“Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Graham said at breakfast the next day. Mum was in the shower and Marjorie was in the kitchen frying bacon, so it was safe to talk. “It’s a well-known fact that some murderers go through a period of denial right after they commit a crime. It doesn’t matter how compellingly the facts are stacked against them: it’s as if they can’t accept what they’ve done. They block it out. Pretend it hasn’t happened. It’s a recognized psychological phenomenon.”
“All right,” I replied. “But think about it for a second. What if Mr Walters is telling the truth? What if she was already dead?”
“If that’s true, it must have happened just minutes before he got there. She was killed between 4.05 – when I took her a cup of tea – and 4.20, when you found her. It can’t have been before 4.05, because she was fine when I saw her.”
I thought back for a moment. “Hang on, though, Graham. She wasn’t fine. You said she was yawning her head off.”
“She was bored.”
“Really?” My palms started to tingle. I had the sudden feeling that I was on to something. “Are you sure?”
“What else would make her yawn?”
“Think of the murder trail, Graham! What knocked out the nuclear scientist? Sleeping pills!”
There was a long pause. I could practically hear the cogs in Graham’s brain crunching together. “Do you mean you think she might have been drugged?”
I nodded. There was a long, thoughtful pause.
“It would be extremely uncanny if that were the case,” Graham said finally.
“True,” I said. “But it fits, doesn’t it? We knew we were being steered, and now we know why – someone used us to kill Mrs King. And I don’t think it was Mr Walters. I reckon he’s as innocent as we are.”
“Another sheep, then,” said Graham. “It seems the flock is growing.”
There was only one answer to that. “Baaaaaa.”
a game of chess
When it came to suspects, we were spoilt for choice. Mrs King hadn’t been at the school for long but she’d already made a whole bunch of enemies. According to what Mrs Plumtree had told Mum, everyone was worried for one reason or another. The staff were worried about their jobs, parents were worried about their kids being excluded and the governors were worried because she didn’t consult them about stuff.
But which of them hated her enough to kill her? And which of them was clever enough to organize a plot involving such a complicated series of manoeuvres?
“It’s like a game of chess,” Graham said.
“Is it?” I don’t play chess, so I wasn’t quite sure what he was on about.
“Yes… A vast and complex strategy with each move planned way ahead. We’re up against someone very clever. A person who can plan logically and methodically, and who possesses a remarkably devious and cunning mind.”
The thought wasn’t at all reassuring.
The school was closed on Monday because the police were still searching the grounds for clues. We were stuck in the B&B while Mum waited to hear if the governors wanted her to go ahead with the project. We were watching an old black-and-white film on TV when DCI Swan paid us a visit.
The postmortem results had come through and they’d found tranquillizers in Mrs King’s blood. Not enough to kill her, but enough to send her into a deep sleep.
“So someone did knock her out first!” I said to Graham.
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” DCI Swan told me, consulting her notebook. “I don’t see any connection between the tranquillizers and her murder. You said in your statement you saw her taking tablets in the toilet?”
“She said she had a headache,” I answered.
“It looks like she got the bottles muddled,” DCI Swan told us. “She had sleeping pills as well as aspirin in her handbag. She simply picked out the wrong bottle – made a mistake and knocked herself out. And then Mr Walters made use of the tools at hand to kill her – the tools you had so conveniently provided.”
“But our murder trail…” I protested limply, feeling stricken with guilt. “That was how the victim was supposed to die. Pills… Suffocation… And she really did. Doesn’t that strike you as weird?”
“It certainly seems strangely coincidental,” the policewoman conceded. “But you know, kids, sometimes things really are as straightforward as they appear. We’ll continue our investigations, but I think you’ll find we’ve got the right man in Mr Walters.”
“But why was he even there?” I said. “Why would he kill her at a crowded event like that? Why not just hide down a dark alley and bash her over the head?”
“He says she phoned him, asking him to come in and discuss his son’s behaviour. But there’s no trace of such a call being made from the school office or indeed from Mrs King’s phone.”
