Murder Most Unladylike: A Wells and Wong Mystery by Robin Stevens Page B

swallow it down as quickly as possible and say ‘Delicious!’ at the end of it.)
    Lavinia passed over the tin. ‘Tongue is nice with chocolate cake,’ she said as she did so. ‘You wouldn’t think it would be, but it is. You should try it.’
    ‘I like it on biscuits,’ said Kitty, munching. ‘Daisy, what are we doing for a prank?’
    ‘Ah,’ said Daisy, ‘well. That’s been taken care of already. At this very moment there’s a nice cold bucket of water balanced above the washroom door. It’ll give the other third-form dorm a nice surprise tomorrow morning when they go for their showers!’
    We all giggled appreciatively. The other dorm had taken to leaping up as soon as the wake-up bell rang and hogging the showers just so they could be down at breakfast first and get dorm points from Matron for promptness. It was odious of them and we had all been dying to get them back for it.
    ‘We ought to do something else, though,’ said Kitty. ‘Right now. Otherwise it’s not a proper midnight feast.’
    ‘If only it was last year,’ said Daisy offhandedly. ‘Remember all those creepy things we used to do? Of course they were quite silly really, and we couldn’t do them now , but—’
    ‘Oh, but why not?’ cried Kitty. ‘We could try levitating Beanie again – remember when we did that?’
    ‘Oh no,’ wailed Beanie. ‘Why is it always me who’s the one being levitated? I hate it—’
    ‘Because you’re the littlest, Beans,’ said Lavinia. ‘And besides, it’s such fun when you squeal.’
    ‘Well, I won’t do it,’ said Beanie, trying to be firm. ‘I won’t. You can’t make me.’
    ‘You know,’ said Kitty, ‘I’ve still got that old Ouija board in the bottom of my tuck box. We could have a go with that, if you like.’
    ‘Oh no,’ gasped Beanie, ‘not a séance, please. It gives me the creeps.’
    ‘Then you oughtn’t to have said no to the levitating, Beanie,’ said Lavinia. ‘Kitty, get out the board.’
    ‘Oh please,’ wailed Beanie. ‘Please no!’
    ‘Shh!’ said Kitty. ‘You’ll wake Matron!’
    They both quietened down at once. Nobody wanted to have the midnight feast ruined by an angry Matron.
    Daisy, I noticed, had taken no part in this. She was sitting back on her heels watching the argument. As I knew perfectly well, this meant that she was Up To Something.
    Kitty went rooting through her tuck box, and after a minute or so gave a satisfied cry. Her Ouija board is from our Spiritualist Society days. It is just a bit of red cardboard, really, with black curly letters and numbers painted on it; and a yellow eye in the very middle of the board where the sharp triangular counter rests at the beginning. I always hated that eye, which glares up from the board as though it is watching you. To be truthful, I feel quite the same as Beanie about séances, although I never let on to Daisy about it.
    Anyway, Daisy balanced her torch on her knees, so that its light fell onto the board, and we all rested our fingers on the counter, as you are supposed to. For a while, nothing happened. I listened to us all breathing, and stared and stared at the counter until the painted eye beneath it seemed to glow up at me.
    Then, all at once, the counter moved. Kitty gave a little squeal, and quite a few of us jumped, so the counter jiggled about and the torchlight jolted.
    ‘I don’t like it,’ Beanie whispered as we all watched the counter begin to slide upwards. ‘I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t—’
    ‘Shut it, Beanie,’ hissed Lavinia fiercely, and Beanie was silent. The counter gave a little jump and came to rest over the letter H.
    ‘H!’ said Daisy. ‘Something at last! Quick, Hazel, write it down!’
    I sat back and snatched up my casebook, very glad to look away from that eye.
    H , I wrote.
    Meanwhile, the counter had moved left, to E, and was now on its way right again. I barely needed to wait for it to stop – L, of course. But then, just as I was about