Arsenic For Tea: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery (A Wells and Wong Mystery) (15 page)

‘Nothing!’ said Daisy quickly. ‘Only talking to Mrs Doherty and Hetty about . . . tea.’

The glasses on Chapman’s tray jangled together like out-of-tune bells, and he backed away against a row of cupboards as though Daisy had just brandished a knife at him.

‘That’s quite enough of
that
,’ he said, as if Daisy had said
murder
instead of
tea
. ‘Miss Daisy, take your friends out of these kitchens at once. Hetty and Mrs Doherty have lunch to prepare, and I am a very busy man.
Now
, Miss Daisy!’

Once again we had to leave – but we had plenty to think about. It seemed to me that we had been given one extra clue. Although we knew that Chapman could not actually have been responsible for Mr Curtis’s murder, the way he had behaved when
tea
was mentioned made me think that he was worried about it. But why?

Out we went into the hall – and stumbled onto another scene. Lady Hastings, in the same bright-green dress and extravagant fur she had been wearing the day before, was standing in the middle of the worn hall carpet, and she was shouting at Uncle Felix.

‘I’m in mourning!’ she wailed. ‘Why can’t anyone understand that? Oh, I have a heartless family. You should have heard Bertie just now, telling me I should be pleased that Denis is dead.
Pleased!
’

‘Don’t exaggerate, Margaret,’ said Uncle Felix. ‘You hardly knew him.’

‘
Hardly knew him!
’ cried Lady Hastings. ‘I’ll have you know that he was my
everything
!’

Next to me, Daisy gasped. Her face had gone very pale. ‘NO HE WASN’T!’ she shouted at her mother, her usual composure cracking. ‘
DADDY
IS! Why do you have to ruin everything?’

‘
Daisy!
’ said Lady Hastings, turning to face us. ‘What are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you to go and play? Miss Alston! Miss Alston!’

‘Really, Daisy, do get yourself under control,’ said Uncle Felix. ‘We can’t have everyone losing their heads.’

Daisy glared at him. ‘I
am
under control,’ she said. ‘Are you?’

‘
This family!
’ Lady Hastings threw up her hands theatrically and rushed away up the stairs.

At that moment Miss Alston stepped out of the music room. Of course, she must have heard her name being called, but seeing her still gave me a frightful shock. Daisy froze, Kitty gasped and Beanie gave a small, frightened squeal.

‘What a lot of noise,’ said Miss Alston. ‘Whatever is going on?’

I stared at her shiny brown handbag and wondered how on earth we would ever get it away from her.

‘My sister, making a scene,’ said Uncle Felix, and he gave Miss Alston a curious look. I struggled to work out what it was . . . and then I had it. It was the sort of look Daisy gave me, to tell me what she was thinking without using words. It was a look between friends – but as far as I knew, Uncle Felix and Miss Alston had never met before this weekend.

‘Miss Alston,’ he said, with another one of those curious looks, ‘I think the girls are bored.’

‘We are not!’ said Daisy. ‘We’re perfectly all right. Kitty and Beanie were going to help Mrs D set out the lunch things, and Hazel and I were about to take a quick walk in the garden. Weren’t we, Hazel?’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘But—’ Kitty began indignantly.

‘It’s spiffing of you to
assist
Mrs D like that,’ said Daisy. ‘Think of all the
useful things
you’ll learn. Now, come along, Hazel.’

She clamped her fingers around my wrist and dragged me towards the front door. Although she looked as cool as anything, I could feel her trembling. I turned and looked back at Miss Alston and Uncle Felix, and saw them still standing together, staring at us. This was suspicious behaviour indeed. They were all I could think about at that moment, but I knew that Daisy had no room in her head for anything but her mother.

We hurried out through the heavy stone front doorway. It had stopped raining for a moment, but I shivered. What I wanted was some lunch – I was terribly jealous of Kitty and Beanie, able to help with it – but this was just between Daisy and me, like old times, and I knew I ought to appreciate it.

Daisy wrinkled her nose and strode out onto the lawn without a pause. The ground was sopping, and my shoes sank into the grass. I tried to go on tiptoe to save them, but it was no good. I soon gave up and slopped after her.

‘I hate Mummy,’ said Daisy, after a while. ‘I know I oughtn’t to, but I
hate
her. Being sad about Mr Curtis! Saying that he was more important to her than Daddy! She’s horrid.
Oh!
What a disappointment she is. Perhaps the murderer
did
do us a favour, getting rid of Mr Curtis. Now perhaps she’ll forget about him, and everything can go back to the way it was.’

