by R. A. Spratt
‘No, it’s a person,’ said Pauline. ‘The voice speaks to me clearly. It says, “Help me, help me, I’m in the attic.”’
‘That’s very specific,’ said Friday.
‘The voices in my head usually just tell me to get up and go to the bathroom,’ said Melanie.
‘So what do you do?’ asked Friday.
‘I try to help them, of course,’ said Pauline.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Melanie.
‘Kindness has nothing to do with it,’ said Pauline. ‘I need my rest if I’m going to function efficiently. Complying with the request is the most logical way to get the voice to shut up.’
‘Do you call for the dorm tutor?’ asked Friday.
‘No, she’s not nice,’ said Pauline. ‘If you disturb her between the hours of eight pm and eight am, she makes you do fifty push-ups.’
‘I would have tried earplugs,’ said Melanie.
‘You wouldn’t have woken up for some voice in the first place,’ said Friday.
‘True,’ agreed Melanie. ‘Not unless it was accompanied by a bucket of water and flashing bright lights.’
‘So we went to investigate.’ Pauline turned and beckoned to her roommate, Sienna Moorcroft, who joined them. ‘Sienna has a flashlight. We went down the corridor to the attic stairs, climbed up and had a look.’
‘What did you find?’ asked Friday.
‘Had your dorm tutor locked someone in the roof?’ asked Melanie.
‘No,’ said Pauline. ‘We found absolutely nothing.’
‘Then what did you do?’ asked Friday.
‘We went back down to our room and went back to sleep,’ said Pauline.
‘And the voice had stopped?’ asked Friday.
‘Yes, there was no more noise from the attic,’ said Pauline. ‘Until last night, when it started again.’
‘What did it say?’ asked Friday.
‘The same thing, “Help me, help me, I’m in the attic”,’ said Pauline, ‘but again when we went upstairs there was nothing to see.’
‘Except for lots of gross cobwebs,’ added Sienna. ‘And stinky mould.’
‘Intriguing,’ said Friday. ‘Melanie, we are going to have a nocturnal escapade.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Melanie. ‘This is going to involve me getting less than my usual eight hours sleep, isn’t it?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Friday, ‘since you manage to nap up to four hours a day. You could spend an hour investigating the attic with me and still be ahead by three hours.’
Chapter 19
Sleuthing Sleepover
That night, Friday and Melanie bedded down on Pauline and Sienna’s floor. They didn’t own sleeping bags because they were concerned that type of thing might lead to being forced to go camping, so they simply lay on the carpet with their quilts and pillows. Once they moved the floor lamp over by the desk and Pauline’s extensive collection of maths textbooks into the wardrobe, there was plenty of room. Melanie, of course, went straight to sleep. Friday’s brain always took a little longer to wind down. She was 892 digits into reciting pi before her brain finally clocked off.
Friday was having a delightful dream where the truth about the universal theory of space and time was was about to be revealed to her when she heard a boy’s voice saying, ‘Help, help me!’ At first Friday’s brain thought it was a theoretical physicist asking for advice on an equation, but then her brain rejected that thesis when it realised that this was the voice in the attic.
‘Help me, please! I’m in the attic,’ wailed the voice.
‘Melanie! Did you hear that?’ asked Friday.
Melanie had not. She was so deeply submerged in sleep. But Pauline and Sienna were awake. They had their flashlights ready and were getting out of bed. Friday put on her own night-vision goggles (a gift from a Navy SEAL soldier who she’d tutored in trigonometry – there is a surprising amount of trigonometry in being a sniper).
‘Melanie, wake up!’ said Friday, shaking her friend.
‘There’s no time,’ said Pauline, grabbing Friday by the arm. ‘We’ve got to help him.’
The three girls ran down the corridor.
‘The attic stairs are this way,’ said Sienna.
‘What if the door is locked?’ asked Friday.
‘Not a problem,’ said Sienna. ‘I stuck a whole packet of chewed chewing gum in there, so no-one could lock it.’
‘Chewing gum is against the school rules,’ said Friday.
