Tup and Stern and the Skipping Rope Scandal.
At Tampin's Stern Mystery.
Written by S.
D.
Hudson Performed by Stephanie Poppins.
Chapter 3 Sitting side by side with Bartholomew Bowman,
Tup and Stern gazed at the 150 girls sat facing the stage in the school hall.
This was the second assembly in as many hours,
But this time Alice Weed was at the helm,
Pacing like an expectant parent.
Only the baby in question was six foot four,
A fully grown man and lying dead in the county morgue.
Tuppence gazed at the latest clip art additions to the school's info posters.
They read,
Accidents don't just happen,
They're caused by carelessness,
With an accompanying red stop sign.
And.
.
.
There are no spare parts for lost fingers.
Tuppence wasn't quite sure how the kitchen poster had slipped through the net and ended up in the school hall.
But all things considered it wasn't the least relevant of the bunch.
This was the 1990s,
And post-production was at its peak.
A time when a laminator was considered cutting-edge classroom technology and no one had yet worked out what the internet was for.
Wherever there was a gap in wooden panel or unwindowed wall,
Weed would stick a poster.
Legal regulations,
She said.
That woman loved legal regulation.
She'd have loved a fax machine too,
If Martin Bonus would agree to one.
As it was,
All urgent business still went through old Mrs Fenwick on the front desk switchboard.
Plugged into the wall like something out of a Bond film.
Of an evening Mrs Fenwick doubled up as matron-cum-housekeeper.
Though keeping house was something she had never done.
Having lived like most of the other teachers in school accommodation.
All of her adult life.
She loved St.
Ethelberg's because it was cut off from the rest of the world.
That was why everyone loved St Ethelberg's.
Except Alice Weed.
She was a square peg in a round hole as the saying went.
Which made sense when you knew she'd been sent as a spy by Inspector Tryhard.
To collect any information she could to justify shutting the whole place down.
St.
Ethelberg's was a ticking time bomb,
The inspector said,
And it was time Steeple Bloodstead got back to the village law and order his grandfather established,
Before Martin Boners rocked up in his shoulder-padded blazer and made St.
Ethelberg's a school without rules.
That was the heart of the problem,
He said,
And it would take nothing more than a silver dagger to eradicate it.
Cue Alice Weed.
Martin found the whole school without rules label hilarious.
For one thing,
There were plenty of rules.
It just so happened Inspector Tryhard disagreed with them.
For another,
Inspector Tryhard was a ridiculous excuse of a man.
So who could take his word for anything?
Having solved exactly one case in 1987,
The gruesome case of the misplaced garden shears.
He had coasted on that reputation ever since,
Like a man dining out on a single Top 40 hit.
He wore a Yorkshire flat cap that failed to conceal his jug ears,
Drove a Ford Sierra he was inordinately proud of,
And he fancied Tup and Stern,
Which wound Martin up much more than he cared to admit.
Right everyone,
Miss Weed began,
I want to begin with a check-in.
She was clutching a laminated card that read BREATHE in comic song,
The font of the decade.
Tuppence placed her palms together condescendingly,
And Bart groaned.
Girls,
We've repeated tapping the mic twice,
And friends and those on their journey to self-discovery,
Settle down now.
Today I want to talk about something very important.
Tubman's rolled her eyes at her dramatic pause for effect.
The woman didn't know the first thing about inner peace.
If you are feeling exhausted,
We continued,
If you are feeling overwhelmed.
If you are feeling scared,
And ladies in this patriarchal hellscape who isn't,
I want you to do three things.
Martin Boner shot her a sideward glance,
But he said nothing.
Then checking her notes in case she said it wrong,
Wade continued.
One.
Up went her index finger.
Name your feeling.
Say it out loud.
Say,
I,
Kimberly,
Am experiencing overwhelm.
Try it with me now.
Dead silence.
Somewhere in the third row a girl named Kimberly,
All Alice bands and Take That badges,
Sank solo in her chair.
She was practically part of the floor.
Nobody.
That's okay.
That's a safe nobody.
Her second finger shot up.
Find your village.
Your village might be a friend.
Your village might be a trusted adult.
Your village might be a scented candle.
She said this with the reverence of someone revealing a religious relic.
I myself have a candle called emotional availability.
It smells of sandalwood and validation.
Suddenly the overhead projector fired up.
One of the school's proudest recent acquisitions,
Wheeled in on a trolley like royalty.
Toppins fancied she saw a tiny police logo on the corner of the acetate before Weed whisked it away.
3.
Alice Reed checked her fingers to make sure she still had another one left.
Channel.
Journal it out.
Journal your truth.
I don't care if it's messy,
I don't care if it's just the words,
I hate English written 40 times in gel pen.
That is valid data.
Tuppence's stomach tightened.
Then to her disbelief,
Alice Weed placed down the card and wiped away an invisible tear.
And girls,
If all else fails,
And I cannot stress this enough,
You were loud.
To just sit with it.
Meese?
