Murder Is At Hand.

Chapter 1

It was a Saturday morning at 15A Praed Street, and I was woken up by the soft, dulcet tones of my beloved older sister.

"Allie! What the hell've you done with all my clothes pegs, for God's sake?" Isabel was hollering up the stairs. I sat up in bed and looked around my room guiltily. Recently, I had found that clothes pegs were actually very helpful for straightening out the creases and folds that had been left in all my books, due to my habit of dropping them in awkward places, sitting on them, and folding over the corners. Unfortunately, I had a lot of books, so I had needed a lot of clothes pegs. All of the clothes pegs, I realized.

"Er... I don't have any of your clothes pegs!" I lied, jumping out of bed and beginning to pull them all off the books.

"Well, last time I saw them, they were in the pot, and now they aren't, so unless we've got ourselves a resident ghost, I can only jump to the conclusion that you've done something with them!" Isabel argued back from downstairs.

"What would I be doing with clothes pegs?" I shouted, as I heard Isabel's feet on the stairs. Quickly, I looked for a place to hide the clothes pegs I was now holding in my hands.

"I could ask you the same question!" Isabel called, now almost outside my door. I ran to the window, speedily dumping the whole handful outside and jumping back into bed just as my sister came in.

"Well?" she asked. I adopted an air of complete innocence.

"Well what?" I repeated, looking around my room like she was. She sighed.

"It looks like I was wrong, then" she sighed, as the doorbell rang.

"Bother!" I gasped. "Go get it, Izzy, please. I'll be five minutes."

As Isabel left to answer the door, I quickly scrambled into a pale blue gingham, did my hair in a bun, grabbed a shawl, put my white shoes on, and ran downstairs and into the living room. Newham was there, with Isabel, and I smiled at him, as he came over and we embraced.

"How are you?" he asked.

"Well. You?" I replied.

"All the better for seeing you. I need to ask you a favour, Allie. I'm not staying long, I've got people to meet, so I'll get to the point. There's an Army get-together happening on the weekend of the 18th. I was hoping you'd come as my date."

I sucked through my teeth.

"Sounds fun. What do I need to pack? Alianna Winter or Violetta Dalton?"

Newham laughed.

"Don't come too dressed up, or the chaps'll get it in their heads I've done better than they thought!" he joked. I laughed.

"I'll look forward to meeting 'the chaps' I'm sure."

Newham sighed.

"I hope so. They'll all love you, for certain. Don't let them get under your skin, though" he warned, looking towards the door. "I've got to dash. I'm picking up some of the boys from the station. Goodbye, both of you" he smiled, as he put his coat back on and made to leave. His face changed to a frown of confusion as he picked something out of his collar.

"You know, I'm pretty sure these things shouldn't be falling out of the sky" he commented, holding up a clothes peg.

"They're all over the front step. Fell right on top of me" he added, and left. My eyebrow shot up and my eyes widened, as I tried to hold in the guilty giggles. Isabel turned her head slowly and deliberately to look at me.

"Clothing pegs falling out of the sky, hm?" she asked. "That's useful. I can't imagine where all mine have got to."