Jolly Foul Play: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery (5 page)

We had no other choice but to go to our dorm. The door closed behind us, and Kitty and Beanie looked at Daisy expectantly. I knew what they were waiting for: a Detective Society meeting.

I could tell that Daisy still did not want to dilute the Detective Society.

‘Stop looking at me like that!’ she said to Kitty and Beanie.

‘We’re waiting for orders,’ said Beanie rapturously.

‘What orders?’ asked Daisy.

I could not bear her pretending to be ignorant any longer. ‘Daisy,’ I said, ‘tell them properly! You’ve got to. You promised earlier, and Beanie and Kitty know already, anyway.’

Daisy groaned. ‘Didn’t I say there would be medieval tortures if you ever revealed the Society?’ she asked Beanie.

‘Oh, I forgot!’ gasped Beanie.

‘If you’re going to be detectives again, we want to be a part of it as well,’ said Kitty. ‘It isn’t fair otherwise.’

‘Look,’ said Lavinia, ‘if it’s me you’re worried about, you needn’t. I already know that you’ve got a stupid secret society that you won’t tell me about.’

Lavinia is, if anything, even less tactful than Kitty.

Daisy looked furious. ‘Who’s been talking?’ she asked. ‘Who?’

‘
Huh
,’ said Lavinia expressively. ‘No one’s been talking. But I’m not
entirely
stupid. You’ve got another secret society, a detective one, and what happened last Easter was part of it.’

‘It really is too bad of you to have found out,’ said Daisy. ‘It’s supposed to be a
secret
. But – bother!’ She stood beside her bed, her arms folded, and glared around at us all. ‘All right, all right! Yes, there is a Detective Society, Lavinia. We detect murders, and I believe that what happened tonight may be the beginning of a new case. If so, you may assist us, along with Kitty and Beanie – but you’ll have to prove yourself worthy. A place in the Detective Society has to be
earned
.’

Lavinia glared. ‘That’s stupid,’ she said. ‘Like your—’

‘Oh, do say you’ll join!’ said Beanie. ‘It’s terribly fun, even though it’s awful as well. Although – oh dear. I don’t want there to have been another murder.’

‘Before we say anything further, Lavinia has to take the pledge,’ said Daisy. ‘And promise not to mention the case to anyone else. In fact, you all must. It is most important that the Society does not keep on
expanding
like this.’

‘I promise!’ said Beanie eagerly.

‘I promise,’ said Kitty, rolling her eyes.

Daisy looked at me.

‘All right, I promise,’ I agreed. But I felt a pulse of uncertainty as I said it.

‘And now you have to take the pledge,’ said Daisy to Lavinia. ‘Listen to me, and say
I do
afterwards:
Do you swear to be a good and clever member of the Detective Society, and to logically detect the crimes presented to you using all the cleverness you have, not placing reliance on grown-ups, especially the police? Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from your Detective Society President and Vice-President, and to do exactly what they say? Do you promise never to mention this to another soul, living or dead, on pain of medieval tortures?
’

Lavinia snorted, but all the same, she said
I do
in the right places. I think, secretly, she was quite pleased to be inside our secret at last – and I could tell she relished the medieval tortures idea.

‘All right,’ said Daisy, in a way that I could tell meant that she had not quite forgiven me. ‘Now that that’s agreed, let’s assume that this is a case – that Elizabeth’s death was a murder. If so, then we must investigate. Detective Society, it’s time for a meeting. Hazel, take notes.’

I nodded. I had a brand-new casebook waiting in my tuck box, on top of this year’s supply of moon cakes, ready for a new case. I dug it out now gladly. I turned to the clean front page and wrote:
The Murder of Elizabeth Hurst. Meeting of the Detective Society. Present: Daisy Wells, Detective Society President; Hazel Wong, Detective Society Vice-President and Secretary; Kitty Freebody, Beanie Martineau and Lavinia Temple, Detective Society Assistants.

‘All right,’ said Daisy, ‘what do we know?’

