Here is a list of the Deepdean masters and mistresses. One of them must have murdered our Science mistress Miss Bell. But which of them did it? Miss Bell – our Science mistress, and the victim. We always thought she was quite dull, in her buttoned-up white lab coat. She was not a beauty, and, even worse, she was poor. But somehow she has ended up murdered. Who could have done it, and why?

Miss Hopkins – our Games mistress. She is round and relentlessly cheerful and she marches about the school corridors brandishing a hockey stick, her athletic brown hair always coming down from its fashionable clipped-back waves. She and Miss Bell were fighting over The One – did she kill Miss Bell because of it?

Miss Tennyson – our English mistress. If you’ve seen that painting of the Lady of Shalott drooping in her boat, you have seen Miss Tennyson. Her hair is always down round her face, and she is as drippy as underdone cake. Like Miss Lappet, she wants to become Deputy Headmistress – but could she have killed Miss Bell to get the job?

Miss Parker – our Maths mistress. Miss Parker is truly ferocious, with chopped-short black hair and a furious voice that comes bellowing out of her tiny body like a foghorn. She used to live with Miss Bell, but they had a falling-out. She gets into the most terrible rages – might she have murdered Miss Bell during one of them?

Mr Reid, ‘The One’ – our Music and Art master. He has rugged cheekbones and a dashing moustache, and he looks exactly like a film star. Half of the school is in love with him – and Miss Bell and Miss Hopkins were fighting over him. Did he kill Miss Bell because of it?

Miss Lappet – our History and Latin mistress. She is grey and useless and shaped like an overstuffed cushion, but she thinks she is Miss Griffin’s most trusted adviser. She wants to become Deputy Headmistress – but could she have killed Miss Bell to get the job?

Miss Griffin – our Headmistress. It is impossible to imagine Deepdean school without Miss Griffin, or Miss Griffin without Deepdean. If the school was a person, it would wear Miss Griffin’s neat swooped-back grey hair and immaculate Harris tweed. We do admit that she seems an unlikely suspect.

Mr MacLean – our old Reverend. He wears filthy, egg-stained jackets, his hair is greasy, and in Prayers he leers at us over the lectern. He certainly looks a bit like a murderer. Could he really be one?

Mademoiselle Renauld, ‘Mamzelle’ – our French mistress. She is very dramatic-looking, and her French accent is very stong. She does not seem to have a motive – but is this just a ruse?

Hazel