Which left him alone in the hall, staring at the hole in the window and the water freezing into ice sheets on the floor.
“Someone should clean that up,” Beth said as she jogged in place on the landing. “It’s dangerous.”
Someone, huh? “Do you know where they keep the mops?” Might as well do something useful with all this nervous energy.
She shrugged and started another lap. She seemed to be taking the death of the headmaster in stride. Literally.
He headed into the kitchen to ask the women who actually lived in the house.
“In the closet in the conservatory,” Orchid said in a small voice. “I was trying to get a mop for the hall when . . .” She hesitated, then swallowed. “That’s how I found the body.”
Mustard nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”
As he entered the conservatory, his eyes went immediately to the large, still lump in the center of the room. It shouldn’t have an effect on him. Dead bodies were a part of combat, after all. An essential fact of military life.
But he’d never seen one. Not a human one. Any second now, he expected the mass of tarp to rise and fall, as if Headmaster Boddy were only sleeping. But it never happened, and the longer he stood there, the more hairs rose on the nape of his neck. Swiftly, he opened the closet, grabbed a mop and bucket, and slammed the door closed, checking again to make sure the corpse hadn’t moved.
It hadn’t.
In the hall he discovered the mop was stiff and frozen, as if any moisture that had remained trapped in the fibers of its head from previous use had crystallized in the conservatory broom closet. Maybe that would be a good place to store the body.
But he’d worry about that later. For now, he wanted to get the water off the floor. It seemed like an awful lot to have come through the window, but maybe it had been raining harder in the night. The puddles of water extended all the way down the hallway, nearly to the conservatory, and Mustard had already emptied out the bucket once in the bathroom sink by the time he reached the front hall, beneath the broken window.
Just a little more KP duty. There was nothing else for them to do at this point. Rusty and Vaughn were trying to get help. No one seemed in immediate danger. Mustard wanted to help, too, and the most immediate thing he could think of was to mop the floor.
The cold wind kept him moving fast. He’d have to find something to cover up that window with. If they were out of tarps, maybe he could try trash bags, or cling film. He looked around the hall. Rusty must have moved the ladder sometime in the night.
Another chill went down his spine. No. Headmaster Boddy had been the one to move the ladder. He remembered that now. The two men had carried it together out onto the front porch. It might have been one of the last things the man had done in his life. Or maybe it had been brushing his teeth, or reading a chapter in some musty old book, or making sure everyone was tucked into their beds, where they were supposed to be.
And what if someone wasn’t? Would that be reason enough to kill the headmaster?
Mustard didn’t want to dwell on all the possibilities. He pushed the mop even faster across the parquet floor as scenarios ricocheted disturbingly through his mind.
There was Scarlett and Plum, always sneaking off together. And Scarlett, so determined to argue it was a suicide.
There was Rusty, who’d hardly said a word when the body was found. Who hadn’t seemed remotely upset, and who also had been quick to volunteer to leave the scene. Vaughn had volunteered, too. He also deserved a spot on the suspect list, especially after Boddy had scolded him for his racy song.
And Peacock! He remembered her behavior in the kitchen yesterday, chopping vegetables and staring at the headmaster as if she wanted him dead. Maybe she’d had the chance.
He wondered if the others were making lists. Probably not. They’d all been in school together for years. They were probably great friends.
Mustard was the only outsider. They probably all thought he did it.
Mrs. White was right: it did no good to speculate. The police would be here eventually, and they were trained for this kind of thing. He’d learned at Farthing that the quickest way to get in trouble was to operate beyond the mission. He wasn’t a detective. His father thought police work was only one step above desk duty.
Combat or bust.
After several more minutes of hard mopping, the floor still shone with moisture, but all the puddles had been sopped up. He stuck the mop head back in the bucket and headed for the conservatory. He’d check the closet for another tarp for the window. They’d need something.
The body remained where he’d left it, still and creepy and somehow smaller than Mustard had remembered the headmaster being. But it hadn’t moved. It wouldn’t move. It was a corpse.
It was like his father always said : he needed to stop acting like such a pansy. Mustard swallowed and opened the closet door, setting the mop and bucket back in their corner. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, and Mustard instinctively pulled the cord before remembering there was no power and no light. He fetched a flashlight from the hall, then returned to peer through the shadows at the closet’s contents, stacked neatly on the shelves and clustered in stacks against the far wall.
There were old watering cans and pottery in a box labeled Decorations, another marked 1972, some brooms, a few old rags and gardening tools, a box of lightbulbs, another of paper towels, an ancient shoe box that seemed to house old seed packets, and—
There. A tarp, neatly folded, but smeared with markings that might have been dirt or paint. Either way, it was better than leaving the hall exposed to the elements. He tucked it under his arm, backed out of the closet, shut the door—and saw the man standing in the corner of the room.
Mustard nearly jumped out of his skin and yelped.
A second later, he realized it wasn’t Boddy at all, but Finn Plum, standing by the back wall of the conservatory and looking at him, one eyebrow lifted.
Mustard’s jaw clenched. “How did you get in here?”
“The usual way. I didn’t see you in the closet.”
“You have a reason to be here?” Mustard replied.
