High Rhymes and Misdemeanors, Page 3

Grace had still not made up her mind which course to follow when she checked out of the Tinker’s Dam and began driving once more. She found herself turning southwest, but she had wanted to see this part of the Lake District in any case, although it wasn’t actually on her itinerary. Two and a half weeks was not nearly long enough to spend, although Great Britain had looked so small on the maps in Monica’s living room that she had truly believed they could completely cover England and still have two days left for Scotland.

  The best-laid plans, Grace reflected as the green fields and hedgerows of Kentmere fell behind in the rainy mist. The hamlet nestled in a valley that had once been under a lake. Decades earlier, the waters had been drained away to provide valuable grazing land. She passed herds of black-face sheep with curling horns and red markings on their shaggy coats. She passed the inevitable cyclist, one or two hikers, a few other cars.

  The rented “mini” hugged the narrow winding road as Grace drove, windshield wipers keeping time to the Irish reels playing on the tape deck. Grace concentrated on shifting gears with her left hand. It had taken a while to get used to driving on the “wrong” side of the road in the wrong side of the car, but she had finally grown comfortable enough to appreciate the scenery as she steered.

  Perhaps I could add an extra day or two in West Cumbria and give up Scotland, she thought, as the road sign advising the way to Hill Top, the farm once belonging to children’s author Beatrix Potter, flashed by. The car seemed to be of the same thought, because they were certainly headed south, although Grace still told herself she hadn’t made up her mind. Of course, were she to stick to her original plan, next on her agenda was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but he had lived in Keswick, which lay to the north.

  She comforted herself by the recollection that by the time Coleridge had moved to the Lake District, he was addicted to opium and his greatest poetical works lay behind him.

  Aside from losing Monica to Love’s Young Dream Revisited, it had been a great holiday, and after all, she and Monica had spent the first week together visiting Kew Gardens on the outskirts of London, the Geffrye Museum, and Charles Dickens’ house at 48 Doughty Street. Just as they had planned for the past fourteen months, they had savored buttered crumpets and tea at the Maids of Honour, and tried out the sticky toffee pudding at Popham’s. Best of all, on Saturday they had prowled the antique market at Portobello Road where Grace had picked up three etched glass apothecary bottles to keep bath salts in, and an eighteenth century tea chest made of rosewood and lined with green felt.

  It was after this high point that they had hit Surrey, the literary southeast, where Monica had bumped, literally, into Professor Calum Bell who had once been her don at Oxford. After that, Monica had not even shown interest in visiting Elizabeth Browning’s childhood home in Herefordshire—shocking when one considered that the Victorians were her period.

  Not only was it lonely, it was a little awkward because Monica was the one who knew her way around Britain. Grace missed not having anyone to share her adventures with, but she felt she was managing pretty well. If Monica had been with her yesterday, she probably would not have taken that twilight stroll, and Peter Fox would be dead, and Grace would have missed an entertaining evening. So perhaps things were working out for the best.

  After stopping for a quick lunch at Lakeside Pier on the southern end of Windermere, Grace resumed driving. Despite the leaden skies, traffic was heavy through this popular holiday resort. Visitors piled in to see the Steamboat Museum and The World of Beatrix Potter, one of the ten most popular tourist attractions in the entire country. Grace was not fond of tourist attractions. She longed to see the Lake District known only to the local residents, not the guidebook’s recommendation for day-trippers and summer folk.

  The silver water of England’s largest natural lake was dotted by boats of all kinds, including old-fashioned steamers chugging out toward the Victorian-styled village of Bowness-on-Windermere. That famous stretch of water, coursing through densely wooded banks and secluded islands, still functioned as a public waterway, just as it had been used since the days of the Romans.

  There were at least two used bookshops in Bowness that Grace would have liked to visit. There really wasn’t a legitimate reason to be rushing along, ignoring breathtaking scenery and missing all these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and yet, Grace felt impelled to hurry.

  It was nearing teatime when Grace spotted the van. Several miles back on the empty road, it gained quickly, the tires eating the miles between. As the van drew near, it flashed its lights; the driver blasted his horn.

  With drystone wall on one side and a steep embankment overlooking somber woods on the other, Grace had no choice but to step on the gas. Her speedometer climbed as the blue mini bounced along over the narrow, potholed road.

  It had been a mistake to speed up. The van stayed right on her tail, lights flashing, horn blaring.

