GUESTS

Hazel Wong – Vice-President and Secretary of the Detective Society

Katherine ‘Kitty’ Freebody

Rebecca ‘Beanie’ Martineau

Denis Curtis – Friend of Lady Hastings

Miss Lucy Alston – Governess to Daisy Wells

Stephen Bampton – School friend of Bertie Wells

STAFF

Chapman – Butler to the Wells family

Mrs Doherty – Cook and housekeeper to the Wells family

Hetty – Maid to the Wells family

DOGS

Toast Dog

Millie

1

Something dreadful has happened to Mr Curtis.

I am quite surprised to realize that I mind. If you had asked me this morning what I thought of him, I should have told you that Mr Curtis was not a nice man at all. But not even the nastiest person deserves this.

Of course, Daisy doesn’t see it like that. To her, crimes are not real things to be upset about. She is only interested in the fact that something has happened, and she wants to understand what it means. So do I, of course – I wouldn’t be a proper member of the Detective Society if I didn’t – but no matter how hard I try, I can’t only think like a detective.

The fact is, Daisy and I will both need to think like detectives again. You see, just now we overheard something quite awful; something that proves that what happened to Mr Curtis was not simply an accident, or a sudden illness. Someone did this to him, and that can only mean one thing: the Detective Society has a brand-new case to investigate.

Daisy has ordered me to write what we have found out so far in the Detective Society’s casebook. She is always on about the importance of taking notes – and also very sure that she should not have to take them. Notes are up to me – I am the Society’s Secretary, as well as its Vice-President, and Daisy is its President. Although I am just as good a detective as she is – I proved that during our first real case, the Murder of Miss Bell – I am a quite different sort of person to Daisy. I like thinking about things before I act, while Daisy always has to go rushing head over heels into things like a dog after a rabbit, and that doesn’t leave much time for note-making. We are entirely different to look at, too: I am dark-haired and short and round, and Daisy is whippet-thin and tall, with glorious golden hair. But all the same, we are best friends, and an excellent crime-detecting partnership.

I think I had better hurry up and explain what has happened, and who Mr Curtis is.

I suppose it all began when I came to Daisy’s house, Fallingford, for the Easter holidays and her birthday.

2

Spring term at our school, Deepdean, had been quite safe and ordinary. That was surprising after everything that had happened there last year – I mean the murder, and then the awful business with the school nearly closing down. But the spring term was quite peaceful, without any hint of danger or death, and I was very glad. The most exciting case we had investigated recently was the Case of the Frog in Kitty’s Bed.

I was expecting Fallingford to be just as calm. Fallingford, for this new casebook, is Daisy’s house: a proper English country mansion, with wood-panelled walls and acres of sprawling grounds with a maze and even an enormous monkey puzzle tree in the middle of the front drive. At first I thought the tree was a fake, but then I investigated and it is quite real.

Honestly, Fallingford is just like a house in a book. It has its own woods and lake, four sets of stairs (Daisy thinks there must be a secret passageway too, only she has never discovered it) and a walled kitchen garden just as hidden as Mary Lennox’s in the book. From the outside it is a great grand square of warm yellow stone that people have been busily adding to for hundreds of years; the inside is a magic box of rooms and staircases and corridors, all unfolding and leading into each other three ways at once. There are whole flocks of stuffed birds (most especially a stuffed owl on the first-floor landing), a grand piano, several Spanish chests and even a real suit of armour in the hall. Just like at Deepdean, everything is treated so carelessly, and is so old and battered, that it took me a while to realize how valuable all these things really are. Daisy’s mother leaves her jewels about on her dressing table, the dogs are dried off after muddy walks with towels that were a wedding present to Daisy’s grandmother from the King, and Daisy dog-ears the first-edition books in the library. Nothing is younger than Daisy’s father, and it makes my family’s glossy white wedding-cake compound in Hong Kong look as if it is only pretending to be real.