“Who died and made you—” Plum cut himself off. His gaze darted to the corpse under the tarp. “I mean—Mrs. White sent me to see if you needed help with the cleanup.” He nodded at the tarp under Mustard’s arm. “Covering up that window is going to be a two-man job.”
“Yeah,” Mustard conceded. “Do you want to go get the ladder?”
Plum did not look as though he did. He was back in his usual preppy clothes. Mustard had found the things he’d lent the boy neatly folded on his side of the billiards table that morning.
Now Plum was staring at the tarp-covered corpse, his expression drawn. “Scarlett still thinks it might be a suicide.”
“Do you?” Mustard ventured to ask.
“No.” Plum shook his head. “I don’t get why he would have done it like this. You didn’t know him. He was a scientist. Everything always planned to perfection. And he was a chemist, too, which meant he should have been able to think of a thousand ways to poison himself, if he’d wanted. But . . . stabbing? It’s not precise. It can be incredibly slow and painful.”
That’s exactly what Mustard had been wondering. He almost said something to Plum along those lines, but the words died in his throat when he saw the other boy walking toward the tarp.
“What are you doing?” Mustard cried, but it was too late. Plum pulled back the covering over the headmaster’s face.
“Do we have to leave him on the floor like this?” Finn asked, his voice choked with some kind of emotion.
“I don’t know. I think until we can get the police here . . .” said Mustard, shaking his head.
“What difference could it make?”
“Evidence. Clues. DNA . . .”
“We already messed with the crime scene.” Finn gestured to the tarp.
“I don’t know,” Mustard said, frustrated. “Do I look like a cop?”<
br />
Plum turned his way. “Honestly? Yeah.”
Mustard wondered if the boy’s hair did that floppy curly thing naturally, or if Plum spent an hour in the mirror every morning, perfecting it. He averted his eyes, but that only meant he was looking at the dead body instead. Suddenly, he couldn’t stop from staring at it, couldn’t stop his brain from cataloging all the gruesome details. The skin, the blood, the fingers that still hadn’t loosened their hold on the handle of the—
Mustard’s brow furrowed. “That’s a Fairbairn-Sykes.”
“What?” Plum asked.
“That’s an F-S stiletto,” said Mustard. “A World War Two fighting knife.”
“A fighting knife?” Finn drawled. “And you know it on sight?”
Mustard shrugged. At the military academy, they memorized weaponry like other students learned different poetry meters. “It’s a famous weapon. My father thinks it’s important to study military history.” He had a whole collection.
Plum was unimpressed. “A knife? That’s old-school, at least in the military. Wouldn’t your time be better spent learning how to program a drone or something?”
Desk job, said his father’s voice. Mustard scowled and returned his attention to the knife. “I wonder if it’s an original or a replica.” Maybe the weapon held a clue as to who might have wielded it. Though it’s not as if he could picture anyone in this house liking antique military daggers. It wasn’t as if Karlee or Kayla kept daggers in their glitter purses.
But when he looked closer, he noticed something else. There were several long, shallow slashes on Boddy’s hands, not near his wrists, but rather across his knuckles and alongside his palms.
As if, prior to plunging the knife into his own chest he’d been . . . fighting it off.
11
Peacock
— EP WORKOUT LOG—
DATE: December 6
TIME WOKE: 6:00 a.m. (back on schedule!)
MORNING WEIGH-IN: They don’t keep scales here, apparently
BREAKFAST: 2 lemon-custard-flavored nutrition bars (420 calories, 12g protein), green tea
MORNING WORKOUT: 500 stair reps
NOTES: They found the corpse of Headmaster Boddy in the conservatory. There have already been two meetings about what to do. The power is still out and the flooding is still too bad to run outside. Will probably do more stairs this afternoon.
12
Orchid
Orchid felt like, somehow, Tudor House had gotten submerged in the flood, only no one else noticed. How else to explain this strange floating sensation, or the way that everyone’s voices came out muffled, as if they were calling back and forth under the water? She tried to concentrate, but everything became lost in the roar of the tide.
Vaughn and Rusty had gone for the police.
He’s back he’s back he’s back he’s back.
Scarlett thought it might be suicide.
He’s here he’s here he’s here he’s here.
And now Mustard had gathered her and the four other girls in the hall, clustered on the marble stairs, and was explaining in great detail the particular qualities of the particular antique military knife that was sticking out of the particular chest of their dead headmaster.
Did he like antique fighting knives? Orchid could not recall. At least not here, at the bottom of the sea.
Besides, she told herself, if the knife was still in Headmaster Boddy’s chest, it wasn’t exactly a danger anymore.
Not like the person who had used it.
Orchid fought back the tide of terror enveloping her and tried to concentrate on what the others were saying. She’d never met the new kid before yesterday, and didn’t know if he was given to wild flights of fancy, like Scarlett and her nonsense suicide theory. Orchid hadn’t been so out of it that she’d missed her housemate’s notion.
At least Mustard didn’t buy it, either. And he’d been the one doing the talking. Finn Plum had nodded in confirmation of the revelation that there were injuries on Headmaster Boddy’s hands “inconsistent with a suicide,” but otherwise had added no extra information.
