Mistletoe and Murder: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery by Robin Stevens
‘You’ve got something for us?’ asked Alexander.
‘Have you got new information about the case?’ said George. ‘That porter’s watching, by the way.’
‘Hold out your hands and look pleased,’ said Daisy. She took a folded card out of her pocket and put it into George’s waiting hands.
We had found it in a shop along the way. On the front of the card was a picture of two cats pulling a Christmas cracker. Daisy had laughed until she cried when she saw it. ‘Funny!’ she had finally gasped. ‘Because cats don’t have opposable thumbs, you see!’ I was not sure I quite saw the joke, but it was perfect for our purposes. We bought it, and inside it I wrote:
George opened it, read my message, and looked up in horror.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘Perfectly,’ said Daisy. ‘We were at Maudlin this morning. We are now investigating Chummy’s murder.’
2
‘Wait!’ said Alexander. ‘Chummy died? But—’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘We thought it would be Donald as well. We didn’t expect what happened, but it’s true.’
‘Did you see the body?’ asked George. ‘Are you sure it was murder?’
‘No,’ said Daisy, sighing. ‘Only the blood. We always do have the worst luck, with bodies. They’re forever disappearing on us. But yes, we think it has to be murder. Chummy wouldn’t have set a trap and tripped over it, and that means someone else did – someone with murderous intent.’
‘I think we ought to go somewhere else to talk,’ said Alexander. ‘The porter’s glaring. Come on, there’s a tea room just down the road.’ He motioned with his arms, rather hectically. I could tell that news of the murder had upset him. As we began to walk, he came over to me. ‘Hazel!’ he said. ‘It’s really true?’
I nodded. ‘We wouldn’t make it up!’ I said.
‘I know,’ said Alexander. ‘I do believe you. But – golly. It’s just like the Orient Express all over again. I don’t really count the Bonfire Night business, as we weren’t there. But this – another murder! It’s awful.’
‘At least you’re on the spot this time,’ I said, glancing up at him. ‘I mean, to help us properly. Now that it’s murder, the bet has to be off. We’ve got to work together.’
Alexander nodded seriously. ‘You’re quite right,’ he said. ‘What does Daisy think?’
‘She agrees,’ I said, the words coming out a little more sharply than I had meant them to. ‘We know we can’t solve the case without you. We’ve been banned from Maudlin now by the Master himself.’
‘No!’ said Alexander. ‘Really?’
I found myself telling him the whole story of everything that had happened so far this morning. It was so easy to talk to Alexander – he laughed, or gasped, in all the right places, and I heard myself chattering away like Daisy herself. I knew I ought to wait until we had sat down, but it was so nice to speak to him properly at last.
We went into the tea room, and were led to a corner table.
‘Honestly, Hazel, you were supposed to wait!’ said Daisy once we had sat down. ‘Although I did tell George everything while you were explaining to Alexander, so I suppose we can move straight on to the important thing, which is this: Chummy Melling is dead, and so the Junior Pinkertons must help the Detective Society get to the solution.’
It was a typically Daisy way of putting things.
‘What Daisy means is that we need to work together!’ I said to George. ‘We can’t get into the college on our own at the moment, but you could, and you could report back to us. You see, all our suspects are there. The murderer has to be someone who was on staircase nine last night, when the trap was set!’
‘I suppose the bet does have to be off,’ said George. ‘And just as things were getting interesting! But look – what’ll you do while we’re at Maudlin? If we agree we’re working together, you’ve got to really do it. You can’t just borrow us for the morning, find out what we’ve discovered, and then not share what you’ve learned with us.’
‘Of course we won’t!’ said Daisy, as though that was not what she had been trying to persuade me to do only an hour before. ‘If you go to Maudlin for us, and help us get in too, we’ll tell you everything we already know. We saw the scene of the crime this morning, and yesterday afternoon we found several crucial clues which help prove that Chummy did not set last night’s trap … and that he was the intended victim all along.’
