8 Top Marks for Murder

by Robin Stevens

  ‘You mean this weekend?’ he asked, with some difficulty. ‘My dear girl’ – and his face changed, and the tears in his eyes were suddenly not mirthful – ‘I’m not a poisoner. That’s a woman’s weapon. And I wouldn’t kill Jean. I meant to ask her to marry me – look, you idiot!’

  He thrust his hand in his pocket – I tensed, and so did Daisy – but when he pulled it out again there was nothing in it but a little velvet box. Mr Stone snapped it open to reveal a thin gold band with a blue stone.

  ‘I was going to offer this to her,’ he said, ‘not kill her! And why would I hurt that Thompson-Bates woman?’

  ‘It wasn’t her. It was Mr Thompson-Bates you meant to hurt!’ said Daisy, struggling to keep her composure. She was rattled, I could tell. ‘He saw what you did to Mrs Rivers!’

  ‘First of all, I didn’t do anything,’ said Mr Stone. ‘You ought to ask Mr Thompson-Bates what he did, though.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ gasped Daisy.

  ‘On Saturday night, when Jean began to fit, he got up and went round the table to her left-hand side. He picked something up and put it in his jacket pocket – I don’t know what it was, but I know what it looked like.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A salt cellar,’ said Mr Stone. ‘In fact, I’ve been waiting for the right time to ask him about it. It was odd, wasn’t it, James?’

  And then there was a sudden movement at the edge of the room.

  I froze. Daisy’s hand wobbled, though her face remained perfectly still.

  A figure unfolded itself from behind the great bulk of the telescope. In the near-dark, with only the light of Daisy’s candle casting shadows, the shape looked huge.

  Daisy stiffened. I put my hands over my mouth to stifle my gasp.

  ‘What do you mean, Tom?’ Mr Thompson-Bates asked. ‘What have you got to say to me?’

  ‘That salt cellar,’ said Mr Stone. ‘You still had it in your pocket at the garden party this afternoon, didn’t you? What’s in it?’

  ‘None of your business,’ said Mr Thompson-Bates. ‘And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget you ever saw it.’

  ‘Oh, will I?’ asked Mr Stone with a sneer. ‘And why would I do that? I’ve plenty of friends in high places who’ll be very interested to hear what’s been going on here, you know – proper policemen, not like the clodhoppers out here.’

  ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll make you,’ said Mr Thompson-Bates, and without warning he jumped across the room – to my hiding place.

  4

  Mr Thompson-Bates’s left hand was squeezing my throat, and his right was over my mouth so that I gasped for breath.

  ‘Leave Hazel alone!’ cried Daisy.

  ‘This is dramatic nonsense,’ said Mr Stone. ‘You can’t kill all three of us – and, anyway, it’s me you want.’

  ‘Be quiet, I say,’ snarled Mr Thompson-Bates. He had begun to shake me as he spoke, and I saw stars again, only this time they were not in the sky above me. My mind was buzzing and scattering with panic. I suddenly knew quite certainly that this was the man who Beanie had seen in the woods.

  ‘Really!’ said Mr Stone. ‘What, will you serve me into silence? Shut me up with a lob?’

  Mr Thompson-Bates growled. But I felt his fingers clenching against my skin, and I knew that he had no idea what to do next.

  ‘You shan’t get away with this!’ said Daisy.

  ‘I certainly intend to. If you tell anyone what’s happened, who would believe you? You’re just a criminal and two silly little girls.’

  ‘WE ARE NOT SILLY!’ gasped Daisy. ‘And we’re hardly little any more. Anyway, we have solved—’

  ‘I’ll have you know that I am not a criminal, despite what gossip may suggest,’ Mr Stone said. ‘I have plenty of friends in high places – and so do these girls. Don’t you know who they are?’

  Mr Thompson-Bates, confused now, wavered, and the grip around my neck loosened. I pushed myself away from him and ran to Daisy.

  ‘It was you!’ I said, with a little difficulty. ‘You were the man – I mean, you’re the strangler!’

  Mr Thompson-Bates flinched. ‘Be quiet!’ he snarled – and there was the temper of the man Beanie had seen. Why had we not connected Mr Thompson-Bates’s rage to the strangler’s?

  ‘We’ve got evidence!’ said Daisy. ‘We’ve got someone who saw you do it – and now we know that Mr Stone saw you poison Mrs Rivers!’

