St. Mallory's Forever!

37 HELEN: Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the candlestick.

So, I went to the Library last night, but Xuan wasn't there, or if she was, I didn't see her. Hardly surprising, since that place is one huge maze, but I asked the librarian and she hadn't seen Xuan either.

I took a look around myself while I was there. After locating the music section — third from the door, bottom two shelves as far as the window, with Mozart on the one above — I began to pile books on a desk if they looked like they might be helpful. At first I seemed to be on the right track, but then I began to notice gaps.

The librarian, a lovely lady called Miss Grace— who looks a bit like how I imagined Miss Honey from Matilda, don't ask why — couldn't tell me where they'd gone. She was jabbing fingers at the keyboard on her desk and staring at the screen with a puzzled expression. "No-one's booked them out," she said. "They're not the sort of books you take back to your dorm for light reading, are they? Perhaps... Oh, there's a reservation code next to them. A staff member."

"A staff member?" My mind raced. Perhaps Mum was more interested in this matter than she was letting on, and was doing some research of her own. I ventured, "Not my Mum by any chance?"

Miss Grace looked at me. "Data protection. I can't tell you that, Helen. I'm not sure the staff would want the students knowing what they were reading in their spare time."

"Mu — sorry, Mrs. Stroud would be the logical suspect," I said. "She is head of the music department after all."

Miss Grace looked at the screen again. "Sorry, Helen. It's not Mrs. Stroud, just to save you a journey. The code is for the ancillary staff, not the teaching staff."

"The Bursar," I said without thinking.

Miss Grace stared at me. "How on earth did you know that?"

I didn't, I thought to myself, But I do now. I shrugged and said, "He was the first ancillary staff member that sprang to mind."

Fortunately Miss Grace seemed satisfied with this explanation. She padded quietly back to her desk, her very way of walking perfect for a library, and I went back to the music section and began to flick through the books I had set to one side. As I'd suspected, they weren't exactly what I was looking for (a hardcore biography of Nils would have been helpful, but not really the sort of thing school libraries stock).

I also had a thick volume on musical forgery, since I wasn't ruling that out, but I can't get my head around some fantastically skilled forger going to all that trouble and then putting the wrong date on it.

I wrote notes for about an hour, because I didn't want them linked to me in the system in case the Bursar started asking questions. Then I had the fright of my life.

I happened to look up, at a gap in the shelves, and saw a face looking back at me from the other side. As you can imagine, I stood up and pushed my chair back with a noisy squeal that made a Sixth Former in the next aisle squawk, and the face disappeared.

A face I knew all too well.

The Bursar.

So there it was. Conclusive proof he was spying on me. He'd been caught red-handed.

He must have thought the same thing, so instead of disappearing, knowing I'd report to Mum, he tried to brave it out, coming around the bookshelves and into the music section. "I apologise if I scared you, Helen," he said. "I was trying to see who was sitting there and you happened to look up."

Yeah, right. And if I hadn't looked up, you would have carried on spying on me.

That's what I was thinking, but I didn't dare to say a word. I moved closer to the desk and put my hand surreptitiously over the title of the book so he wouldn't see what I was researching. Though I strongly suspect he already knew.