Murder Is Bad Manners

by Robin Stevens

  NO TIME. MURDERER UNKNOWN. CANNOT REST.

  “But what can we do?” asked Kitty.

  TELL ALL. GUILT WILL COME OUT. HELP—Q—T—B—N—2—

  After that, the counter slid off the bottom of the board and no one could get any more sense out of it. Beanie had come out of her faint and was crying quietly.

  “You’re all babies. I wasn’t afraid at all,” said Lavinia, and then she climbed into her bed, pulled her blanket all the way up over her head, and refused to say anything more.

  The midnight feast seemed to be over and I crept back to my own bed. Beanie refused to sleep alone and had to be let into Kitty’s bed for comfort. We could hear them whispering quietly to each other under the bedclothes.

  I had closed my eyes and was trying to go back to sleep when there was a sudden creak, the side of my mattress dipped, and someone slid under the covers next to me. In spite of myself, I gasped.

  “Hello, Watson,” hissed Daisy in my ear.

  “Ow!” I whispered, wriggling over. “You’re lying on my arm.”

  “Never mind that,” Daisy whispered back, as quietly as she could. “What did you think? Wasn’t I good?”

  “I think you were awful. Whatever did you do it for?”

  “Don’t you see? It was the only way. It doesn’t matter what Miss Griffin said about Miss Bell having resigned; by tomorrow the news about her murder will be all over the school. The murderer will simply be hopping with panic. They’re bound to do something that’ll lead us straight to them. And anyone who knows anything, or saw anything, or knows of an alibi for any of our suspects will come forward. All we need to do is watch. And the best bit is, I won’t look like I had anything to do with it at all. If you must know, I feel really rather clever.”

  I didn’t like the idea of the murderer panicking at all. What if they came after me because of it? I had another awful, sleepless night, and got up on Friday morning feeling sick to my stomach about the day to come.

  Moments after the wake-up bell rang, while we were all sitting up in bed, we heard squeals ringing out from the washroom. It was the other eighth-grade dorm, of course, running straight into our cold-water trap. Which reminded everyone of what had happened at the séance. We had hardly sat down to breakfast before Kitty told five different people the story of Miss Bell’s ghostly appearance. It went round the room like wildfire, and Daisy, listening to its progress, puffed up with pride. I wanted to shake her. She was putting us both in danger—but of course, she could not see it. She only thought she was being clever and helping to solve the murder. I was almost glad when something happened to spoil her good mood.

  “Ready for the match against Saint Chator’s this weekend?” Daisy asked Clementine as she chewed a slice of toast. I think it was Daisy’s way of making peace for the bucket of water. “I heard Hopkins was awfully helpful at practice in the pavilion on Monday evening.”

  Clementine sniffed. “If we are ready, it’s no thanks to Hopkins,” she said. “The session wasn’t even halfway through when she dodged down to school with some silly excuse about needing to write a letter. A letter! When we haven’t beaten Chator’s for four years! We had to finish the discussion with only the prefect to help us.”

  I gasped out loud, there at the breakfast table. I couldn’t help it. Miss Hopkins’s alibi, which had been so secure all the way through our investigation, had just been smashed to pieces. She had been down at school at the time of the murder. All her suspicious behavior suddenly began to look rather sinister.

  Daisy must have been as shocked as I was, but she only blinked. “Miss Hopkins went back down to school on Monday evening?” she asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Clementine, through a half-chewed mouthful of toast. “Honestly, we were all furious about it. Can you imagine?”

  The rest of the table made sympathetic noises. I wanted to jump up and down and shriek like Beanie. Miss Hopkins might be the murderer! What if she had been afraid that The One might leave her for Miss Bell, just the way he had left Miss Bell for her? She was very strong too (I thought of her swinging a hockey stick in phys ed)—she could easily have shoved Miss Bell off that balcony. I couldn’t decide if I was pleased that my suspicions about Miss Hopkins might still be proven right, or frustrated to have our case made more messy . . . or even frightened. But I could tell that Daisy was simply annoyed.

  “Why do you care if Miss Hopkins doesn’t have an alibi?” I asked as we walked down to school. “If she’s got a motive and she’s been behaving extremely oddly, why shouldn’t she be a suspect?”