‘But he is
dead
, Daisy,’ I said, stumbling on a particularly slippery hummock of grass.

We passed the maze and went on outwards towards the flooded fields, Fallingford House on its little hill receding behind us. I wished it was so easy to leave it behind for good.

‘So?’ asked Daisy. ‘Perhaps some people oughtn’t to live.’

My fists clenched, and I stopped. ‘
Daisy!
’ I said. ‘Don’t talk like that! You know it isn’t true. Mr Curtis was horrid, and what he and your mother were doing was awful, but he didn’t deserve to
die
because of it! You mustn’t say so.’

‘Well, someone thought he did,’ she replied. ‘What a horrible case this is! Everything’s the wrong way round. The only really nasty person is dead. Just our luck, isn’t it?’

At that moment a postage-stamp window flashed open in the house behind us, and a little doll-person stuck its head out and yelled. For one unpleasant moment I thought something else terrible must have happened – but then I heard the words the little person – Kitty – was shouting.

‘
Lunch!
’ she cried, very small and far away. ‘
Come on in!
’ and she wiggled her matchstick arms like sema phore. My stomach gave a glad rumble.

‘Bother,’ said Daisy. ‘Meals. Why do they keep coming round to interrupt us? All right – after lunch we’ll have a proper Detective Society meeting to discuss what we have discovered this morning. We’ll have it in the Secret Tree, so that Bertie and Stephen can’t come bothering us again. Are you in, Watson?’

‘Are Kitty and Beanie in?’ I asked. The Secret Tree sounded like outside, and outside, I could feel perfectly well, was still wet.

‘Yes, they’re in too,’ said Daisy, sighing. ‘If you insist. Although they aren’t really necessary. That is to say, they aren’t
you
.’

‘Oh,’ I said, suddenly feeling quite warm despite the chilly wind blowing through my cardigan.

‘Don’t speak,’ said Daisy. ‘Just shake on it.’

So we did the Detective Society handshake, and then we ran (squelchily) in to lunch.

Lunch was lamb, vegetables, creamy mashed potatoes and a wobbly pink blancmange with cherries on top for afters. While we were eating the lamb, Bertie made a joke about murderers, and Chapman dropped his serving platter and had to be helped by Hetty. Uncle Felix and Miss Alston shared yet more suspicious glances, and I thought again how very odd this weekend was turning out to be.

‘All right,’ said Daisy, half an hour later.

The four of us were squashed into the crook of the big oak that stands just outside the walled garden, looking over onto fruit trees that had all of their early blooms shaken off by the storm. A few rotting boards had been knocked together to make a platform and a sort of roof, but they were green-smelling and slimy, and my seat was not at all comfortable. Every time I moved I got more black stains across my knees and arms. The sky was grey, and suspiciously damp-looking, but the rain was holding off for the moment.

‘Order! Order! This meeting of the Detective Society is hereby convened. Beanie, stop wriggling, bother you.’

‘Sorry, Daisy,’ said Beanie. ‘I’ll stop.’

‘This place is fearfully uncomfortable, Daisy,’ said Kitty. ‘Really, do we
have
to be here?’

‘
Yes
. From up here we can see anyone coming – do you want the murderer to creep up on us unawares?’

‘I don’t like all this murder,’ said Beanie unhappily. ‘I wish there hadn’t been one.’

‘Well, whether you like it or not, there has been,’ said Daisy, ‘and now it’s up to us to work out who it was.’

‘I know,’ said Beanie. ‘I just don’t like it.’

Daisy rolled her eyes at Kitty, who smirked back. I thought this was rather cruel. After all, there was a bit of me that understood what Beanie meant. I love detecting, but I also love being safe. Daisy has a short memory for bad things. All she can remember from the Deepdean murder is the glory – none of the horrible night-time chasing. Sometimes I can’t get the chasing out of my head.

‘All right,’ she said now. ‘We must now consider the new information we have gathered since our last meeting. What evidence do we have? The missing cup and watch. The scrap of paper from the book. And the forged documents.

‘The missing cup and watch: now, we’ve been over the cup before, but I do wonder more and more why the
watch
was taken as well.’

‘Because it was pretty and valuable?’ asked Beanie.

‘It’s possible,’ said Daisy. ‘And if it was that, the most likely suspect would be Aunt Saskia. We must check her room to see if the watch is hidden there.

