Читать книгу Mystery Lady - Paul Magrs - Страница 20

It’s a hideous place with bare brick walls painted lime green. From somewhere down in the cells comes the howling of a homicidal stage magician. He’s raving about throttling Doris and it gives me the real shivers as I sit in this chilly corridor waiting for Dodie and Timothy. She’s using all her charm to speed up the process of getting him set free.

It’s very late now. Early hours. What a dreadful long day it’s been! All murders and maggots and the talking dead…

Speaking of which, here comes that very posh lady again, Lucrezia Noggins, with her pince-nez and her wispy hair. She sits down next to me and sighs. ‘I’m in the book, you know.’

‘Book?’ I ask.

‘The Horrible Book of Terror, Volume 27. I’m actually in each of the preceding volumes, too. The editor, Fox Soames, is a huge fan of my scary stories, even though I died long before volume one was published.’

‘Of course!’ I gasp. ’That’s where I know your name from. The contents page.’ I stare into her luminously pale eyes. ‘But you’re dead? You’re truly dead?’

‘Oh, yes. And I’m here to help you when I can, dear Cassandra. You see, you and your friends are in the most appalling danger. Someone rather nasty is absolutely intent upon nobbling each and every contributor to this anthology. Nobbling them in a very deadly way, I should add.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘We’ve started to suspect that.’

‘No one is safe,’ Lucrezia warns. ‘Not even the dead. It is imperative that you all get back on the road as quickly as possible…’

She is starting to fade away before me. Is it my over-tired eyes, or is she really vanishing?

‘Wait! Tell me, please! Why is it that I can converse with the dead..?’

Her voice lingers. She says, quite kindly, ‘Do you really not know, my dear?’

At that very moment the door flies open and Dodie hurries out with a dazed-looking Timothy Bold in tow. ‘We’re all done here,’ she tells me briskly. ‘That nice Detective Olliphant says that we can go. He bent a few rules for us because of the importance of our mission.’

‘Our mission?’ asks a befuddled Tim. He looks like he can hardly believe he’s free.

‘We’re heading north,’ says Dodie, leading the way to the car park, and Timothy’s Mini. ‘We’ve got a whole anthology of authors to track down. We’ve got to find them before our enemies do! Otherwise we might all wind up in the middle of our own worst imaginings!’