‘You can’t prove it was mine,’ said Sienna. ‘It’s in the lock, not in my mouth.’
‘What if the Headmaster had the chewing gum DNA-tested?’ asked Friday.
‘Princess Ingrid would be in a lot of trouble then,’ said Sienna.
‘What?’ said Friday.
‘I didn’t say I was the one who had chewed the gum,’ said Sienna.
The girls burst through the door and ran up the attic stairs. Friday was panting hard. This was the furthest she had run since the PE lesson where the teacher turned her back and Friday dashed back to the change rooms to hide.
They could still hear the voice. ‘Help me, help me!’ it cried.
Finally they reached the top of the stairs. The attic was a large cavernous room, like a huge triangular tube. They could stand easily in the middle but the roof sloped down to the sides of the building. There was no proper flooring under foot. The timber frame-work had been filled in with insulation batts.
‘Be careful,’ said Sienna. ‘You’ve got to step on the beams. If you put a foot on the insulation it’s only supported by the plaster ceiling below.’
‘Your foot will go right through,’ added Pauline.
‘So where is your room?’ asked Friday.
The voice had fallen silent.
‘About halfway down on the right,’ said Pauline.
The girls started carefully leaping from beam to beam to get to the spot directly above their dorm room. The attic was very dark, and there were cobwebs and mysterious droppings everywhere. Friday was not a superstitious person but everything about this big, empty, uncomfortable room was creepy. Her senses were screaming at her to go back.
‘This is the spot,’ said Pauline, stopping on a beam about halfway down. ‘I marked where our room was with a piece of chalk.’ She shone her flashlight on the beam. An ‘E’ was marked in white chalk.
‘Pauline,’ said Friday, ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance that you sleepwalk and go around marking things with chalk when you’re fast asleep?’
‘No, why?’ asked Pauline.
‘Take a look at the other beams,’ said Friday.
Pauline raised her flashlight to scan the long row of beams along the rest of the attic.
‘Aaaggghh!’ screamed Pauline and Sienna.
Identical ‘E’s had been written on the same spot on every beam in the room.
‘It’s a ghost!’ exclaimed Sienna.
‘I’m being punished for taking glucose tablets as a study aid!’ wept Pauline.
‘Get a grip!’ said Friday. ‘I don’t for a moment believe that slapping is a medically sound treatment for hysteria. But I’m prepared to try it because I can see that slapping would be of therapeutic benefit to the person having to endure listening to hysteria.’
Pauline and Sienna calmed down a little bit.
‘Just because we are standing in an unpleasant-smelling attic, in the dark, in the middle of the night, surrounded by spider webs, animal droppings and goodness knows how many rodents, does not mean that the rules of common sense no longer apply,’ said Friday. ‘We are perfectly safe here.’
Unfortunately Friday emphasised her point by stamping her foot. She missed the beam and her foot slid down the side of an insulation batt and punched through the plaster underneath.
‘Aaagghh!’ cried Friday as she fell, her leg disappearing through the floor into the room below.
‘Aaagghhh!’ screamed Pauline and Sienna, who despite Friday’s stirring speech were perfectly prepared
to believe that a ghost had chopped Friday’s leg off.
‘Ow!’ said a voice from below. It was Melanie. ‘Friday, is that you? I can’t imagine there would be two students at this school wearing periodic table pyjama trousers.’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ said Friday, struggling to pull her leg back up into the attic.
‘Why is your leg dangling from the ceiling?’ Melanie asked, her voice muffled by the plaster and insulation between them. ‘And why did you stamp a piece of plaster ceiling onto my head.’
‘Sorry,’ said Friday. ‘It was an accident. We’re in the attic investigating the voices.’
‘Is it you then?’ asked Melanie.
‘What?’ asked Friday.
‘Well, you’re in the attic,’ reasoned Melanie. ‘And I can hear your voice.’
‘No … ugh.’ Friday finally managed to pull her leg back up. She turned around and crouched down so she could see Melanie through the rather large hole her leg had created. ‘We’re investigating the other voice. The one that’s been calling, “Help me. Help me”. Sorry about the plaster.’