“Hang on, though,” I said, remembering. “I saw him answer his mobile. That’s when he headed off towards the school.”
“How do you know he was answering it? He could have been making a call,” DCI Swan said coolly.
“I don’t think so,” I persisted. “He didn’t press enough buttons. Although he could have been speed-dialling, I suppose.”
The policewoman sighed wearily. “Rest assured we’ll check his phone. If he received a call, we’ll be able to trace who it was from.”
She picked up her stuff and left.
I felt quite grumpy once she’d gone, and Graham didn’t look any happier. When the film was over, we took ourselves off to the park to get some fresh air.
“I don’t believe she muddled up her pills,” I said crossly. We’d both met Mrs King – we’d had the full force of that personality blasted at us. And she wasn’t just forceful: she was efficient. “I just can’t see her making a mistake like that, can you?”
“Strictly speaking it’s the kind of thing that could happen to anybody,” replied Graham. “But to Mrs King? I’d have said the odds were against it.”
“So what happened? Why would she have taken the wrong tablets?” I asked. An idea burst into my head like a firework. “Perhaps she took the right ones!”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s easy enough to put the wrong tablets in the right bottle,” I suggested.
“So she thought she was taking aspirin, but someone had put sleeping pills in that particular bottle?” Graham looked at me and I nodded. I started to imagine how it could have happened.
“It would only have taken a couple of minutes. You’d have had to take the bottles out of her handbag and swap the contents around, then get them back in again.”
“Maybe not even that,” said Graham. “You could have prepared one earlier. Just swapped her aspirin bottle with the dodgy one.”
“And then changed it back after she was dead.”
Graham nodded. “And it would be logical to assume that whoever did it must also have suffocated her. That would have been an easy task if she was deeply asleep.”
“So we should start by working out who could have got to her handbag that afternoon.” I considered the subject. “She dumped it at the back of the hall at the start of the meeting, didn’t she? Anyone could have got to it while she was doing her Winston Churchill bit – everyone was looking at her. And all the staff and half the parents were there.”
“Not all the staff,” said Graham. “Mrs Plumtree arrived late, remember?”
“True. And then she was stuck in the office looking after Ricky. She couldn’t even get out to take Mrs King her tea, could she? I guess she’s off the hook. But practically the whole school and their entire families turned out for the fayre. Where was Mrs King’s handbag when she did her opening speech?”
“She gave it to Mr Piper,” said Graham.
“So she did. And then after I found Mrs King’s body there was all that chaos and confusion with everyone running around… Anyone could have slipped anything in her bag any time.” I looked at Graham.
“So what you’re saying is that absolutely ever
yone is a suspect,” he said gloomily.
“That’s about it, yes. Including you and me, seeing as we planned the whole thing. I wonder how we’re going to solve this one?”
theft
The next morning the pupils of St Andrew’s returned to school. It was on the local news. They were supposed to “settle back into their normal routine” according to Mr Edwards, who stood by the gates, hale and hearty, shepherding staff and pupils through and keeping journalists at bay.
It didn’t look very normal. For a start there were photographers lurking behind bushes trying to take pictures of the murder scene. The kids and parents all looked stunned, as if they didn’t expect sudden death to happen to anyone they knew. But the police had arrested the right man, so Mr Edwards kept telling people as they came in, repeating it so often that it sounded like the rousing chorus to a jolly folk song.
Mum received a phone call at about 9.30 from Mr Piper, who was now acting head. He told her they’d raised £871.26 at the fayre and, combined with the money that was already in the school fund, there was enough to complete the environmental area. Could she come in with her plans?
Graham and I were keen to get another look at the crime scene, so we went along too. By 9.45 we were walking up the path towards the reception area.
But before we even set foot through the door I could feel things weren’t right. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as if a cold draught was blowing down my shirt.
