8 Top Marks for Murder

by Robin Stevens

  ‘Rebecca Martineau,’ said Beanie. ‘I’m in the fourth form. I’ve been – I’ve been talking to Emily. I know how she feels.’

  ‘Oh, have you? Really? Thank you, thank you – I can’t tell you how much she needs a kind ear … how much I wish – well, when I was at Deepdean, the older girls weren’t like you, you know.’

  She suddenly sounded rather like a shrimp, and when she caught hold of Beanie’s hand, I could not tell who was comforting who.

  ‘Gosh, were you at Deepdean?’ asked Daisy, chattering breathily away. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  Mrs Dow blinked at her and then turned back to Beanie.

  ‘You didn’t like it here,’ said Beanie, still gentle.

  ‘May I tell you a secret?’ whispered Mrs Dow – and now she truly did remind me of a shrimp. She had the same scared, shy look about her that Emily did, as though she was afraid the whole world might bite her. ‘I hated every day of it. The bigger girls were awful, and I was so homesick. I remember clinging to my bedframe at home at the end of every holiday, so I wouldn’t have to go back. Just seeing Oakeshott Hill from the car still makes me feel sick to my stomach. It’s so hard to be back here, with the people who were so horrible to me. Even if – well – their lives haven’t all been roses, either. Even if their husbands … well, that’s not for me to talk about.

  ‘I didn’t want Emily to go away to school, but Godfrey insisted. His schooldays were the happiest of his life – he hasn’t been quite the same since. He really has had the most rotten luck – didn’t pass the Civil Service exams, and then he was fired from a very promising job, and now he keeps on not being promoted. I don’t mind, of course, but he does – I think it’s rather hard for him too, being here with so many other Old Westonians. Now, they are successful. He’s been a bear with a sore head all weekend but I haven’t wanted to say anything and— Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this!’

  ‘But you need to tell someone,’ whispered Beanie. ‘I know.’

  Mrs Dow laughed shakily. ‘This all feels like a dream,’ she went on. ‘Jean dead, and now Cordelia – it’s as though I dreamed it. I did, you know, quite a lot. Dreamed that they were all gone, and they couldn’t hurt me any more! I suppose I oughtn’t to have wished it – after all— Well, never mind.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Beanie.

  ‘I really shouldn’t be saying any of this,’ muttered Mrs Dow. ‘I must go and find Godfrey – excuse me – I don’t know what I was thinking …’

  And she pulled back from Beanie and went hurrying away across the lawn, her dress fluttering in the breeze.

  Beanie looked stricken, and I could tell she was feeling dreadfully sorry for Mrs Dow. But – could we trust her? Or had Mrs Dow just given herself a motive for both poisonings?

  ‘Girls!’ Miss Lappet shouted from Library corridor, waving her hands. ‘Get inside immediately! Come on!’

  ‘Come on, everyone,’ said Daisy, her head high, and she stalked away towards the doors to Library corridor. We had to follow her. Once again, we were being cut off from the crime scene. But would we be able to put all our facts in order in time to solve the case?

  3

  With the Hall still out of bounds, and the lawns the scene of yet another poisoning, parents and Council members were led into Big Girls’ Wing to be soothed and looked after by the mistresses, while the rest of us were crammed into Old Wing to fend for ourselves until order could be restored.

  ‘They must be calling the police!’ Daisy kept on saying. ‘Oh, they’ll utterly ruin my crime scene, the clodhoppers. I wonder if the Inspector will arrive with them. Oh bother, this is dreadful!’

  ‘I’ve got a headache,’ said Kitty, who was back from her mission to San. She had been stopped at the door by Mrs Minn, and sent away at the same time as Mr Martineau, so hadn’t been able to find out anything helpful. ‘I keep on thinking about Mum and Dad – and, oh, Beanie!’

  Beanie began to chew violently on the end of her plait.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I whispered to her.

  ‘No,’ Beanie whispered back. ‘It’s all so awful – Mrs Dow and Emily, and poor Mrs Thompson-Bates. I can’t bear it. I want to go home – oh, no I don’t! I can’t – not without Mummy!’

  ‘That’s grown-ups for you,’ said Daisy. ‘You should never rely on them. Now, the only thing for it is a Detective Society meeting, otherwise we shall all keep on moping and go spare. To the cloakroom at once!’