The hand shot up.
Can we sit with it during the maths tests on Thursday?
Tuppence glanced across at Mr Smith from the Maths Department.
He looked furious.
No.
So there's an exception to sit with it then.
There's nuance,
Jane.
I'll speak with Mr Smith later.
She shot him a warning stare.
This upstepped Martin before things got out of hand.
It seemed Alice Weed was not as popular with the girls as he'd assumed she would be at interviews.
Over the past few weeks,
She's become less and less likeable.
But Lord Heffingway,
Chairman of the Board,
Backed her for some reason.
So it looked like she was at St Ethelberg's to stay.
A fixture as permanent and about as welcome as the Millennium Countdown clock,
Someone had stuck up in the staff room three years too early and entirely unprompted.
Then the bell rang.
Martin Boners dismissed the girls with one look,
And they fled like something out of a wildlife documentary.
Scrunchies bobbing,
An illicit Tamagotchi or two beeping indignantly from the depths of a blazer pocket.
Alice Wee glanced at the headteacher pitifully.
But Martin ignored her.
There was nothing left to say the girls hadn't heard already.
If this school,
Our home,
Is to survive,
We have to be very protective of any leaks of information.
Each said at the first assembly.
If you use the payphone to call your parents on Friday,
You may tell them of Mr Marshall's unfortunate demise.
As the inspector is now carrying out his investigation so there's nothing to hide.
They are well aware of what life is like in steep bloodstead.
Please speak to Miss Stern if you have any problems.
She is now appointed pupil confidante.
If you have any information to impart,
You may speak to Miss Stern.
And now know I have faith in all of you,
And I have never seen such mature behaviour and I'm proud of each and every one of you.
The entire cohort beamed at this.
Martin was pleased to see it made tuppence bean too.
Not that he had any right to be concerning himself with what another member of staff thought about him.
Tall and silver-haired with a permanent half-scowl.
He was definitely more beast than beauty.
But the first time he saw her,
He'd practically jumped out of his seat.
Whatever this was or wasn't,
Tuppence Stern was off-limits though.
Crossing boundaries between work and pleasure would ruin everything.
It was now time to close ranks and remember the routine,
He reminded himself.
Tuppence would be the eyes and ears on the front line,
While he held St Ethelberg's together.
Like he always did at times like these.
Tubman Stern made for her classroom door as the girls in Year 8 got up to leave.
Their lesson had been little more than crowd control,
And she was beginning to feel overwhelmed with the emotional baggage of it all.
Murders were supposed to be just that,
Cut and dry.
Especially when conducted by skipping ropes.
Of all the weapons on a Cluedo board,
Arguably the rope was the cleanest to execute.
As they lined up to leave a break,
The girls were like a disturbed wasp's nest,
If wasps wore blazers and pleated skirts and swapped pogs at lunchtime.
They looked to Tuppence for reassurance.
Murders happened in the village,
Yes,
But in this school?
St.
Ethelberg's hadn't seen such a scandal since one of the girls spray-painted atheism on the statue of the founding headmistress.
Now they were all at sixes and sevens.
Miss,
Can we have a video after break?
Last one.
Leading them into the corridor,
Tuppence locked her classroom door and considered the request.
She still had the school's one battered VHS copy of Sense and Sensibility somewhere in the cupboard.
Taped off the telly it was,
Adverts and all.
Only,
We can't really concentrate,
We're traumatised.
Tuppence agreed gratefully.
This would give her more time to work out her list of potential suspects.
And less time to answer ridiculous questions.
No problem,
Girls.
Now off to the canteen for a snack.
Otherwise you'll be starving by lunch.
The noise and confusion and desperation of everyone was getting far too messy.
How on earth could she think amongst all this confusion?
To her relief,
Inspector Tryhard had finally left for the day.
Saying he would be back after the post-mortem.
Ever since her divorce,
He'd been on her like a cold she couldn't shake.
Forever finding some excuse to loiter by the staffroom kettle in his good tie.
And the gym was now cordoned off as a crime scene.
Although Tuffins had seen Alice Weed sniffing about more than once.
Which left her with questions.
But they could wait.
She must tackle the problem in order,
Just like she did whenever problems arose in steeple bloodstead.
Having lived in the village for most of her life,
Tuppence knew the residence like the back of her hand,
And she always found out what was what,
Eventually.
Although asking for calm in a school full of teenage girls,
Most of them still buzzing off the Spice Girls' latest video,
Played on a loop in the common room.
Was a bit of a stretch.
But Bart was on hand to download her deductions too.
That helped.
That and the old Chianti or two.
Tuppence knew Martin Bonas was relying on her to find out what was what.
Hadn't she done so,
So many times before?
But this time it was on school property.
And people got in the way with their fuss and their panic.
She must ask Bart to help her.
To do more than just listen.
She couldn't do this alone,
She concluded.
At this moment Bartholomew Bowman.
Having joined the village only a month before.
Was the only person she could 100% trust.