We arrived in the family car, driven by the chauffeur, O’Brian (who is also the gardener – unlike our family, the Wellses don’t seem to have quite enough servants, and I wonder whether this also has something to do with the fading state of the house), on a sunny Saturday morning, the sixth of April. We came out of the light into the big dark hallway (stone-floored, with the suit of armour looming out at you alarmingly from the dimness), and Chapman, the Wellses’ old butler, was there to greet us. He is white-haired and stooping, and he has been in the family so long that he is beginning to run down, just like the grandfather clock. The two dogs were there too – the little spaniel, Millie, bouncing around Daisy’s knees, and the fat old yellow Labrador, Toast Dog, rocking back and forth on his stiff legs and making groaning noises as though he were ill. Chapman bent down to pick up Daisy’s tuck box with a groan just like Toast Dog’s (he really is very old – I kept worrying that he would seize up in the middle of something like a rusty toy) and said, ‘Miss Daisy, it’s good to have you home.’

Then Daisy’s father came bounding out of the library. Lord Hastings (Lord Hastings is what Daisy’s father is called, although his last name is Wells, like Daisy – apparently, when you are made a lord, you are given an extra name to show how important you are) has fat pink cheeks, a fat white moustache and a stomach that strains against his tweed jackets, but when he smiles, he looks just like Daisy.

‘Daughter!’ he shouted, holding out his arms. ‘Daughter’s friend! Do I know you?’

Daisy’s father is very forgetful.

‘Of course you know Hazel, Daddy,’ said Daisy, sighing. ‘She came for Christmas.’

‘Hazel! Welcome, welcome. How are you? Who are you? You don’t look like Daisy’s friends usually do. Are you English?’

‘She’s from Hong Kong, Daddy,’ said Daisy. ‘She can’t help it.’

I squeezed my fingers tight around the handles of my travelling case and tried to keep smiling. I am so used to being at Deepdean now – and everyone there is so used to me – that I can sometimes forget that I’m different. But as soon as I leave school I remember all over again. The first time people see me they stare at me and sometimes say things under their breath. Usually they say them out loud. I know it is the way things are, but I wish I was not the only one of me – and I wish that the me I am did not seem like the wrong sort of me to be.

‘My name is Lord Hastings,’ said Lord Hastings, obviously trying to be helpful, ‘but you may call me Daisy’s father, because that is who I am.’

‘She knows, Daddy!’ said Daisy. ‘I told you, she’s been here before.’

‘Well, I’m terribly pleased you’re both here now,’ said her father. ‘Come through to the library.’ He was bouncing up and down on his toes, his cheeks all scrunched up above his moustache.

Daisy looked at him suspiciously. ‘If this is one of your tricks . . .’ she said.

‘Oh, come along, tiresome child.’ He put out his arm and Daisy, grinning, took it like a lady being escorted in to dinner.

Lord Hastings led her out of the hall and into the library. I followed on behind. It’s warmer in there, and the shelves are lined with battered and well-read leather books. It is odd to compare it to my father’s library, where everything matches, and is dusted twice daily by one of the valets. Fallingford really is as untidy as the inside of Daisy’s head.

Lord Hastings motioned Daisy into a fat green chair, scattered with cushions. She sat gracefully – and there was a loud and very rude sound.

Lord Hastings roared with laughter. ‘Isn’t it good?’ he cried. ‘I saw it in the Boy’s Own Paper and sent off for it at once.’

Daisy groaned. ‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘you are an awful fool.’

‘Oh, come now, Daisy dearest. It’s an excellent joke. Sometimes I wonder whether you are a child at all.’

Daisy drew herself up to her full height. ‘Really, Daddy,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t think there’s room for another child in this house.’ But she was grinning again, and Lord Hastings twinkled back.

‘Now, come along, Hazel, I think we ought to go up to our room.’

And off we went.

3

Lord Hastings kept on playing humorous jokes all week. ‘Daddy,’ groaned Daisy as she picked a splash of fake ink off her dinner plate on Tuesday, ‘you are an embarrassment to me.’ But I could tell, from the way she looked at him as he giggled into his handkerchief, that she didn’t mean it. Although the careful, good-show Daisy was still in place whenever her mother was watching, I noticed that her secret side, clever and fiercely interested in everything, kept popping out around Lord Hastings – and that, I knew, meant something. Daisy only shows her real self to people she truly likes, and there are not many of them at all. At dinner that day, though, Lady Hastings was there – and so Daisy was careful to be absolutely proper.