It was pretty dark down in Pauline and Sienna’s room, but Friday could still see the large pieces of plaster scattered all over Melanie, and Sienna’s reading lamp had been knocked over her too. Melanie didn’t like being woken up at the best of times, but to be woken up like this would be unpleasant for anybody.
‘That’s all right,’ said Melanie. ‘It doesn’t hurt too much. I think my nose broke its fall.’
‘I’ve got one more thing to search for up here,’ said Friday. ‘Then we’ll be down.’ She turned to Pauline and Sienna. ‘Well, I know what happened. It’s just a question of finding the evidence and confronting the guilty party.’ Friday crouched down again and started pulling up one insulation batt after another and looking underneath.
‘What are you looking for?’ asked Pauline.
‘Aha!’ Friday pulled a small black box out from under a wad of insulation.
‘What is it?’ asked Pauline.
‘A wireless speaker,’ said Friday. ‘Someone has been using this to broadcast cries of help directly above your dorm room.’
‘Why would they want to do that?’ asked Pauline.
‘Were they planning to lure us up here and lock us in the attic as some kind of prank?’ asked Sienna.
‘No,’ said Friday. ‘Their motives were the precise reverse. It’s not that they wanted you up here. It’s because they wanted you out of your room.’
‘Why?’ asked Pauline.
‘Think about it,’ said Friday. ‘What motive would someone have for breaking into your room specifically?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Pauline.
‘That’s the problem with working so hard to be a maths genius, but not focusing on your lateral thinking,’ said Friday, shaking her head. ‘It’s because you are the best maths student in your year.’
‘In the whole school,’ said Pauline.
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Friday. ‘I’m only in year 7. I haven’t had the opportunity to flex my mathematical muscles yet. But I digress. In your room each night sits one object of particular value – your answers to your maths homework. They would be tempting to a less able student ambitious for higher marks.’
‘So they came up with this crazy scheme to get us up in the attic?’ said Pauline. ‘That’s just silly.’
‘It’s ingenious,’ said Friday. ‘As soon as they saw you disappear up the staircase they could enter your room. You left your door unlocked because you’re wearing your pyjamas and it’s dark so you didn’t want to take your key. While they’re in your room searching for your homework, they can hear your footsteps on the beams above so they would know exactly where you were and when you were returning, so they had time to make their escape.’
‘It still sounds crazy,’ said Pauline.
‘But we have further evidence,’ said Friday. ‘Your reading lamp. When I looked down through the hole it was lying across Melanie. When we left your room, the lamp was over by the desk. So the plaster from the roof couldn’t have made it fall. A person must have knocked it over in panic, when my leg smashed through the ceiling.’
‘Wouldn’t Melanie have noticed if there was someone creeping about the room?’ asked Sienna.
‘I doubt it,’ said Friday. ‘I once accidentally generated a sonic boom in our dorm room while Melanie was napping, and she didn’t notice that. So I doubt she would notice a person trying to be quiet. Come on, let’s check out your room.’
Chapter 20
What Happened Below
When they got back down to the dorm room Friday didn’t let Pauline and Sienna enter straight away. She didn’t let Melanie move, either. This suited Melanie. She used the opportunity to go back to sleep. Friday closely inspected the dust debris from the plaster collapse.
‘What can plaster dust tell you about someone stealing my homework?’ asked Pauline.
‘It tells me that there was one intruder,’ said Friday. ‘He was a boy with size twelve feet. From the length of his strides, he was about six foot two.’
‘Can you really see footprints?’ asked Pauline. ‘It just looks like dust to me.’
‘Yes, his sweaty feet picked up the dust as he ran out of the room,’ said Friday. ‘You can see he was standing by the desk when the roof partially collapsed, because his aerial outline has been stencilled in dust.’
‘That just looks like a less dusty patch on the carpet,’ said Sienna.
‘And that’s exactly what it is,’ said Friday. ‘Let’s see what he was looking at.’
