Death in the Spotlight Read online

  Contents

  Maps

  CHARACTER LIST

  PART ONE: A TALE OF MORE WOE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  PART TWO: THE PLACE DEATH Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  PART THREE: THEY WILL MURDER THEE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART FOUR: STAR-CROSSED LOVERS Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  PART FIVE: DEATH LIES ON HER Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PART SIX: IN THE BOTTOM OF A TOMB Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  PART SEVEN: THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS HAVE VIOLENT ENDS Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Daisy’s Guide to the Rue Theatre

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgements

  About the Book

  Someone will take their final bow …

  Fresh from their adventure in Hong Kong, Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells are off to the Rue Theatre in London to face an entirely new challenge: acting.

  But danger has a nasty habit of catching up with the Detective Society, and it soon becomes clear that there is trouble afoot at the Rue. Jealousy, threats and horrible pranks quickly spiral out of control – and then a body is found. Now Hazel and Daisy must take centre stage and solve the crime … before the murderer strikes again.

  About the Author

  Robin was born in California and grew up in an Oxford college, across the road from the house where Alice in Wonderland lived. She has been making up stories all her life.

  When she was twelve, her father handed her a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and she realised that she wanted to be either Hercule Poirot or Agatha Christie when she grew up.

  She spent her teenage years at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, reading a lot of murder mysteries and hoping that she’d get the chance to do some detecting herself (she didn’t). She went to university, where she studied crime fiction, and then she worked at a children’s publisher.

  Robin is now a full-time author, and her books, The Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries and The Guggenheim Mystery, are both award-winning and bestselling. She lives in Oxford.

  Also by Robin Stevens:

  MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE

  ARSENIC FOR TEA

  FIRST CLASS MURDER

  JOLLY FOUL PLAY

  MISTLETOE AND MURDER

  A SPOONFUL OF MURDER

  Tuck-box sized mysteries:

  CREAM BUNS AND CRIME

  THE CASE OF THE MISSING TREASURE

  Based on an idea and characters by Siobhan Dowd:

  THE GUGGENHEIM MYSTERY

  To my father.

  Thank you for being so proud of me.

  Being an account of

  The Case of the Romeo and Juliet Murder, an investigation by the Wells and Wong Detective Society.

  Written by Hazel Wong (Detective Society Vice-President and Secretary), aged 14.

  Begun Sunday 24th May 1936.

  THE RUE THEATRE

  Frances Crompton – Owner of the Rue

  Theresa Johnson – Stage Manager of the Rue

  Inigo Leontes – Director at the Rue and actor, playing the role of Friar Lawrence

  Rose Tree – Actress, playing the role of Juliet

  Lysander Tollington – Actor, playing the role of Romeo

  Simon Carver – Actor, playing the role of Mercutio

  Martita Torrera – Actress, playing the role of Juliet’s Nurse

  Daisy Wells – Actress, playing the part of Rosaline and Paris’s Page, and President of the Detective Society

  Hazel Wong – Actress, playing the role of Potpan, and Vice-President and Secretary of the Detective Society

  Annie Joy – Dresser

  Jim Cotter – Stage Door

  UNCLE FELIX’S HOUSEHOLD

  Felix Mountfitchet – Daisy’s uncle

  Lucy Mountfitchet – Daisy’s aunt

  Bridget O’Connell – Felix and Lucy’s maid

  1

  My name is Hazel Wong, and I am a detective.

  When Daisy and I first began investigating, it simply did not seem possible that someone like me could detect mysteries. But now I cannot imagine my life without Daisy Wells and the Detective Society, without strange events and awful danger and horrid, heart-pounding surprises. There is always a moment, deep in the midst of a case, when I think that I never want to detect another one. But all the same, if more than a few months go by without a murder, or a theft, or a kidnapping, I begin to feel as though something is missing.

  Even by Detective Society standards, though, we are having a most exciting few weeks. We are proper members of a real London theatre company, and thus closer to being grown up than ever before – and, once again, we have found ourselves faced with a ghastly and shocking crime. I do feel almost like one of the heroines of Daisy’s mystery novels.

  Of course, a book heroine would not have a spot on her nose, she would not be so fond of cakes (I don’t much mind about this difference: in my opinion many book heroines do not eat nearly enough) and she would have no trouble remembering her lines in a play. I have fallen short in all three of these tests, and even Daisy, with her flawless skin and her flair for drama, loves cake. So it is clear that we are real, and really facing our seventh murder case. I remember a time when I was surprised we had even got to three.

  I ought to explain exactly how we came to be sitting in the dusty, greasepaint-smelling stalls of the Rue Theatre, while a large, blue-hatted policeman stamps about onstage and shouts at us all to sit tight and not go anywhere.

  Of course, the policeman is here today, and so are we, because of the corpse – which is not a pleasant thing to have to write. Dead bodies are always awful. They are my least favourite part of what Daisy and I do. Daisy is sometimes impatient with me when I say this. But, all the same, I am glad they do upset me. I do not think I would be as good a detective if I stopped caring about the victims. Murder matters, and bothering about it helps us solve each case.

