A frightfully fatal affa.., p.15
A Frightfully Fatal Affair, page 15
‘But you still lied about your alibi.’ Clementine was red in the face. ‘There’s nothing to prove what you’re saying is true.’
‘He was with me.’ A tiny man at the back of the pub stood from his seat in the window. Margery hadn’t even noticed him in the darkness of the pub. He was older and balding but still looked like he could outrun all of them in a one-hundred-metre sprint. ‘I’m his coach. He asked me not to say anything, said it would all come right in the end.’
‘See.’ Jess gestured to the man.
‘Can you prove that?’ Clementine asked him, before turning back to Mr Evans ‘Where were you the day Mr Weaver died?’
‘We were at the betting shop in Ittonvale,’ Mr Evans said. ‘The police got the CCTV and after they checked the needles they let me go.’
Clementine went white, realising immediately what it meant. Margery sat down on the stool nearest. The crushing guilt was too much, she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to pull herself back out from underneath it. After knowing that in their haste to solve a crime an innocent man had been accused. It made her feel sick.
‘It’s your fault,’ Jess barked. Margery felt herself going red as she confronted them. ‘The Dinner Lady Detectives! If you can call yourselves that. You’ve done nothing but fuck everything up for everyone. What if the killer put those needles there to frame him? You didn’t have any trouble coming to the pub and accusing me of stuff!’
Margery wanted to disappear under her chair and never come out. She expected Clementine to yell something back, but Clementine had the same dejected look plastered on her face. A wave of shame and guilt rose up inside her ribcage, Jess was right, what on earth had they been playing at? What if Liam Weaver’s killer had walked free because they’d been too busy making false accusations?
‘You’re not police officers!’ Jess heckled. ‘Why are you acting like you are?’
She finished her rant and finally sat down on her chair behind the bar.
‘It’s not their fault, Jess,’ Mr Evans said kindly. ‘I hid the needles up there, and anyone could have found them. I don’t know what else is going on though, the police asked me a lot of weird questions. Showed me some weird shape thing…’
‘The turned A,’ Clementine said. ‘Had you seen it before?’
‘Never.’ Mr Evans shrugged. ‘They think the students have got something to do with it, I told them not my students, my students would have painted some swearwords or something.’
‘Wait, what did you and Mr Weaver argue about at the harvest festival?’ Margery asked him and Mr Evans took another sip of his beer before answering.
‘He owed me loads of money from the gambling debts,’ he said. ‘I know you must know about that, but I didn’t kill him for it. Why would I? I’ll never get my money back now. Christ, his poor wife. He owed money everywhere; they were going to lose everything. I don’t know how she put up with it.’
Neither did Margery.
Chapter Nineteen
Back at work in the canteen the next day, Margery thought it all over, though it was hard to concentrate with all the normal kitchen distractions. As per usual, her plate was loaded so high with things to do it was as though she was at Ittonvale’s all-you-can-eat carvery. Today, not even work could snap her out of her thoughts. They hadn’t yet seen Rose to try and explain what they had seen of Seren. The talk they’d had with Mr Evans kept whirling around in her head.
The dinner lady team had arrived at the school too early to give their DNA swabs and it had caused a debate before they even began work.
‘What have we all got to hide?’ Clementine had shrugged. ‘Nothing. And if it helps catch the attacker or that group of strangers then that’s a good thing.’
‘What if one of us did a crime and then forgot?’ Sharon had wailed. ‘Or we’re really closely related to the killer and we’ve got the same DNA!’
‘That’s already happened to me once and I was fine!’ Clementine had laughed.
Karen wondered if their DNA would be used to make clones and then an argument had broken out about whether they were already all clones and if you’d remember being a clone or not. Margery had needed to step in after Clementine suggested that she’d never seen Karen or Sharon in the same room as the killer and the room had descended into chaos. After Karen and Sharon had calmed down, it was decided that they would all go and give their samples immediately after they finished work, clones be damned. Though they were all still a bit wary.
