Jolly Foul Play: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery (25 page)

I was not so sure, but I knew she was right that speed was of the essence. I gripped my torch tightly, and together we began the dark walk down to school.

The wind rushed around us, and all the trees rattled, and the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms shivered. My hands felt very cold and clammy. We were walking without torches – we could not risk them just yet – and so I felt that we were swallowed up in darkness, lost in it. I could hear us all breathing, and walking, and Beanie whimpering gently from time to time. She was whispering something to herself, and at last I heard what it was: ‘I’m brave, I’m brave, I’m brave.’

I wished I was so sure myself.

We stumbled and stepped, and at last, there was Old Wing Entrance in front of us.

Daisy went up to the little side door, and gave it a very careful shove with her hip in just the right place, and it swung open quite easily. Beanie clapped.

‘Shh!’ said Daisy. ‘Remember, we’re spies! Come on, in we go.’

She said it, as always, as though it was the easiest and most obvious thing in the world. I wonder sometimes whether Daisy knows how extraordinary she is, and how unusual her life really is – and I think that she does not. She never really pauses to wonder, which is the key to her. She simply is.

In we crept, stepping over a pile of tools and bits of pipe that had been left from some repair work that day. Without Jones, Deepdean was no longer the tidy place it usually was. Old Wing swam around us, very high and dark with shadows in the rafters. Its wooden floor echoed under our feet for our first few eager steps – and then we went much more slowly and quietly, only half breathing as we placed each foot in front of the other. Daisy switched on her torch, and the beam danced in front of us, making the shadows silkier and the space ahead of us blazingly bright.

‘Where are we going?’ whispered Beanie.

‘To the Hall,’ said Daisy, leading us past Old Wing cloakroom and then turning down Library corridor.

Of course, I knew where we were going. The tunnel really was the only place in Deepdean where a girl could be hidden. As I have explained in a previous casebook, there is an underground passage between the Hall and Old Wing. It was bricked up long ago, when Library corridor was built, and the little door leading in to it from the Hall is locked, but it has been used before, in Miss Bell’s murder, and now it seemed likely that it was being used again.

On we went along Library Corridor, past the mistresses’ common room, the Library itself, and the Reverend’s study, and then we turned right at the end. My heart skipped. I felt creepy with déjà vu, as though this really was last year, and Daisy and I were once again on the hunt for Miss Bell’s body.

But now there were five of us, and we were looking for not a body at all, but a real live girl. Or so we hoped.

We tiptoed past the Hall, the light from the torch shining upon the lumber of old desks and chairs.

‘Oh,’ said Kitty suddenly. ‘Binny! Binny!’ And she broke into a run down the corridor.

‘Oh, bother,’ muttered Daisy under her breath. ‘Come back! Shh!’ and she pelted after Kitty. It became an undignified rush: Beanie running after Kitty and Daisy, me after Beanie, and Lavinia lumping along behind, making loud, rude noises.

We really were all being terribly noisy, but I told myself it did not matter. There was no one to hear now, not like last year.

We went almost all the way down the corridor to the Gym when Daisy stopped and turned sharply right, to the door of the tunnel.

‘It’s locked,’ said Lavinia. ‘Padlocked. You’ll never get in.’

‘Hah!’ said Daisy. ‘Don’t you know anything about spying? The best spies can open any lock in the world, and
I
have been practising.’ She put her hand up to her hair and pulled out a pin, slipping it into the padlock. There was a breathless moment, and then a click. The lock sprang open.

‘Una must have oiled it,’ said Daisy. ‘With that bottle, remember? And the pin.’

I remembered what we had found in Una’s school bag: the hairpin, just like the one Daisy had used to pick the padlock just now, and the bottle of what looked like ink, although Una had had no pens. It must have been oil, of course, to grease the lock. Everything fitted.

‘And now,’ Daisy went on, like the ringmaster in a circus, ‘we shall go in, and see what we shall see.’

Kitty pushed past her and stepped forward into the darkness. ‘Binny!’ she cried. ‘Binny! Where are you?!’

There was a pause. I was holding my breath desperately, and then a voice spoke. ‘Kitty? Whatever are you doing here? What’s wrong?’

‘Binny!’ shrieked Kitty, as Binny stepped into the torchlight, rather dirty and with cobwebs in her hair, but seemingly unharmed. Kitty leaped at her, and threw her arms around her, and some of the dirt from Binny’s collar got on Kitty’s cheek. ‘You idiot!’ cried Kitty, stepping back and brushing at her face. ‘You’re
covered
. Look, I shall never be able to get it off!’

