St. Mallory's Forever!

38 XUAN: Agatha Christie, eat your heart out!

XUAN:Agatha Christie, eat your heart out!

The bursar did it. The butler must be on sick leave.

I knew there was something peculiar going on last night — not least because I didn't see Helen anywhere, even after supper at yet another miserably over-long House meeting which mostly consisted of Abby pleading for a volunteer goalkeeper. As if anyone was ever going to oblige her. You only volunteer to be goalie in lacrosse if you have a death wish.

Helen reappeared this morning, and demanded an urgent meeting of her fellow sleuths. As in urgent. Given her absence the previous evening (she was still AWOL when the rest of us turned out the lights) we huddled together in a quiet corner, hoping it would be some exciting development in the mystery of the missing music mistress, but expecting it to be something silly like she had sneaked into her mum's room overnight in defiance of school rules.

Helen didn't disappoint. I know you won't believe this but someone locked her in the library overnight and then stole her investigation notes. I kid thee not. And while she didn't actually see him do it, all the evidence points to the Bursar.

Well, there are worse places to spend a night than a library, even if said library is large enough to house more than one bull-headed minotaur. We already know there's a note-stealing gremlin in there.

Don Pedro and I went back to said library this morning in our solitary free period after English, under the pretence of doing extra reading on Twelfth Night, and we had another hunt for Helen's notes. I'm not saying we disbelieved her, but we figured she'd fallen asleep in there and then woke in the early hours, which must have been disorientating, so maybe they were still there.

But (surprise, surprise!) they really were gone. I even went to check Lost Property at the Don's request. Still nothing. Whoever it was did indeed take the notes while Helen was asleep, and they also had keys to the library.

Enter Poirot, stage left.

Helen's convinced it was the Bursar, and to be honest I'm inclined to believe her. Especially as it was Fireman Sam himself who had come in at supper the previous evening and told us Helen would be late as she was re-arranging some of her music lessons down in the music block. Apparently he had "met her on the way" and remarked on the time. (Insert montage of shifty-eyed looks here.) And we of course fell right into the trap, repeating the story to the other staff as fact when they came head counting.

That's really got my goat this morning. Finding out I'd been conned by the Bursar.

And no, for the benefit of my fellow foreign readers out there in Blogland, I haven't got a goat. That's just another of those crazy idioms the Brits use for no even remotely conceivable reason.

Anyway we now know Helen was nowhere near the music block last night. She was locked in the library by our very own Colonel Mustard. No revolvers, daggers, lead piping or candlesticks involved.

So the game is definitely still afoot, as Sherlock would say, and we need to get our little grey cells going, to borrow a misquote from Poirot. I'm not sure if catch-phrases are actually compulsory for detectives, but they all seem to have them. Although Kojak's "Who loves ya, baby" never struck me as very helpful in tracking down the bad guys.

Anyway, to sum up, Don Pedro and I are still on the hunt for more information about the Nils piece, and Abby's promised she'll raid her local library when she goes home over the weekend — she garbled something about a much-maligned supper and a need to get away from lacrosse for a few hours. The house competition is in two days, and she's going mental.

She's still looking for a goalie, too. And for some reason she looks straight at me whenever she mentions it.

When pigs fly, Abigail. When. Pigs. Fly.