  God help them if they met opposing traffic. The driver of the van had to be crazy, Grace thought, concentrating on keeping the mini under control. Up ahead it looked like there might be room to pull off where a dirt lane turned off into the woods.

  The mini flew, rattling as it hit another missing chunk in the road. The van stuck to Grace’s bumper like glue. As Grace risked a peek in her rearview, she glimpsed what appeared to be an old woman crouched over the van’s steering wheel. The woman’s long gray hair flew around wildly. Another lumpish figure sat beside her.

  The van drew closer still, its black face filling the rear window of the mini. To Grace’s angry amazement, she felt a tremendous bang as the van rammed the bumper of the mini. It was not a hard hit but the mini swerved, its left fender screeching horrendously as it scraped along the stone wall to the accompaniment of whirling Irish fiddles.

  Grace wrenched the car back on course, trying not to panic as the van loomed behind her once more. Once again the van slammed into the mini’s bumper and she fought for control.

  The turnoff lay just a few yards ahead.

  Three yards.

  Two yards.

  Grace cut the wheel sharply and the mini spun out, gravel spraying beneath its tires. Very nearly turning over, the mini rocked back onto all four tires, managing to stay upright, and sat there, its engine running.

  Shaking, Grace leaned over the wheel fully expecting to see the black van go hurtling past in her side mirrors. Instead, the van screeched up perpendicular to the mini effectively blocking entrance to the road. The cab doors flew open and two men got out, striding to where Grace idled.

  Shock held her speechless. For a moment she thought it might be Mutt and Jeff, but no, something about their heights and builds didn’t match up. One of the men was a little taller, one was a little broader. They were dressed in dark casual clothes, jeans and sweaters, and they wore wigs and Halloween masks: the taller man, a flop-eared hound dog; his stockier companion, a beaming caricature of the late Queen Mother.

  The driver, the Queen Mother, reached the mini first, and yanked on the passenger door handle, which was fortunately locked. Belatedly, Grace’s survival instincts kicked into gear. She turned the key in the ignition, which was already running, causing an alarming grinding of the engine.

  Fumbling, she found the unfamiliar shift and threw the car into reverse, dislodging the second man who was tugging on the handle of her door.

  As the first man thumped hard on the windshield, Grace looked up. He was pointing an enormous black gun at her. The glass between them seemed like no barrier at all as he made a convincingly threatening gesture.

  Grace didn’t know what to do. In her entire life she had never faced a genuinely violent situation— barring the occasional brawl between the young ladies of St. Anne’s. She had never held a real gun, let alone had one pointed at her. Staring wide-eyed, Grace tried to think with a brain that felt freeze-dried.

  “Get out of the car!” The man on Grace’s side pounded on her window. He wore black leather gloves, deadening the sound of blows heavy enough to b
reak the glass.

  Grace turned off the engine and the car shuddered to a stop. Numbly, she felt for the seat belt release. She unlocked the door. What choice did she have? They could shoot the tires of her car and smash the window in. They could shoot her through the window for that matter. Even if she could get past the guns, she wasn’t going anywhere with their van blocking the main road.

  The man sporting the hound dog mask jerked open the car door and grabbed Grace’s arm, dragging her out of the mini. Grace fell against the side of the car.

  The other man, the one with the Queen Mother mask and the gun, came around the hood of the car. He said, his voice muffled through the mask, “Where is he?”

  “Who?” Grace gasped.

  “The fox.”

  “The w-what?”

  The Queen Mother turned to the hound dog. “This is the right bird? You’re sure?”

  “It’s her all right.”

  The Queen Mother slapped Grace hard, open palmed. Grace’s head rocked back. She saw stars.

  “Don’t mess me about,” he snarled.

  “I’m n-not!” Tears of fright and fury sprang to Grace’s eyes. Her teeth felt loose. She put her hand up to her jaw. One thing burned in her brain, she was not going to cry in front of these animals.

  “Where’s Fox?” the other man chimed in. “We know you’re in it together.”

  “What are you talking about?” Grace cried. But her mind began to turn over. Not the fox, as in a four-footed woodland creature, but Fox, as in Peter. As in the man who didn’t want police involved even after an attempt on his life. A man who disappeared in the middle of the night—apparently with good reason.

  The guy in the dog mask began to rummage through Grace’s purse in the front seat. The other man waved the gun before her nose. Behind the mask his pale eyes were cold and menacing.

