Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery

by Robin Stevens

  Miss Parker made a noise that sounded like all the air rushing out of a balloon. Her face had gone red and her mouth was open and gaping fishily, and she clutched at the sides of her chair until her knuckles went red and white in strips.

  ‘The discovery means that this is now a murder inquiry, and you are the suspects.’

  Beside me, Daisy made an appreciative noise. I could tell that she was enjoying the Inspector’s sense of theatre.

  ‘I’m afraid, Inspector, that you must be mistaken,’ said Miss Griffin calmly.

  ‘I’m afraid that I am not,’ said the Inspector, who was just as calm.

  Miss Parker’s voice, when she spoke, came choking out of her in odd little bursts. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, she can’t be – we argued, I was going to tell her I was sorry – she can’t be dead before I’ve told her how sorry I am!’

  Oh, poor Miss Parker, I thought. Daisy sniffed. She did not sound sympathetic.

  The Inspector was carrying on. ‘The murderer must have been someone who knew her writing well enough to forge a resignation letter, and who had access to Miss Griffin’s desk – in short, it must have been one of the six of you.’

  ‘But this is preposterous!’ exclaimed Miss Lappet. She was slurring her words again. ‘You have not the smallest bit of evidence against any of us.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the Inspector. ‘I have plenty. There is a bloodstain on the Gym floor and another one on the Gym cupboard’s trolley. The disused tunnel under the school bears signs of recent use, including footprints matching Miss Tennyson’s shoes, and there is a bloodstain and moss from Oakeshott Woods on Miss Tennyson’s abandoned car. I can say with confidence that Miss Tennyson played a part in Miss Bell’s death and the disposal of her body. But she did not do it alone.’

  I could feel the atmosphere change in the music room, and despite myself I shivered.

  ‘Miss Tennyson’s death at first appeared to be a suicide, but certain details did not make sense. There were signs of a struggle, and the body had been rearranged after death. Therefore I deduce that Miss Tennyson’s accomplice returned and killed her. Someone in this room is the murderer of two women.’

  10

  ‘But why do you think one of us did it?’ asked Miss Lappet, in a brief moment of clarity. ‘It might be anyone.’

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ said Miss Hopkins, scandalized. ‘Besides, people like us simply don’t do that sort of thing.’

  ‘All of you were at school during Monday evening,’ the Inspector explained. ‘And all of you had a reason to wish Miss Bell dead.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ cried Mamzelle suddenly. ‘Not I, surely! I had no hatred for Mees Bell.’

  ‘Ah, well, that may be true. But you do have a secret, don’t you?’ said the Inspector.

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ asked Mamzelle. Her chin had gone up, and her face was pale. Behind the curtain, Daisy pinched me in excitement. Whatever did the Inspector mean? Had we missed something else?

  ‘This afternoon I wired the school in France you give as your reference, and they wired back to say that they had never heard of you. In fact, the French do not seem to have any official records of you at all. You aren’t Estelle Renauld, are you?’

  Behind the curtain I gasped, and Daisy kicked me on the ankle so hard that when I inspected it afterwards I could still see the print of her shoe. All the other staff stared up at Mamzelle in shock. She looked round at them and suddenly burst out laughing.

  ‘The things one will do to get a job,’ she said, in a very different accent to her ordinary French one. ‘It seemed such a little deception when compared to the reward.’

  ‘You aren’t French?’ shrieked Miss Hopkins.

  ‘I’m from Leicester,’ said Mamzelle. ‘Down on the official records as Stella Higgins, if you must know. I trained as a Science mistress, but there were no jobs going for a grammar-school girl from Leicester. Then I read about this position. I speak French, after all. My mother was from Toulouse. I thought, why not have a go? It was the sort of place I’d dreamed about teaching at all my life, but I knew I’d never get there as Stella Higgins. So I made a little alteration to my records – taking my mother’s maiden name, and changing the spelling of my first name. One of my mother’s cousins rewrote my reference so that it came from a school in Provence, and I became Mademoiselle Renauld. But if you think that Miss Bell found out, and I killed her to shut her up, you’re quite wrong. I had nothing to do with her death, or Miss Tennyson’s – I might have changed my name to get a job, but I’d never kill anyone to keep it. And if I’m dismissed for this – well, you’re fools. You must admit, I’ve been good at my job.’

