The Hangman's Lair (8 page)

All three of the suspects went upstairs at some point, either to the bathroom, to the bookshelves (both right next to Amy’s room), or to Amy’s room itself. However, Kelly did
not
go up there after Amy had seen her diary safe and sound. The other two
did
– Nicola to return the books, Paul to wash the ink off his hands and replace the spare coloured paper.

All three of them had the opportunity to do a bit of snooping and take the diary from Amy’s window sill. But only Kelly was downstairs all the time
after
Amy had seen the diary. So Kelly had to be innocent.

As all this was swirling around in my head, the bell for the end of the lesson sounded. I suddenly realised I hadn’t listened to a single word that had been said about . . . er, whatever-it-was.

Eliminating Kelly from my list of suspects was a big step forward. Since I’d realised that the diary probably hadn’t been read yet (and that the whole case might still be tied up without the diary’s contents becoming public), the urgency of the situation was the most important factor. So narrowing down the suspects to just two would be very helpful!

However . . .

What was still left unexplained was
why
the diary hadn’t been read. Or, more to the point, why the thief still hadn’t threatened Amy with blackmail, or posted the diary on the internet, or whatever other fiendish scheme they had in mind when they’d stolen the thing in the first place! It was all very puzzling.

For a while, I thought about another possibility. What if something accidental had happened to the diary? Something we hadn’t accounted for up to now?
A-ha! That
would explain the strange lack of diary-reading/ blackmail/fiendish schemes, etc, etc.

But . . .

No, something accidental didn’t really seem to fit the facts. I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly
why,
though.

My thoughts were interrupted by lunchtime. After a yummy, scrummy school dinner of burned thing, mushy thing and green thing (followed by spongy thing), I took a walk along the classroom corridor. I tried to pick up my thoughts where I’d left off.

They were interrupted again when Amy came bustling over to me. ‘I’ve been thinking about another possibility,’ she said. ‘What if something accidental has happened to the diary? Something we haven’t accounted for up to now?’

‘I already thought of that,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t really fit the facts. Although, I can’t quite . . .’

‘I think it might have fallen into the canal,’ said Amy.

‘Canal?’ I said. ‘What canal?’

‘The houses in our street were once Victorian warehouses. The canal runs right along the back of them. If something fell out of my window it’d drop right into the water. My window was open on Thursday afternoon, and it was quite windy out. One hefty billow of the curtains and the diary on the window sill could easily have been knocked outside.’

I snapped my fingers. (Well, sort of – when I snap my fingers it makes more of a thud than a snap. Yet another little practical skill I’m rubbish at. Anyway, you know what I mean.)

Of course!
That
was why I couldn’t quite put my finger on the reason that an accident didn’t really fit the facts! I hadn’t thought about precisely
where
the diary had been. Now I realised that an accident - like the one Amy had just described to me - was out of the question.

‘Nooooo,’ I said. Then I said ‘nooooo’ again, just to emphasise the point. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘Why do you say that?’ said Amy.

‘Think back to what you’ve told me about exactly where your diary is kept,’ I said.

Have you spotted why the diary couldn’t have gone out of the window?

‘You told me the diary is always under your wooden pencil case. Never anywhere else. If something accidental had happened to the diary, why hadn’t it also happened to the pencil case? A billowing curtain, for example, couldn’t lift up the pencil case, brush the diary out of the window and then replace the pencil case, could it?’

Amy sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose it’s obvious, really. I got my hopes up just then. Now I’ve got to go back to worrying. As soon as that diary gets opened . . .’

I stopped still.

Wait a minute! All this talk about accidents and previously-unseen-possibilities had suddenly kicked my brain into gear! Quickly, I took out Amy’s Thursday timetable and read through it again.

T think I’ve spotted a motive,’ I said quietly, not taking my eyes off the timetable. ‘At long last!’

‘What motive?’ said Amy.

