Friday Barnes 2 Page 5

  ‘Are you going to tell us what you’ve found?’ asked the Headmaster.

  ‘See for yourself,’ said Friday, weakly.

  The Headmaster bent down and plucked the blade of grass Friday had been inspecting. There was a small dark blob on one side of the blade.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the tutor.

  ‘Blood,’ said the Headmaster.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Friday with a shudder.

  ‘Urrg,’ moaned a voice several metres away.

  ‘It’s Mr Pilcher,’ said Gillespie.

  The group rushed back to the stricken man. As they got there he was trying to sit up.

  ‘It’s all right, Pilcher, take it easy. An ambulance has been called for you,’ assured the Headmaster. As if to confirm this, the faint wail of an ambulance could be heard approaching over the rolling hills.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Mr Pilcher.

  ‘We were hoping you could tell us,’ said the Headmaster.

  Mr Pilcher rubbed his forehead. ‘I don’t remember anything. I don’t even remember getting out of bed this morning.’

  ‘I can tell you what happened,’ said Friday.

  Everyone turned and looked at her.

  ‘Go on,’ said the Headmaster.

  ‘Mr Pilcher was not hit on the head by a bunya-bunya seed,’ said Friday.

  ‘But then why is he lying here, under a pine tree with seeds littered about him?’ asked the tutor.

  ‘Because he was hit on the head over there by the shed,’ said Friday. ‘When he fell to the ground, his hat fell off.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ asked the Headmaster. ‘That one of the tools fell off the wall and hit his head?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Friday. ‘But only because someone took the tool and swung it at him, then dragged Mr Pilcher over here, smashed a pine cone on the ground and carefully laid his head in the middle of it.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Mr Pilcher.

  ‘You were assaulted by someone very devious,’ said Friday. ‘But they didn’t move the hat. The idea of using the pine cone is a stroke of genius. But to leave the hat was an amateur mistake, which leads me to suspect that the perpetrator was interrupted before he could finish staging this miniature perfect crime.’

  ‘There’s nothing miniature about the lump on Pilcher’s head,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Why would anyone do it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Friday.

  The ambulance pulled up and the paramedics bustled out quickly, taking over.

  Mr Pilcher started fussing about who would turn the compost bin if he was taken off to hospital. The Headmaster reassured him that no-one on staff or in the student body would perform any of his jobs while he was away, so that everything would be just as Mr Pilcher had left it, only slightly overgrown, by the time he returned.

  Friday stepped back, her attention drifting over to the shed. She went to have a look.

  Inside the shed, one entire wall had been made into a peg board that held Mr Pilcher’s extensive collection of tools and garden implements. An outline of each tool was painted onto the peg board. And everything was hung in its place, except for one tool. The stencil of a spade was empty.

  Friday had found the assault weapon. Or, rather, she had found the lack of the assault weapon. Now she just needed to work out the reason for such a strange attack.

  Friday turned to Mr Pilcher’s desk. It was littered with invoices and order sheets. A worn paperback laid open on top of the pile. Friday flipped the book over to see what it was.

  ‘The Curse of the Pirate King,’ muttered Friday. ‘Hmm, interesting.’

  Somewhere in that shed lay the motive for the assault, but even Friday’s enormous brain could not determine exactly where.

  Chapter 8

  Mrs Cannon

  When Friday finally ran out of excuses to avoid going to class, she was happy enough to go because it was third period, which meant English.

  Mrs Cannon always encouraged them to spend the first twenty minutes of every lesson silently reading. She said this was to encourage the students’ literacy, but really it was so she could have some peace and quiet to study the job ads. Mrs Cannon couldn’t do this in the staffroom in case the head of department caught her. But the children were much more understanding about her desire to get out of her career in education. In fact, sometimes she would interrupt their silent reading to ask the children’s opinion.

  ‘Here’s one,’ Mrs Cannon said. ‘Chef wanted. Grilling skills essential. Must be available to work nights and weekends.’