George considered. ‘Shake on it?’ he asked.
We all four shook. It felt very solemn, but at the same time very exciting. There had been two of us – now there were four. I thought at that moment, looking around at George’s serious face, and Alexander’s eager one, and determined Daisy, that the murderer hardly stood a chance.
‘So, what’s your evidence?’ asked Alexander, after we had given the maid our orders: cake and cocoa all round, for such a cold morning. ‘What makes you so sure we were all wrong about Chummy and Donald?’
‘We went into Chummy’s rooms yesterday and saw that he was getting ready to play a silly sewn-up-jacket prank on Donald – nothing serious. We think that Chummy was behind all the harmless pranks, but not the dangerous ones. Those must have been set by someone else, either Donald, who had fishing line in his rooms, and who could have been trying to make it look as though he was a target, or another person on staircase nine. We think Chummy was the victim all along. The injuries to Donald were either mistakes, or just clever blinds by Donald himself. Do you see?’
‘I think I do,’ said George, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. ‘Lots of people hated Chummy. Donald, of course, but also Alfred – and Moss.’
‘Moss?’ I asked.
‘Moss used to work for Chummy and Donald’s parents,’ said George. ‘We found out on Sunday – Mr Perkins told us. Moss thought it was unfair that their parents had always preferred Chummy, even when they were very small boys. Apparently they tried to break the entail, but had no joy. Because of that, Moss made Donald his favourite. He’s always been Donald’s ally, and he came to Maudlin because he knew Donald was going to be a student there along with Chummy. He’s been telling all the other staff about how controlling Chummy is, and how he wished that Donald could get out from his shadow.’
This was extremely interesting. I looked at Daisy.
‘What did Perkins himself think of Chummy?’ asked Daisy. ‘He did have keys to staircase nine, after all – he was another person who could have set that trap!’
‘Didn’t like him,’ said Alexander. ‘Thought he was arrogant. It’s funny. Everyone who works at Maudlin feels the same way. Butler thought Chummy was a pill too.’ Alexander sounded very American for a moment. ‘He was bored of being dragged into arguments between Alfred and Chummy. And Chummy would set up parties, and hold them in Donald’s rooms – they’d go on for hours, and then everyone would try to sneak away down the drainpipe, after Michael’d locked up the staircase. It drove him mad.’
‘What about Bertie?’ I asked. I saw Daisy’s face, but I had to go on. ‘We need to rule him out, at least! I know they were friends so it isn’t very likely at all.’
Alexander and George looked at each other awkwardly.
‘What?’ asked Daisy. ‘What is it?’
‘What did Bertie tell you about where he was last night?’ asked George.
‘He told us he was in his rooms the whole time,’ said Daisy. ‘Why? What do you know?’
George and Alexander glanced at each other again. Then George took a deep breath.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Bertie wasn’t telling the truth.’
3
‘What do you mean?’ asked Daisy.
Her composure had slipped. She looked quite frantic. I suddenly felt the true force of her worry about Bertie, and I wished she had been able to tell me. But, as I know quite well by now, that is not the way Daisy works.
‘Promise you won’t be upset?’ asked Alexander, looking at us both nervously.
‘I sh
‘I promise,’ I said. Daisy narrowed her eyes at me.
‘OK,’ said Alexander. ‘What time did Moss say he went to bed?’
‘At 12:30,’ said Daisy. ‘The trap can’t have been set before then, unless he did it and is lying. And Chummy fell down the stairs at about 2:05.’
‘If Moss did it, then Bertie’s innocent anyway,’ said Alexander. ‘And if he’s telling the truth – why, Bertie’s innocent for sure. See, Bertie was with us from 12:15 until 2:15 last night.’
‘What?’ said Daisy. She put her cup of cocoa down very hard on its saucer. I swallowed my bite of seed cake the wrong way, and coughed.