Mrs Plumtree’s window was closed, so Mum tapped on the glass. Looking through it, everything seemed to be the same. There was the collection of Davy-travels-the-world photographs next to her computer. There was Mrs Plumtree, fingers on her computer keyboard, staring at the screen. But that was what was wrong. She wasn’t moving. Mum tapped again and it was a full five seconds before the secretary responded.
She turned slowly in her chair and raised herself awkwardly to her feet. Her face was a ghastly white, and as she came to the window to slide it open I could see her hands were shaking.
“Is something wrong?” asked Mum.
“I don’t understand,” Mrs Plumtree said in a voice quavering with distress. “It can’t have. I don’t believe it! It’s impossible!” She made a noise in the back of her throat – kind of a cross between a whimper and a sob. “I don’t understand!” she gasped. “No! No!”
“Mrs Plumtree?” Mum said. “Do you want me to do anything?”
“Yes, dear.” The words fell out of the secretary’s mouth as if they were choking her. I could see she felt too weak to stay standing. “Fetch Mr Piper.”
“Go on, Poppy.” Mum pushed me in the direction of the head’s office while she fussed over Mrs Plumtree, persuading her to sit back down and take deep breaths.
Even though she was no longer there, Mrs King’s office was still full of her presence, somehow. I half expected to hear her telling me off for going in without knocking. Instead, Mr Piper was in there, a strange half-smile on his face, leaning back in Mrs King’s chair. It seemed too big for him – like he was a child sitting in a grown-up’s place.
“Mrs Plumtree wants you,” I said. “Something’s happened.”
He followed me without a word. As soon as she saw him, Mrs Plumtree burst out, “Someone’s stolen the money! We had almost five thousand pounds in the school fund at the beginning of term. And now it’s gone. All of it. Look!” She pointed at the computer with a trembling finger.
There was a deathly silence while Mr Piper examined the screen.
“How could that happen?” he said shakily. “I thought only the head was authorized to draw funds from that account.”
“No… There are two signatories,” whispered Mrs Plumtree.
“Who are they?” demanded Mr Piper.
“Mrs King was one. And – oh dear – how could he do such a thing?” Mrs Plumtree tried to steady herself. “The other is Mr Edwards.”
the crooked chairman
Mum dispatched me and Graham to the staff room to make Mrs Plumtree a cup of tea.
“So,” I said as we waited for the kettle to boil. “Mr Edwards nicked the school fund. No wonder he wasn’t keen on the environmental area. I mean, Mrs King was bound to find out about the missing money as soon as the project got started.”
“Embezzlement,” said Graham thoughtfully. “As you know, arguments about money or property – in other words, financial reasons – come fifth on the list of most common motives for murder.”
“Do you reckon Mr Edwards might have done away with Mrs King?”
“I think we ought to consider it as a possibility,” said Graham.
“I suppose he could have done it, couldn’t he?” I felt quite excited all of a sudden. “I mean, he came down the slope right after Mr Walters had run away. He could have been there all along. He could have killed Mrs King, then gone back up to hide until someone found her.”
“It’s not inconceivable that he switched the pills too. He was there at the meeting, wasn’t he?”
“Hey!” I grabbed Graham’s arm. “Do you reckon he framed Mr Walters?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, maybe it was him who called Mr Walters on his mobile. He could have pretended to be Mrs King.”
“That’s highly unlikely,” said Graham. “Mr Walters would have known it was a man ringing him.”
“Not if he disguised his voice,” I persisted. “If he’d talked all high pitched and if the line was crackly or there was lots of background noise – and there was loads of that at the fayre, wasn’t there? – he might have got away with it. He could have lured Mr Walters down there so he would get the blame.”
“If your theory is correct – and personally I think it’s stretching plausibility a tad too far – Mr Edwards must have set up the murder trail to get rid of Mrs King before she found out he’d stolen the school funds,” said Graham slowly.
“In which case he’s the sheepdog,” I said, pouring boiling water onto a teabag and slopping in a bit of milk. “He was the one who was steering everything along.”
