Death Sets Sail Read online

  Contents

  Part One: Towards Zero Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two: Appointment with Death Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Three: The Secret Adversary Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Four: Taken at the Flood Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Five: Cards on the Table 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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Six: Death Comes as the End Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Seven: Curtain Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Amina’s Guide to Egypt

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgements

  A Q&A with Robin Stevens

  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 are both award-winning and bestselling. She lives in Oxford.

  Also available by Robin Stevens:

  MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE

  ARSENIC FOR TEA

  FIRST CLASS MURDER

  JOLLY FOUL PLAY

  MISTLETOE AND MURDER

  A SPOONFUL OF MURDER

  DEATH IN THE SPOTLIGHT

  TOP MARKS FOR 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 mother, Kathie Booth Stevens, my heroine

  Being an account of

  The Case of the Death on the Nile, an investigation by the Wells and Wong Detective Society, with assistance from the Junior Pinkertons.

  Written by Hazel Wong

  (Detective Society Vice-President), aged 15.

  Begun Wednesday 23rd December 1936.

  Character List

  THE DETECTIVES

  Daisy Wells – the Wells & Wong Detective Society

  Hazel Wong (Wong Fung Ying) – the Wells & Wong Detective Society

  Amina El Maghrabi – the Wells & Wong Detective Society

  Alexander Arcady – the Junior Pinkertons

  George Mukherjee – the Junior Pinkertons

  THE SS HATSHEPSUT

  Mr Mustafa Mansour – the manager of the SS Hatshepsut

  Vincent Wong (Wong Lik Han) – Hazel’s father

  Rose Wong (Wong Ngai Ling, also known as Ling Ling) – Hazel’s half-sister

  May Wong (Wong Mei Li, also known as Monkey) – Hazel’s half-sister

  Pik An – Rose’s maid (also maid to May on this journey)

  Miss Adeline Beauvais – Amina’s governess

  Mr Joseph Young – Alexander and George’s tutor

  Ahmed – a sailor, member of the SS Hatshepsut’s crew

  Mrs Theodora Miller – the leader of the Breath of Life Society and the reincarnation of Hatshepsut

  Hephzibah “Heppy” Miller – member of the Breath of Life Society and Theodora’s adopted daughter

  Daniel Miller – ex-member of the Breath of Life Society and Theodora’s adopted son

  Miss Ida Doggett – member of the Breath of Life Society and the reincarnation of Cleopatra

  Miss Rhiannon Bartleby – member of the Breath of Life Society and the reincarnation of Nefertiti

  Mr Narcissus DeWitt – member of the Breath of Life Society and the reincarnation of Thutmose III

  Joshua Morse – ex-member of the Breath of Life

  Society

  FALLINGFORD

  Rebecca ‘Beanie’ Martineau – the Wells & Wong Detective Society

  Kitty Freebody – the Wells & Wong Detective Society

  Lavinia Temple – the Wells & Wong Detective Society

  Bertie Wells – Daisy’s brother

  Harold Mukherjee – George’s brother

  Chapman – the Wellses’ butler

  Hetty – the Wellses’ maid

  Mrs Doherty – the Wellses’ housekeeper

  Toast Dog – a dog

  Millie – a dog

  1

  This is an account of the last murder mystery the Detective Society will ever solve together.

  My name is Hazel Wong, and I am heartbroken. I used to think that nothing could ever change, not really, not with my best friend Daisy and me. The rest of the world could spin out of true and smash like a Christmas bauble on the floor, but still nothing would be able to touch us. We were Wells and Wong, after all. We were the Detective Society, and we always came out on top.

  But I see now that I got caught in the trick of thinking like Daisy. Her voice in my head and my own have become so mixed up by now that I hardly know which is which unless I pause to think about it, and I never wanted to pause, not about this. And, besides, Daisy promised me – she promised—

  I ought to be grown-up enough now to know that promises can be broken, that no one is safe, and that the myth of Daisy Wells, the girl who can walk through mortal danger without even a scratch on her cheek, is only that. A myth.

  I am beginning this account on the day before Christmas Eve, at Daisy’s home, Fallingford. The last time I was here for Christmas, there were enormous fires in every hearth, a gorgeously lit tree that stretched all the way up beside the great central staircase, and plates and plates of mince pies, carried spiced and steaming from the kitchen by the Wellses’ maid, Hetty. But this Christmas is quite different. The house is cold, and somehow still dark, no matter how many lamps and candles Chapman and Hetty light. Mrs Doherty, the cook, has burned the mince pies, and even the dogs look miserable. My littlest sister, May, tries to feed them biscuits, but they ignore her, so she shouts at them.