  ‘Someone?’ sneered Mr Thompson-Bates. ‘Someone you invented, more like. And Tom saw me pick up a salt cellar on Saturday. So? I was distressed – I didn’t know what I was doing. I put it in my pocket for safe-keeping. I noticed it was there this afternoon and put it back in the tea tent. Hardly enough to hang me, is it?’

  ‘You filled the salt cellar with arsenic and gave it to Mrs Rivers to pour on her food!’ said Daisy, gabbling now. ‘It’ll be tested!’

  ‘Oh, Miss Wells, this is stupid stuff,’ said Mr Thompson-Bates. ‘You don’t imagine anyone will find a single fingerprint of mine on that salt cellar, do you? Be quiet, all of you, and let’s hear no more about it.’

  ‘We will absolutely not be quiet!’ cried Daisy – and Mr Thompson-Bates lunged at her.

  ‘STOP!’ bellowed a voice – and, suddenly, there was the Inspector, looming up in the doorway like an avenging angel, with Kitty, Beanie and Lavinia behind him.

  ‘He’s the murderer!’ Daisy cried. ‘Arrest him!’

  ‘With what evidence?’ asked Mr Thompson-Bates. ‘What do you have against me? Nothing at all. Arrest me now and the trial will fall apart in days. You’ll be a laughing-stock.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him!’ I gasped. ‘Arrest him! He hurt me!’

  ‘Mr Thompson-Bates, I’m arresting you for assaulting Hazel Wong,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘But he’s a murderer as well!’ I cried.

  ‘Can you prove it?’ asked Inspector Priestley.

  ‘They can’t,’ said Mr Thompson-Bates. ‘They’re only little girls. Go on, arrest me, I’ll be out in a few hours.’

  And as Mr Thompson-Bates was led away, we saw a triumphant smile on his lips.

  5

  ‘It’s all so odd, isn’t it?’ asked Lavinia, an hour later.

  ‘You’re odd,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Oh, do stop!’ said Beanie. ‘Don’t be nasty!’

  Daisy, lying flat on her bed with her eyes closed, did not reply.

  We had all been sent up to House after the dramatic fireworks display and Mr Thompson-Bates’s arrest. Of course, the arrest had not been the official reason, but Binny – who had been hiding in Big Girls’ Wing to watch the reaction to the fireworks that she had set off with her candle to impress the third formers’ idol Amina – had seen him being led out to Inspector Priestley’s car, and the gossip had spread quickly.

  Most people thought that he had been arrested for Mrs Rivers’ murder, of course. Only we knew the awful, frustrating truth – that he was the murderer, but that, without any evidence against him, he’d be released within a few hours. Leaving Prayers tomorrow morning would proceed as normal, but with the poisonings unsolved, the school would have to close as soon as all the prizes had been handed out.

  ‘Why wasn’t it enough?’ asked Kitty. ‘Why didn’t the Inspector listen to you?’

  ‘He did!’ I said. ‘Only – only we don’t have all the pieces. We don’t have anything that proves what happened. The poisoned salt cellar would have done it, but Mr Thompson-Bates all but told us he’d wiped it clean before he put it back!’

  ‘It’s all a muddle,’ said Daisy. ‘Oh, bother, things still don’t fit! Did Mrs Thompson-Bates take her husband’s glass by mistake? Did Mr T-B mean to poison himself, to make himself seem less guilty? Or did she see something?’

  House, of course, was currently in uproar. Girls were rushing up and down corridors and whispering to each other in corners, and toothbrushes and lights-out were quite ignored. Lallie Thompson-Bates had been sequestered in San in absolute
hysterics, a still-recovering Mrs Thompson-Bates at her bedside.

  ‘Wait – d’you think it was Mrs Thompson-Bates he was trying to kill all along? First in the woods, and then at the dinner, and finally at the garden party?’ asked Beanie wonderingly. She had Chutney the dormouse in her lap, and she was letting her climb all over her hands and nibble on a bit of old custard cream biscuit.