The three girls walked across the debris to the desk. Pauline’s maths homework was lying face up in the centre. It consisted of three A4 sheets of paper covered in equations.
‘Is this the way you left your work?’ asked Friday.
‘No,’ said Pauline. ‘It was put away in my homework folder.’
‘He can’t have been photographing your homework,’ said Friday. ‘Thanks to Princess Ingrid, the Headmaster has been extra ruthless in making sure that no-one has a camera on campus. And he wouldn’t have had time to copy it all out by hand.’
‘So what was he doing?’ asked Pauline.
‘My guess is he brought his own homework in here and checked it against yours,’ said Friday. ‘If he had any errors, he could have quickly made the corrections.’ She bent down and picked something up from the floor. ‘Is this yours?’ Friday held up a lead pencil that had been thoroughly chewed on one end.
‘Gross! I would never chew a pencil,’ said Pauline. ‘Think of all the chemicals in the paint.’
‘It’s not mine, either,’ said Sienna. ‘I only use mechanical pencils. I had a nasty accident with a pencil sharpener as a small child.’
Friday closely inspected the chewed end of the pencil. ‘From the evidence we have so far, we can conclude that you were tricked into going upstairs by a very tall boy with a crooked left incisor and a nervous temperament, who is good at maths but who desperately wants to be better. Does that sound like anyone you know?’
‘Well, yes, … Michael Cathguard,’ said Pauline.
‘He’s her maths nemesis,’ explained Sienna.
‘For four years we’ve competed against each other for the position of top in maths,’ said Pauline. ‘But over the last six months he’s dropped behind. Michael has struggled to grasp some of the fundamental principles of calculus.’
‘We’ll have to talk to him then,’ said Friday.
Melanie yawned and opened her eyes. ‘I just had a dream about Michael Cathguard. He was standing over me reading a sheet of paper, then a leg came through the ceiling and he ran away. Dreams are always so silly, aren’t they?’
‘In this case, it appears reality is even sillier,’ said Friday. ‘Let’s go and knock on his door. We know he’s awake.’
The girls trooped downstairs for the dramatic confrontation. Friday was just about to knock on Michael’s door when they heard a commotion.
&nb
sp; ‘Dette kan ikke fortsette!’ yelled a girl.
Friday leaned in close to the door. ‘That’s not Michael.’
‘It’s coming from over there,’ said Melanie. They all turned and looked at the door on the other side of the corridor.
‘That’s the bodyguard’s room,’ said Pauline.
‘Really? Mr Rasmus lives here? That’s a coincidence,’ said Friday.
‘But who’s yelling at him?’ asked Melanie.
‘Hun er uutholdelig!’ yelled the girl.
‘She’s yelling in Norwegian,’ said Friday. ‘It must be Princess Ingrid.’
Suddenly the door burst open and Debbie stepped out, slamming the door behind her. She was wearing a large bulky dressing gown, which had been buttoned up right to her chin. Debbie was flushed in the face, but her cheeks grew redder when she saw how many people were standing in the corridor.
‘I didn’t know you speak Norwegian,’ said Friday.
‘I speak Danish,’ said Debbie. ‘It’s very similar.’
‘Why were you yelling at Rasmus?’ asked Friday.
‘And in the middle of the night?’ asked Melanie. ‘Don’t you know how important it is to get a full eight hours of sleep?’
‘I can’t say,’ said Debbie. ‘It’s to do with the princess, and how she behaves.’
‘She’s being an enormous pain and you’re tired of sharing a room with her, aren’t you?’ guessed Melanie.
A door opened behind them. They all turned to see Michael Cathguard peering out from the crack. ‘You know, don’t you?’ he asked, guiltily.
‘Let’s discuss this in your room,’ said Friday, pushing her way in, the other girls following.
Debbie used this opportunity to scurry away.
Michael broke down immediately when Friday confronted him with the facts.
‘I admit it. It was me. I’m so sorry,’ said Michael. ‘I put the speaker in the attic above your room, and when you marked an E on the beam I made the same mark on every beam to make it harder for you to find the speaker.’