  The Old Wing cloakroom had once been the scene of a most important detective breakthrough for us. It has a thick, woolly smell, and is not much used in the summer, but, all the same, Lavinia and Beanie went to check the loo cubicles while Kitty and I leaned against the door to make sure no one else could come in.

  ‘Clear,’ Lavinia called. ‘Clear – ugh, this one’s all blocked up.’

  ‘That is not an important detail,’ said Daisy, rolling her eyes. ‘All right, Detectives, now that we have secured the perimeter, gather round, and let us discuss the developments in the case. The first thing to point out is that it seems we have another poisoning. Mrs Thompson-Bates! But why? Why has the poisoner struck again? And why was the victim Mrs Thompson-Bates?’

  ‘About that,’ I said; ‘what I said earlier: I think – I think she was the wrong victim, Daisy.’

  I told the Society what I had discovered from looking at the glasses. ‘It wasn’t hers that was poisoned!’ I explained. ‘I think Mr Thompson-Bates was the person who should have died, only he ended up holding both their glasses when she sneezed, and then he accidentally gave her his glass back and kept hers.’

  Beanie gasped. Even Daisy looked impressed. ‘Good heavens, Watson!’ she said. ‘What deductive skills you are honing! Well – I can’t argue much with that.’

  ‘And, Daisy – it was Mr Stone who gave Mr Thompson-Bates his drink. But I didn’t see him drinking from it before Mrs Thompson-Bates sneezed,’ I said. ‘So Mr Stone’s extremely suspicious.’

  ‘Good, Hazel. Very true. Now, what about our other suspects? When Beanie and I interviewed Mrs Dow, she mentioned that her husband felt resentful of his schoolmates’ success. The Dows were standing just behind Mr and Mrs Thompson-Bates during the party – what if one of them managed to slip arsenic into Mr Thompson-Bates’s drink?’

  ‘They could have,’ I said, frowning. ‘But I know who couldn’t – Mr El Maghrabi. He and Mrs El Maghrabi went off to look for Amina, and before that they were nowhere near the Thompson-Bateses.’

  ‘Unless he gave Mr Stone the poison when they talked earlier, and Mr Stone put it in the glass before he handed it to …’ Daisy began. Then she shook her head. ‘No, the evidence of my own eyes proves that didn’t happen. Vice-President Wong is correct. We can rule out Mr El Maghrabi from this second crime. Now, Kitty, what did you overhear?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Kitty, ‘but enough to know that Minny’s sure it’s poison, and probably arsenic – that’s why she rushed Mrs T-B away. She’s hoping she can save her. Mr T-B won’t leave her side, he’s absolutely distraught.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Daisy, nodding. ‘Arsenic, again!’

  ‘They had the same symptoms,’ I agreed. ‘It fits!’

  ‘Talking of things fitting, how on earth does this follow on from Mrs Rivers’ murder? Why would the murderer kill again, now? I think Hazel’s idea is a clever one – it makes sense that Mr T-B was the intended victim this time, not his wife – but let us be rigorous before we rule her out of being the intended victim. Can we think of any possible reason why anyone would want to kill Mrs Thompson-Bates?’

  ‘What if Mrs T-B saw the murderer giving poison to Mrs Rivers at Saturday’s dinner?’ said Lavinia.

  ‘How?’ asked Daisy. ‘She wasn’t sitting next to Mrs Rivers, was she?’

  ‘All right, then – Mrs Dow might have wanted to kill Mrs Thompson-Bates because she was cruel to her at school.’

  ‘Yes, but that works for Mr Thompson-Bates too. Mr Dow is jealous of him because he’s doin
g so much better – he might have wanted to murder him because of that. Really, either victim works equally well, if it was the Dows.’

  ‘What if Mr Thompson-Bates wanted to kill his wife because she’s rich and he needs to pay off his gambling debts?’ I suggested.

  ‘Very thorough, Hazel! You are right that we must consider everyone at the scene of the crime. But if he is behind this poisoning, how does that explain Mrs Rivers? We’ve worked out that Mrs Rivers’ death couldn’t have been random. She has to have been the intended victim. And since that is true …’

  ‘The most likely answer is that Mr Thompson-Bates saw the murderer,’ said Beanie. ‘He was sitting next to Mrs Rivers, after all.’

