Read Jolly Foul Play: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery for Free Online

would have had the perfect opportunity to do it.’
    ‘But they were her friends!’ gasped Beanie. ‘That’s dreadful!’
    ‘Not everyone likes their friends as much as you do, Beans,’ said Kitty, nudging her.
    ‘It’s true,’ said Lavinia. ‘I don’t like
any
of you.’
    ‘Shut it, Lavinia,’ said Kitty.
    ‘They weren’t her friends!’ said Daisy. ‘They all disliked her as much as the rest of us. I’ve been watching – she was dreadful to them, just the way she was to us. She made them do everything she told them to, after all! I can imagine that any one of them might want to murder her.’
    It was exactly what I had been thinking, but hearing it explained that way made me realize, suddenly, how familiar
she made them do everything she told them to
sounded. I – we – were subject to Daisy’s whims, after all. In Daisy’s mind she is quite different to Elizabeth, and all the things she asks us to do are sensible and good, but is that entirely true? The world is not as black and white as Daisy expects it to be, although she can never see that.
    ‘We saw Margaret and Elizabeth arguing beside the bonfire,’ I said. ‘Perhaps that’s important?’
    ‘Absolutely!’ said Daisy. ‘And all the others, they were behaving oddly as well. They all seemed upset, even
before
Elizabeth died.’
    ‘So,’ I said, ‘we really think that one of the Five did it?’
    ‘Yes!’ said Daisy. ‘Now we have to discover exactly
why
, and from that,
who
.’
    ‘How are we supposed to do that?’ asked Lavinia scornfully. I could tell that she was not quite believing in the Detective Society yet.
    ‘Ooh, we have to hunt for motives, and evidence, and alibis!’ said Beanie eagerly.
    Daisy nodded. ‘Exactly. At school tomorrow we need to gather information from the other girls. Anyone may have seen something important. Remember what we say?’
    ‘Yes!’ said Beanie. ‘
Constant vigilance.
Oh, hooray!’

13
    We all climbed into bed, and Lavinia put out the light. I could hear Matron calling for quiet as all the other dorms whispered and guessed and wondered about Elizabeth’s death. The ordinary House noises were amplified – everything really had become strange this evening.
    I listened to the noises in our own dorm too, as Beanie went creeping into Kitty’s bed, and they began to talk together in soft voices. Lavinia was snoring defiantly, to show that she did not care about being left out by them. Daisy was quite silent, and I could tell that she was going over and over the events of the evening. But there was one more thing I wanted to do, and that had nothing to do with Daisy. It was time to read my letter.
    I rolled over onto my stomach and pulled the covers over my head. In the warm, close, blanket-smelling air I could at last unfold my letter. I slipped my little torch from under my pillow, careful not to let any light leak out, and held it as close as I could to the paper. The message on the front was very dull indeed.
    Dear Cousin,
    I hope this finds you well. I am well also. We have eaten semolina pudding all week, and written an essay on the French revolution. Georgina sends her regards. How is Daisy?
    Yours sincerely,
    Alexandra
    But the message on the front was not what I was looking for. I turned the piece of paper over and felt myself smiling. A torch, even a small one, gives out a surprising amount of heat, and on the once-clean back of the letter had appeared a spider of brownish words.
    elloHay, azelHay! oringBay eekway. eWay olvedsay
    It looked like nonsense, but of course I knew the trick of it. It was written in Pig Latin, which is simply English with the first letter of each word moved to its end and the letters ‘ay’ added. Translated, it read:
    Weston School, Monday 4th November
    Hello, Hazel!
    Boring week. We solved the Mystery of the Missing Ferret (it was in Jenkins’s tuck box, quite happy), and Hendricks Minor ate three puddings in a row and was ill. I worked out the answer to