  Daisy glared at me. “You know why!” she said. “Because she didn’t do it, I know she didn’t. And now we have to rule her out all over again. It’s simply not tidy!”

  “You only want to clear her name because you like her and you don’t want her to have done it!”

  “I don’t see what’s wrong with that!”

  “Daisy, you can’t be a proper detective if you don’t follow the clues!” I said. “What if she did do it?”

  “She didn’t! Anyway, I’m the president of the society. Have you forgotten?”

  “What does that matter? I thought you said that I was the cleverest person you knew in the whole school?”

  “Apart from me! And I say that I don’t think Miss Hopkins did it!”

  We glared at each other.

  “Well, you can do what you want,” said Daisy at last. “Follow Miss Hopkins as well as Miss Parker this morning, if it’ll make you happy. And you can do The One and Miss Lappet too, just for being so difficult. I’m going to follow Miss Tennyson.”

  “All right, I will follow Miss Hopkins,” I said angrily, thinking how absolutely infuriating Daisy could be at times. “Just you see . . . I’ll follow Miss Hopkins and all the others and I’ll show you what a good detective I am.”

  “If you must,” said Daisy with a sigh. “But when I discover that Miss Tennyson did it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  We both stormed through the Old Wing entrance.

  Unfortunately, it was impossible to ignore Daisy and her annoying ideas. By the time prayers were over, her séance story was all over the school. Miss Bell, everyone was telling one another, had not been kidnapped at all. She had been murdered.

  It was very strange hearing other people say it, and for some reason it made me even more upset. It was our case, and Daisy had given it away to the rest of Deepdean.

  The only way to show Daisy that she was going about the investigation the wrong way, though, was to concentrate on my own detective work. So after prayers, when I saw Miss Lappet and Miss Parker heading to the teachers’ common room, I joined a line of seventh-graders following Miss Hopkins. Miss Hopkins bounced along cheerfully and even patted a shrimp on the back—once again, she seemed far too happy. But was I just being prejudiced against her?

  As I was wondering this, though, The One came striding around the corner in the other direction. He saw Miss Hopkins and his face turned a deep, shameful shade of red. Miss Hopkins stopped so quickly that her hair bounced, and she made a funny, shrill noise, like someone killing a mouse. The seventh-graders stared between the two of them in fascination, and I was fascinated too. Was this behavior evidence of some guilty secret? Just then the bell for the beginning of lessons rang, and I ran for our classroom.

  I bumped into Daisy just outside.

  “I followed Miss Tennyson to the teachers’ bathrooms,” said Daisy coolly. “She’s hidden in there, and of course I can’t get in, but I can hear her crying. It’s extremely suspicious.”

  “Miss Hopkins is being suspicious too,” I said. “She saw The One and she went all funny.”

  Daisy, I could see, was not interested in the slightest.

  I spent the rest of the morning feeling as though I was trying to be in twenty places at once. Shadowing one person, let alone four, is an unexpectedly sweaty business. Between each lesson I went rushing around, trying to keep Miss Hopkins, The One, Miss Parker, and Miss Lappet in sight
at all times, and trying not to pant too heavily while I was doing it.

  Miss Hopkins continued to be enormously cheerful and to skip about the school like a bouncy ball. As she did so, I became grimly sure that she must be doing it on purpose. She did not run into The One again all morning, but to me, that one meeting had proved enough.

  Miss Parker was far easier to follow—and, I had to admit, much more obviously disturbed by something. She stalked around, scowling terribly and dragging her hands through her hair. Was she upset because of what had happened on Monday evening? I was nearly certain that she must at least have argued with Miss Bell—or was there something more to it? Was she worried by the new rumors?

  Miss Lappet moved slowly, peering down at girls after she had nearly tripped over them. Her hair didn’t look as though she had brushed it that morning, and once again her cardigan was misbuttoned over her bosom. I realized that she had been showing signs of this sort of thing for days—ever since Tuesday, in fact. What was wrong with her? I knew she was doing the secretarying for Miss Griffin that Miss Bell usually did, but surely that extra work could not have been enough to tip her over the edge.