  ‘Exactly, Detective Martineau. That is the first really useful thing anyone has said in this meeting so far,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Daisy!’ I said.

  ‘So if the intended victim this time was Mr Thompson-Bates, that means he’s ruled out,’ said Lavinia.

  ‘It’s all a muddle,’ said Kitty, making a face. ‘What? It’s true! All these victims and suspects … and I still don’t understand how all the different bits fit together.’

  ‘Well,’ said Daisy, ‘Hazel, will you summarize the facts of the case so far for us all, so we can consider them?’

  ‘Beanie saw a man choking a woman in Oakeshott Woods on Friday morning,’ I said carefully. ‘She wasn’t close enough to see what either of them looked like, only that they were both quite tall. She saw her fall to the ground, we found a matchbox, an invitation, and a hat with strands of dark hair on its brim in the woods, but no body.

  ‘On Saturday evening, Mr and Mrs El Maghrabi, Mr and Mrs Thompson-Bates, Mr and Mrs Dow, Mr Turnbull and Mr Stone were on Table Four at the gala dinner with Mrs Rivers. Food was served randomly on plates, and drink from bottles and decanters. Mr and Mrs El Maghrabi and Mrs Dow refused their first course, but everyone else was given a plate. Mr Stone and Mrs Dow got up and walked past Mrs Rivers, and Mr Thompson-Bates and Mr El Maghrabi were sitting next to her. During the main course, Mrs Rivers was taken ill and later died, with symptoms that point to arsenic poisoning.

  ‘This afternoon, at the garden party, Mr and Mrs Thompson-Bates, Mr and Mrs Dow and Mr Stone were standing close together during Miss Barnard’s speech. At some point, we know that Mr and Mrs Thompson-Bates’s glasses became mixed up. Everyone was distracted by Amina El Maghrabi’s banner, and later, after the toast, Mrs Thompson-Bates was taken ill with the same symptoms as Mrs Rivers. And that’s all we know.’

  ‘Well,’ said Daisy, ‘that’s excellent. Don’t you see? Mr and Mrs Dow, or Mr Stone. It must be one of them.’

  4

  ‘But how do we prove it? Ah, there’s the rub.’

  Daisy has got very fond of Shakespeare since our case at the Rue. I stared at her until she sighed and said, ‘Is there anything else you think we should consider before we close this meeting?’

  ‘There’s one thing that I think is odd, if it was Mr Stone,’ said Kitty, butting in.

  ‘What?’ asked Daisy, frowning at her, for she likes to be the one to make mysterious pronouncements.

  ‘Well, what Beanie saw was so … fierce,’ said Kitty. ‘Choking someone! It’s nasty, and it’s not like poisoning them.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ said Lavinia. ‘It’s all murder.’

  ‘No, Kitty’s right!’ I said, for something had been nagging at the back of my mind about that. ‘Why, after trying to strangle someone, would you switch to poison the following day? It’s a very different sort of way to kill someone. It’s … more polite. And also, why didn’t the killer finish the job in the woods, so that the poison wasn’t needed?’

  ‘Perhaps the woods were only supposed to be a threat?’ suggested Lavinia. ‘If Mrs Rivers didn’t do what the killer wanted, he’d really murder her?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Daisy. ‘That is an interesting question.’

  ‘But the arsenic makes it seem as though the plan was to kill her all along,’ I said. ‘There isn’t any arsenic in the Hall, is there? So the poisoner had to know what was going to happen before they arrived that evening.’

  Daisy took a deep breath to tell me to stop being so silly, and then she let it out again.

  ‘I do admit that is … a point,’ she said. ‘Not an important point, obviously, but … well, how did the poisoner get hold of the poison? Did he – they – buy it from a shop? Or did he concoct it himself? It’s not hard to do, as we know.

  ‘Now, I have two suggestions for our next steps. First, we must get ourselves into San, to see if we can find out anything else from the people there. And second, we need to recreate the second poisoning to see exactly how it could have been done. It’s amazing to me that no one saw the poison go into the glass. But we have to do everything quickly. The play’s this evening, and after that the weekend will be over – and so, it is very possible, will Deepdean School.’

