Free Jolly Foul Play: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery by Robin Stevens

shared around now? It makes sense to guess that this is the motive for murder – that Elizabeth knew something about one of the Five, and they killed her to keep it quiet – but if so, it can’t be the murderer who is behind the other secrets being shared. The Five are terrified, you can tell. They’ve quite lost control of the younger years, and the mood at school is so strange today.
    We’re going to try to understand more about the secrets, to find out what the Five could be hiding, and we’re also going back to the sports field at the next opportunity, tomorrow, to hunt for clues. Is there anything else you can think of that we ought to be doing?
    Hazel
    At that point, Miss Dodgson came walking down the rows of desks to see how we were getting on with our work, and I had to shuffle the pages of my letter under an old half-finished composition that I use for camouflage and pretend to be writing that. I looked over at Daisy, and saw with a shock that she was looking back at me, with her eyes very slightly narrowed. It felt like all the fizz in my chest had been sucked away. She must think I was working on this account, surely. But what would she do if she discovered that I was writing to Alexander about the case instead? I looked down as quickly as I could and told myself that I had every right to carry on. He was my friend, after all, and another detective.
    I quickly turned back to this casebook, and my usual blue-ink pen, and carried on writing until the bell went. But I was really thinking of something else. Writing the letter had somehow given me a plan, a rather Daisy-ish one, and I wanted to put it into practice.
    Now, the first formers happened to have a lesson in the room next door to ours, and so we all came flooding out together at the bell. Just as the crush became truly close, I spilled my books out of my hands, into Lavinia. As I knew she would, she growled, lashed out with her elbow and (I stepped aside as neatly as I could) knocked into one of the first formers, Emily Dow. Emily stumbled, and then Lavinia (being Lavinia) pushed her all the way over. Emily shrieked and fell.
    ‘Lavinia!’ Beanie cried, and rushed to help Emily up. ‘Don’t do that! Poor Emily!’ For a moment Beanie looked quite fierce. Emily burst into tears and Beanie put her arms around her protectively. I was glad that Beanie, at least, had not been infected by the nastiness of this year.
    ‘It’s Elizabeth,’ I said as Beanie and Emily stood up, and Daisy and Kitty pushed over to where we were. ‘That’s why we’re all upset. Lavinia didn’t mean it.’ (I felt rather guilty as I said that). Everything depended on what Emily said next, and she did not disappoint.
    ‘It’s horrid!’ said Emily, wiping her face. ‘I’ve been thinking and thinking about it, ever since last night. We were so near, after the end of the fireworks! What if
we
had stepped on that rake?’
    ‘But—’ said Beanie, and then she went red. She looked at us helplessly.
    ‘But you didn’t,’ Daisy said pointedly, and Beanie collected herself.
    ‘It was Charlotte who found her,’ said Emily, and I thought of what Daisy says: that if you give people room to talk, they will explain everything without you having to ask. ‘She – she
tripped over her
.’
    ‘She was just
lying there
,’ said Charlotte Waiting, a little first former with curly blonde hair and eyes even bigger than Beanie’s. Daisy made sympathetic noises, and as usual they did the trick.
    ‘It was awful,’ Charlotte went on passionately. ‘We went over to the bonfire after the display to warm our hands – it was awfully cold – but the prefect beside it—’
    ‘Enid, wasn’t it?’ asked Daisy casually.
    ‘Oh no, it was Una, she had just put another load of wood on – she told us to move along. She was terribly flustered and cross. So we went back beyond it, towards the pavilion, and that’s when we – when I –
trod on Elizabeth
.’
    I could have cheered.