If Miss Macdonald had written those poems, why would she write an identical one for Dr Roberts? Though there had been no name addressed on the poem she had just found. Only the symbol, as stark as always, filling the page at the bottom. Margery lowered herself to the floor, careful not to catch her leg as she did so, it was still painful. Standing without her walking stick wasn’t helping at all.

  There was a knock of the classroom door, though it was barely audible over the show Dr Roberts was watching. Margery peered through the gap again just in time to see her get up and open it. Rose was waiting on the other side of the door, and she didn’t waste any time before she was swooping into the room without an invitation, pottering in on her tall heels and surveying the place with her usual stern eyes.

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly made this room your own,’ she said, wandering to the poster of the periodic table stuck to the wall by the whiteboard. Dr Roberts looked on from her chair, her arms folded. If she was nervous about the deputy head’s presence, not a single drop of it showed. Rose noticed Margery’s walking stick immediately, Margery saw her eyes flit to it and then look away again just as quickly.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’ Dr Roberts’ eyes were steely, she looked ready for a fight.

  Rose sized her up, giving her a cool once-over. Margery worried for a moment that Rose wouldn’t be able to come up with a reason to distract Dr Roberts long enough for them to escape and they would be stuck here for another few hours while she watched the laptop, or worse, caught hiding in her cupboard. What if she decided to get the next day’s class ready while she was up here and needed to get out the Bunsen burners sitting behind them on the shelf? She needn’t have worried. Years of drama training had prepared Summerview School’s Head of Drama for such an eventuality. In fact, Margery thought, it almost sounded like Rose was enjoying herself.

  ‘I need you to come to my office and sign some paperwork,’ Rose said, in the matter-of-fact manner of someone who spends all their time telling people what to do. ‘It seems when you started here we didn’t get an up-to-date emergency contact or health questionnaire. I’m afraid what with all that’s gone on recently we need to amend that right away.’

  ‘Really?’ Dr Roberts scoffed. ‘What a thing to admit to a member of the health and safety team. I’m sure they’ll have a field day at our next meeting.’

  Rose didn’t say anything, just crossed her arms and gave her a cold stare. Dr Roberts still didn’t look entirely convinced but she sighed and then stood, gesturing for Rose to lead the way anyway. They left, the door slamming behind them. Margery and Clementine waited a moment before they scuttled out of the cupboard, looking at each other in relief.

  ‘That was a close call,’ Clementine whispered as they crossed the room to the classroom door. Margery eagerly grasped for her walking stick, glad to be reunited. ‘How long do you think we should wait before we leave?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Margery leaned again the door and listened. She couldn’t hear anything, but that didn’t mean that if they bounded straight out of the classroom and into the corridor they wouldn’t accidentally catch up to Rose and Dr Roberts. Clementine was looking under Dr Roberts’ desk with interest.

  ‘Look at this,’ she said, lifting up the yellow box Dr Roberts had been holding when she had tried to use their fire escape. She turned it over, showing off the biohazard symbol plastered to the side and Margery realised why she had recognised it. It was a sharps box. The very same type her mother used to have for her insulin injection needles. Clementine shook the box and the lone rattle of the object inside caused them to look at each other.

  ‘Can you open it?’ Margery asked, hunching over to have a better look.

  Clementine shook her head, trying to lift the plastic lid, which was stuck fast. ‘It’s one of those lockable ones.’

  ‘She’s diabetic though, isn’t she?’ Margery said, thinking back to the conversation they had had with her at Ittonvale Farm when she had mentioned sugar causing a potential hyper. ‘That must be why she has it.’

  ‘Why is there only one thing inside though?’ Clementine said, shaking the box again to prove her point. ‘Why would she try and take it out of the building with her?’

  ‘Gosh.’ Margery scratched her head. ‘Mr Weaver’s puncture wound, you don’t think? No, that’s silly, Clem. Maybe she’s run out of sharps boxes at home? Or this is her work one? She must check her sugar levels during the workday.’

  ‘We should still get the police to come and have a look.’ Clementine put the box back and stood again, brushing the dust off her trousers. ‘They can test whatever’s inside it with all the other DNA, can’t they? If it’s her DNA then that’s fine.’