I glanced at her. I didn’t really want to say, not right at that moment, just in case I was wrong. The motive for the theft – if I was right – didn’t exactly show Amy in a favourable light.

There was a clear difference between our two remaining suspects. One of them had a reason to be peeved at Amy, and the other didn’t. And one of them had a possible motive for taking the diary, while the other didn’t.

I was annoyed with myself for not spotting it before. Have you seen the evidence for a motive in that timetable too? No time to explain now – check if you’re right when we get to the next chapter!

‘Well?’ said Amy.

‘Got to go,’ I said quickly, avoiding her gaze. ‘There’s not a moment to lose.’ As I hurried off down the corridor, I called back to her over my shoulder, ‘With a bit of luck, I’ll have this sorted out by the end of school today.’

I headed for one of the classrooms close to the assembly hall. Now I had a definite plan. I would do three things:

1. Locate Suspect No.1.

2. Tell Suspect No.1 that the game was up and that I
knew everything.

3. Get Suspect No.1 to hand over Amy’s diary.

As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered having a plan of any sort, definite or not. As I neared the classroom door, I was stopped in my tracks by the sound of a low, braying laugh.

I knew the sound all too well. It was the jeering sneer of that low-down rat Harry Lovecraft.

The classroom door was open a few centimetres. I crept up to it, carefully making sure that my shadow wouldn’t pass across the crack of sunshine that sliced along the floor. Through the gap I could see Harry Lovecraft sitting on one of the desks. He was talking to someone I couldn’t see. They were alone in the classroom.

‘Yes, I’ve got the money,’ slimed Harry. ‘I had some rubbishy old books to sell, and I knew exactly who’d take the bait.’ He reached into his blazer and produced the money I’d paid him earlier that day. ‘Here’s your payment, courtesy of that revolting know-it-all, Saxby Smart.’

A hand appeared and took the cash. The unseen person said something I couldn’t hear.

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Harry Lovecraft. ‘You think I want to be caught carrying it around? Drop it off where I told you. And make sure you do it before the end of school!’

Harry stood up and headed straight for the door. If I didn’t get out of the corridor he’d see me in seconds!

I hopped on tiptoe, trying desperately not to let my shoes clack against the polished floor. I must have looked like a frog dancing on hot coals! A few bounding strides took me into the classroom next door and I crouched down out of sight.

I saw Harry slither past. Time to scuttle back out into the corridor, I thought to myself, and catch whoever it was Harry has been talking to.

But just as I was about to move, the bell for afternoon lessons went. A trickle of kids started flowing outside the classrooms almost instantly. By the time I’d got into the corridor, the trickle had become a river. There was no hope of identifying the correct person now.

Never mind, I thought to myself, I’ve got a pretty good idea of who it was. Since overhearing Harry Lovecraft, I now also had a pretty good idea of exactly what had been going on all this time.

The whole case revolved around three things:

1. What was said at Amy’s house on Thursday afternoon.

2. That mystery about why the thief seemed not to have read the diary.

3. The Mega-Sale at the local branch of SwordStore in Hanover Street.

I hurried along back to class.

‘Drop it off where I told you,’ Harry had said.

So . . . Where might that be, I wondered?

O
UTSIDE OUR CLASSROOMS, NEXT
TO
the racking where people put their lunchboxes and assorted other stuff, there is a long honeycomb of lockers. I have no idea why these are called ‘lockers’ because they have no locks on them, just lift-up wooden hatches. Every pupil is allocated one; mine is on the third row up, fourth from the end.

We use them to store school books, homework, and so forth. Teachers use them now and again to distribute stuff like newsletters and parental consent forms.

Most people drop by their locker at the end of the day, which was why I was standing beside the lockers when the bell went for the end of school. I positioned myself in front of Harry Lovecraft’s, top row, second from the left.

‘Are you getting in my way for a reason, Smart?’ smarmed Harry. ‘Or are you just being your normal awkward self? I told you, I’ll bring those books in for you tomorrow.’

‘There’s a definite reason,’ I said. ‘This won’t take long.’

