I’m wearing my red beret, my bob-cut hair framing my face, and my eyebrows are knitted together as though concentrating on his lecture. The headmaster’s desk is very shiny and if I look down I can see my own reflection in the caramel-coloured wood. If I want to watch something more interesting, I just imagine it. I’ve always found this easy – like switching channels on TV. “Two – you tried to miss lessons by convincing the groundskeeper that you were an apprentice tree surgeon who needed to scale a tree near the boundary wall… and just so you could get out of school…”

This really happened – he was – but without evidence I had to drop my investigation. “One – you were found hiding in the ceiling space above the chemistry labs, because you believed Mr Stamp was stealing sulphuric acid to sell on eBay.” He has five liver spots in the shape of the constellation Cassiopeia on his forehead, and a steely glare which I would say is a 4B on the eye colour chart I have hanging in my bedroom. He isn’t a doctor, as you and I think of them, but he likes to be called one. He’s very good at that, and it’s best to wait until he’s done. It’s true, and I don’t know what to say.ĭoctor Hargrave (Ronald Hargrave, BPhil MEd OBE) likes to fill silences. We’re sitting in his office, the air sticky, and that’s not just because of the heatwave outside. “This is the twelfth –” the headmaster glances up from his notes – “no, let me correct that – the thirteenth time you’ve been in trouble this term, Agatha.”

The secret key agatha oddly