  That must have been what Mamzelle was doing when Sophie heard her in the music practice room, I thought. Practising her accent! It had only been a very small mystery, but it was lovely to have it solved.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Miss Hopkins faintly.

  ‘Well,’ snapped Miss Griffin. ‘We’ll deal with this later.’

  Inspector Priestley nodded. ‘Thank you for clearing that up,’ he said to Mamzelle. ‘For the moment I shall assume that you are innocent – or rather, that you are guilty of nothing more serious than identity fraud – and move on with the problem of who killed Miss Bell and Miss Tennyson.’

  Everyone went very quiet again.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ said Miss Parker at last. ‘I swear I didn’t. Joan and I argued horribly that evening but that’s all. I didn’t want to tell anyone that we’d had another row – I was embarrassed, so I’ve been lying about exactly when I left school that day. I was here until nearly six, but I swear I had nothing to do with her being murdered. And I thought Joan was alive until just now – didn’t I?’ she asked The One pleadingly, turning to look at him with huge staring eyes.

  The One gulped. ‘Miss Parker is telling the truth,’ he said. ‘Ever since last Tuesday morning she has been asking me to tell her where Miss Bell is. I found it impossible to make her believe that I had no idea, or that I had nothing to do with her resignation.’

  I felt pleased again at that. I had guessed right!

  ‘I see,’ said the Inspector. ‘But why should Miss Parker think that you had something to do with Miss Bell’s disappearance?’

  ‘Because Miss Bell told me that she was going to go back to him,’ growled Miss Parker, glaring furiously at The One.

  ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ Daisy whispered to me. ‘Just like the end of one of my novels!’

  I thought it was more like being at the pictures. After all, there we were in the dark, watching grown-ups weep and shout and accuse each other of dreadful things.

  The One went very red. His Adam’s apple gulped up and down in his throat, and at first I thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all. But then he seemed to decide something. He swallowed once more, and then reached out and put his hand over Miss Hopkins’s.

  ‘Miss Bell,’ he said unsteadily, ‘did come to see me on Monday evening. But, er, I could not possibly give her what she was asking for. You see – when she came in, I was with Arabella. She, er, surprised us together.’

  ‘And what were you doing with Miss Hopkins?’ asked the Inspector, although of course he knew perfectly well.

  ‘Er,’ said The One sheepishly, ‘I’d rather not say, exactly. You see, we are engaged.’

  Miss Griffin gave a hiss of rage. ‘After all I’ve done for you!’ she said to Miss Hopkins. ‘To waste it by getting married!’

  All I could think was, They deserve each other.

  ‘We’re going to be married in the spring,’ said Miss Hopkins. ‘Isn’t it blissful? He asked me at lunch last Friday and I said yes. We knew’ – she nodded at Miss Griffin – ‘that we had to keep it a deadly secret. I couldn’t wear the ring he bought me, so he gave me these earrings as well, as a token of his love. They are just like the ones Miss Griffin has, which I’d admired. I was so excited about it on Monday that I slipped away from the after-school hockey tactics talk halfway through and
went down to his cubby to see him.’

  ‘And what time was that?’ asked Inspector Priestley.

  ‘Oh, about five thirty, I should think,’ said Miss Hopkins. ‘We were there together until just before six.’

  The One nodded. ‘At one point there was a noise in the corridor and I put my head round the door to see who it was. Miss Tennyson was there, and Mam— er, Miss . . . er . . . Oh, you remember seeing me, surely?’ he asked Mamzelle. She nodded.

  ‘You see?’ said Miss Hopkins. ‘So we both have alibis. And anyway, there was no reason for either of us to want silly old Miss Bell dead, was there? Not once we were engaged. She might have got cross about it, but she couldn’t do anything to us. It would have been perfectly foolish to kill her.’

