Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery by Robin Stevens Read Free Book Online Page B

taken place, and she had lied about it. Had she really argued with Miss Bell again? If so, why was she trying to hide it? It was like a plot from one of Daisy’s books.
    But all the same, I couldn’t help wondering whether Miss Parker could really kill someone. She was a very angry person, and we all knew it – but so is Lavinia, and for all her shouting she is really mostly harmless. It’s as if all that yelling and kicking gets the rage out of her and she has none left to do worse things. Was it the same for Miss Parker?
    ‘But what if Mamzelle was the kidnapper?’ asked Kitty as we were walking between lessons. Evidently she was still thinking about what Daisy had said in Maths; about secret Russian agents abducting Miss Bell. ‘She’s been behaving awfully strangely lately – Sophie, tell them what you told me yesterday.’
    Sophie Croke-Finchley, who is in the other third form dorm and is a musical prodigy, grinned. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘It was terribly odd. I had my lesson with The One—’
    ‘When?’ asked Daisy, cutting her off.
    ‘Oh, four twenty to four fifty, same as always,’ Sophie said, blinking a bit. ‘But anyway , I stayed on in the Music room afterwards, practising, and I noticed after a bit that someone else was in the small practice room next to me, and they were making the oddest sounds. Garglings and yellings – not music at all! I thought for a while that there were two people in there, speaking in tongues, but then I realized that it was Mamzelle, talking to herself in English and then repeating it in French! She carried on for ages – until almost five forty-five, when I had to go – and then just as I was leaving she came out of her practice room, and saw me. She looked awfully frightened, for some reason, and then she hared down the hall towards New Wing. Isn’t that odd?’
    Daisy and I agreed that it was. But all I could think was how we finally had a proper alibi for one of our suspects.

3
    In Div., we found another alibi.
    Mr MacLean, who we had seen lurking so promisingly next to the Gym on Monday evening, certainly looks a bit like a murderer. He wears filthy, egg-stained jackets, his hair is greasy, and in Prayers he leers at us over the lectern. It would have been very easy and satisfying if he had been Miss Bell’s killer, but it was not to be. Mr MacLean began telling us all about the confirmation training we would be taking next year, when we got to the fourth form. ‘The girls enjoy it so!’ he said, beaming at us with his nasty yellow teeth. ‘Why, the class I took on Monday was so fascinating that we managed to overrun by nearly half an hour! In the end I had to tell them to hurry so as not to be late for dinner!’
    If that was true, it gave Mr MacLean an alibi for the time of the murder. When we got back up to House for lunch, Daisy made enquiries – and Mr MacLean’s impossibly perfect alibi turned out to be entirely true. He had let his class out at 5.45, which meant that he would not have been able to go to the Gym, murder Miss Bell and be back in Library corridor talking to Mamzelle and Miss Tennyson by the time we saw him there on Monday evening.
    Daisy and I looked at each other in amazement. We had managed to get rid of two suspects in one morning.
    It was time to update my suspect list.





4
    Ruling out Mr MacLean and Mamzelle in one fell swoop (both of them had seemed so promising!) was oddly disappointing, but what happened after lunch very nearly made up for it. First thing on Wednesday afternoon is Dance in the Gym, and that means an hour of torturously bobbing about in circles while Miss Hopkins watches us, her brown hair bouncing out of its clips, and says, ‘Straight backs, girls! Straight arms, straighten those legs!’ If we all turned into boards she would still not be perfectly satisfied with us.
    She is particularly displeased with me. She pokes at my waistband and says, ‘Perhaps a little more dancing might help with this, Hazel?