Lady Alkmene Collection: Four fabulous 1920s murder mysteries you won’t want to miss!

Was that a registry of members of this congregation? It could easily be in a place like this.

He halted, his face lighting in relief. His finger pointed at a certain place on the page. Then it moved upwards, grabbed the edge, and without any care for the antiquity of the book or the sanctity of the place he was in, he ripped the page out of it.

Alkmene gasped.

Maybe he heard, maybe it was just because he was done and eager to get away, but he looked up at the door and he noticed something. He came for the door, in large strides.

Alkmene backed up, collided with something that clattered down. Ignoring it, she turned and ran.

Someone overtook her, grabbed her from behind and pinned her against a bench.

‘Lady Alkmene.’ The voice at her ear was low and menacing. ‘Such a shame. You are just too curious for your own good.’

She wanted to say something, but her assailant pushed a cloth thing into her mouth. She bit down on it, hoping it was not a dirty handkerchief.

‘I know the perfect place to put you,’ the voice said at her ear. ‘You might be found eventually. Or not. That would be a shame, I guess. But I have to cover my tracks. With this little piece of paper in my pocket, I am halfway done. There will be nothing left to prove that Silas Norwhich ever had any interest in Cunningham or indeed that a Mary Sullivan ever lived here. Her sister will not testify. When I came here to establish if there was any chance Mary or her dear baby would pop up and cause us trouble, the sister was the first to ask me how much money I was willing to pay to make her swear in court Mary was dead, drowned in the marshes. She was here ready and waiting to make sure dear Mary never surfaced again. Family is a wonderful thing, right?’

He began to pull her back.

Alkmene struggled, but knew it was futile. He was much stronger than she was. If only Jake…

But he was in bed, sleeping off yesterday’s long hike across the moor.

She had been a silly idiot coming here without informing him, thinking it couldn’t hurt to sleuth on her own. Hurt by his remarks, goaded by his rejection, she had endangered her life. It was only fair she was caught and now…locked up.

She just hoped that the man had been a little optimistic in surmising she’d never be found. An hour or two of discomfort would be punishment enough.

Still dragging her, the man wrestled her down some steps. She stumbled and almost fell. It smelled damp in here, chilly, like a dungeon.

He threw her to the ground and hunched beside her, dragging some rough rope around her wrists and then her ankles. Tying it, he laughed softly. ‘You are not all alone in here, Lady Alkmene. But I am afraid the others are not very talkative. All dead, you know, and have been for centuries. But then again with that cloth in your mouth you are not saying a whole lot either.’

He backed away. She tried to scream, crawl after him, grab his ankles, pull him to the floor.

But his muddy shoes had walked away already, up the steps, and then a door closed with a thud, and a chain rattled.

She was locked up. Under the village church. In a vault or something.

Probably where all the prominent citizens had been buried in times past.

In a tomb that was. A grave for the rich and wealthy.

Ironic. Jake might have had a good laugh about it.

Chapter Twenty (#ulink_18debf49-65ee-5e65-9bd0-9f71e8c32909)

Alkmene tried to push the despicable gag out of her mouth with her tongue, but it didn’t work. Neither could she get her hands loose. There didn’t seem to be an edge or sharp rim in the vicinity that could aid her in this purpose. Everything she had always imagined you could do when bound and gagged and left to die was not working.

Maybe Jake had been right that she knew too little about being undercover.

Maybe so little she would actually die on her first investigation.

No. That was pathetic. Her father had taught her you didn’t sit down and cry at the first trouble that came into your path. She just had to try harder.

Or be smarter.

She wriggled herself onto her stomach and tried to crawl like a worm or caterpillar. Those little creatures had no arms or legs and they moved about freely, even dug through earth or crawled up trees.

But they had to have special powers to do so, because this was not working either.

She was only getting a terrible muscle cramp.

Snakes then. How did snakes move?

She tried to picture the images of them from her father’s books.

Then she heard a sound overhead. Something thudding. She wanted to scream, but the gag would not let her. She had to make a sound, somehow.

She lifted her feet and dropped them on the floor.

Ouch. That didn’t sound loud enough to reach the world overhead. She needed metal to bash against, but there was none there. No pipes to clink sending out some sort of Morse code. Just nothing.

It was terrible to realize, but people would just bustle about the church all day: putting fresh flowers in place, lighting candles, offering prayers, talking to the deacon or the vicar, and they would have no idea of the tragedy playing out down here.

She could die of famine here with all those people happily singing glory to God overhead.

She tried to swallow down the despair that flooded her. She just had to think. She could come up with something.

And maybe people did come down here, every now and then.

For…

For what?!

Alkmene closed her eyes. She thought of her father in India, looking out over the river and listening to the cries of the monkeys and feeling so secure in the knowledge his daughter was safely in London, far away from poisonous beasts and the possibility of rabies from a bite. Safe in their home with the servants, safe among their well-bred friends. Safe because he had made her so.

He’d have no idea what kind of trouble she had gotten herself into. All because she had overheard the fatal words ‘marry me’.

She sighed, but even that was not as relieving as when you were not gagged.

Then a door opened. A voice said, ‘Down here.’

She lifted her head and moaned, groaned, made any sound possible at all. She kicked with her foot against something, hoping despite knowing better that it would make a clanging sound.

Somebody knelt down beside her and touched her face. A voice said, ‘Alkmene, are you all right?’ Hands came on her wrists, untying her bonds. She shook her head, willing him to take off the gag first.

Carefully he pulled it out. She moved her dry tongue. Her throat refused to let audible words out.

Jake untied her ankles and rubbed them with his large hands. She sat on her bottom on the cold stone floor, while other people stood over her, saying things like: terrible and no idea that somebody could be locked in like that.