When The Snow Falls

Daniel stayed where he was and finished eating his cake. Amien had given him a lot to think about and sugar always helped his mind work better. He was about to start making a move to leave the cafe when his phone buzzed. Felix was calling him.

"Did you manage to convince them to stay?" was the first thing he asked his boyfriend.

"I couldn't, but they agreed to help us out in subtle ways if we need things," Felix admitted reluctantly. "I can't let their family companies lose a major investor because we wanted to solve a mystery. Hopefully them leaving has done enough to placate the headmaster."

"You're right. I'll see you back at the apartment. We've got some things to discuss."

He hung up the phone and picked up his bag. It was time to try and put everything together.

***

"Amien certainly told you a lot. He was definitely hiding a lot of information we needed," Felix commented after Daniel had updated him.

"It's shed some light on parts I wasn't sure about," Daniel agreed.

Felix retrieved his notebook from under his pillow and handed it to him.

"Thanks," Daniel said. "Let's proceed on the assumption that the rumour Amien heard about the pharmaceutical company were correct."

"The company inadvertently kills its drug trial volunteers. This gets covered up somehow and the company shuts down and converts the building into an international school and the scientists become teachers," Felix began. "We need to find out which teachers have been there since the beginning."

"Did no one find it strange that an international school popped up out of nowhere?" Daniel wondered aloud.

"I've been to a few international schools before and they can be very small so it would not have seemed strange. It wouldn't have been odd if they specialised in science either as some schools do have speciality subjects," his boyfriend explained.

Something dawned on Daniel. He didn't know much about Felix's life before Kingston Royal Academy, but that comment had a clue.

"By any chance, have you lived in Japan before?"

"When I was 7 we lived here for a year, did you never wonder why my Japanese is a lot better than yours?" Felix smirked.

Daniel chucked a cushion at his smirking face. He should have questioned Felix's language prowess before.

"I didn't attend the British International School though so it never had any bearing on the mystery," Felix added hurriedly. "This isn't the only foreign country I lived in as a child, I swear."

Daniel raised an eyebrow and returned to the subject at hand.

"They start the Seven Mysteries rumours to stop people looking too closely at things. At some point Carter Emberry stumbles onto something and is killed off. The old building is finally closed down and concealed from sight with those trees. Fast forward to now and they know we are investigating and make most of the Mystery Club pull out."

Felix nodded and he bit his lip suddenly.

"There is something I am concerned about. Those people we overheard at the theme park like using business pressure, you're completely impregnable. The case at Kingston Royal Academy was about tradition and snobbery, this one is about business. They can't do anything to you business wise- you're just the son of an Earl. My parents run a business…"

"It doesn't have anything to do with pharmaceuticals," Daniel pointed out. "They would refuse partnership with a completely unrelated company, wouldn't they?"

Felix gave him a pitying look.

"If you have an upcoming business and someone very rich comes along and offers you money, wouldn't you take it even if their business has nothing to do with yours?"

Daniel couldn't help but agree with the point. There was a risk in that area.

"We need to solve this as quickly as possible before any offer like that happens," he announced. "Should we ignore all that homework we got today?"

"You would like that, wouldn't you?" Felix teased. "Let's go through what we know before we make any rash decisions like that."

"We need to find out what 'Shelling Ford', the words that were written under the desk in the old school building means- we haven't looked into that yet," Daniel said. "Let's just type it into a search engine to start with."

He retrieved his laptop from the desk and typed it into his usual search engine. The first results were not promising.

"It's a village in England…" he said. "Wait, there's a link with some detective things."

He opened up one of the other results and found a reference that was helpful. He typed in the name again and put Sherlock Holmes next to it. That produced results he was happy with it.

"Sherlock Holmes before being called Sherlock Holmes had lots of different proposed names. One of them was Sherringford Hope. He might have written it like that because it appears that way in Detective Conan- that's a detective series. He wanted to hint something about Sherlock Holmes"

Felix was very quick on the uptake.

"There was a Sherlock Holmes poster in the old clubroom."

"Carter must have wanted someone to look closer at it," Daniel said. "He must have been too afraid to write a direct hint. That's why it was so vague."

They looked at each other. Felix g.r.o.a.n.e.d.

"We need to go out again to that building and check room 23 and the clubroom."

"The cherry blossom tree as well…"

Daniel shared his feelings on the subject. As the mystery stood now, he wasn't overly happy with trying to sneak in again. They could get caught this time.

"Tonight?" he asked quietly. "We need to do it as soon as possible."

Felix made a face.

"Fine. I agree that we need to get it done as soon as possible. But what if they found it six years ago and we've gone there for nothing?"

Daniel didn't have an answer for that question.

***

They reached the outside of the international school at midnight. Daniel looked at the wall and then at the nearest CCTV camera. This was approximately where they had gone over the previous time and they hadn't been caught. The headmaster must have assumed if they were going to get into the old school building, they would have to break the padlock.

Felix bounded over the wall smoothly and Daniel climbed over with much less grace. He let Felix catch him this time as he didn't want to ruin any of the flowerbeds by the wall. The less traces they left the better.

"Isn't it more romantic when you fall into my arms?" Felix whispered.

Daniel ignored him and they crept together across the grounds, making sure they weren't in the path of any CCTV cameras and they made it to the old school building. Felix unlocked the padlock and looked around cautiously before opening the door.

The more experienced detective pulled off the padlock and pocketed it for safety. If someone found the door had been unlocked whilst they were in there and locked it; they would be stuck inside without any escape.

Mindful of danger Daniel looked around for signs that anything had changed since their last visit. There was still a lot of dust swirling around in the air and the musty smell was still heavily present which signalled the air hadn't been disturbed.

"Where should we go first?" Felix asked once they had closed the door behind him.

"The Mystery Club," Daniel decided. "We're more likely to find something there."

They walked up to the third floor together and Daniel paused on the stairs to look at the oddly low ceiling again. He had a rough memory of how large the gap between the roof and the top floor windows and it wasn't this small.

"Do you think there's an attic here?" he enquired.

Felix shone his own torch at the ceiling.

"There wasn't actually a way of getting up there that I saw last time. We'll have to check every room carefully this time. Oliver checked the other rooms last time because we took so long in the old Mystery Club room."

Once they were in the old clubroom Daniel took a set of spare torches out his backpack to illuminate the room better.

The Sherlock Holmes poster was large and covered a lot of the wall. Felix moved one of the tables and reached up to take it down carefully. When the area behind it was uncovered it became clear that there was something odd with the wall. There was a rectangular area of plaster with cracks running down it. This area wasn't painted yellow like the rest of the wall. Daniel tapped it experimentally and found that it sounded oddly hollow.

"There's something behind here."