  Grace chattered out, “I don’t know him. Last night was the first time I ever laid eyes on him. I don’t know where he’s gone. I don’t know anything about him.”

  The man in her car turned his head, his mask askew and said, “I saw you kissing the life back into him last night.”

  “That was mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! I never saw him before,” Grace insisted. “I’d have done the same for anyone.”

  “Why did you follow him out there if you didn’t know him?”

  “I didn’t! I was out for a walk. I just found him in the stream.”

  The Queen Mother said slyly, “Teach you to mind your own business then, won’t it?”

  “She knows him all right,” the dog mask interrupted triumphantly, holding aloft Grace’s copy of Walker’s Britain. “His address is scribbled here.” He indicated the flyleaf where Grace had jotted down Peter Fox’s address.

  Both masks turned accusingly to Grace. She said helplessly, “I don’t know him.”

  The Queen Mother uttered an ugly chuckle. “That’s your story, you stick to it. I suppose you don’t know anything about gewgaws either?”

  This can’t be happening, Grace thought dizzily. I’m dreaming. The rain pattering on her face, bouncing off the cars, soaking the ground where they stood told her she wasn’t.

  “Nothing in here,” the man in the car continued, rifling the contents of Grace’s shoulder bag. He pulled out her passport. “Grace Hollister, thirty-three. She’s American.” He made a sound of contempt.

  “Save the inventory,” barked the Queen Mother. “Fox won’t have left the stuff with her.” He jerked his head toward the van. “Come ahead, we can’t stand about all day. Someone’s liable to come by.” He reached out a massive, gloved fist, and Grace shrank back.

  Grabbing Grace’s braid, he hauled her face up to his plastic one. The Queen Mother’s face smiled benignly, at odds with the threats issuing through the molded lips. “Listen up, ducks, you do what I tell you and maybe you won’t get hurt.”

  “What do you need her for?” objected the hound dog.

  Blue eyes shifted briefly from Grace’s. “Use your loaf,” he snarled. “We’ll trade her for the gewgaws.”

  “Fox won’t go for that.”

  “He’d better.” The mask turned back to Grace. “For your sake.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Grace got out desperately.

  Neither man listened. The Queen Mother shoved Grace forward toward the van.

  In less than a minute Grace found herself facedown on the grease-stained carpet in the back of the van. She could hear the mini’s engine gunning as the van doors slammed shut. Rain rattled on the metal roof.

  “Keep your head down,” the Queen Mother ordered, settling in behind the steering wheel. “Try to see where we’re going and I’ll break your nose for you.”

  Grace believed him. She cradled her head on her arms as the van’s engine roared into life. The van backed up sharply and she dug her fingers into the carpet, trying to keep from tumbling forward. A moment later tires skidded back onto the main road, and they hurtled down the highway.

  For what felt like ages they drove, the van clattering alarmingly as they banged down on potholes. The driver did not speak, fiddling incessantly with the radio knobs, finally settling on a talk show.

  As Grace’s initial shock and fear wore off, she was able to think rationally, and the first rational thought that occurred was that if her abductors bothered to wear masks and didn’t want her to see where they were headed, then there was a good chance they did plan on letting her go.

  On the other hand, if her rescue depended on Peter Fox’s cooperation…?

  Grace could not imagine what her Good Samaritan stunt yesterday had involved her in, but apparently attempted murder was just the beginning. Pulling Peter Fox out of that stream just might have been the biggest mistake of Grace’s life.

  Would Peter Fox be willing to trade gewgaws for Grace? What were gewgaws exactly? Jewels? Or was it some modern slang for drugs?

  Perhaps these two had attacked Peter last night, and not Mutt and Jeff. Could two separate sets of thugs be after the man? Just who was Peter Fox? What had he involved her in?

  Fingers clenching the diesel-smelling carpet as the van fishtailed left and right, Grace no longer doubted the seriousness of that attack on Peter’s life. Had he left the inn last night of his own free will? Maybe he was already dead.

  Then again, maybe he was on the run. If so, how would he find out about Grace’s plight? If Peter Fox did know Grace was in trouble, maybe he didn’t care, especially if he were a crook, too.

  The van finally left the main highway, bumping along a dirt track; Grace tried to keep straight which direction they were traveling in, but the smell of dust and exhaust fumes under the rear doors made her a little nauseous. She reminded herself that if she did survive, she would need to know where to bring the police.