‘We know that Elizabeth’s dead,’ said Lavinia. ‘There, the case is solved. This is easy!’

‘It is
not
solved,’ said Daisy, bristling. ‘And if you are insolent I shall have to ask you to be quiet.’

Lavinia and Daisy glared at each other. I bit back a smile. I thought that it was quite good for Daisy to be challenged from time to time.

Victim
, I wrote.
Elizabeth Hurst.

‘And she died on the sports field,’ said Kitty. ‘Hit on the head by that rake. Do you really think it was on purpose?’

I nodded. ‘Daisy’s right about the position of it. It doesn’t make sense that Elizabeth stepped on it by accident. The position of her injury is all wrong!’

‘And we all know that Jones would never leave something like that lying about,’ Daisy butted in. ‘He’s a very careful person, and very tidy. He gets frightfully cross when anyone tracks mud into the corridors, and he never leaves a tool out of place. We heard him say that the rake was leaning up against the pavilion the last time he saw it, and I’m sure that’s true. Someone else must have taken it from where Jones left it and hit Elizabeth with it.’

‘But how can we be
sure
?’ Kitty persisted. Kitty, as she had at Fallingford, was proving herself a rather smart detective.

‘Well,’ said Daisy, scowling. ‘We
can’t
, yet. We can only guess. We must put it in our plan of action, to prove that the rake was moved deliberately. Now, time of death.’

‘Time of death,’ I said, scribbling. ‘I remember hearing Elizabeth shouting at us all to get back into line just before the fireworks, so she must have died
during
the fireworks display.’

‘Exactly,’ agreed Daisy. ‘And of course, it would have been the perfect time – when everything was loud, and we were all looking up and away from the bonfire.’

‘That was ten minutes,’ said Lavinia unexpectedly. ‘I was looking at my wristwatch. I got bored. It began at 7.40 and it was over by 7.50. And no, before you ask, I didn’t see anything. I was looking away from the fire too.’

‘So were we all!’ said Beanie, wrinkling her forehead. ‘We were all in our form rows, and Miss Barnard and Miss Runcible were in front of us, with Jones. How could any girl have been able to get out of line and hurt Elizabeth without the other members of her form noticing?’

‘No!’ I said. ‘Not all of us were in rows.’ I looked up to see Daisy nodding.

‘Watson is quite right,’ she said to the others. ‘We
were
all lined up – apart from the Five. They were behind us, next to the fire and the pavilion, and next to Elizabeth. One of them was supposed to be always tending the bonfire, but they were changing over all the time. Anyone not on duty would have had the perfect opportunity to do it.’

‘But they were her friends!’ gasped Beanie. ‘That’s dreadful!’

‘Not everyone likes their friends as much as you do, Beans,’ said Kitty, nudging her.

‘It’s true,’ said Lavinia. ‘I don’t like
any
of you.’

‘Shut it, Lavinia,’ said Kitty.

‘They weren’t her friends!’ said Daisy. ‘They all disliked her as much as the rest of us. I’ve been watching – she was dreadful to them, just the way she was to us. She made them do everything she told them to, after all! I can imagine that any one of them might want to murder her.’

It was exactly what I had been thinking, but hearing it explained that way made me realize, suddenly, how familiar
she made them do everything she told them to
sounded. I – we – were subject to Daisy’s whims, after all. In Daisy’s mind she is quite different to Elizabeth, and all the things she asks us to do are sensible and good, but is that entirely true? The world is not as black and white as Daisy expects it to be, although she can never see that.

‘We saw Margaret and Elizabeth arguing beside the bonfire,’ I said. ‘Perhaps that’s important?’

‘Absolutely!’ said Daisy. ‘And all the others, they were behaving oddly as well. They all seemed upset, even
before
Elizabeth died.’

‘So,’ I said, ‘we really think that one of the Five did it?’

‘Yes!’ said Daisy. ‘Now we have to discover exactly
why
, and from that,
who
.’

‘How are we supposed to do that?’ asked Lavinia scornfully. I could tell that she was not quite believing in the Detective Society yet.

