The sister in the dark

Chapter 4

Oh my god. I completely forgot that my sister had taken her jewellery box with her. And because she left all of her things to me in her will, It's now mine. All the expensive necklaces and bracelets and earrings in the velvet cloth bags and the little engraved wooden boxes. All mine. I can hardly believe it.

I carefully flick the cold brass latches on the box up and gently lift the lid to reveal her priceless selection of expensive gems set onto silver chains...

Wait. The box is unoccupied. Only a small silk bag is inside, probably empty. No. This can't have happened. My sister has been burgled, and the only other person in this room to have the opportunity is...

Olivia Graham, her roommate. I will kill you, Olivia. Mark my words.

But just in case, I open the little silk bag and there inside is a folded up piece of paper, folded up so small that it could easily be hidden from anyone wanting to steal it, and I begin to wonder, for the first time, if my sister's jewellery box was actually stolen from or not. It doesn't look like it.

I open the letter and begin to read.

If you aren't Evelyn Rose Hyde, put this right back where you found it or else there will be consequences! And that includes you, Olivia Niamh Graham!

Dear sister,

I hope that nobody has found this before you do, or else there will be no hope of justice. Use your brain, Evelyn, in the next few weeks. And I don't mean academically, I mean in the search for the truth. The truth about me. And until you uncover the full truth, you must not share these riddles with anyone except a girl in your class, and her name is Hirah Khalil. You can trust her, and ONLY her. Do not let Olivia find this box. She is untrustworthy, a sneak, and the best friend of Charlotte Grosse, the girl who went missing with me. But I suppose I am dead now, so I can't influence your decisions, I have to let you make your own choices, however stupid they may be.

Now go and find Hirah Khalil, and say this one word to her: Steeple. She will understand, for she has a letter left in the place she always used to hide her secret stash of food and sweets. So go now and meet her in the common room downstairs.

Stay safe.

Rose Evelyn Hyde

The letter leaves me strangely emotional. In a warm kind of way. But I can't stay here, not when there is someone to talk to. Someone else who knows. Someone else who wants justice in the same way that I do.

I walk down the stairs to the common room, but not before hiding the jewellery box back inside the wardrobe's false bottom. If Olivia finds it, then I am toast. The common room is much nicer than I first thought. There is a fire burning in the hearth, a few sofas and armchairs draped in blankets but what made my jaw really drop open was... a fifteen inch television! I look around for the girl named Hirah, but since Rose had given me no clue on where to find her except that she would be in here with the other students, and while I am staring uselessly around the room, a girl walks through the door. I look at her for a moment until she spots me, and I think I see recognition sparking behind her eyes.

"Steeple," I whisper, and she nods.

"Come outside," she whispers back.

Hirah takes me across the front of the school, where children are still hopping out of cars and kissing their parents goodbye. Then she leads me through the trees and past a chapel, down to a stream and across a wooden bridge then through an orchard to a circle of statues.

"This is where I met your sister," she sighs, "Standing behind that statue."

I smile at the thought of my sister hiding behind something to scare somebody.

"And um... Evelyn," stammers Hirah, "I think you need to know this. I was the one to find the body... and it wasn't Rose's. She and Charlotte looked quite a lot like each other and..."

"Wait," I interrupt, "Are you saying that Rose might still be alive?"