‘We’ll be back for the second half of term,’ said Daisy. ‘Worse luck!’
‘It isn’t worse luck!’ I called down the line. ‘We miss you too!’
‘I suppose we do,’ Daisy conceded. ‘But do try to have something interesting for us, will you? Could you arrange a nice murder?’
‘We’ll do our best,’ said Kitty. ‘Oh bother! Matron wants us to go. See you soon! Detective Society for ever!’
‘Half a term!’ said Daisy to me. ‘What could possibly happen in half a term? It’s just exams and Speech Day!’
‘You never know!’ I said.
The doorbell has just rung again.
Alexander and George are here, bubbling over with excitement about the case. We are to be allowed to go out with them for ices to talk it through – and we have not even had to promise not to detect any crimes while we are gone. Bridget winked at us as she said this. I think she has forgiven me – or at least I hope so.
George offered his arm to Daisy, and she took it, beaming at him. They really do seem to understand each other in the most mysterious way. If this was a story, they would be in love with each other.
And, if this was a story, Alexander – well.
He smiled down at me, his dimple showing. ‘You were jolly good in the play,’ he said. ‘I clapped for you – did you hear? I’ll miss you when we all go back to school. Promise you won’t stop writing?’
Then he held out his hand, and I took it, and … I am beginning to think that even if Alexander has not quite stopped loving Daisy, I might have begun to step out of the shadow she casts in his mind.
‘Come on!’ cried Daisy. ‘Teatime!’
And off the four of us went together, into the bright spring day.
Daisy’s Guide to the Rue Theatre
My Detective Society Vice-President and Secretary Hazel has done a most excellent job writing up our new case – and I do not say that lightly. She is most definitely improving. But it has come to my attention that some of the words she uses may not be obvious to those people who are not actresses like Hazel and me. Below is my list of words that you ought to learn if you want to go on the stage.
Aesthetic – a man who is the very opposite of Athletic, fond of nice clothes and beautiful art. Aesthetes wear their hair long and sometimes put green carnations in their button holes. Bertie and his friend Harold are excellent examples of Aesthetes.
Avant-garde – something dazzlingly new and exciting.
The Bard – a theatrical word for Shakespeare, the man who wrote Romeo and Juliet. He has been dead for ages.
Blocking – something actors and actresses do when rehearsing a play. It means learning their movements on the stage.
Boarding house – rather like the boarding house Hazel and I live in at Deepdean School for Girls, but this sort is for grown-ups who are actors, and who can’t afford their own London flats yet.
Bourgeois – a word that means posh.
Cadge – this word means to borrow or steal.
Camiknickers – a word for the undergarments that some grown-up ladies wear.
Cow us – this phrase is another way of saying frighten us. It has nothing to do with cows.
Cravat – a sort of loose tie that artistic men droop around their necks.
Eau de Nil – a sort of light green colour.
Ewer – a pitcher used to keep water in.
Exeat – a word for a special weekend when pupils at boarding schools are allowed to go and stay with their parents or their friends.
Flies – the rigging and pulley system above a stage in a theatre, where the lights and things hang.
Flat – a painted bit of set that can be pulled on and off stage.
Gadding about – being silly.
Iron curtain – a metal safety screen that unrolls behind an ordinary theatre curtain to keep fire from spreading through a theatre.
Jerkin – a sort of old-fashioned waistcoat.
Newel post – the posts at the top and bottom and turns of staircases, sometimes with knobbly bits on top.
Off book – when actors have learned their lines and don’t need to look at their scripts any more in rehearsal.
On book – when actors are still learning lines and holding scripts as they rehearse.
Paper tiger – something that seems frightening but is really all just show, like a tiger made out of drawing paper.
Pash – a sort of love that one schoolgirl has for another. It is not meant to mean anything or be real, but I think that is silly, because the truth is that sometimes it is.
Pea-souper – a very heavy London fog that feels as thick as soup to walk through.