“The open-and-shut case against Mr Walters seems to have developed faulty hinges,” said Graham, pushing the sugar towards me. “I wonder what DCI Swan will say?”
DCI Swan didn’t say much at all.
By the time we took Mrs Plumtree her tea, the policewoman was sitting in the office listening to the long and distressing tale of the vanished funds. Mrs Plumtree had taken the whole thing very personally: she was crying and emitting great gusts of floral perfume, and in between heaving sobs she kept saying, “It’s all my fault! I should have noticed the money was missing before now. But I just didn’t think to check. I only looked at it this morning so I could pay in what we made at the fayre. And now look what’s happened! Mrs King dead! The money stolen! Oh dear! It’s too awful.”
I couldn’t help myself. I blurted out, “Do you think there’s a connection with Mrs King’s death?” and then wished I hadn’t.
DCI Swan fixed me with an icy stare. “No, I don’t,” she said. “Theft is one thing. Murder is quite another. And the circumstantial evidence against Mr Walters is overwhelming.” Just then her mobile rang. She listened to the person on the other end, gave a couple of grunts and hung up.
“The money’s been found,” she announced.
“Oh, good heavens!” exclaimed Mrs Plumtree. “But where? How?”
“Mr Edwards wasn’t very clever about hiding it. It’s right there in his bank account. Time I had a chat with him, I think.”
She didn’t give us another glance, but stalked out of the school building and down the drive to where a panda car was waiting for her.
We saw on the local news later that day that Mr Edwards had been arrested for fraud.
spring flowers
There didn’t seem much point in us staying after that. Mr Edwards’ bank account had been frozen by the police, so the school wouldn’t get its money back for a while. And if it couldn’t pay Mum, she couldn’t very well do the job. “Pack
your stuff, you two,” she told me and Graham. “We may as well go home. But I can’t face a five-hour drive today. We’ll leave in the morning.”
Before that, though, Mum decided to call on Mrs Plumtree. “Poor woman,” she said. “She was so upset this morning! And it’s not like she hasn’t got enough on her plate without all that. She’s been so kind to us. I’d like to say a proper goodbye. Maybe we could drop some flowers round to her.”
So that’s what we did. Just before tea, we walked around to Mrs Plumtree’s house with a massive bunch of daffodils. We banged with the knocker and rang the doorbell, but no one answered. We were standing there, wondering whether or not to leave the flowers on the doorstep, when a wrinkly old woman peered out of the neighbouring house.
“Are you looking for Joyce?” she asked in a wibbly-wobbly old-person voice.
We had no idea what Mrs Plumtree’s first name was, but we knew we were at the right house, so Mum said, “Yes.”
“She’s out, dear,” the old woman answered, adding rather unnecessarily, “I’m Pearl, her neighbour. She’s gone shopping with Ricky. Won’t be back for a while, I’m afraid.”
“We were hoping to give her these,” Mum said, waving the daffodils. “Could we leave them with you?”
Pearl nodded and all three of us stepped across the low wall dividing the front gardens so that Mum could hand the flowers over. Which turned out to be a big mistake. Because once she had us in her garden, we were trapped. Pearl started talking. And talking. And talking. There was no escape. The more Mum smiled politely and nodded, the more the old lady went on. If we’d had any sense we’d have run away, but Graham and I had been Properly Brought Up and Mum Didn’t Do Such Things, so we all had to stand there dying of boredom.
She started off with the weather (“Wasn’t much of a summer last year, was it? Not like 1976. That was one to remember. Let’s hope we get better weather this year. I could use a bit of sun.”), progressed to the State of the Country (“Youth of today. They don’t know they’re born. Soft. That’s what they are. Soft.”) and the National Health Service (“Service? That’s a joke. It’s not what I’d call service.”) and ended up with her bunions (the details of which were so grotesque, I won’t repeat them). We were just losing the will to live, when Mrs Plumtree’s car pulled up.