Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery Read Online Free Page B

there , as much a part of Deepdean School as the building itself. You only ever get to know her if you are one of the particularly promising Big Girls, whom she tutors for university entrance exams, or a prefect – who are not at all like the rest of us.
    Miss Griffin gave her sermon, all about honour and striving which are the themes most Tuesdays. As soon as she began to run through the daily messages, you could feel the whole school waiting to hear news about Miss Bell, but there was only a reminder about the fourth form’s visit to a museum next Wednesday and then a scolding little notice about mess in The One’s art room.
    It may seem a bit odd, since Miss Griffin did not say anything at all about Miss Bell, but that was how I knew that she had been murdered. If even Miss Griffin did not know what had happened to Miss Bell, then the murderer really had managed to hide what they had done. Just as Daisy had said, it was up to us to detect it. The Detective Society’s first real case! My stomach jumped like one of Lavinia’s Mexican beans, and I couldn’t tell whether I was terrified or wildly excited.
    Miss Griffin, of course, had no idea about the state of my insides. ‘And now, the hymn,’ she said.
    It was ‘Lift Up Your Hearts’. The One pounded away with gusto, and under cover of the organ’s enormous trumpeting blares Daisy leaned over to me.
    ‘ E’en so, with one accord – so, nothing about the Bell, then,’ she sang.
    ‘I know – we lift them to the Lord ,’ I replied. ‘What shall we do?’
    ‘Detect, of course,’ warbled Daisy. ‘We’ll talk about our first lines of enquiry later – The mire of sin, the weight of guilty fears – isn’t this song apt, though!’
    Miss Griffin glared out from her podium, as though she had heard us, and I gulped and went back to singing the proper words.

3
    It seemed that the masters and mistresses were determined to carry on as though nothing had changed. I wondered who would be waiting for us when we arrived for Science in second hour, but even I was amazed when we found Mamzelle waiting in Miss Bell’s usual place, with a white lab coat on over her silky blouse. The rest of the form were simply gobsmacked.
    ‘Bonjour, girls,’ Mamzelle said. ‘Mees Bell eez not ’ere aujourd’hui, et alors I will be taking you for ze lesson.’
    ‘Will we have to speak in French?’ asked Beanie in consternation.
    ‘Not unless you want to, Rebecca,’ said Mamzelle, shaking her hair and pursing her lips in amusement. ‘Fear not, in la France I was ze mistress for Science, and so I know about what I will be teaching.’
    ‘What’s happened to Miss Bell?’ asked Kitty.
    ‘I cannot tell you Mees Bell’s business, Kitty. I can only say that she eez not in school today and so I must take her lessons for her. Now sit down, all of you, and we will discuss ze cells of plants, which I gather eez what Mees Bell had planned for you.’
    ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ whispered Daisy to me as we sat down. I could see everyone else around the room making surprised faces at each other behind their textbooks.
    I really did feel as though I had fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. Even if I had not seen Miss Bell lying there on the Gym floor, I would have known that something terrible had happened to her. Miss Bell, after all, had never been even a minute late for a single lesson, and now here she was, missing an entire morning of school. If I had been a master or mistress, I would have been ringing for the police directly, but it seemed none of them had. It was infuriating.
    I was itching to speak to Daisy about it, and I could see, from the way that she was bouncing about on her chair, that she was dying to talk to me as well.
    The bell for bunbreak rang, and Daisy spun round to face me. ‘All right, Watson, this is it! Mental casebook at the ready! Our first mission is to dig up all the idle gossip we can. Before we begin our investigation properly, I want to know what