We were banished to the drawing room, with the door shut and a box of dominoes in front of us. Toast Dog and Millie were there too, whining and grumbling and aching to be let out. None of us quite knew what to do with them – or ourselves.
Beanie was crying. ‘Your poor mummy!’ she wailed. ‘Will she be all right? Will she?’
‘I don’t know!’ said Daisy ferociously. She had posted herself just inside the closed door, and was listening to the noises outside. Toast Dog waddled over to stand beside her, and it was almost funny to see how alike they looked – golden and hopeful, ears pricked. ‘Can’t you be quiet for a bit? I want to think.’
‘I’m sure she will be,’ said Kitty, trying to be helpful. ‘My aunt knows someone who fell from the very top of a block of flats – all the way down the stairs – and she lived. She broke every bone in her body, of course, and she walked very oddly afterwards, but—’
‘Kitty,’ I said. ‘Be quiet.’
Kitty closed her mouth, scowling. ‘Rude,’ she muttered to herself.
For a moment Beanie was quiet too. Then she said, ‘D’you think the police really will be here tomorrow?’
‘Hah!’ said Daisy. ‘What can they do? I hope they never come at all. They’ll only ruin everything.’ I knew she was thinking about Lord Hastings.
‘But if the police don’t come,’ said Beanie nervously, ‘how will we stop the murderer? I know you say the police can’t help, but won’t they protect us? Two people have been hurt now!’
‘Daisy,’ I said, because I had to, ‘she is right. We want the police to come, don’t we? And it’s Inspector Priestley. Remember Deepdean? He’s clever. He’ll know it isn’t your father!’
‘Will he?’ asked Daisy.
Outside, the front door slammed, and we heard a new voice, tidy and carrying. Dr Cooper had arrived. The dogs went wild, and Toast Dog flung himself quite heavily against the closed door.
‘He may be a nice clodhopper, but he’s still a clodhopper. He’s got to stick to the rules.’
‘But if he catches the real murderer—’ said Kitty.
‘He may not!’ snapped Daisy. ‘And anyway, we’ll be perfectly all right. We must just stick together – and bar the door to the nursery before we go to bed tonight. They can’t kill all four of us.’
As usual when Daisy tries to reassure people, this was not at all comforting. Beanie wailed, and I silently agreed with her. If the murderer was going to strike again, we were surely next. How could we think we were safe? Even if we ran, we would be brought back – within easy reach of the murderer.
I imagined Inspector Priestley wading through the receding floods towards us, his greatcoat swishing behind him, and willed him to hurry up. For all that Daisy did not trust the police, he had saved us once before – and now, I felt, it was time for him to do so again. I wanted to get away from Fallingford and never come back. I missed my Hong Kong home, where everything was hot and light and safe. And despite what had happened there last year, I missed Deepdean. I felt a rush of remembering it – for a moment I thought I could almost smell it, chalk and not-clean socks and cold water. It washed over my memory of home, which was only very faint now, like my mother’s perfume on my clothes. I wasn’t sure which place I wanted more.
Daisy was still talking, faster and faster, a river of sound that I struggled to make sense of: ‘. . . but we must be vigilant. As soon as we’re let out of this silly room we must remember to check our suspects’ alibis for the time Mummy was pushed. Pay attention to everything – not just what they say, but how they say it. Modern detectives need to be psychological, because you see, today’s criminal mind is cleverer than ever – it says so in my books – and—’
But just then she was interrupted by the most dreadful noise. It was a groaning; a horrible howl that started very low down and rose up through the scale, so that it seemed to go twisting up my spine in coils.
‘Ugh!’ cried Kitty. ‘What’s that?’
‘Oh!’ wailed Beanie. ‘Is she dead? What’s wrong? Oh dear!’
Daisy’s head jerked up and her eyes went wide.
‘What is it?’ I asked her. I was very afraid of the answer.
Daisy took a deep breath. ‘That,’ she said composedly, ‘is Mummy. It’s the noise she makes when she thinks she’s dreadfully hurt – generally after she’s bumped her elbow. And if she’s making it now, it means that she’s going to be all right. She’s not going to die after all – not that I ever thought she would. And if you’ll all excuse me for one moment, I must just . . .’