  ‘That seems like a massive overstep of boundaries,’ Margery said, her voice rising in pitch. She had wanted to poke around, but not like this. ‘What if we’re wrong? What if it’s another Mr Evans situation?’

  Clementine’s eyes widened, and she put it down while she looked around for a solution. ‘Well, maybe we can hide it somewhere in here or take it with us?’

  ‘No,’ Margery shook her head. ‘She’ll know it’s missing. Wouldn’t you? And we can’t take medical equipment away with us, what if she needs it?’

  ‘There’s got to be a way,’ Clementine said, reaching to pick it up again.

  ‘She could come back at any moment,’ Margery said, wringing her hands together. ‘We’re wasting time just standing here. And if she comes back and sees it’s gone then all hell will break loose.’

  Clementine looked truly conflicted for a moment, but then relief washed over her face. ‘My keys.’

  ‘What?’

  Clementine pulled her keys from her handbag and took off the GPS fob. ‘Do you have any glue, Margery?’

  Margery stared at her. ‘No. Of course I don’t.’

  ‘Not even a bit of tape?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘If she takes it home,’ Clementine explained, ‘then the fob will go home with her. But if she takes it somewhere else…’

  ‘Oh,’ Margery said, understanding at once. ‘Then we can tell the police.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘There must be something in here, surely it’s part of teaching college to be prepared to glue all sorts.’ Margery rummaged through Dr Roberts’ desk, finding an old roll of Sellotape and holding it up triumphantly. ‘Quick, tape it on!’

  Clementine taped the fob to the bottom of the sharps bin, they put everything back where it had been and rushed out of the classroom. Nervously, they crept down the corridor and down the stairs, not daring to speak until they were near the police checkpoint in the main entrance.

  ‘That was too close!’ Margery said. ‘That was good thinking though, Clem, with the key fob and Rose.’

  ‘Thank goodness she’s an insane workaholic,’ Clementine said. ‘I knew she’d still be here, especially now Seren isn’t around to wait on her hand and foot.’

  ‘Did you find anything else apart from the skeleton when you were looking inside the cupboard?’ Margery asked. ‘Aside from that sharps bin, of course.’

  ‘No,’ Clementine admitted. ‘I did try and get the toolbox in the cupboard open, but it was locked.’

  ‘I saw that too,’ Margery said. ‘I wonder if there’s anything inside it. I don’t see why there would be, but always best to check all the angles, I suppose.’

  ‘What about that poem you mentioned?’ Clementine asked as they paused before the entrance to the vestibule. The corridor was almost deserted now, the police having managed to work their way through the line. ‘You seemed to be quite engrossed in it.’

  Margery took the letter out of her bag and showed her. Clementine raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘It’s just like the one we think Miss Macdonald wrote, from Mr Weaver’s photo frame.’

  ‘Yes!’ Margery exclaimed. She rummaged through her bag and found the heart-shaped piece of paper they had discovered before, the one that had started the trouble with Miss Macdonald in the first place.

  ‘We saw her side of the conversation then, didn’t we?’ Clementine said, rubbing her chin in thought and comparing the two pieces of paper. ‘That’s different handwriting altogether. What’s to say Mr Weaver didn’t write her back in the same way? And then decided to send the same type of message to Dr Roberts?’

  ‘But why?’ Margery said, she couldn’t see the significance. ‘You don’t think Miss Macdonald sent that to her?’

  ‘No. I think Mr Weaver wrote it to conceal his identity,’ Clementine said, pointing at the poem. ‘The symbol is a maths symbol. So, maybe he was using it as a signature. Dr Roberts is clever, she must have known what it meant, and look, this bit in the note; our spot in the wood, money will free you. Money for his gambling debts, I’d bet.’

  ‘He was blackmailing her,’ Margery thought out loud. ‘Gosh.’

  ‘I think so.’ Clementine nodded.

  ‘But how was he blackmailing her?’ Margery looked at the note again. ‘What for? It doesn’t say.’

  ‘I doubt this is the only message she got.’ Clementine shrugged. ‘I’d imagine she knew exactly who they were and where they wanted to meet her by this point. I wonder what he had on her though.’

