by R. A. Spratt
‘But who would put a bottle of ipecac in my beef stroganoff?’ said Mrs Marigold. She was pulling herself together now, thanks to the recuperative power of anger.
‘More importantly,’ said Friday, ‘who would want to make it look like the whole school had been poisoned by deadly mushrooms?’
‘It’s the type of thing Ian might do,’ said Melanie.
‘What?!’ exploded the Headmaster. ‘That boy’s expelled. He’s at some state school two hours’ drive away.’ He slumped down on a chair. ‘Oh no, you don’t think he’s masterminded the whole thing from a distance, do you? He’s probably trying to destabilise the school so it will be closed down as an act of revenge. That’s just what I need – a vengeful ex-student causing chaos.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Friday. ‘I’m sure Ian is playing elaborate pranks on his own school now. There’s bound to be someone else with a motive to cause mayhem here.’
‘The vegetarians?’ said Melanie.
‘They don’t have enough energy to cause trouble,’ said Mrs Marigold. ‘They don’t get enough protein. The human body was not designed to be fuelled by chickpeas.’
‘But they are the only ones who weren’t endangered by the ipecac syrup,’ said Friday.
‘And if they’re iron-deficient, they might not be thinking clearly,’ added Melanie.
‘Just stop it,’ said the Headmaster. ‘The last thing we need – in addition to three-quarters of the students wanting to vomit – is wild and reckless speculation. Everyone healthy is to return to their dorm rooms immediately and quarantine themselves until breakfast time. I’ll call in a doctor, actually two or three doctors, to come and monitor the sick students during the night.’
Chapter 15
In the Room
Friday, Melanie and all the vegetarians were told to go back to their dorm rooms while the sick students were cared for.
‘The whole thing is very odd,’ said Melanie.
‘The mass poisoning?’ asked Friday.
‘Yes,’ said Melanie. ‘It seems like such an enormous amount of effort. If you hate the school that much, why not just stay home?’
‘Perhaps whoever did it has parents who won’t let them stay at home,’ said Friday. ‘Or their parents are overseas, so they have no home to go to.’
‘Like you,’ observed Melanie.
‘I didn’t do it,’ said Friday.
‘If you say so,’ said Melanie.
‘I didn’t do it!’ restated Friday.
‘That’s all right,’ said Melanie. ‘It doesn’t bother me, either way. If you had poisoned the whole school, I’m sure you’d only do it for the best possible reasons. Underneath your ugly cardigan and eccentric green hat, you are an extremely good person.’
‘I think I should say “thank you”,’ said Friday, ‘because beneath all those insults was some sort of compliment.’
‘That’s what best friends are for,’ said Melanie as she pushed open their dorm room door but then she stopped dead.
‘Did you write that on the wall?’ asked Melanie.
Friday followed Melanie into the room. On the wall the words ‘Go Home Nerd’ were scrawled in red.
‘Of course I didn’t,’ said Friday.
‘Then it must be directed at you,’ said Melanie. ‘If it was directed at me, it would say “Go Home Sleepy Head”.’
Friday carefully stepped across the room to the words. She peered at the lettering.
‘Is it written in blood?’ asked Melanie.
Friday went white. She didn’t like blood. She clapped her hands over her eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she whimpered.
‘I’ll check,’ said Melanie, following her over to the wall.
‘How?’ asked Friday. ‘If it’s blood, you mustn’t touch it. We’ll need to get expert forensic cleaners in to decontaminate the scene.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Melanie. ‘I’ll just do what you always do.’ Melanie leaned in and sniffed the lettering. ‘Aha!’
‘What is it?’ asked Friday, peeking between her fingers.
Melanie dipped her finger in the letter then licked it.
‘Urgh,’ said Friday as she fainted.
‘It’s all right,’ said Melanie. ‘It’s just strawberry syrup. The type you put on ice-cream.’
‘It looks exactly like blood,’ whimpered Friday from the floor.
‘Who would do this?’ asked Melanie.