And she got up from her chair, walked carefully over to the ornamental plant on the sideboard and was very neatly sick into the pot.
1
‘Oh, it was dreadful,’ said Lady Hastings. She was lying on a sofa in the library, her head swaddled in a pillowy white bandage and one arm strapped to her chest. The rest of us were gathered round her like an audience.
Before we were let out of the drawing room, we had managed to overhear Dr Cooper talking to Uncle Felix in the hall. Apparently it was a wonder that Lady Hastings wasn’t more severely injured. ‘She must have hit her head on the banister as she went down,’ he said (rather crossly, as though Lady Hastings had no right to her good fortune). ‘She was concussed, and that made her go limp and roll. Most falling cases try to stop themselves, and that’s when the damage is done. All I can find here is a fracture of the tibia, and extensive bruising. And the concussion, of course. She’ll have to be watched closely. How did it happen?’
‘Carelessness,’ said Uncle Felix briefly. (Lying again! I thought. He must surely know that this was no more an accident than Mr Curtis’s death!) ‘My sister is a liability. Now, please don’t worry yourself – we shall take very good care of her.’
‘Oh no,’ said Dr Cooper. ‘She needs expert care – at least for tonight. I’ll stay here at Fallingford and sit with her. None of us would forgive ourselves if anything happened to dear Lady Hastings, would we?’
‘Indeed not,’ said Uncle Felix blandly. ‘Thank you, Doctor. And – have you had a chance to send off those samples yet?’
‘Not yet,’ Dr Cooper replied. ‘As soon as the floods have gone, I shall, I assure you. You’ve called the police – for the body?’
‘They’re on their way,’ said Uncle Felix – and again, his voice gave nothing away.
At last we were released – and made straight for the library, where Lady Hastings had been moved. As Daisy said, we had to collect alibis as quickly as possible – but for a while we learned absolutely nothing of interest. It was very frustrating. All Lady Hastings did was complain very loudly about her headache. ‘Is there a cut on my forehead?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Imagine if I’m scarred! Oh, and my arm! I might never play the piano again!’
‘Don’t talk, Lady Hastings,’ said Miss Alston. ‘Just rest.’
I flinched. Given what we had discovered about her, everything Miss Alston said seemed menacing. Her presence in the room made my back hot, as though her eyes were on it. Did she know that we suspected her? Meanwhile Daisy was watching the handbag like a mongoose after a snake. A few times I had to nudge her to stop her being so obvious. ‘She must put it down!’ she whispered in my ear. ‘She must!’ But Miss Alston never did.
‘How can I rest?’ cried Lady Hastings. ‘The most dreadful things have happened to me. Every time I close my eyes I feel it all over again. Those shadowy stairs – the silence – and then those terrible hands, shoving me in the back – so cruel! I remember thinking, This is the end! And then something hit my head and there was nothing more. I thought I had died!’
‘Incredible,’ murmured Bertie. ‘Thinking while unconscious.’
‘Do be quiet, thankless child,’ snapped his mother. ‘But what I want to know now is, who is responsible for what happened to me?’
‘What do you mean?’ twittered Aunt Saskia.
‘Exactly what I said. I was not attacked by a ghost, now, was I? Someone did that to me. Someone in this h
ouse! Only imagine . . . what cruelty, what meanness – what have I ever done to deserve it?’
‘That,’ said Bertie, ‘is perhaps not a question you would like us to answer honestly.’
Lady Hastings ignored him.
‘I assure you, Margaret, I had nothing to do with it,’ said Aunt Saskia.
Daisy sat up and poked me. Were we about to hear an alibi?
‘I was in my bedchamber . . . reading, yes, reading a lovely book, when I heard your terrible scream. I rushed out of the room and met dear George, who was already on the landing – we rushed downstairs and saw Felix kneeling over your lifeless body. Or so I thought. Of course, I was dreadfully glad that it wasn’t, you know, truly lifeless after all. George, don’t you remember?’ She patted down the front of her dress, rearranging her scarves, and as she did so she gave off a waft of ghostly smell that made my nose wrinkle. Beneath her own sickly-sweet bluebell scent was something else; something dirty and unpleasant. I could almost taste it. Whatever could it be?