As Amy emerged from the classroom I flagged her down and asked her to round up Nicola, Paul and Kelly for me. A couple of minutes later, we were all gathered together beside the lockers.

I could see Mrs Penzler, our form teacher, marking homework at her desk with huge swishes of her pen. I considered calling her over too, but I decided that this matter was probably best dealt with amongst the six of us.

‘What’s this about?’ said Nicola. ‘I’ve got netball practice in ten minutes.’

‘I’ve got to get to the shops,’ said Paul.

‘And I’ve got a steak and kidney pie sitting at home with my name on it,’ grumbled Kelly.

‘Last Thursday afternoon,’ I began, ‘Amy here had her diary stolen from her room at home.’

‘What’s that got to do with us?’ said Nicola.

‘I didn’t even know she had a diary,’ grumbled Kelly.

‘Get to the point, Smart,’ sneered Harry Lovecraft. ‘You’re boring me already.’

‘The point is,’ I said, ‘that only one of you three, Nicola, Paul and Kelly, could have taken it. I was able to rule Kelly out of my investigations, so the theft had to be down to either Nicola or Paul. Now, at this point, Amy, I really do have to say that, in a way, you brought this entire affair on yourself.’

‘What?’ she cried. She shook her head in astonishment. ‘What?’

‘It was all a question of motive,’ I said. ‘It’s no secret that Amy, Nicola, Paul and Kelly aren’t best buddies. They’re just having to work together on this history project we’re all doing. But you’d need more than that to have a motive to actually steal Amy’s diary. And Amy gave you that motive . . . Paul.’

Paul stared at me like a small furry animal caught in the crosshairs of a shotgun. He went paler than a slice of white bread.

‘Umm . . .’ he said at last, trembling.

‘We all know,’ I said, ‘that Paul’s a huge FrogWar fan. He collects all the figures and builds all the weaponry and stuff. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Paul quietly.

‘If you look at the noticeboard further along this corridor, you’ll see that there’s a sale on at SwordStore, which stocks the whole FrogWar range. FrogWar merchandise isn’t cheap. A money-off sale is something Paul
really
doesn’t want to miss. But it ends this Wednesday. So what’s Paul been doing? Saving up as hard as he can, trying to sell some old CDs, doing his best to raise enough cash by this Wednesday to get a few bargains.

‘Last Thursday afternoon, he asked his fellow timeline-assemblers if they were interested in any of the stuff he was selling. They weren’t. Unfortunately, Paul maaaaay have asked them one too many times, and he maaaaay have chattered on a bit about FrogWar in general. His fellow timeline-assemblers maaaaay have found this slightly irritating.

‘However, Amy’s response was a little harsh. In fact, she was positively rude to Paul, and even called him a loser. Which, completely understandably, made him very cross. If someone who didn’t like reading crime stories the way I do started moaning about them and calling me a loser, I expect I’d get pretty annoyed too.

‘A short while later, an opportunity for revenge presents itself. He’s returning some coloured paper to Amy’s room when he notices her diary. People always value their diaries, he thinks to himself, even if the only thing they put in them is a note or two about the weather.

‘He wants to raise some money, and quickly. I’ll hold that diary to ransom, thinks Paul. Now, bear in mind that Paul’s angry with Amy. He’s not in the clearest-thinking of moods. He sneaks the diary away . . . er, in his pocket?’

Paul looked sheepish. ‘Tucked under my sweatshirt,’ he muttered.

Tucked under his sweatshirt,’ I said. ‘But as soon as he gets home, he realises how stupid he’s been. He’s no thief. He’s not the sort of person who normally goes around stealing other people’s property. He feels terrible about it. But what can he do?

The right thing to do, of course, would be to simply return the diary to Amy. But she’s made it absolutely clear what she thinks of him. If I return it, thinks Paul, I’ll have to admit what I’ve done. Amy can’t stand me. She’ll make sure I get into a whole heap of trouble for this.’