Stevens - Arsenic For Tea: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery (A Wells and Wong Mystery)

Contents

Schoolgirl detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are at Daisys home, Fallingford, for the holidays. Daisys glamorous mother is throwing a tea party for Daisys birthday, and the whole family is invited, from eccentric Aunt Saskia to dashing Uncle Felix. But it soon becomes clear that this party isnt really about Daisy at all. Naturally, Daisy is furious.

Then one of their party falls seriously, mysteriously ill and everything points to poison.

With wild storms preventing anyone from leaving, or the police from arriving, Fallingford suddenly feels like a very dangerous place to be. Not a single person present is what they seem and everyone has a secret or two. And when someone very close to Daisy looks suspicious, the Detective Society must do everything they can to reveal the truth... no matter the consequences.

To Boadie and the MBs, with thanks for years of kindness and friendship and for giving Daisy her house.

Being an account of

The Case of Mr Curtis,
an investigation by the Wells and Wong Detective Society.

Written by Hazel Wong
(Detective Society Vice-President and Secretary), aged 13.

Begun Saturday 13th April 1935.

George Wells Lord Hastings

Margaret Wells (ne Mountfitchet) Lady Hastings

Saskia Wells Aunt of Lord Hastings

Felix Mountfitchet Brother of Lady Hastings

Albert Bertie Wells Son of Lord and Lady Hastings

Daisy Wells Daughter of Lord and Lady Hastings and President of the Detective Society

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

Chapman Butler to the Wells family

Mrs Doherty Cook and housekeeper to the Wells family

Hetty Maid to the Wells family

Toast Dog

Millie

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 doesnt 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 wouldnt be a proper member of the Detective Society if I didnt but no matter how hard I try, I cant 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 Societys 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 Societys 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 doesnt 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 Daisys house, Fallingford, for the Easter holidays and her birthday.

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 Kittys Bed.

I was expecting Fallingford to be just as calm. Fallingford, for this new casebook, is Daisys 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 Lennoxs 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. Daisys 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 Daisys grandmother from the King, and Daisy dog-ears the first-edition books in the library. Nothing is younger than Daisys father, and it makes my familys glossy white wedding-cake compound in Hong Kong look as if it is only pretending to be real.