I try to understand. I suspect that Uncle Felix, like Daisy’s parents, cannot bear to be at Fallingford when Daisy is not, and I agree with him. I would rather be anywhere else – only if I was anywhere else I would feel even worse.
This morning, Lavinia, Kitty and Beanie arrived. They have been staying with Lavinia for Christmas this year – Kitty’s mother is on bed rest while she waits for the baby to be born, and Beanie’s mother is in hospital for a different reason. They all look very sad, though Kitty perked up when she realized George and Alexander were here with us too.
‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘We’ll get to meet them at last!’
That made me more miserable than ever. It was so unfair that Kitty should be able to think of anything other than Daisy.
‘I never stopped you meeting them before,’ I said crossly.
‘Hah!’ said Kitty. ‘That’s a lie and you know it, Hazel Wong.’
At lunch she chatted charmingly with Alexander, who only said, ‘I guess,’ in response to her questions, and seemed very interested in his slightly burnt piece of roast chicken (all Mrs Doherty can do is sit in the kitchen with Chapman and cry, so all the food is burnt). Then Kitty turned to George, at her other side, and found that he was deep in conversation with Lavinia about communism.
‘As soon as I’m eighteen, I’m going to fight in the Spanish Civil War,’ said George. ‘Would you come with me?’
‘Obviously,’ said Lavinia. ‘But why wait until we’re eighteen? School’s stupid and we’re hardly learning anything. We could go now.’
They shook on it, beaming at each other, and I saw Kitty pout.
‘I’m going to marry that girl,’ said George to me, after pudding was cleared and we were sitting together in the window seat in the music room.
‘Who – Lavinia?’ I asked, astonished.
‘Why not Lavinia?’ said George with a grin. ‘I like her. She’s fierce. And she’s different. She believes in the same things I do.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Was falling in love as easy as George and Lavinia made it seem – or even Daisy and Amina? At that, I thought of Daisy again, and plunged back down into blackness.
‘See here, what’s up with you and Alexander?’ asked George, as though he were reading my thoughts. ‘I was certain, on the ship – did he really not do anything?’
‘He tried,’ I said dully, taking my scarab beetle out of my pocket and spinning it between my fingers. It has got to be a habit of mine. ‘I – well, it was my fault. It’s too late now.’
George made a scornful noise. ‘It’s never too late!’
‘Yes, it is,’ I told him. ‘Nothing matters now, does it?’
‘Doesn’t it?’ asked George, turning to look at me. ‘Of course it does. You’re still Hazel Wong, aren’t you? You’re still the most brilliant detective I’ve ever met.’
‘I’m not,’ I said, tears burning behind my eyes. ‘That’s Daisy – was Daisy.’
‘Nonsense, Madam President,’ said George, and he strode out of the music room, shutting the door behind him hard as he went.
Which I think was the first time I realized that, without Daisy, I am the leader of what is left of the Detective Society.
2
I was expecting Alexander – and rather dreading it – but the person who came in next was Mrs Doherty, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.
‘Hazel dear!’ she cried. ‘I have – there’s a problem. I’ve lost my brooch.’
‘Oh,’ I said politely. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Doherty.’
‘But you see, I was wondering if you could help,’ said Mrs Doherty. ‘Since – since – oh, you know. Daisy – Daisy gave it to me for my birthday, five years ago. She saved up for it with her pocket money.’
I was about to say no. The thought of detecting without Daisy, on a case that was so much about her, made me feel faintly sick. I needed Daisy. Nothing worked properly without her. Without her, I was nothing but a shrimp. It was Daisy who made me special. But the expression on Mrs Doherty’s face was suddenly so similar to mine, when I look in the mirror every morning now, that I couldn’t bear to.
‘Of course, Mrs Doherty,’ I said. ‘What does it look like?’
Alexander came into the music room, then, and looked startled and embarrassed. ‘Oh hey, I didn’t realize—’ he began.
‘Alexander,’ I said, ‘can take notes. Alexander, could you? Mrs Doherty’s lost her brooch.’
‘Oh – sure,’ said Alexander. ‘Hang on, let me get my notebook out.’
