Chapter 7

The Deadly Pine Cone

Friday and the Headmaster trudged across several damp playing fields to get to the caretaker’s shed. The shed was a large corrugated-iron building that housed several impressive-looking machines, a tractor, a ride-on lawnmower and a whole wall rack full of hand tools.

A crowd of a dozen or so students plus their young dorm supervisor was gathered at the far end of the building. The Headmaster puffed himself up as he approached, ready to assume authority. ‘Out of the way, boys,’ he called.

The boys stepped aside to let the Headmaster and Friday into their circle.

There on the ground was the caretaker, completely unconscious. There was no blood but there was a scattering of large triangular seed pods all around his head.

Friday looked up at the huge bunya-bunya pine tree that towered over them. It had massive pine cones the size of watermelons, and when they hit the ground they shattered like hand grenades into triangle-shaped seed pods the size of a fist.

‘That must have hurt,’ observed the Headmaster.

‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Friday. ‘A bunya-bunya pine cone can weigh up to 10 kilos. To have that hit you on the head accelerating at 9.8 metres per second over a 40-metre drop – allowing for the fact that Mr Pilcher is about 1.8 metres tall and collapsing to the ground would absorb some of the impact – it would result in over 2,177 newtons of impact force slamming into your skull.’

‘Thank you,’ said the Headmaster. ‘I know what I’ll be thinking about as I attempt to sleep tonight.’

‘He’s breathing and he’s got a strong pulse,’ said the dorm tutor.

‘That’s a miracle,’ said Friday.

‘What happened?’ asked the Headmaster.

‘I was taking the boys out for their cross-country training,’ explained the tutor. ‘It was Gillespie who found him. He’s our fastest boy. We’ve got high hopes for him at the regional carnival.’

Gillespie blushed at the praise.

‘Yes, yes,’ said the Headmaster, ‘but did anyone see what happened?’

‘No, sir,’ said Gillespie. ‘Mr Pilcher was lying on the ground, knocked out cold, when I got here.’

‘When was that?’ asked Friday.

‘Ten minutes ago,’ said the tutor.

Friday crouched down and inspected the caretaker herself. She looked at his fingernails. The tread of his boots. The hems of his trousers. And she even smelled his breath.

The older boys were disgusted. ‘Ew, gross.’

The Headmaster rolled his eyes. ‘Barnes, must you always sniff things? You know it’s behaviour like this that makes you such a credible suspect for the police.’

‘It’s behaviour like this that got me and a swarthy ex-jailbird off when suspected by police,’ said Friday as she grabbed Mr Pilcher by the arm, pulled his knee up and rolled him over onto his side.

‘What are you doing?!’ demanded the Headmaster. ‘You shouldn’t touch him.’

‘I thought all teachers had to do first-aid courses,’ said Friday. ‘An unconscious person should always be rolled onto their side, into the safety position, so if they throw up they don’t choke on their own vomit.’

‘Ew,’ chorused the boys again.

‘She’s right, sir,’ said the tutor. ‘I did my first-aid course six weeks ago and they were very adamant about that.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the Headmaster. ‘I may have many faults as a headmaster, but I assure you that allowing staff to choke on their own vomit is not one of them.’

‘Plus,’ said Friday, ‘rolling him on to his side allows me to look at the back of his head.’ She peered closely at the back of Mr  Pilcher’s crown. ‘Just as I suspected,’ she muttered.

‘What did you suspect? That he’d have that enormous lump?’ asked the Headmaster. ‘I can see it from here. That’s going to hurt tomorrow.’

‘Yes, there is an enormous lump,’ agreed Friday. ‘That is the lymph rushing to the area with platelets and white blood cells to help heal the wound. But if you look closer you’ll see that the back of Mr Pilcher’s head has a lot to tell us.’

‘Here we go,’ said the Headmaster, rolling his eyes.

‘Does anyone have a sheet of paper?’ asked Friday.

The boys were in their running shorts and singlets, so they were of no help. The tutor shrugged.

‘Not even a betting slip?’ asked Friday, looking meaningfully at the Headmaster.

The Headmaster sighed and took a small slip of paper from his pocket, and handed it to Friday.

Friday laid the paper on the grass under Mr  Pilcher’s head. Then she brushed his hair with her hand. A shower of dirt, dried grass and leaves fell onto the slip.

‘That is a lot of organic debris,’ said Friday.

‘He’s a caretaker,’ said the Headmaster. ‘He’s got a dirty job.’