  At bunbreak, Miss Hopkins and Miss Lappet sequestered themselves again in the teachers’ common room. Miss Parker, though, swept straight past and on down the Library corridor. I chased her small figure in its sweater and brown skirt as she wove between groups of girls, and then I hung back, just in time to see her climb the steps to The One’s office door, knock on it, and step inside.

  Here was something interesting.

  I edged through a crowd of seventh-grade shrimps, checked my wristwatch as though I was waiting for someone, sighed deeply, and plumped down onto the top step. Staring ahead of me vaguely, I let my head lean backward until it was resting as near as possible to the door hinge. For added camouflage I pulled Swallows and Amazons out of my bag and opened it on my lap as though I was reading. Then I let my eyes unfocus from the text and listened with all my might to what was happening in the office behind me.

  The first thing I heard was The One. If it had been anyone else, I would have said he sounded angry.

  “. . . don’t know why you think I have anything to do with this,” he was saying.

  “I know you do!” said Miss Parker, cutting across him. She really was angry, nearly raving. “Joan told me—she said that you and she—”

  (For a moment I wondered what someone called Joan had to do with anything, and then I remembered it was Miss Bell’s first name.)

  “I tell you you’re wrong!” The One did shout then, and I jumped and had to pretend I had a cramp.

  “No,” said Miss Parker, and her voice went much quieter, so that I could barely hear her. “I know she went back to you, and I want you to admit it. You must give me—”

  There was a heavy thump. “I will give you nothing!” shouted The One. “You have no right to ask! Get out of my office at once!”

  “I shall!” Miss Parker screamed back. “But you’ll be sorry! I’ll come back and—oh!”

  Trying to look as interested in Swallows and Amazons as I could, I hurriedly bumped down the stairs. When Miss Parker shoved the door open a few seconds later, I was sitting innocently on the bottom step, engrossed in my book.

  I needn’t have bothered. She pushed past without noticing me and stormed off down the corridor, nearly crashing into Miss Hopkins, who happened to be coming the other way, her hair bouncing more than ever. Was she coming to see The One? I hung back to see where she would go—and sure enough, she began to climb the steps to The One’s office.

  Just then, though, the bell to end bunbreak rang. Cursing school bells, I stuffed Swallows and Amazons back into my bag and walked away. What did what I had just heard mean? Were Miss Hopkins and The One working together? Had Miss Parker discovered something awful about them? Was she even planning to blackmail them now that she had heard the new rumors? Off I went to history class, thinking that at last I had something really important to tell Daisy—something so good that even she could not ignore it.

  I should have known that Daisy would find a way to foil me. She rushed into history when we were already standing up for Miss Lappet to come in.

  “Good of you to grace us with your presence, Daisy,” said Miss Lappet, who was looking just as flustered and misbuttoned as she had earlier. Also, I could tell from up close, she had a sickly after-dinner smell wafting about her. Next to me, Kitty mouthed to Beanie, Drinking again.

  “Sorry, Miss Lappet,” said Daisy, pretending to be contrite. “It won’t happen again, Miss Lappet. Miss Lappet?”

  “What, Daisy?” asked Miss Lappet, and steadied herself with both hands on her desk.

  “Miss Lappet, I was wondering if you were the one who went around collecting lost property on Monday evening. You see, I’ve lost my very special pen, and—”

  Miss Lappet sighed windily. “Enough, Daisy,” she said. “You do speak loudly sometimes. As it happens, that evening Miss Bell was in charge of confiscations and lost property.” (The whole class stiffened at the mention of Miss Bell’s name.) “Not that she ever handed any in before she resigned. I was in Miss Griffin’s office, discussing important matters, for the entire evening.”

  “Oh,” said Daisy, flashing a private, triumphant look at me. “So—you were there the entire evening?”

  “Good grief, Daisy!” snapped Miss Lappet, clutching her forehead. “You never listen, do you? Yes, I was there the whole evening. And what does this have to do with your pen?”

  So, I thought to myself, that did for Miss Lappet. I had to admit it was neat of Daisy to get her alibi like that. But afterward, it was no good even attempting to send a note. Miss Lappet kept her eyes focused (with a slight effort) on Daisy through the entire lesson. I had no chance to let Daisy know about the argument I had overheard between Miss Parker and The One, and so when we went on to music I was the only member of the Detective Society who knew that we had a new reason to watch him.