People – sometimes ‘people’ means ‘parents’. So when you say ‘I am going to my friend’s people’ you mean that you are staying with their parents.
Prompt – someone whispering lines to an actor who has forgotten what to say next.
Proscenium arch – the big arch that frames the stage in theatres.
RADA – a school for actors in London.
RP – this means ‘received pronunciation’ and is the way that everyone on the BBC speaks.
Shrimps – the smallest Deepdean pupils.
Stage-door Johnny – a man who likes to wait outside stage doors for actresses they are in love with. I think this is very odd behaviour.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
This book began because of Harry Potter. I’ve been a fan since I read the first book when I was ten, and in 2016 I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience: I toured the Palace Theatre in London, the home of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I saw the under-stage corridors, the props department, the wardrobe rooms … and, at the very bottom of the building, I saw the well. I took one look at it and I knew I had to use it in a story.
I love going to the theatre, and I love theatrical murder mysteries, but all the same I’m not a theatrical expert. Every correct detail in this story comes from Ngaio Marsh’s Enter a Murderer, and from my theatrical consultants Kriss Buddle, Anne Miller and Sam Cable. Every mistake is mine.
Doing historical research is always exciting, but during my research for this book I discovered three people who particularly informed this story, and reminded me once again of how diverse British history really is. Lilian Baylis was a no-nonsense London woman who pretty much single-handedly turned the Old Vic Theatre into the place to see Shakespeare in the UK in the 1920s and 1930s, Ira Aldridge was a black actor who became one of the first true stars of the Victorian stage, and Paul Robeson was a black actor and singer who travelled from America to light up the London theatre scene in the 1930s. I love basing my fictional characters on real historical figures, and you’ll recognize parts of all three in Frances, Inigo and Simon, though of course they are my own fictional creations. I also read about a 1930s performance of Romeo and Juliet where a young woman was chosen for the part of the Nurse. I liked that idea so much that I decided to use it in this story – I know that Martita is rather young, even to play a young Nurse, but stranger casting choices have been made in real life.
In this book I also wanted to write about one of the less-nice parts of British history: the fact that, until 1967, it was a crime for two men to be in love with each other. You would literally be thrown in jail if you were caught. Lots of clever, good, kind people, including the mathematician Alan Turing, had their lives ruined just for being who they were. (Oddly, there was never an actual law against two women being in love, although it was frowned upon in the same way.) Although the sixties seem like a long time ago, it’s important to remember that horrible, prejudiced laws also existed in the UK much more recently. When I was growing up in the 1990s, I never read about characters like Simon or Daisy in a book – there was a law called Section 28 that banned anyone from telling children about LGBTQ+ people or relationships. I am so happy that this law was repealed in 2003, so that I can write the books I do, and I am so happy that in 2018 there is a law that says that couples like Frances and Theresa c
an get married. There is still far to go – it is easy to be frightened and intolerant, and hard to overcome prejudice – but we can each help get there by remembering that we are all just the same, despite our apparent differences. All any of us want is to be loved.
I chose Romeo and Juliet as the play in this story for three reasons. First, because I went to school in the UK, and Shakespeare is for some reason about a third of the English curriculum. By the end of my GCSE course I could recite pretty much the entire play, and I thought that I might as well put that knowledge to use. Second, because there is lots of murder in it. I think Shakespeare would have been a murder mystery writer if he’d been alive today. And third, because when I was beginning to plan this book, a girl called Poppy asked me to set a mystery during a production of Romeo and Juliet. I don’t usually take your story ideas, because they are yours, not mine, and so you own them – but Poppy’s email was exactly the prompt I needed at that moment. Thank you, Poppy. If you want to find out more about Romeo and Juliet, you should watch the Baz Luhrmann film, which is very old now but still good. But please remember: I do not endorse either Romeo OR Juliet’s actions at the end of the play, and I don’t think Shakespeare did either. It is not really a romance, it is a cautionary tale.