‘Really, George,’ snapped Lady Hastings, glaring at her husband.

We all cringed a bit. There was something very wrong between Lord and Lady Hastings this hols. At Christmas I had thought Daisy’s mother perfectly nice, if slightly vague, but this time she was quite different – all brittle and angry at everything. She was still just as tall and blonde and glamorously beautiful as she had been at Christmas, but now her beauty was like a porcelain vase that must not be touched. Everything Lord Hastings did seemed to be wrong. Staying in the house with them was a bit like being stuck in the middle of a war, with troops on either side sending shells over our heads. I know all about parents not speaking – at home there are weeks when my mother and father talk to each other through me, as though I’m a living telephone – but this seemed to be something else entirely. Poor Lord Hastings drooped. Hopeful presents of sagging flowers and squashed chocolates kept appearing outside Lady Hastings’ room, and then were banished straight down to the kitchens, which began to look very much like the inside of a hot-house. Daisy and I ate most of the chocolates for our bunbreaks (Daisy insisted on having bunbreaks in the hols, ‘in honour of Deepdean’, and I saw no reason to argue with her).

‘He loves her,’ said Daisy, munching an orange cream, ‘and she loves him too, really, only she sometimes doesn’t show it. She’ll come round in the end.’

I wasn’t so sure. Lady Hastings seemed to spend all her time either locked away in her bedroom or on the telephone in the hall, whispering away into it and falling silent when we came too close.

It was not just Daisy and I who had been turned into hostages of the row between her parents. Daisy’s brother Bertie, who was in his final year at Eton, was home for the holidays too.

Bertie looked unnervingly like Daisy – a Daisy stretched out like India rubber and shorn of her hair – but if Daisy fizzed like a rocket, Bertie hummed with rage. He was cross all the time, and as soon as he arrived he began to crash about the house. He had a pair of bright green trousers, an out-of-tune ukulele which he insisted on playing at odd hours of the day and night (according to Daisy he could only play three songs, and they were all rude), and a friend whose name was Stephen Bampton.

I felt very grateful that Stephen was not a cross person. He was short and stocky, with smooth reddish hair, and he seemed gentle and slightly sad. He looked at me as though I were a person rather than The Orient, and I liked him at once.

I was glad he was there, because this hols, Fallingford felt foreign – or perhaps it reminded me how foreign I was. Bertie jangled away on his ukulele, musically angry, and Lord and Lady Hastings argued, and Daisy went bouncing around the house, showing me secret hiding places and house-martin nests and a sword that had belonged to her great-grandfather, and I began to be hungry for my own Hong Kong house’s gluey heat and fake flower arrangements.

The last person in the house – apart from the cook and housekeeper, Mrs Doherty, and Hetty the maid – was Miss Alston, Daisy’s governess. There was always a governess in the holidays at Deepdean, to help Daisy with prep and keep her out of trouble – and to help Lord Hastings write letters. ‘He gets muddled when he tries to do it himself, poor dear,’ Daisy told me, by way of explanation.

This hols, though, dull, droning Miss Rose, who we’d had to suffer at Christmas, had quite inexplicably gone away. ‘With only the briefest telephone call!’ said Lady Hastings, as cross as ever. ‘Really!’ Instead, we had Miss Alston.

Miss Alston was, as our Deepdean dorm mate Kitty would have said, a frump. She was the very image of a spinster bluestocking: she wore ugly square clothes without a waist, her hair stood out from her forehead in a heavy clump, and she always carried an enormous handbag in ugly brown pigskin. On first acquaintance, she seemed very safe and very dull, but that was misleading. The more lessons we had with her, the more we realized that Miss Alston was not dull at all. She was interesting.

