A Girl, a Murder, and Twelve Dreadful Children

Chapter VI: A Sticky Situation

Now produce your explanation, and pray make it improbable. -- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Parents everywhere knew only too well that when they really needed children to behave well, children tended to behave terribly. Dani spent the entirety of her visit in a state of nervous panic. Were the children about to do something dreadful? Would they start a food fight, or break a cup, or have one of their screaming arguments?

Luckily, none of that happened. But it didn't stop Dani worrying.

Samantha remained blissfully ignorant of her guest's dreads. She poured tea for Dani and the older children, was kind enough to get juice for the younger children, and brought out a box full of sweets.

Children were rarely going to cause trouble when they were busy eating sweets. Dani mentally praised Samantha's wisdom in this course of action.

The other woman needed no prompting to begin talking about her murdered friend. "It was the most shocking thing! There we all were, in the middle of a lecture, and never suspecting what was happening at home!"

"How dreadful," Dani agreed sympathetically. "Have they still not caught the murderer?"

Samantha shook her head and looked around as if she expected to see the killer lurking somewhere in her living room. "No, but I know who did it."

Dani's ears pricked up at this. So did the children's, as she would have seen if she had only been looking at them.

"Who was it?" Dani asked. Then she realised this might sound too much like a detective questioning a suspect. So she added, "Do you think it's an ex-boyfriend? The things they do are unbelievable!"

What was especially unbelievable for her was that she was having this conversation in front of the children. But she could hardly say so.

"Dear me, no," Samantha said. "Courtney never had a serious boyfriend before she met her fiancé, and he was at uni in Belfast when she died."

Dani took a mental note of this information. It might prove useful later. "And she hadn't argued with anyone recently?"

Samantha shook her head sadly. "Everyone seemed to get on well with her. We can't understand why anyone would do this."

That hardly indicated anything. Many, many people were disliked while they lived, but the minute they were dead everyone remembered them as being saints. Perhaps people thought it wasn't good form to speak ill of someone who could no longer defend themselves. Or perhaps they had some superstitious dread of a supernatural retribution. Dani didn't know, and didn't particularly care. But it made investigations very difficult.

"She was so good-natured," Samantha continued. Dani had heard people say that about some of the most ill-tempered people imaginable. "And so kind." That had been said about some of cruel bastards. "And so generous to everyone." A phrase often used in obituaries to refer to stingy misers.

How was anyone to work out the truth about a dead person when there were so many conflicting interpretations they could put on the words used to describe them?

"I was surprised to hear she talked about me a lot," Dani said. "I wouldn't have thought I would stick in her memory."

Samantha shrugged. "We were surprised too. Most people don't remember kids who were years below them in school."

Finally, Dani thought. A statement in this conversation that I know is true.

"But she talked about, er, the ordeal you endured." Samantha winced as she spoke and looked everywhere except at Dani.