  ‘So do I,’ Margery said. ‘Do you think his wife was involved?’

  ‘No, idea,’ Clementine said, any worries she had earlier seemed to have vanished. ‘But I think it’s about time we found out. Here, give me that, I’ll put it in the book to keep it safe till we get home.’

  Margery passed her the note as Clementine took the student’s Maths book out of her bag and opened it. A slip of cardboard fell out and twirled its way down to the carpet below. Margery picked it up.

  ‘Oh,’ she said as she was confronted by the symbol they had spent so much time examining. ‘Clem!’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. Margery flipped it over and read the writing in green felt tip pen on the back.

  ‘It’s an invitation,’ Margery said. Clementine locked eyes with her and they stared at each other in surprise.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It wasn’t hard to read the writing. In fact, it was much easier than trying to read huge letters written in green spray paint. Whoever had written the invitation had given up being inconspicuous. If the murderer was getting cleverer about it, what hope did they have of solving the case? Margery felt a bit sick. She wanted to find Amelia and ask where she had got it from. Surely she hadn’t been given the invitation? After the first time they had accidentally been at a meeting of the strangers they knew that the numbers were a date and time. To the untrained eye the invitation would look like any other, the kind the students sent around on WhatsApp now instead of printing them out. Whoever the strangers were, they were meeting in the school drama studio at eight in the evening tomorrow, just as the curfew would begin. They hadn’t bothered to even conceal that particular piece of information. It was written boldly underneath the numbers. Judging by Amelia and Oliver’s reactions to their gentle questioning, the students did have something to do with it all, as they had thought they might. But how did they keep getting into the building? Margery couldn’t make hide nor hair of it all. Her first thought had been that they needed to tell the police. Clementine had other ideas, pulling a sour face at the mere mention of it.

  ‘Right,’ Clementine said, helping herself to a slice of apple pie. ‘Here’s my mad plan…’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Margery said. She poured herself another cup of tea from the pot on their kitchen table and turned to Clementine eagerly.

  ‘We won’t tell the police.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ll tell the headmaster instead,’ Clementine said. ‘Let him tell the police if he wants to, but it’ll give us a chance to see who these people are without damaging the reputation of the school any more. You saw the governors’ faces at that town meeting, none of this is good for Summerview School.’

  ‘I heard that they were both on thin ice after the wedding anyway,’ Margery said, thinking back to the governors’ judgement of the headmaster’s extramarital affair with his deputy. ‘But you don’t think the board of governors would do anything extreme?’

  ‘Like threaten to shut the school down if there was one more issue?’ Clementine recalled. Margery winced as she remembered the fear in the headmaster’s eyes the last few times they had spoken to him.

  ‘Hmmm, that doesn’t sound good, does it?’

  Margery agreed. She began to cut the apple on her plate into slices, topping it with a spoon of peanut butter.

  ‘No, so the next step, if that happens, is replacing the headmaster, I’d put money on it.’ Clementine sighed, biting into the piece of pie that was rapidly going cold on her fork. ‘What if we tell the police, they don’t manage to catch whoever the strangers are and then the paper publishes it? We can’t have that; we’ll look awful. We can’t be wrong this time.’

  ‘Right,’ Margery said. She wasn’t sure that this was a good idea, but she didn’t have any of her own and she agreed with Clementine that nothing else could go wrong at the school or with their reputation. She picked up the invitation from the middle of the table and looked the symbol again. Tomorrow didn’t seem very far away, Margery thought nervously.

  ‘Mr Barrow will never go along with it,’ Margery warned Clementine. ‘In fact, he’ll definitely try and talk us out of it.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘I really do. I think he’d try and sort it himself and something else would go wrong.’ Margery tutted. ‘Gosh, what can we do? How will we even hide in the drama studio?’

  ‘That little cupboard with the mixing desk in?’ Clementine suggested. ‘Like Rose did at Christmas?’

  Margery smiled at the memory of Rose being caught in the cupboard, yelling into a microphone. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If we were checking no one had followed us, that would be the first place we’d look, wouldn’t it?’