Miss Rose had simply marched us through our Deepdean prep like an army general with no time to waste, but Miss Alston was not like that at all. If we were working on a Latin translation about Hannibal, she would stop to talk about his elephants. If we were learning about water, she took us outside to look at the clouds. If we were reading a Shakespeare play, she asked us whether we felt sorry for the Macbeths. I said yes (though they shouldn’t have done it), and Daisy said absolutely not, of course. ‘Explain,’ said Miss Alston, and for almost half an hour we both quite forgot that we were doing prep, in the holidays, with a governess.

The oddest thing was that, around the grown-ups, Miss Alston was very different. She was perfectly ordinary. When she wasn’t busy with us, she sat with Lord Hastings, drafting his letters and making lists and ordering him yo-yos and fake moustaches from his Boy’s Own catalogues. He thought Miss Alston deadly dull, just as Daisy and I had before she began teaching us. ‘She doesn’t even laugh at my jokes!’ he complained.

‘I shouldn’t think that was a surprise,’ said Daisy, patting him on the head as if she were stroking Toast Dog. ‘Mummy, where did you find Miss Alston?’

‘Goodness, how should I remember?’ asked Lady Hastings, who was busy trying to brush dog hair off her cape. ‘The agency, I suppose. There was a letter . . . Heavens, Daisy, why must you complain about your governesses? You know perfectly well that I can’t look after you.’

‘Quite obviously,’ said Daisy icily. I knew what lay behind the question. Daisy wanted to understand Miss Alston, and what made her so different – but there was no easy answer to that. Miss Alston kept on being privately interesting and publicly dull, and Daisy and I became more and more curious about her.

4

Lady Hastings, when she was not mysteriously on the telephone, spent all her time organizing Daisy’s birthday party – although it was quite obvious that the party was really going to be Lady Hastings’, not Daisy’s.

‘A children’s tea!’ said Daisy scornfully. ‘How old does she think I am?’

At least Daisy had been allowed to invite guests. Kitty and Beanie, from our dorm at Deepdean, were coming for the weekend, which made me glad. Being at Fallingford was making me think almost longingly of Deepdean’s scratchy blankets and smell of washed clothes and boiled food.

On Friday morning we were in the dining room, and I was halfway through a piece of toast (plum jam from Fallingford’s walled garden, butter from its herd of cows) when we heard the growl and crunch of a car on the drive outside.

Daisy stood up, leaving her kipper half eaten. ‘Kitty!’ she said. ‘Beanie!’ She shoved back her chair and went rocketing out into the hall. I followed her, still chewing and licking jam off my sticky fingers, turned left through the dining-room door – and went thumping straight into her back.

I yelped and grabbed at her cardigan to stop myself falling over. ‘Daisy!’ I said. ‘Whatever—’

Daisy had frozen, just like Millie with a rabbit in her sights. ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

I craned round her to see who she was speaking to. There, standing in the arch of the stone doorway, was a man. He was quite young for a grown-up, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist just like a man in an advertisement. He came into the hall, slouching fashionably, and I saw that his face was good-looking, his dark hair very smooth and his smile toothpaste-wide. He did not look at all the sort of man who might belong in the front hall of Fallingford House.

The man shone his teeth at Daisy. ‘You must be Daisy,’ he said. ‘The little birthday girl.’

‘Yes,’ said Daisy, coming forward to shake his hand with her prettiest smile – though I could tell that she was burning up with fury at being called little – and burning with curiosity to know who this man was, and how he knew her when she had never met him. Daisy, you see, hates to be at a disadvantage with anyone.

Then the dining-room door banged open again, and Daisy’s mother appeared behind us.

‘Mummy,’ said Daisy lightly, ‘who is this?’

‘Good heavens!’ cried Lady Hastings. Her voice had gone very shrill and her cheeks were pink. ‘How lovely! I wasn’t expecting you until later, Denis. Daisy dear, this is my friend Denis Curtis. He’s here for your party. Be nice to him.’

‘I always am,’ said Daisy, beaming up at Mr Curtis, and I knew that inside she was absolutely seething.