  SUSPECT LIST

  Mr Turnbull. His wife Artemis … She did not attend! MOTIVE: Possibly worried about Ella’s music scholarship? We must discover more. NB Where is Mrs Turnbull? He was a suspect before the poisoning! RULED OUT from the strangling! Mrs Turnbull is safe and sound – and she has given her husband an alibi for the altercation Beanie saw in Oakeshott Woods on Friday morning!

  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 spoken to her. We have observed him smoking. He was a suspect before the poisoning! He seems to have been in love with Mrs Rivers, but she was trying to rebuff him. Did he take revenge? NOTES: He has been to Paris recently!

  MOTIVE for the first poisoning: he loved her, but she rejected him, and he is the sort of person who is not used to being rejected! OPPORTUNITY for the first poisoning: he was at the other end of the table to Mrs Rivers, but he did stand up and speak to her just after the first course was brought in. This is highly irregular behaviour, and could have been a cover for her poisoning.

  MOTIVE for the second poisoning: could Mr T-B have seen something at the table on the night of Mrs Rivers’ murder? OPPORTUNITY for the second poisoning: he gave a glass to Mr Thompson-Bates, which was swapped with Mrs Thompson-Bates’s glass when she sneezed!

  Mr Thompson-Bates. MOTIVE: Possibly worried about Lallie’s tennis scholarship (he seemed upset at her exhibition match) but we must discover more. He has a gambling addiction, he smokes and he also has been on a losing streak in his tennis games. Has he been pawning his wife’s jewellery? But how does this fit in with the murder? NOTES: he has been to Paris recently! RULED OUT! We have discovered that HE was the intended target for the second murder, and so must look at him as a victim rather than a potential murderer.

  Mr and Mrs Dow. MOTIVE: Unclear – but Mrs Dow seemed very unhappy at the dinner. He was at Weston at the same time Mrs Rivers was at Deepdean – did they know each other? MOTIVE for the first poisoning: Mrs Dow was bullied at school, and Mrs Rivers seems to have been one of the girls who was cruel to her.

  OPPORTUNITY for the first poisoning: Mrs Dow stood up and ran past Mrs Rivers during the first course.

  MOTIVE for the second poisoning: Mr Dow bears a grudge against Mr Thompson-Bates for being more successful than him, and Mrs Dow clearly dislikes Mrs Thompson-Bates.

  OPPORTUNITY for the second poisoning: they were standing near the Thompson-Bateses at the party, when Amina distracted everyone with her banner. Either of them could have used this as an opportunity to drop poison into Mr Thompson-Bates’s glass! NB How does this fit in with the strangling in the woods, though?

  Mr El Maghrabi. MOTIVE: Possible that he wants to stop Amina from being expelled? He seems to be obsessed with Mrs Rivers’ dead husband and his business deals – does he have a vendetta against the Riverses? Did he murder her to get revenge? RULED OUT! Mr and Mrs El Maghrabi were nowhere near Mr and Mrs Thompson-Bates during the party. He could not have poison
ed Mr Thompson-Bates’s glass, and so, since the same poison seems to have been used for Mrs Rivers as Mrs Thompson-Bates, it is clear that he cannot be guilty.

  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.

  Stage a reconstruction of the second poisoning, to work out how it could have happened.

  Get into San and discover all we can there.

  5

  ‘But how are we going to get into San?’ I asked, looking at our plan of action. ‘We can’t use ipecac this time!’

  ‘I could punch you,’ offered Lavinia.

  ‘No one is punching anyone,’ said Daisy. ‘And I am going as well as Hazel.’

  ‘Why is it you who gets to go to San, Daisy?’ asked Kitty. ‘I can pretend to be ill just as well as you can.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m the President,’ said Daisy. ‘What I say goes, all right? Stop being insubordinate, Detective Freebody. And it’s perfectly obvious how we can get into San. It ought to be obvious to all of you.’

  We all looked puzzled.

  ‘You have no imaginations!’ said Daisy. ‘Come on, really, do I have to think of everything? What one thing can you say to any mistress to get off lessons and Games? The only illness that people don’t want to hear more about?’

  ‘Ohhhh,’ said Lavinia, enlightened.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Beanie.