Jolly Foul Play: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery (23 page)

‘Come on!’ hissed Daisy. ‘The bonfire—’

But then there was a gasp from the crowd as Florence tumbled forward across the pitch bonelessly. Her eyes were closed and her face was chalk-white. She had fainted before she even touched the grass. Several people screamed.

‘Lord!’ cried Kitty.

‘Oh no!’ gasped Beanie. ‘Her heart! Oh, quick! What if she’s dead too?’

‘Wait,’ said the Inspector, holding out a large hand to stop us moving.

I almost thought him cruel, but then I saw Miss Barnard rushing to Florence’s side, kneeling on the ground, brushing a finger against her pulse. She looked up, and everyone stilled. She has that effect on people.

‘Miss Hamersley has only fainted!’ she said firmly. ‘She needs help, quickly! Miss Talent! Help me, she must go to San immediately.’

Miss Talent knelt beside her, and then she hefted Florence up as though she was only a little shrimp, instead of tall and strong-shouldered.

‘Come along then, you great lump of a girl,’ she said to Florence, and it sounded oddly tender. ‘Up you come.’

The Inspector was still holding us back, but he had no need to any longer. I could see that Florence was being looked after, but as soon as she got to San, Nurse Minn would examine her and discover her heart condition. Her secret would be out.

I stared around, and in the crowd I picked out the other members of the Five. Margaret looked sullen and half glad; Lettice was pale; Una was scornful and Enid pinched. None of them looked upset for Florence – they only looked lost. I felt sad for them again: they were tied together so tightly by the most horrible events, and yet they were still not friends in the slightest. Florence had been the closest thing they had to a new leader, after Elizabeth’s death – and now she had fallen. But was she the murderer? And if she was, how would we ever find Binny now?

‘Hurry,’ said Daisy quietly. ‘To the bonfire, while everyone’s distracted!’

We rushed over to it.

‘There, look, the stick – oh!’ Daisy was staring down at the remains of the bonfire in utter confusion. ‘It’s gone!’ she said. ‘It’s
gone
!’

We all stared. And it was true. There was nothing on the bonfire now but perfectly ordinary bits of wood. The hockey stick had vanished.

‘Perhaps it’s moved!’ said Kitty. ‘Look again!’

‘No,’ said Daisy slowly. ‘It’s gone. I know where it was lying. Someone’s taken it.’

I drew away from her, ready to have her blame me – for it had been my fault that we had not been able to hide the stick in time before.

But Daisy did not turn on me at all. Instead, she reached out and seized my hand. We faced the Inspector together.

‘It was here!’ said Daisy. ‘Hazel and I both saw it. It was the murder weapon, it had blood and hair on it, but now it’s gone. The murderer must have come back for it!’

The Inspector looked very serious. ‘Ladies,’ he said. ‘Despite what you say, if you cannot show me any evidence, I have to take Miss Barnard’s word for what happened rather than yours.’

Daisy looked as though she was about to burst. ‘Grown-ups!’ she cried. ‘You’re just like the rest of them after all. You’ll see. We’ll keep working. We will! And you’ll be sorry you doubted us.’

The Inspector wrinkled up his face. He looked as though he did not much like what he was having to say.

‘You
will
be sorry you didn’t listen to us,’ Daisy insisted. ‘After all, we’ve solved
three
murder cases now. We’re professionals. Haven’t you heard about the Orient Express?’

‘I certainly have,’ said the Inspector. ‘Your most triumphant case yet, I think I heard it called. But that was then, and this is quite separate. When each case begins, it begins quite new. Surely you understand that?’ He sighed. ‘If you insist, I can speak to this Jones character, certainly. I believe I recall him from last year’s case. I will see what he says about Tuesday’s events.’

‘You must!’ Kitty broke in. ‘Binny didn’t run away, she’s been kidnapped! I know her. She does run away quite often, but never for this long! She always gets bored, or hungry, and comes back. She hasn’t any sticking power. I
know
.’

‘
I
know you want your sister found,’ said the Inspector, and he put a hand on Kitty’s arm. Kitty drew a jerky breath and looked down at her feet. ‘I promise that I will do my best to find her, wherever she is. I do promise that.’

When the Inspector gives a promise, it ought to be believed. But all the same … I wished he would take a leap of faith, and trust us that once again we had uncovered a murder.

I stared at him rather sadly.