‘But there’s someone else who’s got a better motive to take the watch: Stephen.’

I squashed my lips together, but all the same I couldn’t prevent a small noise coming out.

Daisy rolled her eyes. ‘Hazel doesn’t think he did it, of course, but even Hazel can be wrong. Now, Hetty and Mrs D confirmed what we already knew – that Stephen is poor. The watch is quite obviously dreadfully valuable – what if he stole it to pay debts, or something like that?’

‘But how would we check?’ I asked.

‘Quite easily,’ said Daisy. ‘We use you. Go up to Stephen the very next chance you get and find out if he . . . needs money. He likes you, after all. He’ll be honest.’

I wouldn’t do it! I thought. I would not, not even for Daisy. But then I remembered who the other suspects were. If Daisy was willing to suspect her family, then I must be brave enough to rule out her brother’s friend.

I picked at the mould on the board next to me. Under my fingernails it turned quite black and foul. ‘Oh, all right,’ I said at last. ‘I’ll ask him.’

‘Excellent,’ said Daisy. ‘Look, the watch may be a blind. The murderer may just have taken it on a whim, or by mistake. We must consider the other evidence too.

‘Like that bit of paper you found on the dining-room table. It was torn out of a book of poetry, and judging by that smudge on it, it’s likely that the murderer used it to keep the poison in until they poured it into Mr Curtis’s tea. Unfortunately, this is less helpful than it seems. Mummy and Daddy aren’t very bookish, but they could still have gone into the library and torn out a page – and any of the others might have had a book on them at the crucial moment.’

‘But isn’t it more likely to be someone who
does
read?’ I asked. ‘Like . . . Uncle Felix.’

Daisy frowned. ‘I suppose so. Yes. And even I have to admit that Uncle Felix has been behaving in a . . . thoroughly un-uncle-like manner. He’s still lying about what he thinks happened to Mr Curtis, and doing everything he can to stop Mummy calling the police.’

‘And – Daisy,’ I said, ‘I think he might know Miss Alston. The way they looked at each other just now . . . I really don’t think they’ve only just met.’

‘If all you have to base that on is looks—’ Daisy began, but then Kitty cut in.

‘Oh yes, I thought so too!’ she said. ‘They looked awfully friendly when we saw them before lunch, didn’t they?’

Daisy narrowed her eyes at both of us. She was outnumbered, and she wasn’t used to it. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Perhaps. We must watch Uncle Felix, I admit that – although I don’t think it can be him. Even if he’s been behaving oddly, we know he’s
good
, just the way we knew Mr Curtis was
bad
.’

I frowned. I wasn’t sure that we
did
know that.

‘I do think that it’s less likely to be Mummy. If I was a bad detective who only went on feelings – not that this applies to anyone
here
’ – she glared at us – ‘I’d rule her out because she’s simply too upset about Mr Curtis dying, and because she contacted the police when no one else wanted to. But of course, we must be entirely rigorous. We need evidence of her innocence, and we don’t have that yet. Perhaps if we conducted a re-creation of the crime scene, we might be able to rule her, or another suspect, out . . . Yes, let’s put that down on our to-do list.

‘Now, the forged documents. These are terribly important bits of evidence, as they confirm that Miss Alston is not who she seems to be. She is at Fallingford under some sort of assumed identity. But why? Hazel and I witnessed Mr Curtis threatening her outside the maze on Saturday morning. He seemed to know who she was – did she kill him to prevent him telling Mummy and Daddy her secret?

‘We must discover her true identity – and after what Mrs D said, our best chance must be to get hold of that handbag of hers and see what she’s got hidden in there.’

She stared around at us, eyes wide, and we all nodded.

‘Now, before we end, is there any new bit of evidence we’ve missed?’

‘Um,’ I said, ‘should we be watching Chapman? He’s behaving awfully oddly. What if he knows something?’

‘Oh!’ said Beanie. ‘You mean – him dropping the tray at lunch today?’

‘Yes!’ I said. ‘And lots of other things.’

‘That’s an excellent thought, Hazel!’ said Daisy. ‘Why, he might be protecting someone. Like . . .’

But then she paused. We both realized, then, who Chapman would be most likely to shield. Someone from Daisy’s family – and not just that, but someone who was part of Fallingford itself. That meant Lady Hastings, Bertie – or Lord Hastings. Lord Hastings, I thought, who we had all seen shouting at Mr Curtis on the morning of the murder.