‘But he always wears a flat cap to protect his hair,’ said Friday. ‘Besides, if he had simply been hit on the head and fallen to the ground, like so …’ Friday lay down on the grass for a moment then sat back up. ‘Can you see anything in my hair?’

The Headmaster looked at Friday’s head. There was nothing there.

‘You’ve lost your hat,’ said the tutor, picking up Friday’s green pork-pie hat.

‘Well observed,’ said Friday, putting the hat back on her head.

‘A man could only get that much debris in his hair if he had been dragged,’ said Friday.

‘Dragged where?’ asked the Headmaster.

Friday looked about. ‘The answer lies with Mr Pilcher’s flat cap. Can anybody see it?’

Now all the boys looked about.

‘Over there,’ called a boy. ‘In the doorway to the shed.’

The group hurried over to inspect the hat.

‘Stay back!’ Friday warned.

The rest of the group stood several metres away while Friday carefully crept forward. She took a biro out of her pocket and carefully picked the cap up and checked the underside.

‘Just as I suspected,’ said Friday.

‘What is it?’ asked the Headmaster.

‘Nothing,’ said Friday. She looked down at the ground, peering intently, until she dropped to her knees, whipped out a magnifying glass and closely inspected a blade of grass. Then, just as quickly, she slapped her hand across her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, as if she were obviously sickened by what she saw.

‘Are you going to tell us what you’ve found?’ asked the Headmaster.

‘See for yourself,’ said Friday, weakly.

The Headmaster bent down and plucked the blade of grass Friday had been inspecting. There was a small dark blob on one side of the blade.

‘What is it?’ asked the tutor.

‘Blood,’ said the Headmaster.

‘Precisely,’ said Friday with a shudder.

‘Urrg,’ moaned a voice several metres away.

‘It’s Mr Pilcher,’ said Gillespie.

The group rushed back to the stricken man. As they got there he was trying to sit up.

‘It’s all right, Pilcher, take it easy. An ambulance has been called for you,’ assured the Headmaster. As if to confirm this, the faint wail of an ambulance could be heard approaching over the rolling hills.

‘What happened?’ asked Mr Pilcher.

‘We were hoping you could tell us,’ said the Headmaster.

Mr Pilcher rubbed his forehead. ‘I don’t remember anything. I don’t even remember getting out of bed this morning.’

‘I can tell you what happened,’ said Friday.

Everyone turned and looked at her.

‘Go on,’ said the Headmaster.

‘Mr  Pilcher was not hit on the head by a bunya-bunya seed,’ said Friday.

‘But then why is he lying here, under a pine tree with seeds littered about him?’ asked the tutor.

‘Because he was hit on the head over there by the shed,’ said Friday. ‘When he fell to the ground, his hat fell off.’

‘What are you saying?’ asked the Headmaster. ‘That one of the tools fell off the wall and hit his head?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Friday. ‘But only because someone took the tool and swung it at him, then dragged Mr Pilcher over here, smashed a pine cone on the ground and carefully laid his head in the middle of it.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Mr Pilcher.

‘You were assaulted by someone very devious,’ said Friday. ‘But they didn’t move the hat. The idea of using the pine cone is a stroke of genius. But to leave the hat was an amateur mistake, which leads me to suspect that the perpetrator was interrupted before he could finish staging this miniature perfect crime.’

‘There’s nothing miniature about the lump on Pilcher’s head,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Why would anyone do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Friday.

The ambulance pulled up and the paramedics bustled out quickly, taking over.

Mr Pilcher started fussing about who would turn the compost bin if he was taken off to hospital. The Headmaster reassured him that no-one on staff or in the student body would perform any of his jobs while he was away, so that everything would be just as Mr Pilcher had left it, only slightly overgrown, by the time he returned.

Friday stepped back, her attention drifting over to the shed. She went to have a look.

Inside the shed, one entire wall had been made into a peg board that held Mr  Pilcher’s extensive collection of tools and garden implements. An outline of each tool was painted onto the peg board. And everything was hung in its place, except for one tool. The stencil of a spade was empty.

Friday had found the assault weapon. Or, rather, she had found the lack of the assault weapon. Now she just needed to work out the reason for such a strange attack.

Friday turned to Mr Pilcher’s desk. It was littered with invoices and order sheets. A worn paperback laid open on top of the pile. Friday flipped the book over to see what it was.

‘The Curse of the Pirate King,’ muttered Friday. ‘Hmm, interesting.’

Somewhere in that shed lay the motive for the assault, but even Friday’s enormous brain could not determine exactly where.