Once, in another life, Orchid had done a three-episode arc on a famous crime show. She’d played the murder victim, which had been fun during the flashback scenes, but had also required a lot of lying around half naked on fake mortuary slabs while actors pretending to be detectives stood above her and said things just like that.
It had sounded every bit as incomprehensible then.
“So . . .” said Scarlett. “What you’re saying is, someone stabbed Headmaster Boddy, then put his hands around the old knife?”
“I’m saying I don’t know why he would have slashed up his own hands before stabbing himself in the heart.”
“Maybe he was trying to . . . slash his wrists or something. Did you check out his wrists?”
“I didn’t touch the body,” said Mustard. “I don’t want to mess up any fingerprints for when the police get here. It’s a crime scene.”
“Just let it go already, Scarlett,” Orchid found herself snapping. “He didn’t commit suicide.”
Not that she blamed Scarlett for clinging to any option—no matter how horrible—that kept her safe.
After all, didn’t Orchid make the same kinds of choices herself? The chill had nothing to do with the falling temperature in the hall.
You didn’t think you could hide from me forever, did you?
How stupid to think she could. Even more moronic to think that the storm would protect her. All it did was strand her here, with no help of defense or escape.
“It’s too bad Rusty and Vaughn already left,” said Karlee. “The police need this info, too.”
“Where’s Mrs. White?” Mustard asked.
“Wasn’t she in the kitchen?” asked Finn.
“She was,” said Orchid. “We were cleaning up in there. I think she went to change.” Or collect herself, or something. There was a dead body in her house. That would rattle anyone.
Orchid knew that for a fact.
“She wasn’t in her room upstairs,” said Karlee. “That’s where we were.”
“Maybe she’s in the bathroom,” said Kayla.
Finn knocked on the study door. “Mrs. White?” No answer.
He knocked again, harder. “Mrs. White?” A frantic note had entered his tone.
Behind them, the door to the lounge opened and they all jumped.
Mrs. White stood on the threshold. Her eyes looked tired. She seemed to have aged ten years in the last several hours. Orchid wondered if they all looked like that. “Yes? Did you need something?”
Mustard stepped forward. “Mrs. White, Finn and I were just in the conservatory looking at the corpse and—”
Her eyes widened in horror. “Why would you do that? Can’t the man get a single moment of peace, even in death?”
“Well, ma’am, it seems that Mr. Boddy—”
“Headmaster Boddy,” Mrs. White corrected, her tone clipped, her gaze as cold as ice.
Mustard was undeterred. “—had slash marks all over his hands. As if he was fighting off an attacker with the knife, before he was stabbed.”
Mrs. White took this in. “What do you mean?”
“I saw them, on his body. I don’t know why a man committing suicide would take the time to cut up his hands first.”
“Or why he’d use a knife to start with,” Plum said. “That doesn’t feel like the headmaster.”
“You are not the coroner,” she said harshly to Mustard. “And you,” she added, turning to Plum, “are not the police. I suggest you leave an investigation—if one is necessary—to those trained to do one. We’re in a bad enough situation as it is.”
“You think?” Scarlett asked, her voice frantic. “If it wasn’t a suicide, then there’s a murderer in this house! How can you just expect us to stay here? Any of us might be next!”
“Scarlett!” Mrs. White cried, astonished. “What did I just say? My goodness, what a fantasy you’ve cooked up. As if
one of your fellow students could have murdered a man! On what grounds?”
Because, of course, a murderer needed a motive. Orchid could tell when that same thought occurred to the other people in the hall. The flickering gazes, the changes in posture, the expressions that morphed from horrified to suspicious. They were each making their own mental list.
Karlee and Kayla: Clueless.
Mustard: But then why would he be the one tipping them all off?
Scarlett and Finn: Devious enough to try anything, for sure, but they were total teachers’ pets.
Peacock: There had been that fight with the headmaster, and Finn had told Scarlett, which meant half the school knew.
She wondered what they were thinking about her. What motive they imagined that was one hundred percent wrong, but also right in the only way that mattered.
She was to blame.
Only . . . If the person who wrote her that letter had wanted to get to her—if he’d killed Headmaster Boddy to do it—what possible reason would he have for not finishing the job?
Lost in thought, Orchid didn’t even realize that she was still staring at Peacock, until the other girl snapped at her.
“What?” Peacock cried. “Do I stink or something?”
Orchid quickly returned her attention to her hands in her lap.
Mrs. White clucked her tongue. “No. I’m afraid if Headmaster Boddy met a bad end, it was something else entirely. But that won’t be for us to say. We must remain calm until Rusty gets back with the police.”
“I don’t understand,” Mustard said to her. “Who do you think is responsible?”
Mrs. White looked grave. “I’ve just been in the lounge, looking at the headmaster’s belongings and trying to get a sense of why he’d even be in the conservatory so late at night.”
“And?” Scarlett nearly pounced.
“Yesterday, he brought over boxes from the school office,” Mrs. White said. “In case he couldn’t reach it during the flood. Important files and such. I saw them when he arrived. And now—well, several are missing.”
In the Hall with the Knife Page 8