  ‘Murder is always foolish,’ said the Inspector. ‘If people only murdered each other rationally, I would be out of a job. Now, what about Miss Lappet and Miss Griffin?’

  Miss Lappet twitched back in her seat. ‘Miss Griffin and I,’ she said faintly. ‘were in her office, working on administrative matters. All evening.’

  I saw Miss Griffin look at her sideways. What will she say? I wondered.

  ‘Yes,’ she said after the slightest of pauses. ‘Miss Lappet is quite right.’

  ‘How convenient,’ said the Inspector politely – not, of course, meaning to be polite at all. ‘Thank you. Well, taking all of those statements into account, shall I put forward what I believe happened on Monday evening?’

  The room went very still. Daisy bounced silently next to me – I could tell she was holding her hand over her mouth to stop herself from squeaking.

  ‘As I said before, I believe that whoever was responsible for Miss Bell’s death was also responsible for Miss Tennyson’s – to solve one murder is to solve the other. The crucial person in all this, therefore, is Miss Bell herself. Why would someone have wanted to kill her in the first place?

  ‘Rivalry for the Deputy Headmistress job seems the obvious motive – that would be you, Miss Lappet, as well as Miss Tennyson. Then there is the rather knotty lovelife of Mr Reid’ – I very nearly giggled at that – ‘which involves Mr Reid himself, as well as Miss Parker and Miss Hopkins.’

  ‘I see that I am not included in this little list,’ said Miss Griffin frostily. ‘Since I am obviously not a suspect, may I be permitted to leave?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ snapped the Inspector. ‘Two of your mistresses have died in the past week. If nothing else, as Headmistress you should take responsibility for their welfare.’

  ‘Come now, Inspector,’ said Miss Griffin. ‘It is rather hard to run a school with no mistresses. I hardly think it would be in my best interests to kill my own staff.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Inspector. ‘For a headmistress to kill her own staff she would have to have a very good reason.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Miss Griffin, sitting back in her chair.

  ‘Exactly,’ the Inspector echoed. ‘So. Did you have a very good reason for doing it?’

  Suddenly the rest of the mistresses began to catch on to what was happening. They all whipped their heads round to stare at Miss Griffin, like people at a tennis match.

  ‘Certainly not!’ It was almost a shout.

  ‘It seems to me,’ the Inspector went on smoothly, ‘that Miss Bell must have been a rather desperate woman. She needed money, did she not? That’s why she was performing secretarial duties for you. After she was rejected by Mr Reid, that Deputy job must have become even more important to her. If she had known anything that could have swung the appointment in her favour, or given her more power at Deepdean, I suspect she would have used it. So, did she know something about your past that you might want to keep hidden?’

  ‘Do – not – be – ridiculous,’ hissed Miss Griffin. ‘As I have told you, I was in my office all Monday evening with Miss Lappet.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that it was Miss Lappet who told me you were meeting in your office all evening – a tale, incidentally, that I find suspiciously convenient and not particularly likely. I suggest that after a very brief meeting in your office, Miss Lappet left – witnessed by several of your students, I might add – and then spent much of the evening in another room, perhaps with a bottle to keep her company. Leaving you on your own.’

  Oh! I thought. Of course, that made sense. If Miss Lappet had been off somewhere drinking, she would not want anyone to know about it. That was why she had made up the story about being with Miss Griffin all evening. And of course, it had suited Miss Griffin to play along with that.

  ‘It isn’t true!’ shouted Miss Lappet. ‘It isn’t – what I mean to say is, I was only out of the room for a little while. A very little while. And I only had a nip of something, the merest nip – I resent your implications. Resent them!’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet, Elizabeth,’ hissed Miss Griffin.

  Miss Lappet flinched and pushed her glasses up her nose. The Inspector looked rather pleased with himself.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘And with that, Miss Griffin, your alibi vanishes. Now, I believe that you met Miss Bell on the Gym balcony. During that meeting, she threatened you with blackmail. You argued with her, and then you reached out and pushed her over the side.’