I saw something glisten in the torchlight, just beneath Kitty’s eye, and on her hand, but did not say anything. Kitty would never forgive me, I knew. ‘What happened? Why are you – why – oh,
Binny
!’ cried Kitty. ‘Trust you!’

‘Trust you!’ said Binny, snorting. ‘Do stop worrying. I’m quite all right, only bored. And hungry. You don’t happen to have a bun I could eat, do you?’

‘But what did Una do to you?’ I asked. Why was Binny so unharmed and unworried? We had just come to rescue her from a kidnapping. Why was she not more pleased?

‘Locked me up, the beast,’ said Binny. ‘She pulled me over after school and told me she knew I was the one letting out the secrets, and then she dragged me in here.’

‘Oh!’ squealed Beanie.

‘Oh, Binny!’ said Kitty.

‘But why didn’t she kill you?’ asked Daisy. Beanie gasped, and Kitty clutched at Binny. ‘What?’ asked Daisy. ‘It’s a logical question. Why aren’t you dead?’

‘Why should I be?’ asked Binny, puzzled. ‘Look, do you have any buns? Or a biscuit would do.’

Lavinia fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a rather fluffy square of chocolate. ‘Here, have this,’ she said gruffly.

‘Because Una is the murderer!’ I said.

‘What?’ said Binny through a mouthful of chocolate. ‘No, she only locked me in because she was worried that the murderer might get to me if she didn’t hide me. She pretended to check the tunnel, too, so that the police wouldn’t find me.
Una
’s never murdered anyone. What are you talking about?’

And at that moment the door slammed to behind us.

Beanie screamed. I saw Kitty clutch at Binny, her torch flashing across the tunnel wall, spinning crazily to light up a grey Deepdean uniform and a prefect’s tie. My heart was thudding and my hands were clenched in fists. I felt dizzy and the light from the torch gave me spots in my eyes. But then up went Daisy’s torch. She is fearless, like Kipling’s ‘If’ in the flesh, keeping her head where everyone else is losing theirs – and settled on, not Florence, but
Enid
. Her face looked set and determined, and in her hand was one of the bits of metal piping that had been lying in Old Wing.

‘I’ve found you,’ said Enid, to Binny.

I gasped in a breath of air and opened my fists. If Una was not the murderer, and Florence was not, and Lettice and Margaret could not be, then – it was Enid, after all.

But Enid could not be the murderer! We had ruled her out. There was not time, and she was too weak to carry everything and hit Elizabeth. Surely! But here we were.

My heart flew and plummeted like something dying. In all the cases Daisy and I have investigated, there have been awful moments, times when I have feared for us, but in that instant I knew that I had never really been afraid for my life before. Enid had cornered us, and she had a weapon. Every nerve in my body felt naked and every bone was water. But Daisy did not lower the torch. She held it up against Enid like a shield, and I felt her free hand brush against mine. I snatched at it, my life jacket. She was shaking.

‘Did you kill Elizabeth?’ asked Daisy, her voice not betraying her at all.

Enid blinked. ‘I’m not about to tell you that,’ she said. ‘I’m not an idiot.’ She shifted the bit of piping in her hand.

‘You did, didn’t you?’ said Daisy. ‘You were terrified that Elizabeth would let out your secret. You were stoking the fire at the beginning of the evening, when you saw the rake propped against the wall of the pavilion, and the hockey stick lying beside it. The stick was the perfect weapon, and the rake the perfect cover. You realized you could kill Elizabeth with the hockey stick, get rid of it on the fire and plant the rake beside her, and everyone would think it was an accident. You – oh! – you were still stoking the fire when the fireworks began going off, you made sure of that. You used your last journey to pick up the rake and the stick with some other bits of wood, then you walked up behind Elizabeth and you hit her with the stick. You put down the rake, pulled the Scandal Book out of her pocket, and went towards the fire to throw the book and the stick on it. But the book fell out of your hand, and you couldn’t find it in the dark, and then the stick didn’t burn properly – the fire had died down when Lettice didn’t stoke it.’

I saw Enid twitch, and knew that it was most important that we did not stop talking, did not give her a moment’s silence to gather herself and decide what to do.

‘Is that how you found the book?’ I asked Binny.