  It was a good thing I did. Wrinkling his handsome brow, The One could barely hold a tune on the piano, confused Kitty with Lavinia, forgot to give us prep, fell over a tambourine, and then wished us a good evening—at one o’clock in the afternoon. Even Beanie noticed that something was wrong.

  “P’raps he’s in mourning for Miss Bell,” she said to us on the way out of the Old Wing entrance at lunchtime.

  Unfortunately, Miss Lappet happened to be passing by, and she was still cross.

  “Beanie!” she snapped. Beanie froze in horror. “Enough! If I hear you repeating any more foolish and baseless gossip, it’ll be the whole eighth grade in detention for all of next week. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Miss Lappet,” gulped Beanie. “Sorry, Miss Lappet.”

  We walked up to the dorm very quietly, in case we spread any more rumors by mistake, and Beanie stayed with us all the way . . . Yet again, I had no chance to talk to Daisy.

  In a way, though, this was a good thing. I was free to think about The One without any interruptions or contradictions. He had shown exactly the sort of behavior you might expect of someone who had just been blackmailed. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that there was no other explanation for the argument I had overheard. The One knew something about Miss Bell’s murder—from what I had witnessed, it seemed likely he and Miss Hopkins both knew something about it—and Miss Parker knew that they knew. But could The One really be a murderer? Perhaps he was just covering for Miss Hopkins’s crime. Was that why she had gone hurrying down to school on Monday night? So much for Daisy being sure Miss Hopkins was innocent!

  I felt quite triumphant about my deductions. At last it was me who had come up with the important clue, and Daisy who would have to follow along behind.

  But it was Daisy who cornered me.

  “Come with me,” she ordered, as soon as we had finished lunch. “I’ve got the plan ready at last.”

  “Daisy, I have to tell you what I heard at bunbreak. I think Miss Parker is blackmailing T
he One. Honestly! I think he and Miss Hopkins—”

  “Shh,” said Daisy. “Dorm.”

  The dorm room was empty when we arrived. We made straight for my bed and sat down facing each other.

  “Daisy,” I said again, as soon as the door closed on us. “You’ve got to listen. I think Miss Hopkins and The One are in it together. We know that he was down at school, and that she came back halfway through hockey practice. One of them could have done it, or maybe it was both of them, and then Miss Parker found out somehow and now she’s blackmailing them! Miss Parker went into The One’s study at morning break and I heard them arguing.”

  “Oh, Hazel,” said Daisy. I could hardly believe it. She was dismissing me. “How do you know she was blackmailing him? Did you hear her actually ask him for money?”

  “No,” I said, “but—”

  “Exactly. She’s furious about his past with Miss Bell—we know that already. She must have just gone to confront him about it again. Anyway, it hardly matters. I’ve got something much more important to show you!”

  She dug around in the depths of her book bag and then pulled out a little glass bottle. She waved it at me, beaming as though I ought to be particularly impressed. I wasn’t. I wanted to shout at her. She had to listen to me.

  “What is it this time?” I asked crossly.

  “Ipecac,” said Daisy. “I got it from Alice Murgatroyd.” Then, seeing my look, she said, “Oh, honestly, where did you come from? Every nursery has it. Nanny used to make us take it whenever we’d eaten something we oughtn’t. It makes you awfully sick. It’s exactly what we need.”

  I did not understand, and I was not in the mood to try. I was still angry. Why was Daisy’s idiotic idea more important than my perfectly good clue?

  “Don’t you see?” asked Daisy, still chugging along on her own triumphant train of thought. “If we’re going to go hunting for clues about Miss Bell, we need to get into the school when we can snoop about without any of the teachers wondering what we’re up to—and more importantly, without the murderer noticing us. That means at night, and the easiest way to do that is to get admitted to the infirmary. If we take this we won’t need to pretend at all—we’ll be sick everywhere and Minny will have to keep us in the infirmary overnight. Then all we need to do is wait until she falls asleep and we can go wherever we like.”