  11

  Inspector Priestley stopped for a moment. The whole room was horribly, heavily silent, as though electricity was crackling round the edges and sparking from person to person. I could hear myself breathing and my heart pounding – I was terrified all over again.

  Miss Griffin sat glaring straight ahead, her jaw clenched shut and her fingers white on her lap, but everyone else stared towards her, like people at a tennis match after the last point has been played.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said, in an icy-cold voice. ‘This is all nonsense. You have no proof.’

  ‘Miss Bell asked to see you that evening,’ said Mamzelle suddenly. ‘I remember now. It was in the mistresses’ common room – I was there.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ snarled Miss Griffin.

  ‘I certainly shall not,’ said Mamzelle, offended. ‘What I said is true and I’m prepared to say so in court.’

  ‘And you think they’ll believe you? You’re not even French!’

  ‘I told you I liked Mamzelle,’ I whispered in Daisy’s ear.

  ‘Shh – he hasn’t got her in the bag yet,’ Daisy whispered back.

  ‘Quite apart from witness statements,’ the Inspector was saying, unruffled, ‘I can have Miss Bell’s resignation letter and Miss Tennyson’s suicide note tested against your handwriting. My men are fingerprinting Miss Tennyson’s car and the Gym cupboard trolley to match to your prints.’

  ‘I’ve destroyed the resignation letter,’ snapped Miss Griffin. ‘And those prints could have got there at any time.’

  ‘The woman who runs Miss Tennyson’s boarding house has also identified you from a photograph as the woman who came to visit her on Saturday evening,’ the Inspector went on.

  ‘No one can tell anything from a photograph – that’s common knowledge!’

  Despite myself, I was rather impressed by the way Miss Griffin was brazening it out. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to lie so quickly and well. She must, I thought, have had a lot of practice.

  ‘And your fingerprints have also been found on Miss Tennyson’s bottle of Veronal.’

  Miss Griffin made a most unladylike snort. ‘This is ridiculous. Are you expecting me to slip up and tell you that I was wearing gloves? Now, you can accuse me of what you like, but I don’t believe you could even bring this to trial. If you were hoping for a confession, I’m afraid you will be disappointed.’

  And she smiled. It was the most terrifying smile I have ever seen. It looked like it came from a person made out of clockwork.

  ‘Ah,’ said Inspector Priestley. ‘But I do have one more piece of evidence that may sway you.’ And he took out Verity’s diary.

  Miss Hopkins whispered, ‘Oh, what is it?’ to The One, as though she were watching a play.

  Miss Gr
iffin did not do anything all, but her face went tight all over.

  ‘This diary,’ said the Inspector, ‘is what Miss Bell intended to use for blackmail. It makes for astonishing reading – as I assume, Miss Griffin, you know. I assume you also know that, on its own, this is enough to have you removed from the school, to ensure that you never teach again, and even possibly to convict you of a previous crime. Its contents also provide the perfect motive for the two murders you have carried out. And that is my case against you.’

  12

  When we talked about it afterwards, Daisy swore that at the end of his speech, Inspector Priestley bowed, like a magician who has just finished a trick – but I think that is only what she herself would have done. At any rate, no one was looking at the Inspector then. They were staring at Miss Griffin. She had begun to shake, like a clockwork person coming unwound, and was making odd little hissing noises out of the side of her mouth.

  ‘How did you find it?’ she asked jerkily. ‘How did you know – who told you – I have been looking for that diary everywhere!’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not in the habit of revealing my sources,’ said the Inspector.

  Miss Griffin stared around, as though she was looking for the first time – at Miss Lappet, who was shivering in her seat, like a jelly wobbling, at Miss Hopkins, clutching The One’s arm for protection, at Miss Parker, who was slowly turning purple with rage, at Mamzelle, who looked as though she had found something nasty on her shoe; and then she turned her head to stare at the velvet curtain we were hiding behind. I swear she looked straight at me.

  I jerked back into the stuffy dark, making the edge of the curtain move, and she must have seen it, even if she had not been sure before.

  ‘Chump!’ gasped Daisy. She did not stop watching, of course. It would have taken more than that to make Daisy stop looking at something so interesting.