Read Online Jolly Foul Play: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery by Robin Stevens - Free Book Online Page A

and I could feel everything that Clementine had said swirling in their minds. I had forgotten how much gossip hurts when it is about you, how it makes your head spin and your eyes smart, and leaves you powerless and in pain. You want to stretch out your hands and snatch it back, but you cannot, and it is even worse when you know the story is untrue. My father, as I have said and said, is a banker, and absolutely honest. He would never touch opium in a thousand years, but it is no good protesting. The story is that he trades opium, and somehow, that is stronger than the truth. I have been followed about by the opium story ever since I arrived at Deepdean two years ago.
    I realized something as I walked past the half-open doors of the second-form dorms, the rows of beds inside them neatly made. If Elizabeth really had written down the secrets she knew, she must have written down secrets about the Five as well. And there, perfectly, were the Five’s motives for murder. Secrets are the most powerful things in the world – I had felt that in the Dining Room.
    I could easily imagine someone killing to keep a secret hidden.

7
    ‘I could punch them,’ snarled Lavinia, up in the dorm. ‘I could hurt them, I could – I could—’
    ‘Really, don’t do that,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s all right, Beanie, we know she won’t. Oh, sit down, Lavinia, stop thrashing about, we’ve all been upset!’
    Daisy was perched on the edge of her bed. She was flexing her fingers, and narrowing her eyes, and I could tell that she was focused inwards, on the problem of the secrets.
    ‘I take it back,’ said Lavinia. ‘What I said earlier. All right, I do care now. I’ll do whatever you like.’
    What seeing Jones leave Deepdean could not do this morning, the scene at lunch had managed: Lavinia was now desperate to solve the mystery.
    ‘Of course we have to do something,’ said Kitty. ‘Dorm pride! Those horrid secrets – I admit, I was wrong. It isn’t just the puzzle this time. Come on. Detective Society Meeting?’
    I got out this casebook, and the rustle of its pages seemed to call Daisy back to herself.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Excellent. Watson, assistants, we must detect. We must! It’s a matter of honour.’
    ‘It’s a matter of lies!’ said Lavinia.
    ‘Yours isn’t a lie, Lavinia,’ said Kitty.
    Lavinia scowled at her. ‘Yes, all right,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t mean I want it said in public, does it?’
    ‘But where are the secrets coming from?’ asked Beanie.
    ‘We know that,’ said Daisy. ‘
Elizabeth.
We always thought that she stored them up in her head, the way I— I mean, the sensible way. But, as I confirmed this morning by matching the sample from Betsy with Elizabeth’s detention list, she appears to have written them all down. So, you see, we have a possible motive for our murderer – if Elizabeth knew something secret about one of the Five, and was threatening to reveal it, they might have killed her to stop it getting out.’
    Lavinia scowled. ‘They can’t all have secrets!’ she said.
    ‘Why not?’ Kitty asked. ‘Most of the rest of us do. Isn’t that what we’ve just been finding out?’
    ‘Yes, but even if that’s true, how are we supposed to narrow them down?’ asked Lavinia. ‘Isn’t that what detectives do? Rule out suspects?’
    ‘If they
do
all have secrets,’ said Daisy, ‘which, as Assistant Freebody happens to be correct about, is quite possible, the only way we shall rule them out is by discovering what they are.’
    ‘And how are we supposed to do that?’ asked Lavinia, curling her lip. ‘They’re Big Girls.’
    ‘Easy,’ said Daisy. ‘We must listen out for gossip. You never know what details they may have let slip.’
    ‘But what about the secrets being spread
now
?’ I asked. ‘Who’s doing that? How does it connect to the Five?’ This was a problem I had been stumbling over. If Elizabeth had been writing secrets down somewhere, how were they getting out