And so Alexander scribbled shorthand notes as Mrs Doherty described her brooch to us. ‘It’s shaped like a crescent moon, with little paste gems. It was on the sideboard in the kitchen just before lunch!’ she said. ‘I took it off to stir up the Christmas pudding – I didn’t want it falling into that and being mixed up with the sixpence! – but then when I turned round again it was gone. I think – I think someone might have taken it.’
‘Who else was in the kitchen?’ I asked.
‘Hetty,’ said Mrs Doherty. ‘But she would never! She’s a good, bright girl and, between you and me, don’t tell Master Wells, she’s been on her best behaviour, saving up for – well, a secretarial course. But that doesn’t mean that she—’
‘Of course it doesn’t,’ said Alexander, but I glanced at him and saw that he was concerned. Surely Hetty couldn’t have done it, not just for the money? But if not – then who?
I marched out into the hallway. May and Rose were there, May teasing Millie as Rose lay cuddled against Toast Dog, reading.
‘May, Rose!’ I said. ‘We’ve got a game for you. We’re hunting for a – well, a brooch. It has blue and red stones, in a crescent-moon shape, and if you can find it you’ll win a prize.’
May looked at me suspiciously. ‘This is detection, isn’t it!’ she said.
‘No!’ I said. ‘Well, perhaps. But there really is a prize!’
‘BRILLIANT!’ said May, and she pounded off up the stairs, Rose just behind her.
So this was what it was like to be Daisy, I thought. You say whatever you want, you do things without having a proper plan, and people just listen to you as though you’re being sensible. I ought to have done it years ago – only it was hard to, with Daisy already being so Daisyish next to me.
‘What’s the prize?’ whispered Alexander to me.
‘Shh! I don’t know!’ I whispered back, and Alexander laughed. I had made him laugh, I thought, and for the first time since Daisy had gone I felt myself glow, just a little.
3
The hunt for the brooch went on all that afternoon – and, as the day drew in and the clouds lowered around Fallingford and it began to snow, things almost started to seem cheerful inside. I felt as though we were all playing a festive game. Even Bertie put down his ukulele, wrapped himself up in a scarf and hat and went to check the plant pots outside on the terrace with Harold.
Only Kitty would not join in. She sat on the first-floor landing, reading a ladies’ magazine.
‘It’s childish,’ she said when I went upstairs to see if she was all right. ‘We’re almost sixteen!’
‘I’m only six!’ said May, running past.
‘And I’m twenty,’ panted Hetty, pink-faced from chasing May in circles round the front hall, ‘and, if I’m still not too old to be childish, then you certainly aren’t.’
They dashed away again, but I sat down next to Kitty.
‘What’s up?’ I asked. ‘Is it the baby?’
‘Nothing,’ said Kitty. ‘Nothing! I don’t care about the baby, and I wish people wouldn’t keep asking me about it.’
‘Is it – boys?’ I asked, my heart beginning to race.
‘UGH!’ said Kitty. ‘Hazel, I ask you, how is it possible that Lavinia – who has bushy eyebrows and an unflattering figure – has managed to get herself a boyfriend in two hours flat? It took me months to get Hugo, and last week he – he jilted me, and now no one will even look at me!’
Her voice rose in a wail.
‘I do
n’t think you should say that about Lavinia,’ I told her. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her figure or her eyebrows. George likes her because she’s’ – I almost said nice, but then realized it was not really a good description of Lavinia – ‘interested in the same things he is.’
‘So to get a boyfriend I need to pretend to care about COMMUNISM?’ squeaked Kitty.
‘No!’ I said. ‘You don’t care about communism, so you shouldn’t pretend to. All I mean is, if George likes communism and you don’t, then you probably don’t really want to spend your life with him. You should find someone who likes – er – magazines and fashion and things.’
Kitty sighed. ‘I just want someone to look at me,’ she said. And I suddenly got a hunch, a tingle of my old detective sense back again.
‘Kitty,’ I said, ‘is that why you took Mrs Doherty’s brooch?’
‘NO! That is – she wasn’t using it!’
‘Kitty!’
‘But she wasn’t! It’s far too pretty for her. I thought that if I wore it this evening Alexander might notice me – but it isn’t any good, I know that. He’s only interested in you.’
My heart jumped up into my throat in the most peculiar way.
‘No, he isn’t,’ I said.
‘Hazel,’ said Kitty, ‘I’m not stupid. Even if you and D— I mean, even if I hadn’t learned how to be a detective, I’d still have eyes.’