Finally, this book is a love letter to my favourite parts of London: Charing Cross Road, Soho, Trafalgar Square, the Thames, Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and the West End. I love this bright, hectic, bewildering city – every time I leave, I can’t wait to go back.
And now, on to the thank-yous.
Thank you to Tim Thompson, Julie Cradock and the Cheshire Police, for helping me with questions of forensics, to Derrick Pounder, who spent an hour talking me in great detail through nasty ways in which someone might die, and to Carol Rutter, for helping me with questions about Shakespeare. Huge thank-you to Kriss Buddle, for giving up his time to patiently talk me through theatrical maps and explain to me how a theatre works. I’m pretty sure this book would not exist without him.
Thanks to my readers Kathie Booth Stevens, Anne Miller, Sam Cable, Wei Ming Kam, Charlie Morris, Gráinne Clear, Ana Brígida Paiva, Joelyn Rolston-Esdele and Eden McKenzie-Goddard for giving me invaluable insights, and to Mariana Mouzinho and Aimée Felone for connecting me with them.
Thanks to the audience at my Imagine Festival event in spring 2018, and to my Twitter followers, for crowd-sourcing this title and strapline. You’re better at titles than I am. And thanks, more broadly, to my Detective Society across the world. You really do make me proud to write my books.
Thanks to my author friends, the closest thing I have to colleagues in this strange job of ours, especially to Non Pratt, Maz Evans, Lisa Thompson, Nick Ostler, Mark Huckerby and the wonderful Team Cooper collective. Thanks to my lovely non-author friends, who remind me that I am actually a real person, and to my family, especially my beloved and only niece, who came to visit and showed me exactly how Uncle Felix feels in this book.
Thanks to my brilliant Team Bunbreak, who have shown so much care and love for this series throughout the years. I was lucky enough to have two editors working on this book, Naomi Colthurst and Natalie Doherty, and I’m so grateful for both of their insights. Thanks also to Francesca Dow, Harriet Venn, Sonia Razvi, Ellen Grady, Louise Dickie, Jane Tait, Tom Rawlinson, Stephanie Barrett, Sophie Nelson, Dominica Clements and my illustrator, Nina Tara, who has created yet another fantastic cover. Thanks to my fiercely brilliant agent Gemma Cooper, who always knows the right thing to do.
And finally, thanks to my husband, David Stevens, who makes me want to be a better person every day.
June 2018
Turn over to read an extract from another of
Daisy and Hazel’s rip-roaring mysteries:
1
From the way my father is carrying on, anyone would think that the murder which has just taken place was our fault – or rather, that it was Daisy’s.
Of course, this is not true in the least. First, holidaying on a train was his idea – and inviting Daisy too. And as for Daisy and me being detectives – why, it is just who we are. This murder would always have happened, whether Daisy and I had been here to detect it or not, so how can we be blamed for investigating it? If we did not, what sort of Detective Society would we be?
Naturally, murder is always rather dreadful, but all the same, after our last murder case (at Daisy’s house, Fallingford, in the Easter holidays), when every suspect was someone we knew, this seems rather separate to us, and that is a relief. With one exception, everyone who might possibly have been involved in this crime was a perfect stranger to Daisy and me two days ago. So although we are sorry that one of them is dead (at least I am, and I hope Daisy is too), more importantly we are detectives on the case, with a puzzle to solve and a murderer to bring to justice. And we will succeed, whatever my father tries to do to stop us.
You see, although this murder does not seem as though it will be as upsetting for us as the cases of poor Miss Bell or awful Mr Curtis, it may well be the most difficult to solve. Infuriating obstacles have been put in our way by grown-ups who want to ensure that the Detective Society is not able to detect at all. This is supposed to be for our own good – like eating vegetables and going for walks in January – but that, of course, is nonsense. Daisy says, Daisy-ishly, that they are simply jealous of our superior intellect. I know they are simply trying to keep us safe, but I wish they wouldn’t. I am older than I was in April – and much older than I was last November – and I can decide for myself whether or not I want to be in danger. I am quite all right with being afraid for a while, if it means that we catch a murderer.
