Paul Magrs - Mystery Lady

With that, I threw open the concealed door to reveal a disheveled figure in a ginger wig. He looked absolutely furious.

‘Carswell Hobbs!’ cried Tim. ‘But you’re not meant to be here!’

‘He was here the whole time, of course,’ I said. ‘He secreted himself inside his own magic box and made a plan to strangle his wife, whom I presume he despised..?’

Carswell glowered at me. ‘I loathed her,’ he snarled. ‘Worst magician’s assistant in the business. I don’t know what I ever saw in her.’

‘She was lovely!’ Cassandra cried out. ‘You didn’t deserve her!’

‘He was hoping to bump her off, pin the blame on Timothy Bold, and lay low inside this box and sneak out when no one was looking,’ I explained.

‘That’s a ridiculous plan,’ gasped the Detective Inspector, staring at the magician.

I shrugged. ‘He’s a homicidal maniac. And a very poor magician. What more do you expect?’

The detective got his men to haul Carswell out of his hiding place. He wriggled and shrieked and cackled. He said he was glad that Doris was dead.

‘Oh, that poor girl,’ sniffed Cassie. ‘She was so puzzled by what had happened to her. I was glad Lucrezia was there to help her over to the other side…’

I didn’t have a clue what Cassandra was talking about, but in the meantime we had to get away from Television Centre and back on the road. We had a mystery of our own to investigate.

‘Detective Inspector,’ I turned to the man in the grubby mac. ‘Are we free to go now, my friends and I?’

He frowned. ‘Mr Bold will still have to stay and make a full report. Even though we’ve got what amounts to a confession from Mr Hobbs, there’s still a great deal of paperwork to sort out down the station.’

I pulled a face. ‘Really? You see, we’re involved in a very important and hush-hush investigation of our own. It involves murder and imposters and a strange vendetta, and also, if I’m not mistaken, it has a certain somewhat supernatural element to it. Really, we can’t afford to waste any further time on cases that I’ve already sorted out for you.’

The detective gave me a very dark look. ‘Mr Timothy Bold is coming with me to the Shepherd’s Bush nick, Miss. There’s forms to fill in, and suchlike.’

Timothy gave me a hopeless glance.

Cassandra whispered in my ear, ‘Let’s break him out. Let’s get him away.’

I shook my head. ‘We can’t go round behaving like common criminals, Cassandra.’

I watched them lead Timothy away. He looked very doleful.

‘We’ll follow you to the station in the Mini,’ I promised.

And so we did.

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!’

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