The Top Secret Diary of Davina Dupree (8 page)

Carrie rushed over and gave me the biggest hug. She was trembling. She hugged Arabella, then turned to look at Pike and Croaka, who were now both handcuffed and surrounded by burly, serious policemen. Pike still looked scared while Croaka looked fuming mad.

‘You two ought to be ashamed of yourselves,’ she said sternly. ‘Deceiving pupils and teachers, then trying to rob the nation of its art. You should have chosen an honest career like the rest of us. I remember now where I’ve heard your names, why they sounded familiar when young Davina first told me about you. You’ve stolen works of art from galleries and museums around the world, haven’t you? I remember seeing you on the news. The newsreader said you were two of the most wanted criminals in the world.’

‘Yes, I think we’ll have quite a few high up police officers from all over the globe on the phone when news of this arrest gets out,’ said a big, red man. He must have been an important policeman because all other ones kept asking him questions. He turned to look at me and Arabella. ‘Apologies for not believing you when you phoned.’ He spoke gruffly and looked a bit embarrassed. ‘It was me you spoke to. You’ve both done a sterling job, helping to catch this man and woman. There’ll always be a job here waiting for you on the force for when you’re older – you’ve already proven yourselves fine detectives.’

‘Thank you. But hang on a minute, did you say
man
and a woman?’ I asked, feeling puzzled. I looked at Pike and Croaka. ‘They are two
women
. Aren’t they?’

‘Of course I’m a man, you silly little worm,’ Croaka yelled. ‘Didn’t you notice? With my deep voice and broad shoulders? The way my sister Jacinta kept calling me Chris? It stands for Christopher, not Christine. You must be even more stupid than I thought. Those women’s clothes were so uncomfortable, I can’t wait to put my jeans on again.’

‘Here, don’t you talk to my Davina like that,’ Carrie said crossly. ‘And I think you’ll be wearing prison uniform, not jeans, where you’re going. Isn’t that right, Hugh?’

‘Absolutely correct,’ said the man with tufty white eyebrows, who’d so far been standing next to Carrie observing everything. ‘Davina and Arabella, you’ve done some top class detecting work. And with hardly any help, I hear.’ Mrs Fairchild and the important policeman blushed red at this point. ‘I thought you might want to know,’ Hugh went on. ‘That as soon as Carrie explained everything to me, I had some men go over to bunker thirty seven and pick up Katie Cherry and Harriet Wise. They’re both being looked after in hospital now.’

‘Oh thank goodness,’ I said. ‘Are they OK? Poor Harriet sounded very ill.’

‘Harriet is diabetic, she needs to have her medicine called insulin with her at all times,’ Hugh explained. ‘The little she had with her when they were kidnapped soon ran out and she became very poorly, but she is being very well looked after now. The doctor I spoke to says she’ll make a full recovery. They both send you two and Carrie their thanks.’

I have to go now, Diary, because Mrs Fairchild – who hasn’t done any mad twirling or dancing since she got here so I think that might all be an act – says she wants to have a word with Arabella and I in private.

5.30 AM on Tuesday 1
^st
October

Yawn, Diary…

Arabella, me, Mrs Fairchild, Carrie and Hugh (until he fell asleep on a chair in the corner) have just finished putting up the Annual Egmont Art Show in the National Gallery of Art and Design. And it looks pretty fabulous, even if I do say so myself.

That’s what Mrs Fairchild wanted to talk to us about, after Croaka and Pike had been led away in shame, handcuffed and surrounded by loads of policemen. She said it would be silly to let two selfish criminals spoil such a strong artistic tradition and did we think we had enough energy left to help her put up the show? She said no problem at all if we didn’t, but Arabella and I said yes, yes, yes and Carrie said she’d help as she wasn’t going to let me out of her sight quite so quickly, not after everything that had happened. And Hugh said that if Carrie was helping, he would too, as she’d travelled with him to the gallery and wouldn’t be able to get home if he didn’t stay.

Mr Cerise, the man in charge of the gallery, arrived in a total flap ten minutes after we’d started arranging the show, at about half past one in the morning. He said a police officer had phoned him to let him know about the attempted burglary about and he was so worried he’d jumped in to his car right away and driven straight here. Arabella and I couldn’t stop giggling because he was still wearing his pyjamas, which were red with a white paint brush design. After Carrie had made him a cup of tea in the gallery kitchen and advised him to pull himself together, Mr Cerise stopped pacing around flapping his hands and calmed down enough to fix the painting and frame that Croaka and Pike had tried to steal.