Margery had tried to get involved with the latest inane team conversation – the dinner lady team’s favourite toothpaste. It had culminated in Clementine telling the story of how she had squeezed a blob of face scrub onto her toothbrush accidentally – ‘My teeth would have been full of purifying grains!’ – but nothing was quite distracting enough. Now there would be no more mysteries, no more murders to solve. They had to admit to themselves that they were not good enough to be involved. They could have very well have ruined Mr Evans’ life with their meddling. Though Mr Barrow had stopped her in the main corridor before work and told her that no matter what had happened Mr Evans would be suspended anyway. To be a suspect in an unsolved murder investigation was one thing, but to add steroid use on school grounds and the illegal gambling ring – which may or may not have led to Mr Weaver’s death – was another. He assured her he was glad that they had brought the matter to light, and he didn’t blame them for any of it. That didn’t seem to alleviate her fears, however, and lunch time was well underway before Margery realised that in all her worrying, she hadn’t remembered to switch the panini machine on.
‘You’ll have to have something else,’ Gloria told the Year Seven, not unkindly. ‘We’ve had an electrical problem with it, you see. Why don’t you have a nice filling jacket potato or a KitKat Chunky instead?’
‘Thanks, Gloria,’ Margery said when the line had begun to move away again.
‘That’s all right.’ Gloria looked at her with concern. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes,’ Margery said firmly. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’
‘Sure?’ Gloria asked, with an eyebrow raise that told Margery she didn’t believe her. ‘You just don’t seem very with it today.’
‘It’s just all a bit strange, isn’t it?’ Margery explained as the line of children began to thin. ‘They haven’t caught those people in masks. We should have known it wasn’t Mr Evans. Even if it had been him who killed Mr Weaver, he isn’t a group of people, is he? Like the people outside Rose’s on Halloween. Who are they?’
‘I agree.’ Gloria sighed, folding her arms, and leaning back on the nearest counter, ignoring the children in the queue. ‘It’s all a bit weird and I don’t like the idea of this curfew. I saw the police on the way in, they’ve started searching students’ bags. What if they search our bags and find all the crisps we’ve stolen from the vending machine?’
Miss Macdonald’s attacker was still at large. Nervousness filtered down from staff to the students, the latter were much better-behaved than usual. Usually there was jostling and shoving and children screeching at each other in the lunchtime queue, but today was very different. It was almost as though they had all been scared into submission. They were interrupted by the arrival of the TikTok group, who weaved their way through the canteen all holding a shop-bought sandwich, they were the only students left who were still on normal behaviour.
‘What the hell is that?’ Gloria stood to attention as they sat at the table nearest and clicked at them with her fingers. ‘Hey! You can’t eat outside food in here! School dinners or packed lunches only!’
‘My mum got us all a meal deal. It’s a supermarket packed lunch!’ Number One beamed at them from her seat. ‘Hey, miss, will you please be on our school podcast now? We did a video to promote it last night and it got loads of likes. Miss Grant says we’re probably going to get an A on our media studies coursework.’
‘No,’ Margery said, at the same time as Clementine said, ‘Yes.’ She turned to stare at her in dismay, she hadn’t even seen her return from washing up in the main kitchen.
‘Oh, come on, Margery, we promised them before,’ Clementine said, pulling off the washing-up gloves. ‘Anyway, it might be fun, we need a bit of amusement, don’t we? And it’s for, oh what is it called…? Education!’
Margery couldn’t do anything but agree. For once, Clementine was entirely right, if nothing else it was certain to be very distracting. She sighed and turned back to the teenagers who had already started on their crisps.
‘Fine,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Where do you usually record it?’
‘The library!’ Number One looked extremely pleased with herself. ‘We’ve got Miss Grant next lesson, so we can ask if she’ll help us set up the equipment. How about half three today? The library closes at four.’
‘As long as it’s okay with Miss Grant.’ Margery said. It wouldn’t do to upset any other teachers, not after the debacle with Miss Macdonald and Mr Evans.