‘Someone who had just come from the kitchen,’ said Friday. ‘Perhaps it’s someone who’s angry that we thwarted their deathcap panic campaign?’
‘Or perhaps it’s someone with really strong feelings about immigration policy who thinks you should “go home” to Switzerland?’ suggested Melanie.
‘It’s definitely someone trying to intimidate me,’ said Friday.
‘With strawberry topping,’ added Melanie.
Friday gathered herself enough to stand up and go over to the wall. She dipped her finger in the lettering and tasted it herself. ‘Mmm, tastes pretty good,’ said Friday. ‘Hey, I just realised we totally missed out on dinner.’
‘I think that makes us the lucky ones,’ said Melanie.
‘If only we had some ice-cream to go with all this syrup,’ said Friday.
‘I’ve got a packet of biscuits Granny sent me,’ said Melanie. ‘They’d be pretty nice dipped in strawberry sauce.’
And so the girls got to eat some sort of makeshift dinner while they contemplated the strange goings-on of the evening.
Chapter 16
The Case of the Missing Furniture
Friday and Melanie were sitting on the lawn eating sandwiches. The whole school was eating lunch picnic-style because the dining hall was being scrubbed by professional cleaners to get the parmesan cheese smell out.
‘Barnes!’
Friday flinched. Just what she needed. Someone else yelling at her. Friday turned to see Tristan Fanshaw striding towards her.
‘Terrific,’ said Friday. Her whole body slumped as she accepted that there was no way she could get away from him.
Tristan Fanshaw was a fifth form boy and nobody liked him. This was no exaggeration. Not even his own mother liked spending time with him. He was an entitled, mean-spirited, petty, pedantic snob, but the irritation he caused was beyond that. He didn’t just insult and belittle others, he did so thoughtlessly. And the only thing worse than someone being maliciously cruel, is someone being thoughtlessly cruel.
‘I need your help,’ said Tristan. He beckoned for her to follow him.
‘Really?’ said Friday, not moving.
‘I’m prepared to pay,’ said Tristan.
‘I can’t imagine why I would help you otherwise,’ said Friday.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Tristan dismissively. ‘Come with me.’ He started walking towards the senior boys’ dormitory.
‘Are you going to follow him?’ asked Melanie.
‘I suppose so,’ said Friday. ‘I’ve finished my sandwich and there’s half an hour left of lunch to fill.’ She started ambling after him and Melanie followed in her wake.
‘He walks quickly,’ complained Melanie.
‘He doesn’t seem to have been affected by last night’s mass poisoning,’ observed Friday. ‘He doesn’t strike me as the vegetarian type.’
‘He’s poisonous enough already,’ said Melanie. ‘Ingesting extra poison probably wouldn’t affect him.’
Friday had never been inside the senior boys’ dormitory before. There was a lot of oak panelling and thick red carpet. It felt more like they were going to visit a high-price barrister in his chambers, than a seventeen-year-old in his school dorm room.
‘This way,’ said Tristan, clicking his fingers at them.
‘He does realise we’re not his staff, doesn’t he?’ asked Melanie.
‘I think I am,’ said Friday. ‘If I take the case.’
When they caught up with Tristan he was unlocking his door.
‘What’s your problem?’ asked Friday.
‘It’s easier just to show you,’ said Tristan. He swung the door open.
Friday and Melanie stepped inside. Tristan was right. It was immediately apparent what his problem was – his furniture was missing. On one side of the room there was a bed, desk and chest of drawers typical of every Highcrest dorm room. On the other side of the room there was nothing except a scrunched-up set of sheets on the floor where the bed had been, books and stationery scattered on the floor by the window where the desk once stood, and a huge pile of clothes left in the chest of drawers’ wake.
‘As you can see, my furniture has disappeared,’ said Tristan. ‘My roommate still has a chest of drawers, bed and desk, but mine have vanished.’
‘What happened?’ asked Friday.
Tristan rolled his eyes. ‘If I knew I wouldn’t have had to hire you. I want you to sort this out and return my furniture to me A-S-A-P.’
‘Asap?’ asked Melanie.
