The Dance in the Dark. Sophie Cleverly

back to your room for a rest, and now you feel better. Anyway, won’t she be more concerned about what’s happened to Miss Finch?”

      Of course, that was the important thing. My twin and I would have to put our differences behind us.

      “Right,” I said, and got shakily back to my feet. “Let’s go.”

      I just hoped we weren’t too late.

      

       Chapter Ten

       SCARLET

      We were too late.

      By the time we got down to her office, Mrs Knight must have already gone home. She lived in accommodation near the school, but I couldn’t say where.

      I kicked the door and just about restrained myself from cursing.

      “What are we going to do now?” Ariadne wailed.

      “We could call the police,” I said.

      Ivy gave me a look that said she thought I was being ridiculous. “How exactly are we going to call them? The offices are locked. And even if we could get to a telephone, what would we say? A teacher’s been missing for an hour? They’ll laugh at us!”

      She was right, and I hated it. Our only hope was to talk to the teachers. But most of them had gone home, with the exception of the few staff that stayed overnight. I swallowed. In the past, that had included Miss Finch, when she’d had nowhere else to go. I tried my hardest not to picture her walking stick lying there in the middle of the floor.

      “We can try and tell Matron,” I said finally. “But I doubt she’ll be any use.”

      We went to the door of Matron’s room, only for her to bustle straight into us in her housecoat.

      “Oof! Girls,” she said, narrowing her neatly plucked eyebrows. “You’re supposed to be getting ready for bed. It’s lights-out soon, you know!”

      “We know, Miss,” said Ivy. “We’ve got a … problem …”

      “If you’re here to tell me that Josephine Wilcox has been running laps of the corridor in her swimsuit, I already know. That’s what I was just on the way to sort out.”

      “No!” I said quickly, before she could push past us. “It’s Miss Finch. We’re worried something’s happened to her.”

      Matron stopped in her tracks and looked down at us – or, more accurately, across, because she wasn’t very tall. “Whatever makes you say that? She’s gone home to bed, I’m sure.”

      I glanced at Ariadne, hoping she remembered her part of the plan. She took a deep breath and then gave her explanation without, it seemed, taking another one. “Well, Miss, we were on our way to visit Miss Finch, Miss, because she asked us to, you see, it was about the ballet recital, and we were going to paint the scenery, a lovely castle and some trees, you know, that sort of thing, and so we’d arranged a time to meet her this evening, so we went down there, Miss, and—”

      At this point Ivy had the sense to push Ariadne out of the way before she dropped dead from forgetting how her lungs worked. “Miss Finch wasn’t there,” she said simply.