The English department were no longer on speaking terms with the catering department and that had been before Miss Macdonald’s attack. It was making things very complicated indeed. Now they would post their tea and coffee orders underneath the door once the canteen was shut. More than once the form had ended up under a prep table overnight and gone missing, leaving the English department in an even worse mood when they didn’t get their biscuits. She hoped they could find a way to patch things up. Maybe if they could then they would be able to find out why Miss Macdonald had Dr Roberts’ personnel file and why she had been at Liv Weaver’s house. Were the two related? She tried to squash all the thoughts down now they had officially been removed from the case by Officer Thomas. She thought about the text message, and Jess’s accusations at the pub afterwards, remembering the details bitterly.
‘Okay!’ Number One jumped up, meal deal forgotten and rushed out of the canteen, not even waiting for the end of lunch bell before deciding to go and ask Miss Grant.
‘Gosh, what are we getting ourselves into?’ Margery asked as Gloria chuckled.
There was a shout from the back of the canteen, they whipped their heads around at the sound. It was Ceri-Ann, rushing towards them all in her big outside coat.
‘How did it go?’ Gloria asked her, not waiting for Ceri-Ann to make it inside the prep area before yelling over to her. Ceri-Ann didn’t reply with words, instead, she pulled out a photograph from her coat pocket and handed it over, beaming from ear to ear.
‘Oh, Ceri,’ Gloria said, smiling down at the scan photo, her eyes filling with tears.
‘Let’s see.’ Clementine barged over and took the photograph from Gloria. ‘Oh, that is lovely. Well done, Ceri-Ann, marvellous work.’
‘They said everything’s all growing and that,’ Ceri-Ann beamed, looking proudly at the photo. ‘I got Symon to bring me here after the scan, he’s got to go back to work monitoring the testing station anyway and I thought you’d all want to see.’
‘Did they say what it is?’ Gloria asked.
‘A boy!’ Ceri-Ann said. The dinner ladies all oohed at that.
‘Good, Margery and I will need someone to open jars and reach the tall shelves for us when we get older,’ Clementine said, ‘it’s a miracle we’ve got this far.’
She took the ultrasound and stuck it to the whiteboard with Blu-tack, next to Margery’s ordering list.
‘Welcome to the family, Clement!’ she said, stepping back to admire the photograph again.
* * *
It didn’t take long to pack the kitchen down and turn everything off, even with the interruption of Ceri-Ann, and soon they were all putting their aprons and tabards into the kitchen washing machine and getting ready to go and get their coats. They were interrupted by Dr Roberts who had entered the kitchen through the canteen door and was staring at them wide-eyed.
‘Oh hello,’ she said, ‘I didn’t realise you’d all still be here.’
‘Of course,’ Margery said, looking at the clock. They had run over a little bit, but it wasn’t even three o’clock yet. Dr Roberts looked ready for home, her laptop bag swung over one arm and a large yellow, plastic box balanced in the other. Margery recognised it from somewhere, but she couldn’t put her finger on it, though the shape was familiar.
‘Right, right,’ Dr Roberts said, frowning at the sight of them. They all looked at each other in surprise.
‘Can we help you?’ Margery asked, remembering her manners. ‘Do you need an apple or a banana?’
‘The food bank hasn’t come to collect the out-of-date sandwiches yet.’ Gloria smiled, offering her a stale cheese and onion from the trolley she had put aside for collection.
‘Oh no, no thank you.’ Dr Roberts gave a forced smile in return, it looked strained and the warmth of it didn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘I’m just going to use your fire escape.’
‘Why?’ Margery asked. ‘It gets very slippy out there, especially in this weather. It’s probably best if you don’t.’
‘Oh, well.’ Dr Roberts looked around at all of them, suddenly realising she was outnumbered. She clutched the box closer to her side and gestured to the door again. ‘Are you sure I couldn’t just—’
‘I just don’t see why you would want to.’ Margery shrugged. ‘Why don’t you just go out the main entrance so I can lock the kitchen up? I really wouldn’t like you to fall on the stairs, honestly, I’m not sure it would be worth the risk even if there was a need for the fire escape!’