  But this mystery properly began a few weeks ago, with Daisy’s Aunt Lucy and Uncle Felix. They are the reason why we are at the Rue, and it is funny to think that we were sent here to keep us out of detective trouble.

  ‘Ooh,’ Daisy has just hissed under her breath from the seat next to me. ‘Uncle Felix will be annoyed, won’t he? We were supposed to be safe from crimes here! Serve him right for treating us like children.’

  So she is thinking alon
g the same lines as I am, as usual.

  While we wait for the policeman to stop marching about and decide what to do next, I will explain all the steps leading up to the moment when the Detective Society came upon their seventh murder mystery.

  2

  Daisy and I might look like schoolgirls, but we have not been going to school very much lately. In January, my grandfather, my Ah Yeh, died. Daisy and I had to leave Deepdean School for Girls (where we are fourth formers), and rush to my home in Hong Kong to mourn him. By the time we came back to England, after all the awful adventures we faced in Hong Kong, it was the beginning of May, and we had missed not just the spring term but the beginning of the summer one too.

  I was expecting to be sent straight back to school, but it was decided that we needed a rest after so much upsetting excitement in Hong Kong. We would not go back to Deepdean until the second half of term began, on the first of June.

  I thought that we would go to Fallingford, Daisy’s house – but it was all shut up, as it usually is these days. Instead, we were sent to London, to stay with Daisy’s Uncle Felix and his new wife. We have been told to call the new Mrs Mountfitchet ‘Aunt Lucy’, and most of the time we remember.

  Uncle Felix is just the same as he ever was. He is a fascinating and quite unnerving person, tall and golden like Daisy, and extremely clever too. He has a monocle that he has a habit of screwing into place over his eye and peering at me through, and he has an immensely important and secret job that we are not supposed to know anything about.

  This job meant that, during the first week of our stay, he vanished for long stretches of time, returning quite unexpectedly to sweep us all out of the flat and into the glitter of London. He took us for afternoon tea at Brown’s, to a magic show and the theatre, and for dinner shockingly late, at eight or nine at night, in restaurants where laughter sparkled off the golden walls, and ladies daringly showed their shoulders in evening gowns. We sipped Robinsons squash from champagne glasses, and I felt quite worldly.

  While Uncle Felix was gone, we were left with Aunt Lucy. ‘I shall be your governess,’ she told us, mouth set firmly. ‘I have had practice, after all, and work is … quiet at the moment.’ Aunt Lucy’s work is as important as Uncle Felix’s, and quite as secret.

  I was expecting prim and proper instruction, like porridge for the mind. But I should not have been surprised that the lessons we were given turned out to be, once again, as unusual as Aunt Lucy herself, not like the starchy Deepdean hours of Latin and Deportment and the names of kings.

  Just after we arrived, Aunt Lucy found the notebook full of codes I have been practising (and trying to make Daisy practise), and the next day my desk was filled with more code books than I had ever thought existed.

  ‘Have a look at those,’ said Aunt Lucy, ‘and then begin to go through this exercise book. Solve what you can, and bring your work to me this afternoon.’

  ‘Dull!’ said Daisy, pushing them aside to perch on my desk, but I thought them quite marvellous. I lost myself in them for hours, far past the time I would have been brave enough to be seen studying anything at Deepdean, and only stopped when my brain was humming with numbers and symbols and languages.

  Daisy, meanwhile, was given a set of lessons that was quite different. She was taken into another room in the flat, filled with racks and racks of clothes and hats and wigs and drawers full of make-up. After an hour or two, a wrinkly old lady with wispy white curls and a pair of thick spectacles, bent over in a shawl, came shuffling back out, Aunt Lucy following behind her. The old lady stood by my desk, and in a creaky, wobbling voice said, ‘Hazel Wong! I have a message for you!’

  ‘I know it’s you, Daisy,’ I said to her. ‘I can see your shoes are the same.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know if you met me on the street!’ said the old lady in Daisy’s voice. ‘I do grant you the shoes, though. Bother.’

  Aunt Lucy smiled at me. ‘Good eyes, Hazel. You’re a natural. More practice needed, Daisy.’

  Daisy sighed impatiently, but I could see she was thrilled by Aunt Lucy’s unusual lessons – particularly because they were secret. There was an unspoken agreement between the three of us that Uncle Felix need not be informed about them. He is a very interesting uncle, but an uncle all the same, and he does not really approve of our detective adventures. Aunt Lucy, we could see, understood that being detectives was not a game to us. It was simply who we were.

  Still, it was Uncle Felix who had the final say while we lived with him – and Uncle Felix continued to want us far away from murder or mystery of any kind.

