Davina Dupree Catches a Crook (2 page)

‘Look at this, first years,’ he said, moving the folder around so girls in all parts of the classroom could see it. ‘Young Daphne here came to see me the other night to show me her work, and I’m as impressed with it now as I was then. A shining example of how well I teach, and what great ideas I have. I hope to see work of a similar standard from all of you.’

Most girls grinned at me or gave me the thumbs up sign. Cleo mouthed, “swot” at me and Clarice pulled a mean face, but I wouldn’t expect anything different from them.

But Dr Aardvark’s words had troubled me. “Daphne?”, “I’m as impressed now as I was then”? The TRUTH was he couldn’t even get my name right and he hadn’t been impressed with my work at all the other evening! In fact, been very rude and told me to go away. Could it be that his friendly teacher bit was all an act? I’ve decided to discuss this with Arabella later. She doesn’t like him already because he keeps making unkind remarks about poor Mr Fossil. #Prefer Mr Fossil now, #more real, less fake.

Anyway, Diary, I’ve got to dash as we’re making our own sushi for lunch and Akemi, our tutor, said she’ll teach me how to make Unagi Sushi with seaweed and rice! #Yumsters.

Love our new friends, Diary.

Yesterday, me, Arabella, Angel and Diya had a really good chat about Dr Aardvark while we were sprinkling our soy sauce over our sushi.

I told them that unfortunately I now fully agreed with Arabella about Dr Aardvark.

‘There’s something fishy about him,’ I said, munching down on my seaweed roll. ‘No pun intended. But I can’t explain exactly what.’

‘He’s a fraud,’ Arabella said loudly, licking her fingers, her mass of red hair tumbling about wildly. ‘He pretends to be nice then he’s rude to people like Davina. And he’s so horrible about poor Mr Fossil.’

‘Yes,’ Diya said, her big, owl eyes looking serious as she picked daintily at her sushi. Everything Diya does is so dainty, I feel like a lumbering elephant just sitting near her. ‘But let’s not forget about how clever and brave he is, and how he’s got so much training from all those universities. I think you were right the other day, Davina, when you said that Dr Aardvark might have spent so much time with animals he’s forgotten how to behave politely with humans. I vote we give him another chance.’

‘Hmph,’ Angel said, stuffing another Kappa Maki into her mouth – Angel seriously loves tuna fish. ‘I’m not so sure about him anymore. All he does is tell me off for talking loudly and looks bored if I ask him any questions.

‘Well you do have a very loud voice,’ Diya said gently.

‘Hmph!’ Angel said again, consoling herself with another piece of sushi.

I do hope Diya’s right about Dr Aardvark and I’m trying to keep an open mind about him, after all, he does bring some really unusual animals to our lessons. But there’s something niggling away at the back of my mind...

Anyway, I’ve got to go to my maths lesson now, Diary, which is NOT good news as we are doing a test.

Something terrible has happened, Diary!

Mrs Fairchild has been taken very ill!

Basically, Mr Portly, the new deputy head who also teaches us how to use the latest technology, called an emergency assembly this morning. I could tell that something awful had happened because he ran on to the stage on his tiptoes, something he only does if he’s VERY stressed. He usually skips if he’s happy.

‘My dear Egmont girls,’ Mr Portly said, looking round at us. ‘Something rather, er, perplexing has happened. Your darling headmistress, Mrs Fairchild, was found slumped over her favourite chaise longue early this morning and is now in Little Pineham General Hospital. Her condition is very serious and the doctors are doing all sorts of tests to try and find out the cause.’

Gasps came from all the luxury arm chairs including my own.

‘She probably been eating one of her crazy food combinations and got food poisoning,’ Clarice whispered loudly, earning herself some very sharp digs in the ribs from surrounding older girls.

I turned to Arabella, feeling a sense of doom and foreboding descend. We both loved Mrs Fairchild very much.

‘I was the one to discover Mrs Fairchild,’ Mr Portly went on, his high voice rising to a near scream. ‘I knocked on her study door to compare notes for this weekend’s activities – we were going to offer sky diving and off road biking, both now cancelled until further notice – and found her lying down on the smoky blue chaise longue- at first I thought she was asleep. This seemed strange because as we all know, Mrs Fairchild usually rises with the lark at five each morning. But it soon became clear that she had a raging temperature, I could actually feel heat radiating from her as I went nearer, so I called for an ambulance immediately. She’s not usually one for getting illnesses, it really is
very
worrying.’