‘As soon as possible,’ said Friday.
‘Oh,’ said Melanie. ‘I hate it when people spell things.’
‘When did it disappear?’ asked Friday.
‘Well, the bed was there last night when I slept in it,’ said Tristan. ‘The desk and chest of drawers, too. It was all here when I set off for breakfast, but when I came back here during mid-morning break to change my books, it was all gone.’
‘So your furniture disappeared sometime between 7.30 and 11 am?’ said Friday.
‘That’s what I just said,’ said Tristan testily.
‘Did anybody else in the dorm see anything?’ asked Friday.
‘I don’t know,’ said Tristan, ‘I’m not going to waste my time playing detective. That’s what I want you to do for me.’
‘Do you have any enemies?’ asked Friday.
‘How should I know?’ said Tristan. ‘I can’t read people’s minds to know what they think of me.’
‘I can answer that question,’ said Melanie, holding up her hand. ‘Yes, he does. In fact, it would be better to ask if he had any friends because that would be a much shorter list. Nobody likes him.’
‘The feeling is mutual,’ said Tristan. ‘I don’t like anybody here, either. Common riff-raff. If it weren’t for the legal requirement to attend school, I’d be in Switzerland enjoying the first powder of the season.’
‘You enjoy powder?’ asked Friday. She knew rich people could be peculiar. But this was a peculiarity she had not encountered before.
‘Powder snow,’ said Melanie. ‘He means he’d rather be skiing.’
‘Snowboarding, actually,’ corrected Tristan. ‘Skiing is so twentieth century.’
‘Is there anyone you have been particularly offensive to in the last twenty-four hours, aside from us?’ asked Friday.
‘I suppose I did tell Mr Maclean to his face that he was a disgrace to his profession, and that he had spinach stuck in his teeth,’ said Tristan.
‘He wouldn’t like that,’ said Melanie.
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Tristan, with a shrug. ‘It’s much better to know than not to know. Besides, if he can’t maintain proper dental hygiene he shouldn’t eat spinach.’
‘Anyone else?’ asked Friday.
‘My roommate, Harris, has gone off in a strop,’ said Tristan. ‘He’s been sleeping on Singh and Thorpe’s floor for the past week.’
‘Then maybe that’s why he took your furniture?’ said Melanie.
‘No,’ said Friday. ‘He could just take his own.’
‘Why did Harris go off in a strop?’ asked Melanie.
‘I told him at the beginning of the year I’d chuck a glass of water on him if he snored,’ said Tristan.
‘And he snored?’ asked Friday.
‘Yes, he got an upper respiratory tract infection and snored like a chainsaw,’ said Tristan. ‘It was dashed inconvenient. I ended up throwing eight glasses of water on him in one night. I kept having to trot back and forth to the bathroom to fetch more. If I’d known, I would have borrowed a jug from the kitchen.’
‘Surely making him wet would exacerbate his respiratory infection?’ said Friday.
‘Not my problem,’ said Tristan. ‘Getting some sleep was my main concern. He pushed off after two nights of it.’
‘Anyone else?’ asked Friday.
‘I kicked a year seven boy into the swamp yesterday after breakfast,’ said Tristan.
‘Why?’ asked Friday.
‘He was crouching on the boardwalk, bending right over looking at a crab in the mud,’ said Tristan. ‘With his rear up in the air, he was practically inviting me to do it.’
‘What was the boy’s name?’ asked Friday.
‘I don’t know,’ said Tristan. ‘He was a year seven.’
‘They have names too,’ said Melanie.
‘Well, I don’t bother learning them,’ said Tristan.
‘What did the boy look like?’ asked Friday.
‘Muddy,’ said Tristan. ‘I didn’t see his face until he was trying to pull himself back up onto the boardwalk. He had landed head-first, so there was an inch-thick layer of mud over his whole face. He should have paid me for the privilege. Mud is supposed to be good for the skin, isn’t it?’ Tristan laughed at his own joke and wasn’t at all perturbed when the girls did not join in.