  Grace could only rely on herself. Monica wouldn’t worry if she didn’t hear from her until Grace missed their flight. That was eight days—no, seven days now—away. By then Grace could be long dead.

  With a suddenness that took her by surprise, the van lurched to a stop. How long had they traveled west? At least an hour. Motionless, Grace waited for the next development.

  The driver turned around in his seat, commanding Grace to stay down. She obeyed, listening as he climbed out, hearing the crunching of his feet on gravel as he came around to the rear of the van.

  The mini’s engine whined as it parked behind the van.

  The next instant the back doors of the van flew wide. Before Grace could sit up she was hauled out into the misting rain, and shoved against the bumper. All this pushing and pulling was beginning to make her mad, a healthy reaction to being victimized. She leaned against the van and glared at the two men in their silly masks.

  “Look, you have got—”

  “No, you look,” the Queen Mum shot back. Twisting Grace’s arm behind her back, he swung her about so that she had a clear view of the abandoned farmhouse and outlying buildings. “Take a good look. What do you see?”

  Despite t
he pain in her arm and shoulder, Grace looked. It was obvious the whitewashed buildings had not been inhabited for years. Weeds overgrew the vegetable garden and flowerbeds. The yew trees surrounding the house were wild and brambly. The house had a couple of broken windows and a tumbledown chimney. Slates were missing in patches from the roof.

  There was not another house as far as the eye could see, nor even another road. Nothing but rain-swept empty hills disappearing into gray mist.

  “Nothing,” she got out.

  “Too right,” said the Queen Mum. “Nothing. No phone, no gas, no electric and no body. There isn’t anyone to hear you scream, so scream your bloody head off. And there isn’t anywhere to run, so don’t get any bright ideas. You’ll be wasting your time—and mine. And I don’t like people who waste my time.”

  Together they trooped into the house. Uneasily Grace gazed about. Mildew stained the walls, cobwebs draped from light fixtures. The floor was beginning to rot.

  Marched up a narrow flight of stairs, Grace found herself thrown into a room with multi-paned windows looking over the outlying sheds and lonely moors. In one corner of the room stood a cot; in the other, a metal bucket. That completed the furnishings.

  The door locked behind Grace.

  Picking herself up, Grace examined her prison more closely. In the dying light she could see faded wallpaper peeling from the walls in sheets. The wooden floor was thick with years of dust and dirt. Listening to the pinpricks of rain against the windows, Grace was nearly overcome with despair.

  Angrily, she pushed these feelings aside. Feeling sorry for herself would accomplish nothing. She had to start using her head. Going to the window, Grace stared out through the tangle of tree limbs. She felt around for the catch. It took her several minutes in the fading light to identify the old-fashioned latch. By the time she found it, Grace had also noticed bright shiny studs fastening the sill down.

  Frustrated, she stood back and studied the window. It was made up of four panes of glass, each about two-by-two across. Voices drifted eerily up from downstairs. She traced their source back to the heating register on the floor. Kneeling down beside the fancy iron grid covering what must have once been the heating duct, she listened tensely.

  “When will you be back?” It was the other man. The dog mask man. Grace’s heart lifted. One less kidnapper improved her chances of escape by fifty percent. And if she had to be left alone with one of them, she preferred Man’s Best Friend to the gun-toting Queen Mother.

  The Queen Mother growled something that Grace couldn’t pick up through the air shaft.

  “What if he doesn’t come through?”

  “He will.”

  “Maybe she’s telling the truth. Not much his usual style, is she?”

  “They’re all his style.”

  More that Grace couldn’t hear. Then one of them, she thought the Queen Mother, snarled, “I’ll bring something back. Don’t be a bloody nit. One of us has to watch her. You might be recognized.”

  “Twenty years later? Not bloody likely.”

  Their voices faded. They must be walking out toward the cars.

  Grace hopped up, swiftly crossing to the cot and grabbing the moldy mattress. She dragged it under the window. Wildly, she visualized shoving the mattress out and jumping after it, her fall cushioned by the rotting stuffing. A quick reality check stopped her. The branches against the windows were too close to throw anything down—even if she could stuff the mattress through the small frame, which was unlikely.

  Wrapping the blanket in a great swath around her arm, she returned to the window.