More intakes of breath as we knew this to be true; Mrs Fairchild was just
always
around, healthy, happy and a bit eccentric. I’d never even known her to have a COLD! Diya and Angel turned and stared at us, their faces as dismayed as I felt.

‘But don’t worry, dear Egmont girls,’ Mr Portly wrung his hands and looked like he was about to burst into tears. ‘I’ll look after you while poor Mrs Fairchild is in hospital. I’ll run the school until she comes back. Oh dear-‘ he snorted, pulling a blue and white spotted handkerchief out of his pocket and trumpeting into it. ‘This really is
too
sad.’

‘Poor Mr Portly,’ Arabella whispered as we all filed out, most girls looking pale faced. ‘He’s a kind man but not a natural leader.’

‘Let’s meet up at lunchtime,’ Angel muttered as she passed us. ‘We
definitely
need to discuss this!’

Shocking turn of
events.com
!

Me, Arabella, Diya and Angel discussed Mrs Fairchild’s mysterious illness over our fennel and smoked salmon bagels at lunch yesterday.

‘I hate to admit it,’ Angel said, chomping away. ‘But Clarice could be right. Mrs Fairchild does love to put odd food combinations together – do you remember when she was going round telling everyone that sprout and chocolate sandwiches were just the best thing EVER?’

‘Ew yes,’ Arabella giggled. ‘Davina, do you remember when we knocked on Mrs Fairchild’s door to ask for the key to the helicopter warehouse and found her eating tomato, cabbage and sherbet flavoured gravy?’

‘Yes,’ I smiled, remembering how delighted Mrs Fairchild had looked with this new combination. ‘She even offered us some!’ We all pulled faces at the thought.

‘I wish there was something we could do to help her,’ Diya said, picking bits off her bagel and pushing them round her plate. ‘Mrs Fairchild is such a sweetie. It’s just not the same here without her.’

We had double art in the afternoon – yes! - and Miss Cherry and Miss Wise suggested we all make cards for Mrs Fairchild to cheer her up. I was just in the middle of a really complicated bit, sticking real dried fruit into a flat basket I’d woven out of thin dried straw, getting it ready to stick onto my pink, glittery, FABULOUS ‘Get Well Soon’ card, when the school microphones were switched on and we could all hear Mr Portly clearing his throat. Each classroom has several pink and white speakers fitted to the ceiling so that if anyone needs to make an announcement we can all hear it at the same time. Quite clever
really.com
. #amazing what you can do with technology.

‘My dear girls,’ he began, his voice shaking. ‘This is the most effective way I could think of telling you the latest news about our dear Mrs Fairchild. And it’s not good I’m afraid.’ He paused and we could hear loud sniffing and snorting going on. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, so I might as well say it. The doctor’s tests have come back and it appears that, I can hardly believe I’m going to say this, Mrs Fairchild has been poisoned.’

I dropped my glue stick. Diya burst into tears and even Miss Wise and Miss Cherry went pale. For once Clarice and Cleo didn’t have any stupid remarks to make, they just stood there with their mouths open.

‘I know this must be a shock to all of you,’ Mr Portly’s voice was getting higher and higher. ‘Dear Mrs Pumpernickle has asked me to tell you that if anyone is feeling upset and wants to talk to her about it, her door is always open. I must also warn you, Egmont girls, that there will be a few unfortunate disruptions to our school life over the next few days. Because the doctors haven’t yet identified exactly what the poison is or where it came from, the police will soon be arriving here to conduct an investigation into whether or not foul play was involved. Basically this means they want to find out if someone poisoned Mrs Fairchild on purpose. Oh I’m too upset, I can’t say anymore...’ there was a loud crackling and sniffing then the microphone snapped off.

We stared at each other, mouths open, faces pale. Diya was too shocked to cry any more. Poison Mrs Fairchild on purpose? But who on EARTH would do a thing like that? She’s the sweetest, most lovely lamb in the world.