The art show space Egmont School had been given was also in the Orange Room. We had two enormous bare walls to fill with pupils work. It was MEGA exciting to think that my painting would be on show in the same room as Vincent Van Gogh’s!

We worked on the exhibition for hours, wanting it to look totally perfect. Mr Cerise lent us tons of spare gold and silver picture frames that he’d stored in an upstairs cupboard, before escaping to do some work in his office. Arabella and I spent quite a long time matching each first year’s painting to the right sized frame. Mrs Fairchild and Carrie made a good team, with Mrs Fairchild standing on a chair holding a hammer and nail in one hand and a frame in the otherand Carrie saying, ‘Up a bit, left a bit, no I mean right a bit, there – perfect.’

When they’d put my painting up, Carrie gave me a kiss and said she was very proud of me. They put Arabella’s little one of a maths book next to it. The paintings did look smart all together against the deep orange wall. I couldn’t wait to tell all the other first years about everything that had happened. That is if any of them except Arabella were talking to me…

Right Diary, I have to go now because Mrs Fairchild is going to drive us back to Egmont. I think I might fall asleep in her car because I’m so very, very zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

Thursday 3
^rd
October

I’ve just had the best news, Diary!

Arabella and I have been voted in as head of year prefects! Can you imagine?! I’m so extremely
excited.com
.

It turns out that while we were kidnapped at the National Gallery of Art and Design, Melody overheard Cleo and Clarice giggling about what other notes they could write, pretending to be us, during dinner. She quickly told the rest of the first year and they called a meeting with Clarice and Cleo that evening and told them they’d found out about the note writing. At first Clarice and Cleo tried to deny everything but in the end they gave in and admitted it, before storming off saying they didn’t want to be prefects for a bunch of losers anyway. Then, in the morning, when Arabella and I were asleep in the infirmary under Matron’s watchful eye, (Mrs Fairchild was very firm about this, she said we had to rest for several hours without being disturbed) word somehow leaked out about us being kidnapped by Croaka and Pike. By the time we joined the rest of the school for lunch in the hall, everyone knew all about how we’d escaped, been chased, captured the art thieves with Mrs Fairchild and helped to display the Annual Egmont Art Show. I can’t help thinking the crafty headmistress had a hand in leaking the information.

‘Look, here come the heroes!’ Suzie yelled as she saw us come in, rubbing our eyes. Everyone in the lunch hall broke in to applause and some people even drummed on the table with their knives and forks and stamped their feet hard on the floor, while the canaries overhead joined in by singing. Honestly, Diary, it was awesome and very noisy!

Everyone wanted to sit on our table during lunch, and people were asking so many questions.

‘Is it true that Croaka was really a man?’

‘Did they hurt you?’

‘How did you escape?’

‘Is it true that Mrs Fairchild attacked them like a ninja?’

‘Did they manage to steal any art?’

We tried to answer them all as best we could and I hardly had time to eat any of my asparagus and bean wrap even though I was starving.

Near the end of lunch, Mrs Fairchild appeared, which I thought very odd because she never usually comes in to the lunch hall.

She called for quiet, then looked over at Arabella and I and smiled.

‘Hello everyone,’ she said. ‘I have a special announcement to make, one that I usually reserve for the last assembly before half term, but as you may have heard, this has not been a typical week for many reasons.

Last night, two very brave first years, Davina Dupree and Arabella Rothsbury, saved the National Gallery of Art and Design from being robbed by two terrible art thieves. Christopher Croaka and Jacinta Pike had wormed their way in to our school by kidnapping our two excellent art teachers Katie Cherry and Harriet Wise, forcing them to write handwritten resignation letters which then arrived on my desk. They’d then turned up the day I advertised for emergency art teachers, with Christopher Croaka disguised as a woman. I regret to say I was completely deceived by them. Feeling that we needed to employ two more teachers quickly, I’m sorry to say I hired them on the spot, something that I now wish I’d never done.’ She stopped for a minute, looking upset. But then her eyes twinkled again as she looked over at us.