  There would be noise. There was no way around that, Grace thought. Most of the glass would fall to the ground outside. But now, while they were on the other side of the house, while the rain drummed down on the roof and thundered on the gravel, now was her best opportunity. Taking a deep breath and turning her face away, Grace tapped lightly at the corner windowpane. Breaking windows did not come naturally to her. She feinted again, patting the pane with increasing force.

  On the fourth blow the glass cracked across like a spider web. A few pieces fell tinkling to the mattress. Grace stopped, waiting rigidly.

  She could hear nothing but the rain. Reaching with the blanket, she pulled loose the broken shards and tossed them to the ticking. When she had worked most of the glass free, she wiped her thickly blanketed arm around the casement, making sure all the splinters were removed. Roughly, she dusted the sill.

  Grace hastily gathered all the broken pieces of glass off the mattress and piled them in the corner behind the door. One of those shards would make a brutal weapon, though she couldn’t imagine slicing at someone’s face or throat, and that’s what it would come down to if she tried to make a fight of it. Her only thought at the moment was escape.

  She tiptoed over to the heating duct and listened. She could hear someone moving downstairs. No sound of alarm. No sound of anyone coming to check on her.

  Grace went back to the window and stared out at the mist-shrouded fell. She felt rain against her face. It was oddly comforting, a taste of freedom. Nightfall opens the door… Who had written that?

  It would be hours before it was actually dark, thanks to the lingering English twilight. She was afraid to chance an escape without the cover of night. But in a few hours the Queen Mother would also be back, and if she feared one of them more than the other, it was he.

  Desperately, Grace tried to think. Run or wait? If she blew this chance she would be unlikely to get another. Everything in her screamed to go now, but a flicker of caution—or maybe sheer fear—held her motionless.

  At last Grace lugged the mattress back to the cot.

  The hours passed slowly. The room slid into complete darkness. Grace paced up and down to keep warm. It was cold, almost bitter, for summer.

  She heard the stairs creak beneath heavy feet. The key in the lock had Grace’s heart leaping in her mouth. There was no disguising the cold air gusting through the room from the broken window, nor the rain pooling on the floor, but in the darkness her jailer might not notice. Surely his attention would be on her.

  Grace moved over to the cot, settling her back against the wall.

  He stood in the doorway holding a kerosene lantern. The sight of the lugubrious dog mask in the flickering light had Grace biting her lip on a hysterical bubble of laughter. He began to back out of the room.

  “I’m freezing up here,” Grace chattered out between teeth clicking as much from nerves as cold. “Could I have my jacket? And a light?”

  “You don’t need a light. Go to sleep.” He shut the door and relocked it.

  Well, it had been worth a try.

  A few minutes later the lock scraped, the door opened a crack, and her duffel jacket flew in like a wounded bird, landing on the floor. The man closed and relocked the door before Grace could stir.

  Gratefully, she shrugged on her jacket and huddled back into the blanket. She resettled on the mattress to wait.

  The hours crawled by.

  The rain slowed, stopped. The wind sent skeletal fingers clawing at the remaining panes of glass. The rain began again.

  Grace heard the van’s return across the echoing emptiness of the valley. Her heart began to slug against her ribs. Rising from the mattress, she returned to her listening post by the heating duct.

  Not long to wait before she could hear them moving below, their voices distorted by the sounds of rustling paper and the wind in the shaft.

  “What the hell do we do now?”

  “—tomorrow—” That was the one with the gun. The Queen Mother.

  The other man’s voice rose nervously. “What if we can’t? What if he’s gone to earth? What does the man say?”

  The scent of curry wafted up through the vent. Grace’s stomach growled a hungry response so loudly she wondered the men downstairs didn’t hear.

  Her lunch at Lakeside Pier was a fond memory now. Grace fantasized about the rashers of thick bacon she had left untouched at b
reakfast. The voices downstairs droned on unintelligibly. Grace heard something about “Delon.” Was that a person or a place? Obscenities seemed to have the best carrying power, she noted, and the two downstairs lavishly sprinkled their conversation with them.

  “What do we do with the bird?”

  As tensely as Grace listened she could not catch the reply to this. There was more undertone talk. The first man’s voice rose and was cut off by the Queen Mum’s stream of swearing.

  “—ice Fox—”

  Grace’s blood ran cold. “Ice Fox?” She’d watched enough TV to know what that meant.

  “You’re off your bloody nut! I knew this would never work. If you cross him and—”

  “Do you want to cross the man?”

  Sharp silence followed.