‘Ooh, we have to hunt for motives, and evidence, and alibis!’ said Beanie eagerly.

Daisy nodded. ‘Exactly. At school tomorrow we need to gather information from the other girls. Anyone may have seen something important. Remember what we say?’

‘Yes!’ said Beanie. ‘
Constant vigilance.
Oh, hooray!’

We all climbed into bed, and Lavinia put out the light. I could hear Matron calling for quiet as all the other dorms whispered and guessed and wondered about Elizabeth’s death. The ordinary House noises were amplified – everything really had become strange this evening.

I listened to the noises in our own dorm too, as Beanie went creeping into Kitty’s bed, and they began to talk together in soft voices. Lavinia was snoring defiantly, to show that she did not care about being left out by them. Daisy was quite silent, and I could tell that she was going over and over the events of the evening. But there was one more thing I wanted to do, and that had nothing to do with Daisy. It was time to read my letter.

I rolled over onto my stomach and pulled the covers over my head. In the warm, close, blanket-smelling air I could at last unfold my letter. I slipped my little torch from under my pillow, careful not to let any light leak out, and held it as close as I could to the paper. The message on the front was very dull indeed.

Dear Cousin,

I hope this finds you well. I am well also. We have eaten semolina pudding all week, and written an essay on the French revolution. Georgina sends her regards. How is Daisy?

Yours sincerely,

Alexandra

But the message on the front was not what I was looking for. I turned the piece of paper over and felt myself smiling. A torch, even a small one, gives out a surprising amount of heat, and on the once-clean back of the letter had appeared a spider of brownish words.

elloHay, azelHay! oringBay eekway. eWay olvedsay

It looked like nonsense, but of course I knew the trick of it. It was written in Pig Latin, which is simply English with the first letter of each word moved to its end and the letters ‘ay’ added. Translated, it read:

Weston School, Monday 4th November

Hello, Hazel!

Boring week. We solved the Mystery of the Missing Ferret (it was in Jenkins’s tuck box, quite happy), and Hendricks Minor ate three puddings in a row and was ill. I worked out the answer to the latest puzzle you sent, it’s 42. Have you found anything proper to detect? If not, here’s a puzzle. Sophie’s mother has four children. The first is called April, the second is called May and the third is June. What is the fourth child’s name? George says hello too, he’s the one who came up with that. How is Daisy?

Alexander

I read, my heart jumping and my fingers fizzy with excitement – until I reached that last line, and felt a twinge of unhappiness.
How is Daisy?
I reminded myself that Alexander was a very polite and nice person. It was only natural for him to ask after Daisy as well as me. Alexander and Daisy had met at the same time he and I had, on the Orient Express this past summer. The three of us had worked together to solve a most unpleasant murder – and that is the sort of experience that you do not forget.

I liked to think of Alexander and his best friend George, the other member of his detective society, the Junior Pinkertons (I had never met George, but I imagined him as looking very much like Alexander, although more bossy), at their school. I saw it like Deepdean, only full of boys instead of girls, eating the same heavy food and running about on the same sort of sports fields as we did. Before I met Alexander, I used to think that boys must be entirely different to girls inside, like another species, but now I see that this is not true.

I so wanted to tell Alexander about what had just happened, but I remembered Daisy making me swear not to talk about the case. She would be fearfully angry if I disobeyed her, I knew, but I wanted to. Alexander had helped before, and he might be able to help again. I turned the question over and over in my mind, the pen frozen in my hand – and finally, with a guilty leap in my stomach, I made a decision. It had nothing to do with
her
, who else I was friends with. I could make decisions for myself, I thought, and if I wanted to bring in another detective society, there was nothing she could do to stop me.

I turned to a new page of this casebook, and took out my secret pen, the one filled with lemon juice. I would write the letter now, and post it very first thing tomorrow.

Deepdean School, Tuesday 5th November

Dear Alexander,

You’ll never guess what happened – or perhaps you will, because I think it really is true what you said once, that mystery follows us around. There’s been another murder at our school. Or at least, someone has died.