  ‘But you have tango lessons on Thursday evenings,’ said Melanie.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ agreed Mrs Cannon.

  ‘And you can’t cook,’ added Peterson.

  ‘No,’ admitted Mrs Cannon. ‘But how hard can it be? It must be easier than being an English teacher.’

  The children nodded. They would not like to have to teach themselves English either. Then they all went back to their quiet reading until another job would catch Mrs Cannon’s eye.

  ‘How about this one, children?’ Mrs Cannon would interrupt. ‘Nanny needed to work in Kuwait. Six days a week, room and board provided.’

  ‘But, Mrs Cannon,’ called a boy, ‘you don’t like children.’

  ‘True, very true,’ agreed Mrs Cannon.

  ‘And you don’t like sweating,’ added another girl. Mrs Cannon was a large woman. ‘Kuwait is a very hot country. A job like that would be sure to involve sweating.’

  ‘Good point,’ agreed Mrs Cannon.

  This is how the lesson would continue until the last ten minutes when someone would point out that they didn’t have long to go. Then Mrs Cannon would reluctantly put down her paper and launch into a literary discussion, which would always end up with her concluding that the author they were discussing, be it Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or Arundhati Roy, was extremely lazy for not including more gunfights, explosions and murder mysteries in their stories. And it was entirely the author’s fault if students could not get through the first fifty pages of their books without falling asleep.

  On this particular morning Friday arrived when the job adverts were unusually lacklustre, so Mrs Cannon was getting the class to help her with the crossword puzzle instead.

  ‘What’s an eight-letter word for the fourth stomach of a cow?’ asked Mrs Cannon.

  ‘Abomasum,’ said Friday as she walked in through the door.

  ‘Well done,’ said Mrs Cannon, filling in the squares. ‘You’re not late because you’ve done something dreadful I have to punish you for, are you?’

  ‘No, Mrs Cannon,’ said Friday. ‘I was helping the Headmaster.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Mrs Cannon. ‘As long as I don’t have to fill in any slips, or report you to anyone. It was so much easier back in the day when you could just cane a child and get on with your lesson plan. These days everything involves filling in paperwork.’

  ‘Did you really cane students back in the olden days?’ asked a boy.

  ‘No,’ admitted Mrs Cannon. ‘It seemed like such a lot of effort. For a start I’d have to stand up, and you know I dislike doing that. Then I’d have to catch them. And the wicked things children do always seem like exactly what I would do if I were in the same position, so my heart was never in it.’

  Friday made her way to the back of the class. Melanie was sitting in her usual seat next to the window, staring out. Friday sat down beside her. The desks were arranged in a horseshoe pattern, so Friday had her back to the window. Looking across she could see Ian smiling his usual smug smile, but then it transformed into a glare. It was an unexpectedly hateful glare. Friday was baffled until she heard a tapping sound behind her.

  She turned around to see Christopher standing outside the window, waving to her. Friday glanced across at Mrs Cannon, who was concentrating hard on her crossword, so Friday slid her chair back towards the window.

  Christopher raised the sash.

  ‘Hello,’ he wh
ispered. ‘Hello,’ whispered Friday. She wasn’t used to making small talk with boys, so she paused here.

  ‘Friday,’ said Mrs Cannon, ‘if you are going to talk to your friend, please hold a book in front of your face while you do it, in case the Vice Principal walks in.’

  Friday dutifully took her copy of Proust out of her bag and opened it to the page she was on.

  ‘Proust? Very impressive,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Oh, I’m not reading Proust,’ said Friday. ‘I just cut the cover off my copy of Swann’s Way and stuck it over a book on forensic psychology. I wouldn’t want Mrs Cannon to get in trouble if I was caught reading non-fiction in her class.’

  ‘I heard that you were the smartest girl in school,’ said Christopher. ‘I was wondering if you could help me. I’ve got to try to catch up with the academic standard here, particularly in geography. Would you be able to meet me some time to give me a few pointers?’

  ‘Keeping up with Mr Maclean’s class isn’t very hard,’ said Friday. ‘He barely knows anything about geography himself.’