  The Queen Mother said scornfully, “You don’t think big enough, that’s your problem.”

  “You think we should go into business for ourselves?”

  “I think—options open.”

  The voices faded out again.

  After a while Grace gave up and returned to her nest on the mattress. An hour passed. She listened to the minutes tick by on her wristwatch as the house sank into uneasy slumber.

  There had not been a sound from downstairs in ages. Nothing to indicate her captors were not sleeping. The first hours of sleep were the deepest. If she was going to make a try at escape, it should be now. Now with darkness to cover her and the drumming of rain to deaden the sound.

  Grace crossed to the window and stared down. It was about a twelve-foot drop. Far enough to break an ankle or leg, if not her neck.

  In her navy duffel coat and jeans she made a suitably dark silhouette, but the bulky coat added too many inches to squeeze through the small window frame. Grace stripped off the coat, shoved it out into the tree branches where it dangled precariously and fell to the ground.

  Agonizing seconds passed while Grace waited for signs of alarm. There was nothing. She decided to go ahead. She studied the window opening. Should she try head first or feet first?

  A nosedive out the window did not appeal, but the other way she had no way of spotting a foothold. There was no sill as such on the outside of the window, and no screens.

  Grace finally decided on headfirst. Squeezing her arms and shoulders out through the open window, she groped for a branch strong enough to take her full weight. It was like trying to find an opening in a wall of brambles. Putting her eye out was a real possibility. Ducking her head Grace reached still farther till she found a limb that felt thicker than the others and grabbed on tight.

  Now what?

  Twigs poking her head, hair and shoulders already soaked, Grace pushed the rest of the way through the window. The branch she clung to dipped with her weight. Grace found herself in a vulnerable position, spread-eagled across the drop between tree and house.

  Don’t look down, she warned herself doggedly.

  The tree limb sank and sprang back, and Grace had a vivid picture of herself bucked clear over the roof of the house. She bit her lip against a hysterical laugh, but all humor fled as the branch gave an alarming crack. Grace hoped to heaven the storm howling around the house would mask the sounds of her clumsy escape.

  She pushed off from the windowsill with a silent prayer.

  Clinging monkey-style, she shinnied toward the tree trunk, shoving through the twigs catching at her hair and clothes. She balanced unsteadily on her wooden perch. Dead leaves and sticks rained to the ground.

  Grace stared down. Light from the kitchen window pooled on the ground below. Stealthily, she lowered herself to the next branch, trying to avoid poking an eye out on one of the brittle twigs. When she was near the ground, she half fell, half dropped out of the tree, landing on her haunches in the soft mud.

  Grace picked herself up off her soggy behind and hustled into the duffel coat, fingers fumbling with cold and fright as she drew the hood down over her hair. She hoped with her head covered, the long line of the navy coat and her dark jeans would present only a shadow to any watcher.

  Creeping to the window, Grace leaned against the stone wall, panting softly. Fear warred with the knowledge that if she could get her car keys, her chances of escape would be much better. On foot out in this wilderness, what chance would she stand once her flight was discovered? She didn’t even know what direction to run in.

  Inch by inch Grace raised her head until she could peek over the windowsill. Her heart froze.

  One of her captors sat at a table reading The Sun, and smoking. Facing the hall and the stairs leading to Grace’s prison, his back was to the window where Grace stood, otherwise her escape would have ended then and there. He read on unperturbed.

  Grace spotted a wig and rubber mask tossed carelessly amid the Indian take-out containers. She studied the square set of his shoulders. He had long dark hair in a ponytail with a thick gray streak down the back. Grace was sure she would recognize him by that distinguishing feature alone.

  Her eyes darted around the room. Her suitcases were tossed carelessly in the corner. Everything had been dumped out and pawed through. She could see one of her little apothecary bottles smashed on the floor. The two Regency romances she had brought were sitting on the table next to the man’s elbow. She did not see her purse or keys anywhere.

  Perhaps they were still in her car? She weighed the risk of skulking round to the front of the house on the slim chance that her captors had conveniently left her keys in the ignition. What if the man in the house noticed she was gone? What if the Queen Mother returned? She could only too vividly picture herself caught in the headlights of the Queen Mother’s van.

  Grace turned from the window and picked her way on tiptoe through the overgrown vegetable patch. Behind a broken-down shed she located a footpath and ran, pushing through the bracken, heading for the hills.

  Chapter Three