‘Now,’ said the Inspector, ‘I must get back to my work. I do have men to supervise, and a little girl to find.’ With a swirl of his greatcoat he turned and walked away.

We all looked at each other, and I think we all felt very low. But we knew that we must keep on investigating. We had only two suspects left, after all. We had had a setback, but we could still solve the case and find Binny. And now there was no hope of help from the Inspector. He had said that he would not believe us until we had something concrete to show him. We would have to do it on our own.

Lavinia bent down, and kicked through the bonfire again.

‘Oh, do leave it,’ said Daisy. ‘The stick isn’t there. Don’t you know that by now?’

We were still standing despondently in a group at the end of the match, which did not go well for Deepdean. ‘We would have won it too, if Florence had been fit!’ cried Clementine. ‘I do call that unfair! That she could have hidden the fact that she didn’t feel well – why, it cost us the match. It might cost us the inter-school cup!’

The inter-school cup was, of course, the thing that all the sporty girls had been talking about all term. Florence had been quite obsessed with it, making the team do extra training sessions, and runs and stretches and calisthenic exercises. And now she had jeopardized that by being ill, and hiding it. Deepdean had had to call on their reserve, who had panicked and lost us the match. Everyone was furiously angry, for it made Deepdean look weak, and that was all anyone talked of, all the way up to House.

Then reports began to filter in from San. Florence was not just ill, it was her heart. It was bad, very bad. She might never (I heard it whispered along corridors and as girls passed each other on the stairs) play again. She might be an invalid for life. She could not go to next summer’s Games.

The secret that Florence had fought so hard to hide was out. I watched the remaining four prefects carefully as they came in for dinner. And I saw how afraid they were. Lettice flinched away from Una. Margaret could not look at Enid. And Una looked simply lost. I remembered her conversation with Florence –
we all fall, if one of us does
– and felt another pang. Only one of the Five had done it, but solving the case would mean that they were all affected.

Daisy was watching the prefects too, as were Kitty and Beanie, but Lavinia was hunched over her plate, fiddling with something in her hand.

‘What have you got?’ hissed Kitty, when she had nudged Lavinia twice without making her look up. ‘Ugh, that’s filthy! Put it down!’

‘They’re wood chips,’ said Lavinia. ‘They were on the floor, just inside the door into House. I picked them up.’

‘Ugh! Why?’ asked Kitty.

‘Because I thought they might be important,’ said Lavinia. ‘Look at them! They’re fresh!’

She held them out in her slightly grubby hand, and I saw that they
were
new – a bit smudged and warm from being in her pocket, but under that quite fresh and yellow, as though they had been new-made. And at the end of them was … varnish, and a few flecks of paint.

Suddenly I knew where those chips came from.
A hockey stick.
I could tell the others had recognized them too. Could they be … from the missing murder weapon? Daisy had pulled out her tiny magnifying glass and was examining them, eyebrows raised in excitement.

‘The stick’s gone,’ said Lavinia. ‘We know that. And so I began thinking about how I’d hide it, if I had to. It would be no good stuffing it in a book bag, it’s too long. Unless it was made shorter somehow – unless it was chopped up. That’s what I’d do, anyway. It’d be easy, and awfully fun too. Then I could hide it properly.’

‘You’re odd,’ said Kitty.

‘But she’s
right
,’ said Daisy, looking up with the magnifying glass in her hand, and I could feel her prickling a little. Assistants are not supposed to find important clues. ‘Look, these bits are from the outside, where the stick was varnished.’

‘But what happened?’ asked Beanie.

‘I’ll bet you anything that the murderer crept back up to the field while they were supposed to be hunting for Rose and Binny,’ said Daisy, whispering so as not to be overheard by the rest of the table. ‘They took the stick out of the fire, got one of those little axes from the tool room and chopped it up with that.’

‘How did the chips get here, though?’ asked Beanie, frowning.

I felt the hairs on my arm prickle. ‘In the murderer’s book bag,’ I said. ‘Just like Lavinia thought. What if it’s still in there? Or – even if it isn’t – what if there are still some more chips stuck at the bottom? We can look now! The prefects’ bags are outside in the corridor – we can rule the last one of our suspects out!’

‘Watson, you’re a genius,’ said Daisy. ‘And you’re perfectly right – we must look at once, while the prefects are still in dinner. But now they’re watching – they’ll never just let us walk out. Kitty, Beanie, Lavinia, cover us. We are about to be sent out in disgrace.’

