Murder at Ravenswood House: A totally gripping English cozy murder mystery (An English Village Mystery Book 2) by Louise Marley

Author:Louise Marley [Marley, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storm Publishing
Published: 2024-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

‘Were you trying to get yourself killed? Anyone else seeing a man brandishing a broadsword would run in the opposite direction, but not you. You have to confront him!’ Milla smacked his arm again, and then threw her arms around him, burying a sob in his chest. ‘I thought you were going to die, you bloody idiot!’

Ben had never seen Milla cry, not even when someone had once held a knife to her throat. His gut twisted to see her so upset. His arms went around her, intending to pull her close, but she shoved him away and he remembered he still hadn’t apologised for last night.

‘Milla,’ he began, aware they had an attentive audience and that the timing was terrible.

She ignored him, scrubbing at her face with the sleeve of her hoodie.

He patted his pockets for a handkerchief but came up empty.

One of the teenagers stepped between them. ‘I’m calling the police.’

Ben was sorely tempted to snap, ‘Do whatever you want,’ but Milla beat him to it.

‘He is the police.’

The teenager regarded him doubtfully before tapping out treble 9.

Ben sighed. ‘I’ve already called it in,’ he said, but then blue lights were bouncing off the ceiling and someone with a deep, gravelly voice was shouting his name outside.

He unbolted the door. There was no sign of a horse or a highwayman, spiritual or corporeal, but lots of police officers in Kevlar vests clutching H&K carbines. Not an armed response vehicle, as he’d expected, but what appeared to be the entire Tactical Firearms Unit.

He’d called Harriet for back-up and she’d sent the cavalry.

Their leader, a broad-shouldered action-hero with a face that could have been carved from pure granite, came forward. Ben recognised Sergeant Rackham from a joint operation four months ago, when he’d faced down a man with a knife.

‘I’m DI Taylor,’ Ben said.

‘I remember.’ The other man inclined his head. ‘I’m Rackham. You’re lucky we got here so fast. We were on exercise in Calahurst. So, what have we got?’ He smirked. ‘A headless horseman?’

Ben was never going to live this down.

He pointed to the broad gash in Milla’s door. ‘A man dressed as a highwayman, riding a horse, attacked me with an authentic-looking broadsword.’

The sergeant’s smirk dropped the moment he saw the huge chunk carved from Milla’s door. He stepped back onto the main street to survey the road towards The Witch’s Brew, and then in the direction of The Drop. The sinister fog had disappeared and the road was clear in both directions.

‘Which way did he go?’

Ben flipped his thumb behind him.

They regarded the six-foot fence and thicket of trees growing right against it.

‘OK…’ the sergeant said. ‘This was a good test of our response time, and you all seem fine, and this… er, headless highwayman appears to have gone⁠—’

‘He had a head,’ the woman in red interrupted. She was standing on Milla’s doorstep, still pale with shock. ‘It was like a skull… White, with black hollows for eyes…’

‘OK…’ Sergeant Rackham said again.

‘I caught him on video.’ The teenager shoved his way through, holding up his phone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.