  ‘Beanie, we proved that Mrs Rivers must have been the intended victim of the dinner poisoning,’ said Daisy impatiently. ‘Mr Thompson-Bates was in an ideal position to do it. And he must have used the salt cellar. If he had an extra one in his pocket, he could have fished it out and handed it to Mrs Rivers. Oh, remember – we saw the pepper and the salt in completely different places on the table, and if you know anything about polite society you understand that ought never to happen. They stay together as they travel round the table. But it might happen if there was an extra salt cellar being passed about! When Mr Thompson-Bates started the poisoned salt off round the table, he would have sent the original set in the wrong direction – so they would have been split up. There was really not much danger of the poisoned salt being passed on after Mrs Rivers, as Mr El Maghrabi and Mrs Dow didn’t eat their starters or much of their mains – and then, when Mrs Rivers became ill, he simply leaped up and pocketed it again.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Lavinia. ‘Mr Stone, Mr El Maghrabi, and Mr and Mrs Dow all made sense. But why should Mr Thompson-Bates want to kill Mrs Rivers? The best motive we had for him was that he was worried Lallie might not get her tennis scholarship, but that’s not enough to murder someone over, is it?’

  Daisy opened her eyes for a moment and glared at Lavinia.

  ‘What?’ asked Lavinia. ‘It’s a logical question! Now we know that it was Mr Thompson-Bates, it makes far more sense for him to have wanted to murder Mrs Thompson-Bates all along than Mrs Rivers.’

  I sighed. I did not like to admit it, but I thought that Lavinia had hit on something.

  ‘We know he was a gambler,’ I said, trying to think it through. ‘Perhaps Mrs Rivers lent him money and wanted it back? Perhaps her husband’s company had sponsored him, and she was threatening to pull it since he wasn’t doing well in his tennis matches?’

  ‘And it’s still odd that Mrs Rivers didn’t go to the police after what happened in the woods,’ Lavinia pressed. ‘If she had, she’d still be alive. It makes no sense, this whole thing.’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet!’ snapped Daisy at last. ‘I am trying to think!’

  ‘So are we all,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s not just you who’s a detective, Daisy Wells.’

  Daisy let out a groaning noise. Then she leaped off the bed, rushed to the window and clambered up onto the sill in her stocking feet. ‘I am going to think. Don’t follow me.’

  She swung up and out of sight.

  ‘Really!’ said Kitty.

  ‘I’ll fetch her,’ I said, feeling rather apologetic.

  ‘Could you bring her back a bit nicer?’ asked Kitty.

  I simply shrugged at her.

  6

  It was funny, but as I hauled myself upwards, I did not feel as wobbly as usual. I found my feet and hands had begun to know the nooks and crannies in House’s walls, the place where the drainpipe separates, exactly when to reach up and grip hard.

  What if, after all this, we still lose Deepdean? I wondered – and I felt sick with a fear that had nothing to do with heights.

  At last I was up among the sharp peaks of the House roof. We had first come here last autumn, during the Bonfire Night case – it had been frightening then, but it felt quite safe now. There were no murderers here, this time. I clambered across the expanse, and finally found Daisy balancing next to a chimney pot and looking miserable.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ she said at once.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I can feel it. What have we missed?’

  ‘It was just too easy!’ said Daisy – forgetting, of course, that in one evening we had laid a trap for a murderer, almost been set alight by fireworks, and I had nearly been choked. Although I suppose that is the sort of evening that happens to us quite a lot these days. ‘The way he denied everything, I mean. He was so sure the Inspector wouldn’t have anything on him. And there’s something else as well. There was something he said … it didn’t fit. Or rather, it did, but not with what ought to have been happening. Don’t you know that feeling?’

  I did. ‘Like not remembering which language a word is from!’ I said.

  ‘No, not that,’ said Daisy, waving her hand. ‘It’s … like doing a puzzle and finding a piece from quite another one. If only I knew the picture on the other puzzle!’

  She made a face, wrinkling up her nose, and whispered, ‘What was it he said? Something like – yes – this is stupid stuff. Stupid stuff … no, I’ve no idea. Bother! I suppose we must just consider what we heard in light of the evidence we’ve already collected. What did we confirm?’

  ‘I’m sure that Mr Thompson-Bates was the man in the woods,’ I said. ‘And from what Mr Stone said, Mr Thompson-Bates must have been the poisoner at dinner. He used a salt cellar to give Mrs Rivers the poison, and then later picked it up and put it in his pocket. I suppose that’s how he poisoned Mrs Thompson-Bates at the garden party too: he dropped poison in his own glass, and handed it to her.’

  ‘All right, yes. But, Hazel, it’s not surprising that there’s nothing much to go on. It’s all muddled! The victims keep changing! Mrs Turnbull, then Mrs Rivers, then Mr Thompson-Bates, and now Mrs Thompson-Bates – we spend ages discovering motives and alibis for the murder of one victim, only to discover that they weren’t the right person after all!’