‘I trod on it,’ said Binny, ‘just after the fireworks. I looked down and there it was. I picked it up and began to read through it, and then I realized what dynamite it was. Why, it was marvellous, spreading those secrets and seeing the Big Girls afraid for once!’

‘You little beast,’ said Kitty faintly. I knew she understood that I was stalling for time. Enid might be small, but she was older, and she had a weapon, while we were all defenceless. And if she had murdered Elizabeth, she must be less weak than she pretended.

‘Did you know it was Binny letting out the secrets?’ I asked Enid. ‘Before now, I mean?’

‘I had an idea,’ said Enid. ‘I thought it must be a third former. That’s why I came back to House on Thursday, to search their dorm. But I never found the book, and then Binny vanished.’

I remembered meeting Enid in the main hallway and felt cold. We had been so close without knowing it!

‘How did you manage to hit Elizabeth?’ I asked, because I had been wondering about that as well. ‘With the rake and the wood in your hands, how were you strong enough?’

‘I put them down, of course,’ said Enid, sneering. ‘I hit her two-handed. But I never told you that. And I’m stronger than I look. You believed me when I said I was weak, didn’t you? Everyone does.’

I felt myself fizz, and Daisy squeezed my hand.

‘And you know why Enid did it, Binny?’ I asked. ‘You must, if you had the book. She’s been cheating on tests, so she’ll get into Oxford.’

‘That’s not true!’ said Enid sharply, and I knew that had been the wrong thing to say. My stomach curled. ‘You can’t prove it!’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Binny. ‘That secret’s not in the book. None of the prefects’ secrets are. It was terribly frustrating – I couldn’t spread them! I wish I could have, I would have done them first. Do you know, I think that’s what Una thought as well, that I was going to reveal her secret. I told her I didn’t have it. It must have just been in Elizabeth’s head.’

So Elizabeth, for all her faults, had, in her own strange way, kept her followers’ secrets. She might have been going to tell them to Miss Barnard, but she had not written them down. It made me, just for a moment, feel kindly towards her.

Then I looked at Enid’s face. It was horrified, enraged, confused – and then excited. I saw what she was thinking. If the secret was not written down, then only we knew it. And that meant that we were in terrible danger.

She stepped forward. ‘You little beasts!’ she said. ‘I’ve been studying so hard. My parents won’t know what to do if I don’t get in. They’ve been coaching me for years. I’m their hope. They’ve saved and saved, and didn’t send my little sister to a good school so that I had the best chance. And Elizabeth was going to ruin everything. I couldn’t let her do it, and you won’t either!’

‘Wait!’ said Daisy quickly. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

‘I think I’m being perfectly sensible,’ snarled Enid, and she raised her arm.

With a yelp, something darted past me.

‘NO!’ shrieked Beanie, and before any of us could stop her, before any of us even knew what she was doing, she had hurled herself on Enid. ‘YOU SHAN’T HURT MY FRIENDS!’ she screamed, and Enid’s hand came down.

I screamed too, and so did Kitty. Lavinia bellowed. Daisy dropped the torch, and there was a loud bang. I could not see what was happening – everything was rushing and confused, and my head was pounding. What would we do if Beanie was hurt? Someone was yelling, someone else was sobbing, and then light burst out again, in a long beam from a torch that swung around, catching all our faces. Enid was gone – no, she was on the floor, and someone was kneeling over her, pulling her arms behind her back. I knew that greatcoat, and that hat. It was the Inspector.

‘Don’t move!’ he said fiercely to Enid. ‘That’s enough of that! Now, now, stop!’

But if the Inspector was here, who was holding the torch? And how had he known to come? How was he here to save us?

The torch dipped, and at last I saw who was behind it. It was Miss Barnard, and with her was a small figure I knew very well.

‘Hello,’ said Binny’s friend, Martha, shyly. ‘I found you!’

‘Beanie!’ cried Kitty, and I saw that Beanie was on the floor as well, in a little crumpled heap. My heart lurched as Kitty rushed to her. She rolled her over, and for a moment I felt dizzy again. Beanie was quite white, and she flopped in Kitty’s arms.

Kitty shook her, and there was an endless, awful moment. Then Beanie let out a soft little sigh and blinked her eyes open.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘
Oh.
What happened?’

‘You’re not dead, Beans?’ said Kitty, gulping.

‘Of course not!’ said Beanie. ‘
Ow
, my head hurts. Why are you crying?’