Lord Hastings did a funny sort of wriggle. ‘I . . .’ he said. ‘I . . . er, yes, I must have done. I came out of my room, I saw you, I . . . Yes, that’s it. That’s what happened.’
I saw Daisy give him a worried glance. What was he playing at this time? It sounded like another lie.
‘I was also in my room,’ said Miss Alston, ‘fetching a book for the girls’ lesson. I ran out at once, and saw no one else in the hall.’
‘And I was in the billiard room,’ said Uncle Felix shortly.
I thought of something very odd, then. If the servants had been in the kitchens, and everyone else had been in their own rooms, except for Uncle Felix (who had been down on the ground floor – or at least, so he said), Stephen (up on the nursery floor) and Lady Hastings (who had been standing at the top of the stairs, about to be pushed off them by the murderer), then who had I heard walking above us while we were in the library, just before Lady Hastings screamed and fell? The room above the library was Mr Curtis’s, I realized now. And Mr Curtis’s room, we all knew, was locked. I felt a creepy sensation go up my back. I didn’t believe in ghosts any more, I told myself. I was far too grown up. But all the same . . .
I imagined clicking open Mr Curtis’s door and creeping into that dark room – I wondered if it smelled. I wondered if the shadows were tall and creeping. I wondered whether Mr Curtis’s body was still lying on the bed.
‘Yes, but this doesn’t help me,’ said Lady Hastings crossly. ‘We don’t know who pushed me down the stairs, and until we do I’m quite sure that I won’t be able to sleep. Just think, they might come back! I demand a guard at all times!’
‘Dr Cooper will be here,’ said Uncle Felix. ‘And so will the rest of us.’
‘But it was one of you who did THIS!’ shouted Lady Hastings. ‘Who else could it have been? I didn’t hear the dogs bark, did you? There’s been no one else in this house all weekend.’
Beanie, of course, burst into tears.
‘Margaret!’ said Lord Hastings, looking at her awkwardly. ‘The children!’
‘I think that some people ought to go upstairs,’ said Miss Alston, clearing her throat. ‘I shall have your dinner brought up.’
‘But we want to stay with Mummy,’ said Daisy loudly. I grasped her hand and squeezed it. At that moment I could not decide what would be worse – being stuck upstairs in the dark nursery with Miss Alston next door, or being downstairs with Lady Hastings, knowing that the murderer might come back to finish her off at any moment.
‘Don’t be silly, Daisy dear,’ said Aunt Saskia, drawing herself up with all her earrings jingling and wrapping her nasty flat-faced fur stole around her neck. ‘Grown-ups know what’s best for little people. And I confess, I find myself quite tired as well. I shall take a little something from the kitchens and retire to my bedchamber – and I shall lock the door. The murderer shan’t be able to get in!’
She spun about on her flat old-lady heels. Her dress billowed out – and something fell tinkling out of it onto the floor. Quick as a flash, Daisy put her foot on it, and then stared up at the ceiling most innocently.
Aunt Saskia froze. I could tell that she was desperate to bend down and snatch up whatever had fallen – though at the very same time, she knew she mustn’t. She paused in the doorway, twisting her fingers up into her scarves . . . and then the part of her that couldn’t afford to make a fuss won.
‘Oh – goodnight!’ she gasped, and trotted out into the hallway, shoulders all hunched up and hands clenched. It had obviously cost her to leave without whatever it was. I tingled all over with curiosity.
‘Oh!’ I said, as though I had made an interesting discovery. ‘My shoe is untied.’ I bent down, and under cover of fiddling with my left lace I slid my hand next to Daisy’s shoe. She wiggled it aside obligingly, and my fingers closed around something metal-cold and knobbly. What it felt like was a key.
‘There!’ I said, standing up again and palming the key into the sleeve of my cardigan. ‘Done.’
Daisy pinched me appreciatively.
‘All right then, girls,’ said Miss Alston severely. ‘Bed.’
‘Oh, Miss Alston,’ said Daisy. ‘Must we?’
‘You must,’ said Miss Alston, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I shall be up in ten minutes to make sure you have your nighties on – and if you do, then I will send Hetty up with dinner.’
Ordinarily, this would have been enough to cheer me up, but given the circumstances, it sounded most menacing. What if Miss Alston should slip something into the food? There had been one poisoning already, after all.