‘Stop it!’ I said. ‘It’s nonsense. Just tell me where you’ve put the brooch.’
‘It’s in my room,’ said Kitty with a sigh. ‘Beanie’s and mine, under my pillow. And you know I’m right!’
But I was already halfway up the stairs.
Kitty and Beanie’s room was on the top floor of Fallingford, dark and chill. Things creaked around me as I walked down the corridor to their room, and once I would have shivered – but, since Daisy, I couldn’t be bothered. There was nothing so frightening as losing her, and that had already happened.
I pushed open the door and stepped across the quiet carpet towards Kitty’s bed.
‘Hazel!’ said a voice. I clapped my hand over my mouth to stop myself screaming.
‘ALEXANDER!’ I hissed. ‘What are you DOING here?’
‘Sorry,’ said Alexander. ‘I should’ve told you. But I just thought – Kitty’s been behaving weirdly all day, and she came in late to lunch. I wondered if maybe she—’
‘It was her,’ I said. ‘I’ve just spoken to her. The brooch is under her pillow.’
We both reached towards it together, and our hands touched.
‘Hazel,’ said Alexander again.
‘I’ll just take it and give it to Mrs Doherty,’ I said quickly. ‘We don’t even need to tell her who—’
‘Look, Hazel, could you just stop for a second?’ asked Alexander. ‘I keep trying to talk to you, but you’ve been ignoring me. I – er – I—’
I looked up at him and saw him staring at me. Even through the dimness, I could see his freckles, and we were standing close enough for me to catch the faint warm smell of him.
And I was suddenly so tired of waiting. So I stood up on my tiptoes and I kissed him.
He made a surprised gasping noise, but then he leaned forward and kissed me too, and I felt as though I was floating above my own head, because it seemed so unlikely that I was kissing a boy, and he was kissing me back – and then I jumped backwards in sheer panic as I realized that it was quite true.
‘I – I have to give this back to Mrs D,’ I stammered. I was squeezing the brooch into my palm so tightly that it was digging into my skin. ‘I’m – I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?’
‘All right,’ said Alexander, and I could see that he was beaming at me.
As I ran downstairs, I couldn’t stop smiling.
4
That night I was dreaming I was solving a case with Daisy. It was so vivid – I felt her hand on mine, her breath in my ear, I saw the face she made when I got something right before she did – that when I woke up I turned to her bed, my mouth open to tell her about it.
But the bed next to mine was empty, neatly made and still, and I felt as though I had lost her all over again. All I had was my scarab beetle and Daisy’s coded note in my hand, by now quite soft from folding and unfolding.
It took me a moment to realize that something else had woken me. I sat up, eyes still smarting, and saw a figure standing at the foot of my bed. It was Aunt Lucy. So she and Uncle Felix were here at last.
‘Is it Christmas?’ I asked foolishly.
‘Not quite yet,’ said Aunt Lucy. ‘Shh. I need you to get up immediately and come with me.’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘We have a case for you. Very hush-hush, of course, but you’re the best person for it.’
‘But I’m only fifteen!’ I said foolishly again, for when had our age ever stopped us?
‘Not for long,’ said Aunt Lucy. ‘Children do tend to grow up, and that is what you are currently doing. And I think – well, I think you have a long career ahead of you, Hazel Wong, if this mission goes well. Put on your slippers and your dressing gown and come with me. Hurry up!’
She spoke like a Deepdean mistress, and I found myself dressing with hurried fingers. There was something strange about this, something I could not quite make out. I felt horridly anxious, or perhaps excited, or both.
We walked through the dark corridors of Fallingford together, Aunt Lucy moving with confidence ahead of me. Once we disturbed Toast Dog, lying halfway up a flight of stairs, but he just grumbled contentedly and went back to sleep.
‘An absolute failure of a guard dog,’ said Aunt Lucy to herself.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘Shush!’ said Aunt Lucy at once. ‘The library. Now, not another word.’
Across the big front hall we went – and by now I really felt back in my dream. I was thirteen again, and solving our second case. Suddenly everything was easier and simpler, and Daisy – Daisy – and then I blinked and I was fifteen, and following Aunt Lucy, and Daisy was dead.
And then Aunt Lucy pushed open the door to the library, and I got a blast of warmth and light that staggered me.