  And then George and Alexander came to visit for Daisy’s birthday party, during their Exeat weekend. Daisy has written up the case that we solved at the British Museum, so I do not need to mention it here – apart from the fact that it was very exciting, and it made Uncle Felix more worried than ever about us putting ourselves in danger.

  And that led to the reason why the Rue Theatre was suggested.

  3

  It was at breakfast on Monday morning, the eleventh of May, that we first heard of it. The maid, Bridget, had just brought in the toast and a pile of cryptic telegrams, neatly decoded in Bridget’s clear handwriting. In Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy’s house, everyone seems to have an interesting and secretive life, and Bridget is an interesting and secretive maid who does far more than just the cooking and the cleaning.

  Uncle Felix looked up from expertly slicing the bones out of a kipper and spoke to Aunt Lucy.

  ‘I’m glad you’re with the girls again this week,’ he said. ‘They need a steady influence. The very word aunt sounds sensible. I’m sure you’ve become more staid since you became one, Lucy dear.’ He winked at her over his kipper.

  ‘That’s nonsense!’ said Daisy crossly. ‘We don’t need a steady anything!’

  Uncle Felix avoided her glare and Aunt Lucy put down the telegram she had been handed.

  ‘That’s a lovely sentiment, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to oblige, Felix dear,’ she said. ‘Something urgent’s come up at work.’

  ‘What?’ said Uncle Felix sharply. ‘Nonsense – let me see!’

  Wordlessly, Aunt Lucy gave him the telegram and he read it.

  ‘Good grief!’ he said. ‘How inconvenient. You’re quite right. You’ll be out all week.’

  ‘Ooh, what’s happened?’ asked Daisy. ‘Is it awful?’

  ‘None of your business, niece,’ said Uncle Felix. ‘Lucy, what on earth shall we do? Could Bridget look after them?’

  ‘I’m not a nursemaid, Mr M.,’ said Bridget from the doorway. ‘And you know you asked me to watch those suspicious—’

  ‘Yes, ahem, quite so, I did,’ said Uncle Felix, frowning her into silence.

  ‘We shall be perfectly all right on our own!’ cried Daisy. ‘We can explore London properly at last. How exciting!’

  ‘You certainly shall NOT!’ said Uncle Felix.

  Aunt Lucy held up her hand. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a thought. Let me make a few telephone calls.’

  She murmured something to Uncle Felix and then went out into the hall. Twenty minutes later, she was back, looking serene.

  ‘Felix dear, you want the girls to be watched over in an enclosed space, do you not?’ she asked.

  Uncle Felix nodded.

  ‘And Daisy, you want excitement, don’t you?’

  ‘Naturally!’ said Daisy.

  ‘And Hazel, you love stories?’

  ‘Yes?’ I said cautiously.

  ‘Well then,’ said Aunt Lucy, ‘I think I have found the perfect solution for everyone. There’s a girl at work whose aunt is Frances Crompton, the owner of the Rue Theatre. Frances is putting on a new production of Romeo and Juliet, but with the flu that’s going round this spring she keeps on losing actors. All the usual bit-part players have been snapped up by other theatres – they can afford to pay better, and poor Frances is in a bit of a bind financially at the moment. Under the circumstances, I thought she might not mind looking after
two temporary cast members – for a small fee, of course. And she agreed.’

  ‘Lucy!’ said Uncle Felix. ‘Well, I suppose they’ll be looked after there, at least.’

  Daisy’s eyes were widening, and she looked from Aunt Lucy to Uncle Felix and back again. ‘What – us?’ she asked. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really, Daisy,’ said Aunt Lucy. ‘Have you heard of Frances Crompton?’

  ‘Of course I have!’ gasped Daisy. ‘Why, she’s famous! The Rue Theatre might be going through a difficult time, but it’s still quite the most important Shakespearean playhouse in the country!’

  ‘Excellent. So, how would you like to be in its new production?’

  ‘To go on the stage!’ cried Daisy rapturously, all her confusion and suspicion forgotten in a moment. ‘Goodness, how marvellous! Isn’t it marvellous, Hazel?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, gulping. ‘Oh, I …’

  I can’t think of anything worse was what I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. Daisy looked so shiningly excited that I tried to ignore the roaring black gulf that had opened up in my stomach.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased, Daisy,’ said Aunt Lucy, smiling. ‘A bit part in Romeo and Juliet!’

  ‘Aunt Lucy, I shall not have a bit part,’ said Daisy scornfully. ‘I shall be the star.’

  ‘Daisy dear, you could not be anything else,’ said Uncle Felix. ‘I suppose it is a neat solution for you. But what about Hazel?’

  ‘I shall be all right,’ I said, swallowing with difficulty.

  ‘I quite agree, Hazel,’ said Aunt Lucy. ‘You may not think yourself an actress, but I know better. You’ve been around Daisy for too long not to be able to pretend.’

  ‘Rude!’ cried Daisy. ‘You’ve only been married to Uncle Felix for five months and you’re already becoming far too much like him.’