‘All right,’ said Friday. ‘I don’t think we can get any more helpful information from talking to you. You can leave.’
‘But this is my room,’ said Tristan.
‘If you want me to investigate, you need to leave,’ said Friday. ‘Because I’m not taking the case if I have to spend any more time in your company.’
‘Fine,’ said Tristan. ‘I don’t enjoy socialising with bluestockings, either.’ He slouched out of the room.
‘Why did he call us bluestockings?’ asked Melanie.
‘It’s an eighteenth-century derogatory name for a female nerd,’ said Friday.
‘You’ve heard it before then?’ asked Melanie.
‘When you’ve been a nerd as long as I have, it comes up from time to time,’ said Friday.
‘So what do we do now?’ asked Melanie.
‘We’re going to experiment,’ said Friday.
Chapter 17
The Secrets of the Furniture
‘We need to figure out how the furniture was removed,’ said Friday. ‘The thief wouldn’t have taken it through the door. There are eighteen bedrooms along this corridor, with thirty-six occupants. The chances of being discovered would be too high. They must have taken the furniture out through the window.’
Tristan’s room had a large double window. Friday opened both panels wide. ‘Look!’ she said, pointing to the paintwork. There were large scrapes.
‘Let’s see how easy it would have been to do,’ said Friday. She went over to Harris’ bed and picked up the mattress, then promptly dropped it again. It flopped about and was hard to carry. Even with Melanie’s help it took a lot of effort to get the mattress to the window then push it out.
‘Phew, furniture theft is exhausting,’ said Melanie.
‘That was the easy bit,’ said Friday. ‘Now we’ve got to do the bed base.’
In the end it took Friday and Melanie fifteen minutes to shove all of Harris’ furniture out the window. By which time they were knackered, Friday had a bruise in the middle of her forehead where she had been hit by the leg of the desk as it slid out the window and she had pulled several threads in her least ugly brown cardigan.
‘Was that really worth doing?’ asked Melanie as she looked out the window. The furniture looked sad sitting abandoned on the gravel road outside.
‘Absolutely,’ said Friday, swinging her leg over the frame and climbing outside herself. ‘We’ve learned so much.’
‘We have?’ said Melanie, sitting on the frame and spinning her legs over before sliding herself carefully onto the drive.
‘We’ve learned that our thief is physically strong and committed,’ said Friday.
‘Should be committed, more like,’ said
Melanie.
‘That they are academically inclined and culturally refined,’ said Friday.
‘How do you deduce that?’ asked Melanie.
‘Because they stole a desk,’ said Friday. ‘Which means they intend to sit and work. Most students at this school don’t actually use their desk as a desk. It’s more of a collection point for their belongings. When they read or do their homework, they want to be as comfortable as possible so they sit on their bed. Our thief wanted a place they could sit and work diligently.’
‘And how do you figure they are culturally refined?’ asked Melanie.
‘Because they stole the bed base,’ said Friday. ‘If all you’re interested in is sleep, then you only need a mattress. If dignity and style is important to you, then you would value a bed base. It also tells us they intend to use the furniture for a while.’
‘What does the chest of drawers tell you?’ asked Melanie. ‘Their mother’s maiden name?’
‘That they have nice clothes,’ said Friday. ‘If you have nice clothes, you care about how they are stored.’
‘Is that why you always leave your ugly brown cardigan draped on the floor?’ said Melanie.
Friday did not answer because she was too busy looking around her. She stood next to the chest of drawers doing a slow pirouette, taking in what she could see in every direction. To the north lay the long rolling lawn that stretched down to the edge of the swamp. To the west were the cricket pitches. Highcrest Academy had three. This was a fact the school liked to boast about in their prospectus. Although, in reality, very few students enjoyed playing cricket. Polo and lacrosse were more popular in their social milieu. Plus, in this day and age of helicopter parenting, sports involving extremely hard balls being purposefully bowled at great speed at an opponent’s head were not as popular as they once were. To the south was the kitchen garden, then the formal flower garden that wrapped around to the front of the school.
