Three Sentence Ficathon

"What could have happened?" Mary-Lou gasped, clasping her hands dramatically.

It wasn't that she wanted to be dramatic, she prided herself of being sensible, forcefully and loudly sensible. However she was now faced with her Headmistress, two Senior Mistresses, Matron and the so often self-proclaimed founding stone of the school Joey Bettany Maynard. All of them purple of face, sprawled in a ghastly and appallingly unladylike manner over their armchairs and... well, Mary-Lou wasn't an expert on dead bodies, being a properly brought up young lady. She had never seen such a sight before. But at this minute she was absolutely, definitely, completely certain that these were five purple, sprawled and dead bodies.

"Miss Cochrane, this is awful! What will we do? Who could possibly have done this?"

The other founding stone of the School gazed at Mary-Lou with hooded eyes and a calm - no, it couldn't be! an almost contented - look on her face. "I'm sure I don't know, Mary-Lou," she said as she poured from the delicate, flower-bedecked china teapot into two cups, and held one out with a smile, though for some reason she didn't touch her own.

"Here, this will help."

Mary-Lou was affronted. "Tea? Miss Cochrane, at a time like this, you think we should have tea?"

"Of course. Wasn't it Joey," her eyes flicking to their mutual and now ex-friend, and the smile grew, "who always said, every time she butted in, that listening to her endless advice over endless cups would make it all better? Her very last words were 'make the tea, Grizel, and we'll tell you again just what you should do'." She sighed. "Joey had such great faith in butting in, doing things her way... and in tea making everything better."

"This. Is. Not. Better!"

Grizel cocked her head, and spoke very, very softly. "Isn't it?"