The Poisoned Arrow (12 page)

‘Of course not!’

‘OoooKaaaay,’ I said. ‘So, when this police officer gets here . . . finally . . . we’ll be able to find out whose fingerprints are on that drive. If this is your
computer, Deborah, then they’ll be your prints.’

Deborah took a step back. Then another step. I knew she was going to make a run for it. I just knew. As soon as she bolted for the door, Mrs Hardyman was after her.

‘Oi! Get back here! I’ll teach you to break my boy’s heart, you nasty piece of work!’

When they’d gone, Dr Shroeder turned to me. ‘Why did she do it? She’s such a good student, why would she steal my computer?’

I shrugged. ‘Just to replace her own. Just so she wouldn’t look like a twit for ruining her expensive gear. Just so she could stay looking cool, with one of those trendy machines
under her arm.’

‘Astonishing,’ said Dr Shroeder. ‘What motivated her was so feeble and shallow, and yet what motivated Nat was the strongest emotion in the world, a force powerful enough to
overcome his reason, his common sense, his rational thought.’

‘I am still in the room,’ muttered Nat.

‘Come on, mate,’ said Matt, patting Nat on the back. ‘We’ll all go over to my place. I’ve just got
Star Trek
on Blu-ray.’

He followed them out of the office, looking as miserable and bedraggled as a small furry animal that’s just fought its way out of a flushing toilet.

Dr Shroeder sighed. ‘You can’t choose who you love,’ he said.

The police officer arrived at Dr Shroeder’s office a couple of hours later, by which time I was back at my garden shed. She was able to confirm that Dr Shroeder’s fingerprints were
on the hard drive. (Thank goodness. If they’d turned out to be Deborah’s, I don’t know what I’d have done!)

Nat was reinstated on to the advanced mathematics course the following day, at about the same time as Deborah Ashworth was being questioned by the police. Once the situation at school was back
to normal, Mrs Hardyman started giving me extra dollops of vegetable stew whenever she saw me in the dinner queue. I’d much rather have had an extra dollop of the chocolate pudding, but I
guess she was just trying to be kind.

Meanwhile, back at my garden shed, I flopped into my Thinking Chair and vowed that I would
never
let my heart rule my head. Dr Shroeder had been absolutely right about Nat’s
motive.

And this is where we get back to the point I was making way back at the start of Chapter One. Remembering all the crime stories I’d read, I was reminded that Sherlock Holmes had one or two
things to say about love. Mostly rather grumpy things, I seem to recall. Emotions are funny things, certainly when it came to Nat Hardyman’s motive.

I simply hadn’t seen it because I was concentrating on my role as a detective, on staying logical. Sometimes, I said to myself, I guess you have to take account of the illogical and the
intuitive as well.

I jotted down some notes and sat in my Thinking Chair mulling over the strange and peculiar things that grown-ups do. It was only later on, as I placed my notes into my filing cabinet, that I
realised I still hadn't done my science homework.

Oh poo.

Case closed.

C
ASE
F
ILE
T
WENTY-ONE
:

T
HE
F
INAL
P
ROBLEM

I
MEANT
TO GET MY
science homework done on time. I really did. But I got distracted.

I was in my garden shed, or my Crime HQ as I prefer to call it. I had my science homework open on the desk. I’d read through the questions carefully and I had my pen poised over my
workbook, ready to begin.

And then there was a knock at the shed door.

For the tiniest fraction of a nano-second, I thought about pretending I wasn’t in. This science homework needed doing and it needed doing right now. But when you’re a brilliant
schoolboy detective, like me, a simple knock on the door can mean the start of something
big
.

Hmm. Science homework, or the possibility of an important new investigation? Hmmmmmm . . .

‘Come in!’ I cried.

Two people entered the shed. The first was my great friend Isobel ‘Izzy’ Moustique, that well-known genius and St Egbert’s School’s Commander-in-Chief of All Research
Data, whose talent for finding information has played a vital part in many of my case files.