Then she stood up, jabbed her finger so close to my eye that I jumped, and cried, ‘Oh, how dare you! You – you beast!’

My ears rang. The whole of dinner stopped, and everyone turned to me. I felt eyes all around me, all sharply focused. Even after a year of being a detective, I have not lost all of my nervousness. I cannot perform for a crowd, the way Daisy can, but now, without warning, I had to try.

‘I – I—’ I gasped. ‘What did I do?’

‘You know what you did!’ hissed Daisy. ‘Sneaking about with a
boy
! Thinking I wouldn’t notice! Oh, Hazel Wong, you cruel beast!’

I felt myself heat up. How could she use Alexander like that? Perhaps she had not really forgiven me. Perhaps our friendship was only pretending to be mended. Perhaps … but then I saw the glint in her eye, the raise of her eyebrow, and I knew that, as usual, Daisy did not mean a word she was saying.

I let out a gasp that I hoped sounded terribly upset. ‘I wouldn’t!’ I wailed. ‘I would never!’

Unlike Daisy, I do always say what I mean.

‘He was mine!’ cried Daisy dramatically. ‘Mine!’

‘Wells!’ snapped Una, getting up. ‘Wong! Be quiet, or I shall send you out.’

‘No!’ shouted Daisy. ‘It isn’t fair! You can’t! She’s the bad one, not me!’

Eyes were on me, once again. I was rather cross with Daisy. She was making me sound so dreadfully unpleasant. I could feel a rumour starting.

As Daisy knows perfectly well, if you tell someone not to do something, they will jump at the chance, so – ‘Out! At once! Stand in the Hall, facing the wall, and NO TALKING!’ bellowed Una, and we were banished.

We stood looking as shamed as possible, our backs against the wall. But as soon as the Dining-Room door swung closed behind us, Daisy leaped out of her position. ‘Quick!’ she hissed. ‘The bags!’

Una and Enid’s bags were in pride of place on the low table under the clock, with Florence’s between them. The other two girls must have brought it up with them after she collapsed. With one eye on the Dining-Room door, we scrambled to open the buckles. First Una’s: two school books, a hairbrush, a notebook (not the Scandal Book, alas, though Daisy froze for a moment with excitement), a little bottle of something that made my fingers oily, a hairpin, three pencils and an apple. Then Enid’s, very neat and recently cleaned, with five school books, several scribbled-on exercise books, a ruler, pens, pencils, two bottles of ink in different colours and a rubber band.

Then we turned to Florence’s. It opened, and out fell a chopped-up hockey stick. It had been wrapped in an old games jumper, the sort that is left lying about in the pavilion and never claimed, and wood chips and charcoaly bits were stuck to it horribly. The jumper, with the stick inside, had been shoved down amongst Florence’s school books, which had all been bent out of shape.

Daisy and I both gasped. ‘Watson!’ Daisy cried. ‘We have our murderer!’

It really did look as though that was the case. There was the stick, at last. Florence must have been carrying it about all day, looking for an opportunity to get rid of it, but, of course, the match and her collapse had happened before she could. It all fitted.

‘We ought to tell the Inspector!’ I said. ‘He ought to know! Now we have the murder weapon again, we can prove that there really was a murder.’

‘And how are we to do that?’ asked Daisy. ‘The telephone is in Matron’s study, and she’s in there at the moment.
And
dinner’s nearly—’

There was a building roar, and the Dining-Room door swung open once again. Una was the first out, guiding the shrimps. I saw her see us, and the bag – and the hockey stick. She went pale, and then flushed.
She
knew what it meant, I could tell.

‘Wells! Wong!’ she stuttered. ‘What are you doing out of your places?’

‘We found something,’ said Daisy, putting on her most injured and self-righteous voice. ‘Something AWFUL. Florence has been destroying school property! Matron ought to be told. Matron! Matron!’

Matron came storming out of her office. ‘What’s this?’ she snapped.

I could see Una struggling. ‘Wells has found … there is a … Florence seems to have gone mad and chopped up a hockey stick,’ she said at last. ‘I think it’s the one that’s been missing. Miss Talent was looking for it
everywhere
.’ Now Margaret had joined Una, and Lettice and Enid. Margaret looked puzzled, and then suddenly enlightened, Lettice horrified and Enid sharp and frightened. Did they realize what this meant? That Elizabeth’s murderer had been found out at last?