‘Your mummy and I are very good friends,’ said Mr Curtis, who seemed to be under the impression that we were seven.

‘Denis is tremendously clever,’ said Lady Hastings, batting at Mr Curtis’s arm with her fingers. ‘He’s in antiques, you know. He knows all about beautiful things. He’s going to look at some of the things at Fallingford this weekend. But . . . Daisy, I want all this to be a lovely surprise for your father. You mustn’t tell him.’

Despite herself, Daisy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Really?’ she asked.

‘Yes!’ Lady Hastings’ voice was shriller than ever. ‘You know how sentimental he can be. But just think – how exciting, if some of those horrid old paintings turn out to be worth something after all! I can get rid of them and buy lovely new ones instead!’

This worried me. But what worried me even more was the way Mr Curtis was smiling at Daisy’s mother, and the way he kept his hand on her arm for far longer than was necessary. It was the sort of nasty grown-up thing that I do not understand . . . or understand, but wish I didn’t.

5

Then the drive crunched again – car tyres and feet – but when the door opened, it was still not Kitty or Beanie. A very large and broad old lady was standing there, her hair all done up in a puff around her head, a bedraggled fur and several scarves around her neck and none of her clothes matching.

‘MARGARET! DAISY!’ she shrieked, waving her arms and her scarves in the air. ‘I’M HERE!’

Lady Hastings turned round and looked at her, lips pinched together. ‘Hello, Aunt Saskia,’ she said. ‘Oh no, don’t bother to ask to come in. Denis, this is Saskia Wells, George’s aunt.’

Aunt Saskia came barrelling into the hall, shedding multi-coloured gloves and bits of fur, and squashed Daisy against her bosom. She did not seem to have noticed me.

‘DAISY!’ she cried again. ‘Where is your brother? Where is your dear father? And of course, it is your birthday! Twelve years old! Such a lovely age. I have a present for you – somewhere . . . unless – oh dear, I believe I have left it at the Bridesnades’. It was a scarf – at least, I think it was . . . Oh no, wait – here it is!’

And she dragged her hand out of the pocket of her cardigan. Clutched in it was a very small and crumpled square of fabric.

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ Aunt Saskia cried. ‘It’s silk. At least – I think it is. Unless it isn’t.’

‘Thank you, Aunt Saskia,’ said Daisy. ‘My birthday is tomorrow. I’ll be fourteen.’

‘Of course you will!’ said Aunt Saskia, blinking. ‘Of course it is. Didn’t I say so? And – goodness, who is this? Daisy – Daisy, dear’ – she pulled Daisy towards her again and muttered like a foghorn – ‘there seems to be AN ORIENTAL in your hall.’

She said it as though I were a bear, or a snake.

‘I know, Aunt Saskia,’ said Daisy. ‘This is my friend, Hazel. I told you about her. She’s a guest.’

‘Really!’ gasped Aunt Saskia. ‘Such goings-on! In my day it would never have been allowed.’

‘I’m sure it wouldn’t,’ said Daisy politely. Aunt Saskia turned to Lady Hastings, and Daisy put her head close to mine and whispered, ‘In her day they shot servants and ate bread made out of wallpaper paste. The past is awful, only old people never realize it.’

I felt a bit comforted – but only a bit.

Then Miss Alston came out of the music room, where she had been preparing our lesson. We were to have a holiday on Saturday in honour of Daisy’s birthday, but up until then we had to work. One of the few similarities between Fallingford and Deepdean is that the grown-ups are all sure that it is dangerous to give children any free time. I think they worry we might get up to something awful.

Miss Alston saw Mr Curtis standing in the hallway, his suitcase at his feet. For one blink of an eye she stared at him, absolutely frozen. I was looking at her face, and saw the oddest expression on it – a sort of fierce determination, as though she had found something to do, and could not wait to do it. Then her usual blank expression was back. Her fingers tightened around the straps of her fat brown handbag, and she swung round and marched back into the music room again. The movement must have caught Mr Curtis’s eye, and he looked after her, puzzled.