‘Davina and Arabella realised there was something fishy about Miss Croaka and Miss Pike early on in the term,’ she went on. ‘And came to tell me but I thought their story was so fanciful I didn’t believe them. So they phoned the police and spoke to a policeman who didn’t take their story seriously, thinking it was so outlandish it must be a crank call.

To cut a long story short, Davina and Arabella turned detectives
themselves
and found out that Katie Cherry and Harriet Wise had been kidnapped. They even found out where they were being held.’ There were a few gasps from around the room.

‘Miss Pike and Miss Croaka,’ Mrs Fairchild went on. ‘Or should I say Christopher and Jacinta, realised that Davina and Arabella knew about their plans when Davina bravely painted a rather good picture of an art robbery for the Annual Egmont Art Show, hoping that the shock of others knowing about their criminal plans would stop the thieves from carrying them out.

But instead, the thieves brought the day of the Art Show forward and kidnapped Davina and Arabella. They were actually in the National Gallery of Art and Design, in the process of stealing their first painting, “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh, when those two brave school girls escaped from the cupboard they’d been locked in and managed to phone Carrie Whepple, who immediately jumped in to action and got a detective friend of hers to call the police.

By that stage I had also been doing a little detecting work of my own. I’d been rather puzzled by Miss Croaka and Miss Pike’s conversation as they loaded the art for the show in to their car. At first they didn’t realise I was listening and I heard them talk about “picking up the little worms” before “blast off”. So later that evening, after they’d driven off to put up the exhibition, I went along to their apartments and had a good snoop around. To my horror I found Katie Cherry’s purse, a map of the gallery with notes about which paintings they wanted to steal all over it and worst of all a copy of Davina and Arabella’s timetables.’ I looked at Arabella and she shook her head. Neither of us had known anything about
that
.

‘At that point, realising what a fool I’d been, I rushed over to the gallery myself and found my fears confirmed. When I arrived I saw a priceless Van Gogh painting half hanging off the wall with a bag of tools underneath it, but there was no sign of Christopher and Jacinta, or of Davina and Arabella. I immediately phoned the police, then luckily tracked the criminals down just as they’d cornered the girls. Davina and Arabella were magnificently brave as they helped me to capture and tie up the thieves. Suddenly
two
sets of police forces arrived, one called by Carrie’s detective friend and one called by me. They arrested the thieves straight away. Davina and Arabella helped me put up a rather good art show, one I’m sure you’d all be very proud of.

The good news is that it seems the other first years agree with my opinion of Davina and Arabella because they’ve voted them in early as head of year prefects. They came to me this morning and told me and I’ve honestly never known a more deserving pair. Come to the front, you two, and collect your badges.’

With burning cheeks but feeling rather proud, I made my way towards Mrs Fairchild with Arabella following close behind. As we walked, the lunch hall erupted with cheers and applause, and the canaries overhead joined in, tweeting away like mad, it was TOTALLY AND UTTERLY
ASTONISHING.COM
! Girls we didn’t even know from other years were leaning forward to pat our backs or shake our hands and Suzie Bagshaw and her friends gave us three cheers.

To top everything off, two more people arrived. It was Katie and Harriet, I recognised them straight away from the school photos. They were both thin and pale, especially Harriet, but smiling away merrily. They were holding the prefect badges and as we went up to them they gave us ENORMOUS hugs. After all the fuss had died down, Katie told me that in a few weeks, when they’re feeling strong and well enough, they’re going to return to their old jobs and teach us all art. About
time.com
.

No one’s seen Clarice or Cleo since lunch, although Melody says she thought she saw two girls with long, blonde hair heading towards a private jet on the runway. Oh well, it looks like they’re not good losers! I wonder if they’ve got permission to just fly off…

So, Diary, I’m now lying on my bed, proudly wearing my prefect badge. Being an Egmont badge, it’s made from solid gold and the word ‘prefect’ is written in diamonds. How grand! It’s been one whirlwind of a half term but my goodness it was exciting. Mostly. Except for being kidnapped – that was just scary. So I can safely say that I DO like it here at boarding school after all.

Anyway, Diary, I have to go now as Carrie will be arriving in a minute. Mrs Fairchild has invited her, us and Hugh and Marjorie Broderick to a slap up cream tea in her office and she says if we’re lucky she might even entertain us with some salsa dancing.
Whatafunnylady.com
!