‘He told us not to tell you,’ said Alexander. ‘I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have said anything, really. But if it’s a case of proving he didn’t do a murder …’
‘But how could you be with him?’ asked Daisy. ‘The porter locks the gates at eleven o’clock, and Perkins would have noticed if Bertie had come back to college later than that. And he was on the staircase at six this morning, when we arrived!’
‘We all went climbing,’ explained George. ‘Harold had promised to take the two of us, and he invited Bertie along as well over dinner last night. So Bertie went back to Maudlin before the eleven o’clock curfew, and then he slipped out of his rooms, down the drainpipe and over the dons’ garden wall – that’s how all the climbers get in and out. We met him by John’s gates at 12:15. We climbed Senate House – it’s an easy route, and they led us up. We climbed down at 2:15. That’s when Bertie left us to go back to Maudlin, and that’s when we went back to our rooms.’
‘That’s why we’re both so tired this morning,’ explained Alexander.
Daisy was gasping. ‘But what about us?’ she cried. ‘Why weren’t we invited?’
‘I’m sorry Bertie didn’t invite you two. I was hoping you’d turn up with him last night,’ said Alexander.
I felt myself smiling at him. He sounded so sincere. ‘At least we’ve ruled out a suspect!’ I said, trying to keep thinking like a detective. ‘Come on, Daisy, it isn’t so bad.’
‘Isn’t so bad! Just because you don’t want to climb! Bother Bertie! I shall have words with him next time I see him. How dare he! And how dare he frighten me like that! But you’re right, Hazel. This rules him out for good. That leaves us with five real suspects: the four other people who were on staircase nine last night – Donald, Alfred, Michael and Moss – and Mr Perkins as well.’
George nodded. ‘Correct. Those are our five too. So we’ll go to Maudlin and begin the interviews. What about you?’
‘We’ll follow the lead of the fishing line,’ said Daisy. ‘If it’s from a shop in Cambridge, the shopkeeper may remember which of our suspects bought line like it.’
‘But what if they all bought some?’ asked George. ‘We already know there was some in Chummy’s rooms as well as Donald’s.’
‘Then we shall have to think again,’ said Daisy severely.
They were bouncing off each other in a way that I had never seen Daisy do with anyone but me. Last term Daisy had hated the fact that I was writing to Alexander,that I had another close friend, other than her. Now here she was with a new friend of her own. It was so odd to see. I always thought she was unchangeable, but here she was changing in front of my eyes.
‘We ought to write down the things we need to find,’ I said. ‘Where the fishing line came from, for example. And what really happened with Amanda and the telephone call. We know she can’t be a suspect, but we think she might have something to do with what happened.’
‘Yes,’ said George, nodding, as Daisy shot me a cross glare. I knew she felt that giving away our lead about Amanda was rather traitorous. ‘We should add Amanda Price to our list to investigate. You two can question her while we go to Maudlin.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘We also need to make a map of the crime scene so we can recreate the crime.’
‘And find some more clues and alibis,’ said Daisy, cheering up again. ‘This sounds almost like a treasure hunt, doesn’t it? Funny! Hazel, write all those down – you might as well call it TREASURE HUNT, so if we’re caught with it we can say that we were just playing a game. Alexander, you as well – then we all have copies.’
‘This isn’t a game, Daisy!’ I protested. ‘It’s a murder.’
‘There are games all the way through this case,’ said Daisy. ‘It began with a prank, and even the murder has been disguised as a joke gone wrong. I think that a game is perfectly in keeping with the situation. Don’t be po-faced, Hazel. Anyway, to the adults we are still nothing but children, too young and silly to properly understand what has happened.’
I took out this notebook, and Alexander took out his, and we tore out two pages. On each of them we wrote the same list.
We all put down money on the table for the tea-maid. ‘Ready?’ asked Daisy. ‘Three … two … one … detective societies, GO!’
And the game was afoot.
4
Daisy seized my hand, and the moment we touched, all my fears disappeared. We went rushing out of the door and into the street, giddy and spinning, and there was no one and nothing else in the world.