  Clementine sighed and slumped back in defeat. ‘Yes, probably.’

  ‘Well, probably just won’t cut it,’ Margery said sadly.

  ‘You know,’ Clementine said. ‘There might be another way, but it’s terrifically mad and stupid, even for us!’

  ‘I’m listening.’ Margery leaned in closer.

  ‘We’ll have to go out.’ Clementine stood, wiping her hands free of crumbs; they scattered on the kitchen table. She looked up at the kitchen clock on the wall. ‘And hope the shops are still open. The big supermarket will be, I’ll drive.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Margery asked her.

  ‘About the driving?’ Clementine frowned. ‘Of course. I’ve worked roundabouts out and everything, haven’t I?’

  Margery smiled despite her serious mood. If the roundabout seemed too confusing, Clementine just came off at the first exit and let the satnav redirect her. One day they had gone around the same roundabout six times before they reached the right exit. Clementine continued, ‘And then we can go and see what Liv Weaver was doing meeting Miss Macdonald.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Margery said, but Clementine had already rushed off to put the pieces of her mad plan together. Margery looked up at the kitchen clock and realised that it was almost half past five, whatever they were planning would have to be done quickly to avoid the curfew.

  * * *

  They had made it to the supermarket and bought what they needed for the next evening, using the self-scan checkouts to try and be less incriminating, but even so Margery had felt like a criminal. When they had finished shopping, they made their way down to Liv Weaver’s house again, parking up in the Bell and Hope car park and walking over to the house.

  Neither of them was particularly sure what they were going to ask her, or why they were going. Margery wasn’t even sure it was really a good idea, but on the other hand, they were on a roll with the impulsive meddling and might as well careen down every avenue while they were at it, before Officer Thomas found out what they were doing and slammed the brakes on it all. They reached Liv Weaver’s house and rang the doorbell, hearing the booming ding go off through the house and echo around the walls. There was no answer. They rang again and were met with the same, but the hallway lights were on. Clementine lifted the letterbox flap and looked inside, tutting as she closed it again.

  ‘Hmmm.’ Clementine looked at her watch. ‘It’s half six, maybe she’s still at work?’

  ‘I’m sure she said she works at home,’ Margery reminded her. ‘Maybe she’s gone to the shop or something?’

  The front door to their right opened and Seren stepped out. She turned to close the door and then noticed Margery and Clementine. Her eyes were huge with surprise, and she froze in the doorway with her key in the air, halfway to the deadlock.

  ‘Hello,’ Margery called, giving Seren a wave. She knew from experience to try not to spook her because if they did then she’d rush out of the house and up the street and then the next day at work she’d blank any questions about it. ‘Are you doing up your house?’

  Seren looked to Margery as though she were questioning how much to tell them, turning her house key around in her fingers.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, though she avoided looking them directly in the eye, instead looking at the front door again. The wood was freshly painted, Margery could see by the streaks of old paint that were still visible underneath.

  ‘Let’s have a look then!’ Clementine stomped over the wet pavement. Margery tried to hide her smile as Seren hastily fumbled with her keys again.

  ‘Oh no, I don’t think…’ she began, but Clementine was already standing next to her, eagerly waiting to see inside. When Seren realised they were not going away, she unlocked the yale lock, pushing the door open again. They entered, Seren followed and closed the door behind them and began to take off her boots, putting her bag for life down on the top of the little table in the hallway.

  Margery hadn’t been sure what she was expecting when they had realised what Seren and Gary were probably doing, but it was nothing like she’d imagined. It was much lovelier. When the tall, long terrace had been Caroline’s it had been dusty and dank. Somehow Seren and Gary had made it look wonderfully bright in the hallway, the staircase repainted with a brand-new runner running down it. The embossed wallpaper had been stripped off and the walls no longer housed Caroline’s strange charity-shop purchases and odd newspaper cuttings, but photos of Gary and Seren and their friends and families on a sage-green background. It was somehow much more intimate with the personal photographs. There was even a photo of the dinner lady team at last year’s Christmas dinner; Margery remembered Mr Barrow taking the photo of them after he had come to thank them for a job well done.

 

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