food or drink …’

  ‘Were the people on Table Four with her!’ I said. ‘Mr Stone, Mr Turnbull, Mr and Mrs Thompson-Bates, Mr and Mrs El Maghrabi, and Mr and Mrs Dow.’

  ‘Yes, but we can narrow things down even further,’ said Daisy, eyes extremely blue. ‘Beanie saw a man on the hill, strangling the woman we now believe was Mrs Rivers. Therefore we must be looking for a male murderer. Our suspect list is five – Mr Stone, Mr Turnbull, Mr Thompson-Bates, Mr Dow and Mr El Maghrabi. Now, does anyone have thoughts as to why one of them might want to murder Mrs Rivers?’

  ‘If she’s in charge of who’s allowed to be at Deepdean, what if she was threatening to expel one of their daughters?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, very good, Watson!’ said Daisy. ‘And I know just the person. Amina’s prank yesterday made Mrs Rivers furious. We saw Mr El Maghrabi in a heated discussion with Mrs Rivers over dinner – perhaps they were arguing about whether she should be allowed to continue at Deepdean. What else?’

  ‘What if she wouldn’t give a girl a scholarship, or make them a prefect?’ I suggested.

  ‘Why would parents care, though?’ asked Lavinia. ‘Mine wouldn’t.’

  ‘Ugh, you’re lucky!’ said Kitty. ‘Mine are already awfully worried that I won’t be a prefect. Parents get all het up about the stupidest things where their children are concerned.’

  ‘That is an excellent observation, Detective Freebody,’ said Daisy, and I knew that she, like me, was thinking about what we had overheard between Kitty’s parents in the park. ‘Let’s see, isn’t Lallie Thompson-Bates in line for a tennis scholarship, and Ella Turnbull for a music scholarship? And Jennifer Stone’s a Big Girl – she might be a prefect next year.’

  We all pondered these ideas.

  ‘I’m sure Mrs R had a dark past!’ said Lavinia with relish. ‘I bet she’s a cheat or a thief – or a murderer herself, like Kitty said!’

  ‘Or what if she’s a smuggler, along with Mr Stone!’ cried Kitty. ‘Perhaps that’s why he was staring at her.’

  ‘Detective Freebody, I shall bar you from this meeting unless you are more sensible,’ said Daisy. ‘Come on, Detectives, think harder!’

  ‘We are thinking!’ said Kitty. ‘It’s you who’re rejecting perfectly good suggestions!’

  ‘What about method?’ I said, as loudly as was safe, for it was quite clear that we had got as far as we could with motive. ‘Are we quite sure what she died of?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s much doubt,’ said Daisy. ‘Arsenic! We know those symptoms, Hazel. And if so, it’s fearsomely easy to get hold of, as we know well. Rat poison, fly papers … it’s everywhere! But you are correct, we must discover exactly where the murderer got it from, and when and how he administered it. Arsenic takes at least half an hour to work, so I would suggest that Mrs Rivers must have taken it during the first course – either in her food or in her drink. I think we must stage a re-creation of the scene to work out how our poisoner could have given Mrs Rivers the dose. And as the case has changed so much, we need an entirely new suspect list! But first, I believe that it is time to discover a little more about the people on Table Four – and relieve Beanie, of course. Hazel, it is time for another night-time excursion.’

  SUSPECT LIST

  Mr Turnbull. His wife Artemis (an opera singer with an international reputation) was supposed to perform at the concert on Friday night, but she did not attend! MOTIVE: Possibly worried about Ella’s music scholarship? We must discover more. NB Where is Mrs Turnbull? Mr T was a suspect before the poisoning!

  Mr Stone. According to Uncle Felix, he is a smuggler! He has also recently been to Paris. MOTIVE: None yet – but he was observed staring angrily at Mrs Rivers on more than one occasion and at dinner he got up and spoke to her. We have observed him smoking. He was a suspect before the poisoning!

  Mr Thompson-Bates. MOTIVE: Possibly worried about Lallie’s tennis scholarship (he seemed upset at her exhibition match), but we must discover more.

  Mr Dow. MOTIVE: Unclear – but Mrs Dow seemed very unhappy at the dinner.

  Mr El Maghrabi. MOTIVE: Possible that he wants to stop Amina from being expelled?

  PLAN OF ACTION

  Find out whether Mrs Rivers is truly dead.

  Find out more about Mrs Rivers! Why would someone want to murder her?

  Discover more about our five suspects.

  Discover how the murderer got hold of the arsenic.

  Stage a reconstruction, to work out how the poison was given to Mrs Rivers.