That was odd, I thought to myself. From Miss Alston’s expression, I assumed that she knew Mr Curtis – but Mr Curtis did not seem to recognize her at all. Of course, he had only seen the back of her head and the set of her shoulders, but that ought to be enough. And anyway, why would a square, serious woman like Miss Alston know a fashionable, smooth man like Mr Curtis? This made Miss Alston seem odder and more interesting than ever – and made Mr Curtis more interesting too. I glanced at Daisy, and saw that she had noticed it as well. She was gazing at Mr Curtis with her blankest expression. I could almost feel her thinking, Suspicious.

Lord Hastings came in from the garden, brushing leaves and cold air off his Barbour jacket. He stared around in astonishment. ‘Good grief,’ he said. ‘Hullo! Guests! Aunt Saskia, how delightful. And . . . who might you be?’ He looked at Mr Curtis under his beetling white brows and stuck out a fat pink hand for him to shake.

‘Denis Curtis,’ said Mr Curtis. ‘Friend of your wife’s. Met at a London party a few months ago. She invited me.’

There was a smirk in his voice behind the word friend. We all heard it. My heart sank. Lord Hastings cleared his throat and didn’t look at Lady Hastings. ‘Splendid,’ he said hollowly. ‘How splendid. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay here, what?’

‘I’m sure I shall.’ Mr Curtis’s voice glowed with laughter. ‘Such a beautiful old house. Unique. I can’t wait to take the tour.’ He flashed his teeth at Lady Hastings as he said this.

‘Of course,’ said Lord Hastings. ‘Of course. Margaret, do— What I mean to say is – I think I shall go and sit in the library for a while. Saskia, will you join me?’

I could feel the misery coming off Lord Hastings as he led Aunt Saskia into the library, calling, ‘Chapman! Ho, Chapman!’

I did not like smug, rude Mr Curtis at all, I decided, and from the way Daisy was vibrating with anger next to me, I could tell that she felt the same. There was something about the way his voice kept nearly laughing, as though he was telling a private joke, and the way Daisy’s mother’s cheeks were turning pink . . . Something was Going On.

The front door creaked open again, and everyone in the hall turned.

‘Hello?’ said Kitty. ‘We did knock, but no one came. Beanie couldn’t lift her case, so it’s still outside. I say, are we late?’

6

For a while I thought that the house party might be complete – but then, just after we had all finished lunch (cold chicken and new potatoes, with a splendidly oozing rhubarb trifle for afters), the last guest arrived. He flashed up to the front door in a blaze of glory, a silver car with a nose like a space rocket, and leaped out, leaving the engine still running, waving his arms and shouting. It was Lady Hastings’ brother, Daisy’s uncle Felix, and he was just as young and glamorous as his sister.

There had been so many rumours about him at Deepdean – that he was a secret agent, that he had saved Britain single-handed, twice, and received a letter from the King thanking him – that when I saw him it was as though I was looking at a character from a book. It did not help that he looked alarmingly like one of the better-looking heroes from a spy novel. His blond hair was slicked back, his suit was perfectly pressed, he had a gorgeously bright silk square in his buttonhole and a little glittering monocle screwed into his left eye.

He left the car for O’Brian to take round to the old stables and dashed up the front steps, where the four of us were standing (Kitty goggling the way I wanted to, and Beanie saying, ‘Ooh!’ in excitement), bent down and kissed Daisy’s hand. ‘Hello, Daisy,’ he said, winking at her.

‘Hello, Uncle Felix,’ said Daisy, curtseying and winking back.

Uncle Felix seemed to know the right thing to do at all times. He kissed my hand as well, and Kitty’s and Beanie’s, and Kitty got quite giddy (I nearly did too). Then he went rushing through Fallingford greeting the others. He thumped Toast Dog and Millie’s behinds, punched Bertie lovingly on the shoulder, shook hands with Stephen, gently kissed Lady Hastings’ cheek, clapped Lord Hastings on the back and bowed to Aunt Saskia. Mr Curtis only got a very stiff and distant handshake – and a very assessing look. Watching them together made me see again just how wrong Mr Curtis was. They were both as handsome as each other, but Mr Curtis was all brash and rude and ugly inside, while Uncle Felix seemed to glow in a way that made you want to stare and stare at him.

