First Class Murder: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery by Stevens Robin

Author:Stevens, Robin [Stevens, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448193172
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 2015-07-29T23:00:00+00:00

9

I waited and waited, but Daisy still did not come back. Whatever could she be doing? I became so twitchy that I could hardly stay in my seat. Had she been caught spying? Was she in trouble? Did she need my help?

I decided that I had to act.

‘Father!’ I called, putting my head round the door once more. ‘I’ve ripped my stocking. Can we go and ask Hetty to patch it up?’

My father looked up, concerned.

‘We’ll be perfectly safe,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I promise. We’ll come back if even the smallest bit of danger happens.’

‘Very well, then,’ said my father. ‘But be careful, Hazel.’

‘Yes, Father,’ I said, hiding a sigh. I knew that I had confused him by looking in on him so many times: he thought I was frightened, instead of spying, but sometimes I think parents don’t realize how old you really are, or how much you can do.

‘Come on, Daisy!’ I said brightly to the empty room, and then I walked out into the corridor, sounding as much like two people as I could.

It was empty again, all the doors closed. Although I could hear dim voices from the dining car, Daisy was not loitering outside, so I turned the other way, trying to guess where she might be. Then I heard a little scuffling noise coming from Mrs Daunt’s compartment.

I crept up to the door, as softly as I could, and inched it open.

‘Wotcher, Watson,’ whispered Daisy, looking up from where she was kneeling on the floor, over a dark stain that made me shudder. ‘Come in!’

‘How did you know it was me?’ I whispered back, wriggling through the gap and pushing the door closed behind me.

‘Hmph,’ she said. ‘I always know it’s you. I would know you out of every person in the universe. You roll your feet out when you walk, and you step with your heel instead of your toe. How did you know it was me?’

‘You weren’t near the dining car,’ I said. ‘And anyway, a grown-up would have been much noisier. I told my father that I’d ripped my stocking, and we were going to visit Hetty to get it fixed. What have you found out?’

‘Oh, Il Mysterioso is a dreadful witness,’ said Daisy, rolling her eyes in the gloom. ‘All he’ll say is that he was alone in his compartment, practising a new trick, and he was so engrossed that he didn’t hear the noise. He’s either perfectly innocent or lying through his teeth. It was all becoming very boring, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to investigate the crime scene instead. Did you find the necklace?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘And no bloodstains, either. I suppose he might have covered himself with something, the way we thought, and then thrown it out of the window after he’d finished killing Mrs Daunt.’

‘Indeed,’ said Daisy. ‘The only thing that could go out of those windows is clothes.’

‘I found documents, though,’ I said. ‘Hidden in a magic box. They look important – I

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