Miss Wise and Miss Cherry told us to get on with our art if we could, but not to worry if we needed to just sit quietly for a while. I find that doing art makes me feel calmer, so I carried on, not wanting to talk to anybody, Mr Portly’s words going round and round in my head. I finished the basket, stuck it on the card and drew lots of extra pictures of flowers and hearts to stick all over it, all the time thinking about Mrs Fairchild. By the time the card was finished, I felt calmer, but I felt ANGRY. If someone thought they could poison Mrs Fairchild and get away with it, they had another think coming. She had always been SO good to me, there was no way I was going to let her down now, when she needed help. I decided right there and then that I was going to do EVERYTHING possible to get to the bottom of this mystery and uncover the truth about the poison, and I was pretty certain Arabella would want to do the same.

Prepare yourself, Diary, there’s more shocking news...

Golly, police are literally SWARMING round the school. I found one patrolling the corridor outside our dorm this morning, he gave me such a fright I dropped my silver, sequinned history folder and papers fell out and splatted all over the floor. We’ve all been interviewed and the police are conducting investigations into what the poison might be and where it came from, not a nice
business.com
.

Arabella and I had just called an emergency meeting with Diya and Angel in our dorm because we know they love Mrs Fairchild as much as we do and we wanted to know if they wanted to help us do some detective work. They’d just begun to get excited and we were talking about maybe sneaking into Mrs Fairchild’s office to look for clues, when there was a THUMP THUMP THUMP on the door. Arabella fell off her bed in shock, although she likes doing that and I think she would have done it anyway, crazy
girl.com
.

The door opened and a scarred, meaty face appeared.

‘Hello girls, I’m Detective Inspector Frank Clifford. I’m looking for Diya Gala and Angel Anderson, we’ve got reason to believe they might be able to help us with our investigation.’

‘I’m Diya and she’s Angel,’ Diya said pointing at her friend, her big brown eyes trying to read the detective’s face. ‘I’m not sure how we can help you but we’ll certainly try.’

‘Come with me please ladies, this is a private matter and Dr Aardvark has kindly said we can use his study to talk things over,’ Detective Clifford held the door open wide and beckoned them to come through.

‘Listen, what’s all this about?’ Angel sounded like she was getting stressed so I put my hand on her arm. She has a very fiery temper and I didn’t want her to start being rude to a detective, that sort of thing could lead to all SORTS of trouble. ‘Can’t you talk to us here in front of our friends?’

‘Not really,’ Detective Clifford scratched his pock marked face. ‘You see, we have it on good authority that you two were the last two people to see Mrs Fairchild before she was poisoned. Dr Aardvark has confirmed that he saw both of you entering her study at approximately half past eight the evening before she was taken ill, holding some sort of drink or potion.’

‘It wasn’t a POTION it was a large mug of hot chocolate,’ Angel shouted. I could tell she was scared because her arm was shaking. ‘The first years take it in turns to bring Mrs Fairchild her evening drink and we all like doing it because she always gives whoever’s done it some yummy biscuits.’

‘I can confirm this is all true, Detective,’ Diya said, looking more solemn and serious than I’ve ever seen her look in my life. ‘Angel and I made her a double hot chocolate and put squirty cream and marshmallows on the top. Mrs Fairchild was so pleased with it that she gave us three Honeycomb Crunchers each.’

‘Ooh, did she really?’ Arabella drooled. ‘They’re SO yummy, the way they’re all hard on the outside and gooey inside...’ I nudged her hard, this REALLY wasn’t the time to be praising biscuits.

‘These are all things we need to discuss, girls, so if you would kindly come with me we can all sit down and sort things out,’ Detective Clifford sounded kind but very firm. ‘You see, as you two were the last people to be seen entering Mrs Fairchild’s study with a liquid that we know she drank, I’m afraid to say that at the moment you are our prime suspects.’

‘What?’ Arabella screeched, as Diya and Angel got up and allowed themselves to be shuffled out of the room looking pale and confused. ‘This is RIDICULOUS! Are you seriously suggesting Angel and Diya poisoned Mrs Fairchild?’

‘Calm down,’ I said to Arabella in a low but very firm voice. ‘It won’t help them if
we
get in trouble too. We need to help them properly Arabella, so please shut up until Detective Inspector Clifford has gone.’

Time for some serious detective work, Diary.

We seem to be facing a crisis at Egmont Exclusive Boarding School for Girls. Yesterday, after Diya and Angel had been taken away for questioning, Arabella and I tried to regroup and assess the situation, which was very difficult because Arabella has a hot temper and kept stomping round the dorm, picking things up and smashing them down again, most
distracting.com
, #fiery redhead.