‘Where are we going?’ I gasped.
‘We,’ said Daisy, ‘are going shopping again!’
‘But, Daisy—’
‘Shopping for fishing line, Hazel. It’s the perfect Christmas present.’
I beamed at her. This was typical Daisy cleverness – twisty at first, but quite obvious as soon as you thought about it properly.
We wound through the little back streets of Cambridge, and I suddenly noticed that the clouds above us were hanging heavily in the sky. It was getting very gloomy, and there was a bite to the air, as though I might be able to snap it just by putting out my hands. I wondered if it might begin to snow soon.
We went past a butcher’s and a grocer’s and a chemist’s, and at last we tumbled into a little fishing-tackle shop, its walls studded with brightly coloured lures that almost looked like Christmas decorations themselves. The shop owner was balding, huddled in a mackintosh that smelled strongly of oil, but he responded very well to Daisy’s string of bright, silly questions. Yes, miss, that was their most popular line, especially among the students. Must be a craze for fishing – funny what young people got up to these days. Which students? Oh, he couldn’t say. Such a lot of ’em come in. A short man with brown hair and a snub nose, wearing a loud jacket? Why, that could describe half the men he saw! But a Chinese man? Why, yes, now you come to mention it, he was in a couple of times. And old men? Oh, even more popular with them than the students! Yes, the Maudlin livery sounded familiar, but he made a point not to ask for names. Now, would you like to purchase some of that line, miss? Excellent, excellent.
We came out of the store with a roll of fishing line and an interesting piece of information. Whether or not Moss, Donald, Perkins or Michael had bought fishing line, Alfred Cheng certainly had. We had our first clue that pointed towards one of our remaining suspects.
Daisy sighed happily. ‘I know I said what an annoyance it is to be a girl, but at the same time it’s delightful to be underestimated sometimes,’ she said. ‘It is so easy to get things out of old men!’
Down the road we walked – and that was when something happened that felt rather like a Christmas miracle. I was looking into shop windows as we passed, enjoying the light and bustle of them, the tinsel and baubles hanging in the windows. I peered into a little tea-shop window, its glass half smoked over with the warmth from the tea and buns.
But I could still just see in, and there, sitting with her back to the window, was someone with fluffy, flyaway hair that I knew very well.
‘Daisy!’ I cried, just as Daisy nudged me and said, ‘Look!’
She was not pointing into the tea shop, but instead at a rusty, green-painted bicycle propped up outside the shop door. ‘It’s the Horse!’ said Daisy.
‘And Amanda’s inside!’ I s
‘Of course!’ said Daisy. ‘Is that a question at all, Watson? We’ve agreed that there is something suspicious about Amanda’s behaviour, and we know that we need to uncover the truth about that phone call. If we go and confront her without warning, she may give away crucial information that she has hidden until now. Are you ready?’
‘Ready,’ I said, nodding at her, and together we burst into the tea rooms.
5
As we stood in the doorway, I had a moment where time came unstuck. It was last year, and it was Miss Tennyson looking up at us in horror from her table in the Willow. But then I blinked, and we were back in Cambridge. The case that faced us this time was quite different – and so was our suspect. Amanda did not even look round, so intent was she on what she was writing. We had the chance to go all the way up to her and stand one on either side of her chair, her outdoor coat draped across it, to peer down at the paper in front of her.
It was a History essay, boldly handwritten. George III, I saw, and rebels, led by. But the thing that shocked me was not the words at all, but the hand they were written in. I had seen this writing before, I realized, twice: in Chummy’s rooms, and then in Donald’s. I had noticed the similarity before, but I had simply thought that their handwriting was so similar because they were twins. But if this was Amanda’s handwriting … we had the answer to the question of why she was so busy with essays. She was not just writing them for herself.
‘You’re writing their essays!’ exclaimed Daisy, and Amanda jumped, splashing black ink across her page. She cursed, and blotted.