The fire was bright and roaring, and so the books and the deep, worn armchairs looked soft and mysterious, lit clear and dark in shifting patterns by the flames. There was Uncle Felix, standing up to greet us, red fire glinting in his monocle lens, very tall and dapper and golden as always.
‘Merry Christmas, Hazel,’ he said seriously. ‘Now, Lucy and I have a proposition for you. We will put it to you in a moment – but first we need you to stay here while we go and get something.’
‘Why?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘Sensitive case notes, you know,’ said Uncle Felix easily, waving his hand – and I got another rush of misery, for he looked so like Daisy as he did so. ‘Just sit here for a moment and wait, there’s a good girl.’
I bristled at that, for I am not a good girl, not at all, and Uncle Felix knows that perfectly well. But he was already escorting Aunt Lucy to the door, and before I could say anything it had closed behind them. I was left alone with the fire in the hearth, spinning my scarab beetle in my hands.
I sat and stared into the flames. I ought to be pleased – I knew that. I was being invited into Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy’s world – a world I had been fascinated with for years. I had solved a case today all by myself, and Alexander and I had – I could not even quite say it in my head yet. It was too new and exciting.
But, all the same, I felt as though half of me was gone. It should not have still been shocking to me, but it was. Every day I woke up and felt surprised, as though someone had jumped out at me with a painted sign that said DAISY’S DEAD! Sometimes I had a lovely second on waking where I forgot, and then I caught the memory and it dragged me down deep, so heavy that it was hard to get out of bed.
What was I supposed to do without Daisy, really? Who was I without her? I supposed I was beginning to learn. I closed my eyes.
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And then I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the room any more. It was the way the space behind me felt, the hush of a door opening and closing, the pad of a foot.
The person moved very quietly, like a burglar, and I suddenly thought that this might be a test. Was I supposed to attack them? Disarm them? But I didn’t know how to fight at all, and I had no weapons, anyway.
Or was it only Uncle Felix, back again? He did move quietly – but this person felt smaller than him, in a way I could not explain.
I held my breath. I felt my hands trembling, and clutched them still against the arms of my chair.
The person came closer, and closer. They were just behind me. I could not turn round.
And then a hand came down on my shoulder.
I burst into tears.
5
‘Good lord, Watson,’ said Daisy, reaching out to click her scarab beetle against mine. ‘I thought you’d be pleased to see me.’
‘You – you – you,’ I gasped, unable to catch my breath. ‘But you DIED, everyone said you DIED, you let me believe you had DIED. It’s been TWO WEEKS, Daisy, I thought you were DEAD.’
‘Heroines don’t die, Hazel – you know that perfectly well,’ said Daisy.
I turned round furiously, wiping at my cheeks. ‘YOU LEFT ME!’ I shouted. ‘You didn’t TELL ME! I thought I was going to have to live WITHOUT YOU! And you AREN’T a heroine, you’re a real person!’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Daisy. In the firelight, I could see that she was thinner, and there was a new scar on her temple. Her eyes looked suspiciously shiny. ‘If it helps, that evening I thought I was going to die too. I’ve never – I’ve never felt anything like it. Heppy tried to drown me, Hazel. She held me down in the water. I had to go limp to trick her. And then, when I came up for air, I – a branch hit me, and knocked me senseless. I only woke up when I was being pulled out of the river into one of those felucca boats. I had a terrible job convincing them to keep quiet about finding me in case I was still in danger – thank goodness Amina has been teaching me a little Arabic. I got back to Aswan, and when I heard they’d caught Heppy I was going to announce myself, but then I thought of Miss Doggett. We hadn’t officially solved the Joshua Morse case yet, after all – we didn’t have solid evidence. I accused her of murder and then let her get away! So I decided that Daisy Wells needed to be dead, at least until Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy could gather the information to finish Miss Doggett’s case, and be certain that Heppy would stand trial as a waking murderer, not as a sleepwalking one. I pretended to be someone called Leonora Regler, and sent a telegram to my uncle, Victor Regler, at one of Uncle Felix’s addresses. I waited for him and Aunt Lucy at the Cataract Hotel, so I was quite comfortable and safe until they arrived to help me. We finished both cases a few days ago, and we flew home as soon as we could.
Death Sets Sail Page 21
