The Lucy Wilson Mysteries: The Midnight People. by John Peel & Steve Beckett

Author:John Peel & Steve Beckett [Peel, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2019-05-19T23:00:00+00:00

— CHAPTER TEN —

THE END OF

MY ROPE

‘I’ve heard of home gyms,’ Hobo muttered, ‘but this is ridiculous.’ He stared at the ropes, obviously as puzzled by them as Lucy was. ‘What do you make of this?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ she admitted. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’ She went to the door that led to the living room. ‘They’re all over the house,’ she said. Hobo joined her in the doorway, where she could see a dozen more ropes hanging from the ceiling.

‘You think they’re getting ready to lynch some rustlers?’ Hobo suggested, grinning.

‘That’s about as logical as anything I can come up with,’ Lucy replied. ‘Whoever did this went to some effort, so it has to be important. I just wish I could work out why.’

If you could ignore the ropes for a moment, everything else about the room looked perfectly normal. There was a sofa, an armchair, a table, and a sideboard. On the sideboard were several framed photos. One of those was of a man in a military uniform, which must have been the late Mr Moloney. There was another of him with a woman in a wedding gown, obviously the happy couple on their wedding day. They looked so happy, so oblivious of the sadness that was to come their way. Lucy felt quite touched, and it made her feel more and more like an intruder. She fought down this feeling – there was no other option. To investigate what was going on, she had to examine this home.

I’m a Lethbridge-Stewart, she reminded herself. I will do anything to fight this problem. Anything!

It didn’t make her feel any better, but it did help to steel her resolve. She would go through with this. ‘Next room,’ she muttered, and opened the door into the front room.

Unsurprisingly, there were more ropes hanging from the ceiling. Other than that, it was so mind-numbingly normal: soft chairs grouped about a TV, one of the old ones, not a flat screen. There was a record player next to the TV, and a rack of albums. Obviously, Mrs Moloney was not a fan of CDs or downloads. There were built-in cupboards, which Hobo promptly opened. They contained nothing more suspicious than old photo albums, and a pile of jigsaw puzzles.

To the left side of the room were the stairs leading upstairs. There were more ropes all the way up them, of course. They went slowly up the steps. There were framed pictures on the wall, showing Mr and Mrs Moloney at various sites: Stonehenge, the Houses of Parliament, a mountain somewhere. At the top of the stairs was a neat little bathroom and toilet, which, again, seemed perfectly normal.

‘No ropes in here,’ Hobo pointed out. This was true. It was the first room in the house without them hanging down. Lucy wondered why, but as she had no idea why the other rooms had them in the first place – it was impossible to know for sure.

There were three other doors leading off the upstairs landing.

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