It is funny to think, though, that only a few days ago I was determined not to be a detective this holiday at all.
2
I do feel rather guilty about breaking my promise to my father. You see, when he found out about the murder at Easter, he telephoned to tell me that he would be coming to England in the summer hols, to make sure I didn’t get into any more trouble. I didn’t really believe he would, but I was wrong. He really did come all the way from Hong Kong, by plane and train and boat. I ought to have known that when my father says he is going to do something, he does it.
On the last day of the summer term at Deepdean, where Daisy and I go to school, we were lazing on the lawn behind House with Kitty, Beanie and Lavinia, our dorm mates and fellow third-formers, cut grass scratching the backs of our knees. I had my eyes closed as I listened to Kitty and Daisy talk, the sun making the parting of my hair feel warm.
‘And can you believe Miss Barnard chose Elizabeth as Head Girl?’ asked Kitty. Miss Barnard is our new headmistress. She is surprisingly young for such an important grown-up, and most people are amazed when they first see her, but if you spend any time around her you can quite understand. Calm spreads from her like a cool wave – it only takes five minutes for her to make any problem vanish. She is my favourite of all the new mistresses; I think she is slightly magic.
‘And the new prefects too!’ said Daisy. ‘They’re all quite dreadful. Imagine, we shall have to be ruled by them for a whole year!’
‘I know what you mean!’ said Kitty. ‘You never know quite what they’ll do next—’
She was stopped there by the noise of a car purring up the drive and parking outside the big front door of House. We all sat up. Kitty’s father was due at any moment, and we were expecting him, so my heart gave a little lurch when I saw a big black sedan with my father’s secretary, Maxwell, at the wheel – and beside him, my father.
It was a very strange sight. You see, even though my father was the one who told me all about England when I was younger, so that it was all in my head before I ever arrived, and he is the reason why I go to Deepdean School, I had never been able to picture him in England before. He seems to belong to the Hong Kong side of my life. But seeing him there in his immaculate dark suit and tie, climbing out of the car to stand next to the front door of our House, was like holding up a stereoscope and watching the two hal
ves of the picture come together with a snap.
My father is not tall, but he is determined-looking, with a square jaw and little round glasses that nearly hide his eyes – which he narrowed at me when he saw me sitting on the grass in such an unladylike way. I jumped to my feet, shamed.
‘Goodness,’ exclaimed Beanie, eyes wide. ‘Is that your father? How funny – he looks exactly like you!’
‘Beans,’ said Kitty, rolling her eyes, ‘who else would he look like?’
‘I don’t know!’ said Beanie. ‘I mean – does everyone in Hong Kong look like you, Hazel?’
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that when I first came to England, everyone had seemed identical to me – but then I saw Kitty looking at me assessingly. ‘Awfully nice car,’ she said.
I blushed. ‘Is it?’ I asked – although I knew perfectly well that it must be. My father always has the best of everything, wherever he goes, but explaining that to Kitty would be talking about money, and I have been in England long enough to know that talking about money is not nice, especially when you have quite a lot of it.
I curtseyed to my father, who was still watching us. Then the door opened and the maid ushered him inside. While he was speaking to Matron (I rather dreaded that, in case she mentioned how untidy I have become – in Hong Kong I am absolutely neat, but I have discovered that to fit in here I must be careless with my possessions, and leave at least one thing on the floor every day), our trunks were brought outside. There was mine, with all its ship-dents and fading customs stickers – and there, next to it, was Daisy’s.
That made it real. Daisy truly was spending the holidays with us! It was as though a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
You see, what happened at Easter – all the business with Mr Curtis being murdered – meant that Daisy couldn’t go home to Fallingford for the summer hols this year. Her house has been locked up, and her family are all up in London for the trial. Daisy wanted to go too, desperately, but we were both absolutely banned by Inspector Priestley. Secretly, I was glad. I did not want to go at all. I did not even want to think about it – not that we have been able to get away with ignoring what happened.
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