Mr Curtis sauntered away, muttering something about looking at paintings upstairs, and Daisy stood on tiptoe and began to whisper crossly into Uncle Felix’s ear. I knew she was telling him the story of Mr Curtis’s arrival. He raised an eyebrow – even his eyebrows were elegant – and said something in a low voice.

‘He told me not to worry,’ Daisy whispered when she came back to stand beside me, the wrinkle that always appears when she is concerned by something showing at the bridge of her nose. ‘He says it’s nothing. Uncle Felix is very rarely wrong, but all the same . . . you know.’

I nodded. It had not sounded like nothing.

‘At least he’s here now,’ Daisy went on, gazing after her uncle as he climbed the stairs to his room. ‘He’ll make sure that everything’s all right . . . At least— Oh, I don’t like it! Why didn’t he believe me just now? It’s not like him at all!’ She folded her arms across her chest and scrunched up her nose more than ever. I didn’t know what to say.

Oddly, the only person who seemed to make Uncle Felix’s good manners desert him was Miss Alston. They met in the hallway, when Miss Alston came to collect us for afternoon lessons: the moment Miss Alston caught sight of him she went all uncomfortable and stiff. Her awkwardness seemed to infect him, and they shook hands like automatons, Uncle Felix squinting through his monocle and Miss Alston sticking her chin out.

‘Daisy’s uncle, I presume,’ said Miss Alston coldly. ‘Delightful. If you’ll excuse me – come along, girls . . .’

She strode away into the music room, and we had to follow. I looked back and saw Uncle Felix with his eyebrow raised, staring at nothing. He seemed quite amused, although I could not see the joke. Was Miss Alston really immune to his charm? It made her seem stranger than ever. And why had he not been as polite to her as he had been to the rest of us? I had the feeling that they did not like each other – but why? It was yet another mystery in what was becoming a very mysterious weekend.

7

That evening, Daisy, Kitty, Beanie and I dressed for dinner in the nursery on the top floor. This is where Daisy sleeps – and where we were all staying during our visit. It was very odd, putting on our best shiny dresses in such a shabby old room: the patterned wallpaper is peeling off in strips, the rag rugs are frayed and the bed-frames are battered, as though they’ve been beaten with hammers. Candlelight from candles in holders shone on our faces and arms, and made our dresses look soft and faded. Daisy’s was rose shot silk, and I could feel the rest of us coveting it, me especially – even though rose makes me look ill and pale, like a goblin child.

‘Your aunt is very odd, but I like your uncle,’ said Kitty, brushing out her thick brown hair. ‘He’s awfully handsome.’

I caught Daisy’s eye, and we smiled at each other. Kitty thinks everyone is awfully handsome.

‘Is he really a spy?’ asked Beanie. ‘I know everyone says so, but—’

Daisy made her face very mysterious. ‘I can’t tell you that!’ she said. ‘If he were, I’d be revealing state secrets. I could be shot.’

‘Oh!’ Beanie covered her mouth with her hands. ‘Oh, I don’t want you to be shot. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Daisy grandly. ‘I shall pretend it didn’t happen.’

I saw Kitty roll her eyes. ‘I don’t know who I prefer,’ she said, ‘your uncle, or your mother’s friend. They’re both quite glorious.’

‘Mr Curtis is not glorious,’ said Daisy sharply.

‘No, he isn’t,’ Beanie agreed, fumbling as she tried to tie the ribbon at her waist. ‘He’s not nice. He makes me feel . . . wriggly, like looking at a nasty spider. And he bumped into me earlier and shouted at me to look where I was going.’

I was shocked. Beanie is so small and sweet, and her big brown eyes are so worried, that it is quite awful to imagine anyone being cruel to her.

‘Oh, come here, Beans, and let me do it.’ Kitty dragged Beanie closer to the candle and tried to manage the drooping bow Beanie had tied. ‘I’m sure you misunderstood.’