  ‘I think I hate English Christmas,’ says my other sister, Rose, and I agree with her. />
  But it isn’t England I want to write about now, it’s Egypt: the wide light of it, the sparks of sun off the Nile, the hum and churn of our cruise ship moving under my feet – and Daisy. From the moment we stepped into the cabin and saw the blood, I thought that this was just another exciting adventure, another puzzle to solve, but I see now how wrong I was. I have held off writing up this case, but now, finally, I want to go back over those last days – our last murder mystery – to be with her again.

  Perhaps that way I can bring Daisy back to life.

  2

  I suppose it all began during the autumn term at Deepdean. Daisy and I were fifth formers now, which sounds dreadfully grown-up and shiny with promise – only the reality was as misty and confusing as the English autumn weather.

  Our fellow Detective Society members were out of sorts, and it was not hard to see why. Our friend Beanie’s mother was still sickening by the day, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. We realized, once the initial shocking discovery in the summer term had passed, that there really are no words in the English language to explain how sorry you feel, and that grief, outside books, is far less dramatic and far more exhausting than you are led to expect.

  ‘I don’t want you to pity me,’ said Beanie fiercely. ‘Don’t LOOK at me like that!’ And so we all had to pretend that we did not see her becoming thinner and thinner until her big eyes stared out of her face like carriage lamps.

  We all had to be very careful where mothers were concerned. Kitty had to bite off her complaining about her mother expecting a baby (‘It’ll be as dreadful as Binny! Worse, I expect!’) whenever Beanie came into the dorm, and Lavinia threw away the thoughtful notes accompanying the beautifully wrapped packets of sweets and cakes from her stepmother, Patricia, so that Beanie would not see them.

  Daisy, of course, was utterly Daisy about it all. She was the only one of us who really did forget most of the time that Beanie even had a mother. She threw herself back into lacrosse, and riding, and working creative mistakes into her essays – and she threw herself, with a vengeance, back into our quarrel with the other dorm, especially Amina El Maghrabi.

  At first I was surprised at this. I had thought that, after the events of the summer term, we had agreed to be friends with Amina – and Amina was certainly being friendly to us. She waved at us in the corridors, she chattered to us at dinner and she waited so we could walk up to House together. Oddly, this meant that we spent far more time with Clementine Delacroix than we ever had before and, to my astonishment, I discovered that she was not as bad as I had always assumed. And I liked Amina very much – she was funny and clever and bold. I was determined to treat her kindly, for I knew how hard it was for anyone who did not look like the perfect English miss at Deepdean.

  So I could not understand why Daisy met every one of her kind overtures with a snub. I was cross with Daisy over it, and rather embarrassed – and one morning, during the third week of term, I apologized to Amina at the breakfast table, while Daisy glared at us over a slice of toast.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ said Amina. ‘She doesn’t mean it, do you, Daisy?’ and she winked at Daisy as she licked jam off her thumb.

  ‘HARDLY!’ said Daisy nonsensically, and spots of colour appeared high up on her cheeks.

  And I ought to have seen it then; only I did not.

  I didn’t see it when Amina passed Daisy notes in lessons, and Daisy tore them up and crushed them beneath the heel of her shoe. I didn’t see it when Amina asked Daisy what she thought of her Sunday dress and Daisy told her, with a furious flush on her face, that she looked like an utter horror.

  I didn’t see it until I woke in the middle of one night during the fifth week of term to a tiny rustling, barely even a noise. A year ago, I would have slept through it, but my detective senses have been honed, and now I was alert at once. I kept my eyes carefully half-lidded, my breathing slow, and peered through my lashes to see Daisy sitting up in bed. As I watched, she swung her feet down, cat-light, to press them gently against the dorm-room floor. There had been no Detective Society meeting scheduled – there was no case at all: the term had been quite crime free – so I could not think what she was up to. I made sure I did not move until she had slipped away to the window, and only sat up myself when I heard the squeak of the sash rising, then the gentle patter of feet and hands moving up the drainpipe.

  I got up and crept across the dorm – although Daisy might not admit it, I have learned to move as quietly as her, and none of the others woke up – to stand by the window. I waited, peering after her, until she rolled over the lip of the roof high above me, and then I reached out my hands and climbed carefully upwards. These days I am good at that as well.

  At last I pulled myself onto the slope of the roof. There was Daisy, crouched in the shadow of the eaves, the gold of her hair covered with a dark scarf. She was staring round a corniced chimney pot, as fierce as an owl, at something on the other side. I crept up behind her, holding my breath, putting one foot in front of the other as soft as silk.