The second was Jeremy Sweetly, a boy who’s also in my class at school, and who happens to live across the street from me. He’s a nice guy and we all like him, but he’s a bit .
. . weeeeeell, I don’t want to sound unkind, but . . . he’s a bit weedy. A bit wet. A bit of a drip. (You may remember him from my earlier case file
The Mark of the Purple
Homework
.) I was relieved to see that he hadn’t brought his horrible great slobbery dog Humphrey with him. I hate that dog.

‘Hello, you two,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘We’ve got a bit of a problem,’ trembled Jeremy.

Izzy noticed the workbook on the desk. ‘Oh, you’re doing your science homework. We’ll come back later.’

‘No, that’s OK, come on in,’ I said, gratefully flipping the workbook shut.

Jeremy gasped. ‘Haven’t you finished your science homework yet?’

‘No,’ I said.

Jeremy gasped again. ‘That should have been done ages ago.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Aren’t you worried you’ll be in trouble?’ He gawped at me like a startled goldfish.

‘Yes, no, yes, oh I dunno,’ I grumbled. ‘Anyway, tell me about this problem.’

‘You tell him,’ said Jeremy to Izzy. ‘I’m still too upset to get it straight in my head.’

Izzy, who was wearing her usual out-of-school gear (brightly coloured everything with added glitter), flicked a hanky across my desk to dust it down.

‘What’s the matter with boys?’ she muttered. ‘All live in pigsties.’ She parked herself on the desk and turned to me.

‘Jeremy and I are half of the St Egbert’s team in the Brain Boom Schools Quiz Challenge,’ she said. She tutted and shook her head. ‘Sorry, I’m forgetting, you
already know that.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I definitely already know that.’

The whole of St Egbert’s School definitely already knew that. Izzy and Jeremy, along with two kids from Mr Nailshott’s class, had been specially picked for the team. The Brain Boom
Schools Quiz Challenge was a general knowledge knockout competition that some-education-department-or-other was running with one of the nearby radio stations, Vibe FM.

They’d started with sixteen schools. The St Egbert’s team had battled their way through three rounds and had now qualified for the grand final. (Round one had been quite tricky, but
Izzy and co had absolutely wiped the floor with their opponents in the quarter-finals, while the semi-finals had been a real nail-chewer.)

Our team was the Head’s pride and joy at the moment. She seemed to be spending all day skipping up and down the corridors and accidentally-on-purpose mentioning the team to visitors and
reminding Izzy and co to eat plenty of fresh fish and get enough sleep.

‘So, when’s the grand final?’ I asked.

Izzy and Jeremy glared at me, pop-eyed. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been listening to it all on the radio?’ grumbled Izzy.

‘I heard the ones you two were in, obviously,’ I said, ‘but I’ve been very busy working on a case. I thought I might write it up as
The Adventure of the Twisted
Sparrow
.’

‘The grand final is this Saturday afternoon,’ said Izzy. ‘All the heats have taken place at different schools; the final is being held in our school’s main hall and
it’s going out on the radio live.’

‘The twisted what?’ muttered Jeremy to himself.

‘Weren’t all the other rounds live?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Izzy. ‘All the heats have been pre-recorded at the schools. The recordings were being broadcast every weeknight in the three weeks running up to this Saturday. But
the half-hour final goes out live at five o’clock.’

‘Who are you up against?’ I said.

‘That’s why we’ve come to see you, Saxby,’ shivered Jeremy. ‘St Egbert’s are facing Spykeside School.’

‘Never heard of it,’ I said.

‘Neither had we until we started the competition,’ said Jeremy. ‘The place is miles away. But unless you help us, Spykeside are going to win.’

‘Er, well, that’s very flattering,’ I said, ‘but, er, don’t forget that my maths isn’t exactly —’

‘Noooo, you dummy!’ interrupted Izzy. ‘We don’t need your help on the
team
! We need your help because Spykeside School have been
cheating
!’