She smiled in what she hoped was a kind way at Dr Roberts, but Dr Roberts only grimaced back, blinking rapidly. It was early for a teacher to leave work, Margery thought suddenly. They were all here right up until the final bell rang at three-thirty at the very earliest and much later than that usually. Especially now in the run-up to the Year Eleven mock exams after Christmas. She would have expected Dr Roberts to be rushed off her feet with work to do at this time of year.
‘All right,’ Dr Roberts said briskly.
She turned on her heel and disappeared back through the canteen as quickly as she had arrived, leaving them all staring after her as the door slammed shut again.
‘What just happened?’ Margery asked Gloria and Clementine, who were standing nearest to her. They both shook their heads, their eyes narrowed.
‘That seems very odd, doesn’t it?’ Clementine tapped her fingers to her chin. ‘Very odd indeed.’
‘You don’t think she was trying to go out that way, so she didn’t have to go past the DNA-swabbing area?’ Margery said, the epiphany arriving suddenly.
‘Why would she do that?’ Gloria asked, crossing her arms. ‘Do you think she’d have some objection to it for scientific reasons?’
‘Yes, like Karen and Sharon and the cloning.’ Clementine snorted. ‘No, I think that maybe there is something more nefarious going on.’ She looked at Margery with bright eyes for a moment before realising her own vow to stop being involved in any of it. ‘Well, I mean… it’s probably nothing. Let’s all just go home.’
‘We’ve got to go and do that interview with the children.’ Margery sighed, regretting agreeing to it already. ‘I hope it won’t take long.’
Chapter Twenty
They gave their DNA samples, which involved a simple swab and a consent form that Margery tried to read fully but ended up signing anyway after the first hundred words in teeny-tiny writing. Then they rushed upstairs to the library for the dreaded interview. They walked past the desk where Mrs Buch usually handed out bookmarks and over to the back of the room where the outdated computer suite full of big boxy desktops still lived, though Margery doubted anyone still used them. The wallpaper was peeling and the books themselves were dusty and their spines broken. They dodged a pair of Year Sevens eagerly running past them on their way to finish their homework and made it across to where numbers one and two sat, laptop and microphones at the ready.
‘Hello, miss!’ Number One leapt from her seat as they arrived and rushed around the table, dragging their chairs out for them. They had both changed out of their school uniforms and were dressed casually, in huge sweatshirt tops and big chunky trainers. Margery found it quite comforting; if you squinted hard enough you could pretend it was 1997 again. ‘We didn’t think you were going to come! Mrs Buch keeps trying to kick us out.’ Margery could see Mrs Buch glaring at them all through the nearest shelving unit, she was the sort of person who called the police if a delivery driver was outside of their house for too long.
Margery and Clementine sat down and Margery tried not to let the concern show on her face. It wasn’t that she was scared exactly, but the last time she had spoken in public had been their wedding day and she had stammered and stuttered all through her speech. Her nerves were not quelled at all when they all put on their headphones attached to the very professional-looking mixing desk and Number Two flapped about them all, pulling condenser microphones on little stands to and from them as he listened to their general chatter through his own headphones. It was all increasingly nerve-wracking, Margery thought, as she pulled her jumper away from her neck, the wool suddenly feeling tight and itchy. And it was a prime example of where the headmaster spent the school budget. Of course, technology was important, she scoffed to herself, but so was nutritious food full of vitamins from good suppliers.
Number One walked them through ‘the plan’, as she called it, which was just a series of questions she was going to ask them about the events of the last few years. Then they would have a chat about the new murders.
‘No,’ Margery said, ‘both Mr Weaver’s killer and Miss Macdonald’s attacker are still at large, it would be grotesque. And that’s without considering that it would be risking an active investigation.’
‘I agree,’ Clementine nodded. ‘It would be disrespectful to the dead.’
She took Margery’s hand and squeezed it. Number One looked perturbed for a minute, but then agreed reluctantly, her face falling as her scoop was ruined. Number Two started the laptop’s recording program and then they launched straight into it.