I wanted to stay downstairs, in the light and warmth of the library, and I could tell the others did too. But with all the grown-ups watching us, we had no choice but to shuffle out of the room and upstairs.
2
We walked up through the dim and dusty house, keeping very close together. After all that had just happened – and my thoughts about the dinner – my heart was racing. What was the key I had just picked up? Which door would it open? I unfolded my hand and stared at it, and quick as a flash Daisy poked her nose over my shoulder and said, ‘Key!’
‘Ooh,’ said Kitty, staring too. ‘Where does it open?’
As soon as she asked, I knew.
We were on the first-floor landing, about to take the main stairs up to the nursery floor. The lamps were on now, but the bulbs were dim and flickering, and in the odd half-light the house looked very chilly and uncertain. I wasn’t surprised that someone could have crept up behind Lady Hastings in the five o’clock half-dark – even now I could barely make out the others around me. I held out the key.
‘Is it . . . the key to the dining room?’ whispered Beanie. ‘Oh no, Aunt Saskia did it!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Daisy. ‘We told you, the murderer would have put that key back straight afterwards. Uncle Felix hasn’t squeaked about losing it, after all. No, this is something quite different.’
‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘It is! If I’m right, I mean.’
‘You usually are,’ said Daisy. ‘Apart from when I am, of course. So, Watson, what door do you think this key opens?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Mr Curtis’s,’ I said.
Daisy raised one eyebrow (her practice must have paid off). ‘Explain,’ she said.
‘We know Aunt Saskia likes to, um, pick up beautiful things,’ I said. ‘And we all saw how she was staring at the watch earlier this weekend. We’ve been hunting for the watch all day – what if she has too? She must have guessed that Mr Curtis took it upstairs with him when he was taken ill – although we know he didn’t – so in her mind, it should still have been in his room. So she took this key from the bunch in the kitchens sometime this afternoon and went into Mr Curtis’s room to look for it. Just before Lady Hastings fell I heard footsteps above us in the library. I couldn’t work out how someone could be in Mr Curtis’s room – but if it was Aunt Saskia, looking for the watch, then everything makes sense.’
‘But if she was looking for the watch just now, she couldn’t have been the person who took it from the dining room on Saturday night!’ said Kitty. ‘And if we heard her footsteps in Mr Curtis’s room just as Lady Hastings was being pushed – well, she couldn’t have been the person to push her. She can’t be the murderer!’
‘Very true!’ said Daisy. ‘Excellent work, Assistant Kitty!’
‘Urgh,’ Kitty added, wrinkling up her nose. ‘Just imagine. She went into a room with a dead body.’
I remembered the nasty smell that had drifted off Aunt Saskia’s clothes.
‘So?’ said Daisy. I do wonder about her sometimes. She is quite odd in the way she reacts to things. ‘It’s just a dead body. It can’t bite. Hazel, hand me that key. Your theory is very good, and I don’t doubt it’s right, but there’s a way to make quite sure – we need to check that this key really does open the door to Mr Curtis’s room.’
‘Ugh!’ said Kitty again.
‘No!’ cried Beanie.
‘But,’ I said, ‘Daisy, the body.’ Mr Curtis might not be a ghost, but he had been dead for quite some time.
‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Key, Hazel.’
I handed it to her, and we all three watched as Daisy went up to Mr Curtis’s door.
‘She’s very brave,’ said Beanie.
‘She’s quite mad,’ muttered Kitty. ‘Goodness, I never knew.’
But as I stood there, I understood, just a little, what Daisy meant about the body. It couldn’t hurt us. Nothing on the other side of that door could be as terrible as the murderer. Daisy was doing something nasty to make sure we were all safe.
As Beanie protested, and Kitty looked on breathlessly, I stayed quiet – and Daisy put the key into the lock and clicked open Mr Curtis’s door.
A horrid, thin smell came wafting through the crack, making me gulp. It was exactly what I had smelled on Aunt Saskia before.
I was right. Aunt Saskia had been in this room at the moment when Lady Hastings had screamed. She couldn’t have pushed her off the top of the stairs – and so she couldn’t be Mr Curtis’s murderer.
Arsenic For Tea: A Wells and Wong Mystery Page 15