‘C
HEATING
?’ I
SAID
. ‘H
OW DO
you know?’

‘They’ve won every time so far,’ said Jeremy.

‘Well, so have
you
,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s why both schools are in the final! Surely they’re just good at answering general knowledge questions?’

‘
Before
they’re even asked?’ said Izzy.

‘Huh?’ I said.

‘It’s not very noticeable until you listen carefully for it, because the questions are very quick-fire,’ explained Izzy. ‘But it’s like this: each team has a
buzzer, right? First team to buzz gets first go at answering, right? Several times, Spykeside have buzzed before that twerpy DJ who’s asking the questions has even finished.’

‘Lucky guesses?’ I said. ‘You see that sometimes on quiz shows. People can sometimes correctly anticipate the question.’

‘Forty-three times?’ said Izzy. ‘Once we started getting suspicious, I went back and checked. I counted. Don’t forget, Spykeside have been in exactly the same number of
heats as we have. That’s forty-three times in three half-hour quizzes they’ve pressed their buzzer before the end of the question. And thirteen of those times, they pressed the buzzer
before you could sensibly anticipate what the question was going to be. Like I said, it’s actually quite easy to miss unless you’re listening out for it, because of the speed of the
questions.’

‘It could still be that they’re simply very, very bright,’ I said.

‘OK,’ said Izzy. ‘Here’s an example. Answer this question: Who was the third actor . . . ?’

I stared at her. ‘The third actor who what?’ I asked.

‘Exactly,’ said Izzy.

‘That’s when Spykeside buzzed,’ said Jeremy. ‘And they got it right. Roger Moore. Who was the third actor to play James Bond in the official movie series?’

I thought for a moment, hmmmm-ing and wrinkling my nose. ‘I guess they
could
still have worked it out,’ I said. ‘After all, the words “third actor” narrow
down possible answers to just a handful. If three actors have all played one part, then it must be an unusually successful and long-running part. And how many of those are there? Saying
“James Bond” could have been an answer based on weighing up the limited possibilities and some very fast thinking.’

Jeremy muttered, ‘It might have been: Who was the third actor to get swept out to sea by a giant squid at last year’s Dorset Film Festival?’

I pulled an oh-yeahhh-right face at him. ‘I don’t think that’s very likely, do you?’

‘OK, answering a barely-asked question once or twice
could
be down to very fast thinking,’ said Izzy. ‘But
thirteen
times? Try these three:

‘Question one: In what year did the first [BUZZ!] . . .?

‘Question two: In which play by Shakespeare does the main character say [BUZZ!] . . .?

‘Question three: At what temperature does [BUZZ!] . . .?

‘Spykeside had answered them all correctly.’

Hmmmmm.

What do you think? Can you work out the answers? Did Spykeside cheat?

I scratched my head. Then I scratched my chin. Then I scratched my nose. Once I’d run out of things to scratch, I said, ‘No idea. What year was the first sausage
roll made? In which Shakespeare play does someone say “Hey dude, check out my cool new trainers”? At what temperature does our form tutor Mrs Penzler explode? Those questions could
refer to anything.’

‘So you can’t answer them?’ said Izzy.

‘Well, the last one might be about the boiling point of water, maybe?’

‘Close,’ said Izzy. ‘It was about the freezing point of water.’

‘Zero degrees centigrade,’ said Jeremy.

‘I know that!’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Jeremy. ‘Y’know, if you haven't done your science homework yet . . .’

‘I have to admit,’ I said, ‘it looks very much like Spykeside
did
know what the questions were going to be. They
did
cheat. What were the other
answers?’

‘The first one was 1969. In what year did the first man land on the moon? The second was
Hamlet
. In which play by Shakespeare does the main character say “To be or not to
be”?’

‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘the odds of correctly guessing the answers over and over again would be pretty slim. But maybe that’s simply their strategy for playing?
Buzz in quick and take a guess, just to stop the other team from answering first?’