  ‘I know!’ I said. ‘And – I can’t help thinking, Daisy, that Lavinia has a point about Mrs Rivers. Why should Mr Thompson-Bates – who’s famous, after all, and important – spend so much energy killing Mrs Rivers? You have to be passionately angry with someone to strangle them, but you have to plan to get poison and put it in a salt cellar, and bring it out at dinner and simply hope that it only kills the person it’s supposed to. It’s so much!’

  ‘So much,’ murmured Daisy. ‘Yes, Watson. So much bother, isn’t it. And then to try to kill your own wife too because – because she saw something? But Mrs Thompson-Bates has been absolutely composed all weekend. She gave no indication that she had – had …’

  Her eyes had gone rather unfocused.

  ‘Daisy?’ I said – and Daisy snapped to attention, eyes suddenly blazingly blue.

  ‘HAZEL,’ she said. ‘What if we’ve been looking at this wrong, AGAIN?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘What if Mr Thompson-Bates was passionately angry with his victim, and he’d also spent ages plotting exactly how to kill her? We’ve been ignoring part of what Beanie said about the couple she saw in the woods, because we thought it didn’t fit. Remember she said that they were ordinary, like parents? But when Mrs Rivers died, we assumed that she was the woman in the woods, and we know that she’s not the wife or mother of anyone living. Oh, Hazel, what if Beanie did see two parents, a husband and wife? What if the couple in the woods were Mr and Mrs Thompson-Bates?’

  ‘No!’ I said.

  ‘Yes! Listen! What if they went for a walk, he smoked a cigarette using a matchbox he picked up when he was in Paris for the French Open, one of them dropped their invitation to the Anniversary, and then – then they argued about something. Perhaps the gambling, perhaps the other women – but Mr Thompson-Bates became furious with Mrs Thompson-Bates, and he choked her.’

  ‘That’s why she never went to the police!’ I gasped, shuddering at the thought. ‘But – but why didn’t he kill her then?’

  ‘Because the evidence would quite obviously point to him,’ said Daisy. ‘A husband and wife go for a walk in the woods together, and the wife never comes back – the police would look at the husband immediately! Perhaps he realized that and stopped himself, before it was too late. Or perhaps— Oh, Hazel! Perhaps someone else sa
w them in the woods! Someone out for a walk – someone like Mrs Rivers!’

  ‘Just like Lavinia suggested before!’ I said.

  ‘Not at all like!’ said Daisy, typically forgetful about any idea not her own. ‘Anyway, he stopped before he killed her, picked her up and carried her back out of the woods, her hat falling off on the way. He might have left it there to punish her – and she might have been too afraid to go back for it … But before we go haring off after this fascinating thought any further, can we confirm that it could have happened that way?’

  ‘It could,’ I said, excitement flowing through me. ‘Mrs Thompson-Bates has been wearing high-necked dresses and scarves all weekend. She could have hidden bruises on her neck that way! But oh, Daisy, she behaved so fondly towards him! How creepy – you wouldn’t have known that he’d hurt her!’

  ‘You never know what goes on between married people,’ said Daisy. ‘Look at my parents, and yours! Even the ones who seem to like each other are quite puzzling. However do Aunt Lucy and Uncle Felix cope with each other? And then there’s Kitty’s people. All sweetness and light in company, but shouting and crying the moment they believe they’re alone. No, Hazel, all marriages are essentially two people lying to everyone else.

  ‘Now, let us take the gala dinner. Hazel, I think we now have a way to make sense of the fact that Mrs Rivers was the intended victim.’

  ‘Because Mrs Rivers was the person who saw them in the woods!’ I said.

  ‘Yes!’ said Daisy, glowing. ‘I think Beanie was not the only witness to the strangling. Perhaps Mrs Rivers was out walking in the woods – we know she was a pupil here once, and loved it, so it stands to reason that she may have wanted to take in the scenery and remember her time here. I expect she shouted something when she saw them – or cried out and ran away. At any rate, if she did see them, and Mr Thompson-Bates saw her – well, that finally gives Mr Thompson-Bates a sensible motive to do away with her. And if he had already been preparing to poison his wife with arsenic for some reason, then he could have decided to use some on Mrs Rivers. He was next to her at the dinner, so it would have been quite easy to switch the salt cellars.’