  ‘He’s asking you out on a date,’ said Melanie, turning away from the window.

  Friday looked at Melanie, then at Christopher and then back at Melanie. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘What boy would want to catch up with academic work?’ asked Melanie.

  Friday looked at Christopher. He smiled at her. Friday felt alarmed by this unforseen situation.

  ‘I’ll get back to you,’ said Friday.

  ‘Okay,’ said Christopher with a smile.

  Friday slid the window shut. ‘Do you think there’s something wrong with him?’ she whispered.

  ‘There definitely is,’ said Ian from the far side of the room. ‘He’s a smarmy git for a start. All that fake smiling, it’s enough to make you sick.’

  ‘I would have thought that for you, it would be like looking in the mirror,’ said Friday.

  ‘Good one,’ chuckled Melanie. ‘They do both like to smoulder, don’t they? Although Christopher has more of a twinkly smoulder, whereas Ian’s smoulder is more broody.’

  ‘I’m not broody,’ argued Ian.

  ‘I meant in a nice way – broody like Byron,’ said Melanie, ‘not broody like a chicken.’

  ‘He’s coming!’ hissed Peregrine, the boy whose turn it was to sit by the window and watch out for the Vice Principal.

  Mrs Cannon got to her feet and started speaking loudly, ‘And so through his use of assonance, alliteration and bottom humour, Chaucer teaches us of the dangers of … oh, good morning, Vice Principal Dean.’

  The Vice Principal was standing in the doorway, watching the children suspiciously as they dutifully wrote notes in their books. ‘Is everyone behaving themselves here?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Cannon. ‘Such a wonderful class. Great lovers of literature.’

  The Vice Principal scanned the room. Everything was as it should be. Which was, of course, suspicious.

  ‘I’ve got my eye on you, Barnes,’ said the Vice Principal.

  ‘Me, sir?’ said Friday.

  ‘Yes, you,’ said the Vice Principal. ‘Just because the police didn’t have enough evidence, does not make you innocent in my eyes.’

  ‘You don’t believe in the fundamental tenant of our judicial system – the presumption of innocence?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Of course not!’ said the Vice Principal. ‘This is an elite private school. Brutal arbitrary punishment is our tradition. That’s the way it was in my day. And no-one was getting arrested for terrorism back then.’

  ‘Sir, since you’re here and it is our English class you’re interrupting,’ said Friday, ‘could I ask you a literary question?’

  ‘Me?’ asked the Vice Principal. ‘But I’m a maths teacher.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Friday. ‘Vice principals usually are. But I thought you could share your unique insight into the author of The Curse of the Pirate King, since you were here at school the same time as E.M. Dowell. Weren’t you in the year below him?’

  The Vice Principal went bright red. It was hard to tell whether it was from embarrassment or anger, but it was probably a combination of both. ‘I never had anything to do with that wastrel,’ he said. ‘Jumped-up little upstart. I don’t know why everyone makes such a fuss of him.’

  ‘Really? I thought he was a lovely boy,’ said Mrs Cannon. ‘Such a nice smile. Whereas all I remember of you, Vice Principal, was that you were terrible at spelling.’

  Chapter 9

  The Case of the Lying Roommate

  It was a slow and boring week. Friday and Melanie actually found themselves attending classes and doing homework. Friday was sitting in her dorm room, learning the effects of platypus venom for biology, when the door opened and Trea Babcock walked in.

  ‘I need your help,’ said Trea.

  Friday turned and glared at her roommate. ‘I thought you said you locked the door.’

  ‘Did I?’ said Melanie. ‘I probably thought I did at the time. That’s the problem with having Attention Surfeit Disorder – it’s hard to distinguish between what you know, what you think you know and simply what you think, I think.’ Melanie went back to gazing at the ceiling. This was her second favourite pastime after sleeping.