  ‘Hazel,’ said Daisy, not turning round. ‘How dare you?’

  ‘How did you know it was me?’ I hissed, startled. ‘And – what are you doing? Why did you creep off without me? Are you on a case?’

  ‘Shush!’ said Daisy. ‘I always know when it’s you. You’d always know it was me, wouldn’t you?’

  I was level with her now. I peeped over her shoulder to see what she was looking at, and—

  ‘Daisy,’ I said, ‘why are you watching Amina?’

  For there Amina was, leaning on a roof peak twenty paces away, with her legs tucked under her, reading a book by torchlight. She had not noticed us – she seemed in a world of her own.

  ‘She’s behaving suspiciously,’ whispered Daisy. ‘She’s a possible danger! Hazel, I—’

  I saw it, then, the thing I should have all along. I knew, though, that I could not confront Daisy about it. Not yet.

  ‘No, she isn’t,’ I said. ‘She’s not a danger at all! You – you’re just looking for a mystery to solve this term, and you know there isn’t one.’

  It wasn’t the truth, of course.

  ‘Humph!’ said Daisy crossly. ‘There might be, Hazel! Constant vigilance.’

  ‘I think you might be too vigilant in this case,’ I said. I marvelled at my boldness. I was teasing Daisy Wells!

  ‘Hazel, you are not amusing. But – oh, I grant you, there’s nothing doing here. I just want a distraction! Everyone is being so mopey.’

  ‘Because of Beanie’s mother!’ I said. ‘Not everything is a fascinating mystery, Daisy. Some things are just sad. Now can we go back to bed before we freeze?’ It was almost November, and the night was flinchingly cold. Amina had a blanket, and Daisy her scarf, but I was in nothing but my regulation pyjamas.

  ‘All right,’ said Daisy. ‘But – oh, if only something interesting would happen!’

  So it felt like an answer to all of our problems when Amina came up to us after Latin a few days later and said, ‘I’ve just had a letter from my parents. How would you feel about Christmas in Egypt?’

  3

  Daisy, of course, pretended to be quite uninterested.

  ‘We shall have to see,’ she said coolly to Amina.

  ‘Thank you!’ I added over my shoulder, as Daisy rushed me away back to the dorm.

  ‘You shouldn’t be thanking her!’ Daisy hissed at me, her cheeks suddenly pink with excitement. ‘We may be too busy to go, after all.’

  ‘No, we won’t!’ I said. ‘It’s Egypt, Daisy! You’ve always wanted to see it!’

  ‘Humph!’ said Daisy, the crinkle appearing at the top of her nose. ‘I – well—’

  ‘Mummies,’ I said. ‘Pyramids. Tutankhamun. There are plenty of mysteries in Egypt!’

  I saw Daisy’s eyes sparkle despite herself. ‘I shall have to ask Uncle Felix,’ she said. ‘He might say no.’

  ‘Of course he won’t!’ I said. It is true that Uncle Felix is careful where D
aisy is concerned – she is his only niece, and he is fierce about protecting her – but it was also a fact that Daisy and I had helped Uncle Felix and his wife, Aunt Lucy, by solving a problem during the summer holidays. He owed us.

  ‘We shall have to get new clothes,’ said Daisy. ‘Our ones from Hong Kong will be too small. And what about your father?’

  Truly, I was most worried about my father’s reaction – but, when I telephoned him the next day, his voice sounded enthusiastic underneath the hiss of the line.

  ‘What an opportunity!’ he said. ‘Hazel, I know I promised to come and visit you in England this Christmas, but what if we all met in Egypt instead? The history, the culture – it would be wonderfully improving for you all.’

  I heard other-side-of-the-world shrieks at that and I imagined my father in his study, my little sisters dancing round him as their maids, Pik An and Ah Kwan, tried to pull them away.

  ‘Really?’ I asked, hardly able to believe it. ‘Really – I can go?’

  ‘Of course, my Hazel. We can all go.’

  Daisy too came away from her telephone call beaming. ‘Uncle Felix said yes,’ she told me. ‘He – oh, Hazel, I think we’re going to Egypt!’

  We clung to each other in the shabby House hallway, fizzing with delight – and, after that, Daisy gave up the pretence.

  She bubbled over with Egypt, pharaohs and curses and floods. She did her prep in double-quick time so she could gaze at fat, cloth-bound books about Nile exploration parties and the Carter expedition to unearth Tutankhamun. ‘There were female pharaohs, you know,’ she told me, eyes gleaming. ‘Women ruled all of Egypt! Hatshepsut reigned for fifteen years and she wore a false beard so men would accept her. Just imagine! D’you think I’d look good in a beard?’