  Speak to Inspector Priestley to confirm that the poison was arsenic – and that no one else was affected.

  3

  We climbed down the rope of sheets again. I was beginning to worry that it would rip under our weight and my hands were aching from clinging to it.

  ‘Psst!’ came a little voice as we reached the bottom of the rope – and Beanie stepped out of the shadows. She was trembling, but her shoulders were set and her hands were clenched. I am always more impressed with Beanie’s bravery than almost anyone else’s, for I know how much it costs her.

  ‘I watched for ages,’ she whispered. ‘The Inspector made everyone on Mrs Rivers’ table stay in the Hall so he could see if they become ill. I think he thinks what you do – that someone else on Table Four must be responsible for what happened to her.’

  ‘And?’ asked Daisy eagerly.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Beanie, shaking her head. ‘No one’s ill at all. But they’re all looking at each other as though they can’t believe it. Mrs Dow came back – or rather the Inspector made her come back. She and Mrs Thompson-Bates can’t stop shaking, and Mr Stone looks as though he wants to cry.’

  ‘And?’ I asked.

  ‘And Mrs Minn came in looking very upset, just before ten. She whispered in the Inspector’s ear and then he looked very serious. He said something to them all and then Mr Stone did cry.’

  ‘Crying!’ said Daisy. ‘That’s interesting – very interesting. Mr Stone keeps on having dramatic emotions around Mrs Rivers! Make a note of it, Hazel.’

  ‘Mr Thompson-Bates was almost sick too, but not with poisoning, just horror. I think – I’m sure – Mrs Rivers is dead!’

  ‘So it is a murder,’ breathed Daisy. ‘What’s the Inspector doing now, Beanie?’

  ‘Questioning them, I think,’ said Beanie. ‘He looked all official.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said Daisy. ‘Go on back up to the dorm, Detective Martineau. Hazel and I will go and investigate our suspects’ rooms while we have time.’

  ‘You’ve done excellently well,’ I said to Beanie. ‘Thank you.’

  Beanie beamed. And I knew that, although she was frightened, this evening had been important to her. After what she had discovered about her mother yesterday, she needed a distraction as much as Daisy did. They were both hiding from something in their lives that they could not bear to face yet.

  It was quarter past ten and finally turning dark as we began to make our way towards Deepdean town at last – not the way to school, but the way that winds down through Oakeshott Woods, a way hemmed with trees that rustled coolly around us as though they had secrets. Every lift and flinch of a branch in the wind made me start, and Daisy had to put a soothing hand on my shoulder.

  ‘It’s all right, Hazel,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve survived much worse, haven’t we?’

  We had – but, all the same, I was afraid. There was so much unknown in this case. Mrs Rivers’ poisoning had tripped us up, a sly foot stuck out from a row of desks when your eyes are on the mistress calling you up to the front of the form room for punishment, and now I felt I could not trust that anything was safe
and as it seemed. At last I was sure that this was at least an attempted murder – but that certainty was dreadful.

  We came out of the woods, into the curving twilit streets of Deepdean. It was almost half past ten by my wristwatch, and the lights in most houses were burning low, doors closed, curtains drawn. A few dogs barked as we walked by, but we met no one until we turned out onto the Parade. Its lamps were lit, a few cars gliding smoothly along the road, and there, next to Deepdean Park, we saw the Majestic Hotel, as bright as a ship on the ocean.

  ‘Where to?’ I asked Daisy.

  ‘Round the back,’ she said at once. ‘Come on, let’s go!’

  The back of the Majestic was darker, dingier – but there was a light above a little black door that stood half open, and this was what Daisy motioned me through.

  We crept inside, my heart thumping in my chest in case we were stopped and questioned, but although I could hear the clatter and steam of a kitchen somewhere ahead of us, and a rumble of voices beyond that, we saw no one.

  ‘This way,’ said Daisy, pulling me through yet another door and into a room that, for a moment, I thought was full of clouds. Heaps of whiteness, a soft, clean smell and a rolling warmth – but then I blinked and saw that we were still firmly on the ground. The clouds were only linen: towels and tablecloths and handkerchiefs all piled up together. It was like House’s airing cupboard, but enormous.

  ‘Oh!’ I said, startled. ‘Daisy, what are you doing?’

  ‘Getting our disguises,’ said Daisy, busily sorting through the piles. ‘Here, look!’ She held up something frilly, looking absolutely triumphant. ‘Chambermaids’ aprons and caps. Put them on, hurry up! We won’t have long before the Inspector has finished questioning our suspects, and then they’ll come back to the hotel. We have to use every minute of that time!’