  Friday tipped back her green pork-pie hat and looked at her new client. Trea Babcock was a slim brunette in third form. She was not terribly nice. She never would have spoken to Friday under normal circumstances. Friday was curious. ‘How can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘I loaned Jacinta, my roommate, my calculator and she won’t give it back,’ said Trea, clearly distressed.

  ‘It’s just a calculator. Why don’t you buy another one?’ asked Friday.

  ‘I don’t want to say,’ said Trea. ‘I don’t want to incriminate myself.’

  ‘I’m not the police or the Headmaster,’ said Friday. ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘The calculator’s a model that is unacceptable under the school’s anti-technology rules,’ said Trea. ‘It’s wi-fi capable. I can use it to shop online.’

  ‘Your calculator can do online shopping?’ asked Friday.

  ‘It’s quite handy,’ said Trea. ‘You can tally up the purchases as you shop.’

  ‘So why not buy another one?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Duh,’ said Trea, ‘because I’d have to get it smuggled in via the swamp. That’s how I got the last one in.’

  ‘And how is that problematic?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Pedro, our family gardener, refuses to paddle Daddy’s dingy into the swamp again,’ said Trea. ‘He fell overboard last time. Then made such a fuss because he couldn’t swim.’

  ‘He could have drowned,’ said Friday.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Trea. ‘But Mirabella Peterson’s maid was smuggling in her hair-curling tongs on that same night. She pulled him out and knew all about CPR so he was fine.’

  ‘So why won’t Jacinta give your calculator back?’ asked Friday.

  ‘She says she doesn’t have it,’ said Trea. ‘I lent it to her last Thursday because she was doing her calculus homework and her calculator’s battery had gone flat. But today when I asked for it back, she was so busy doing her art project she didn’t even look up. She just said, “Sorry I don’t have it.”’

  ‘Then what did you say?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Trea. ‘Jacinta put her earbuds back in and kept doing her sculpture. So I did what any roommate would do.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ asked Friday. She was self-aware enough to know she did not think like a normal roommate.

  ‘I rifled through her things when she left for ballet class,’ said Trea. ‘But I couldn’t find it anywhere.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Friday, ‘I see.’ She turned to where Melanie was lying in a deeply relaxed meditative state on the bed. ‘Melanie, snap out of it. We need to go and investigate the scene of the crime.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Melanie. This was her response to
most things, even when they clearly weren’t okay.

  Friday gathered her notebook and Melanie gathered her thoughts as they got ready to leave.

  ‘So you agree it is a crime scene?’ said Trea excitedly. She was looking forward to an opportunity to denounce her roommate. She had three months’ worth of irritation built up about everything, from the way Jacinta left her dirty socks on the floor to the way she snored like a chainsaw when she had a cold.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Friday.

  ‘I know she’s still got it because Bronwyn Hanley saw Jacinta with it at lunchtime yesterday. She was in the library doing homework.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Melanie.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Jacinta was at hockey practice at lunchtime yesterday,’ said Melanie. ‘I was sitting in the dining room, staring out the window. I could see her running.’

  ‘Melly Pelly, you have a mind like a sieve,’ said Trea dismissively. ‘You must have confused her with someone else.’

  ‘No, I distinctly remember,’ said Melanie. ‘Because she fell in a hole on the field, and went over on her ankle, giving it a nasty twist.’

  ‘There was a hole in the field?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Yes, quite a large one,’ said Melanie. ‘Her foot completely disappeared up to the shin. It reminded me of that game you play when you’re little, where you don’t want to stand on the cracks in the pavement or a lion will get you.’

  ‘I always thought it was a crocodile,’ said Friday.

  ‘Definitely something large that will eat your leg,’ agreed Melanie. ‘Which is why Jacinta’s leg suddenly disappearing before my eyes made me think of it. They had to carry her off crying. It was very sad. But a good cautionary example of why you should never play sport.’

  Several minutes later, when they arrived at Trea’s room, Jacinta wasn’t there.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Trea. ‘You’ll be able to search her things.’

  ‘I have no intention of doing that,’ said Friday. ‘It would be an invasion of Jacinta’s privacy.’