Lady Alkmene Collection: Four fabulous 1920s murder mysteries you won’t want to miss!. Vivian Conroy

up old hurt, you’d better leave again at first light. We don’t want to hear no more about it.’

      Alkmene opened her mouth to say she was not here to hurt anyone, even to set old injustices straight, but the woman was not waiting for a response. Waving the knife, she continued, ‘You’d better leave again, at first light, unless you want something to happen to you.’

      ‘Anything wrong here?’ Jake stood in the door opening with her bags in his hands.

      The woman spun to him. She hissed a moment like an angry tiger, then tossed the knife on the table beside the plate and brushed past Jake, who moved sideways to let her through.

      Hitching a brow at Alkmene, he asked, ‘Did she mention something happening to somebody?’

      ‘Yes, me,’ Alkmene retorted, ‘or rather us unless we are smart and leave again at first light. They don’t welcome strangers who are digging into old hurt or something. I tried to say birdwatching and rare plants, but she didn’t buy into it for a moment. It is all your fault. You should not have mentioned my title.’

      Jake dropped her bags on the floorboards beside the bed. ‘You had already said we were from London. Birdwatchers carry field glasses and cameras. Botanists wave the local “What grows where?” in the air.’

      ‘My father never waves “What grows where?” in the air,’ Alkmene protested. ‘He goes to places where he writes the “What grows where?” because before he came out, there was none.’

      But Jake already said, ‘Besides, if you had wanted to travel incognito, you should have chosen less conspicuous clothes to wear.’

      Alkmene glanced down. ‘These are my less conspicuous clothes.’

      Jake rolled his eyes. ‘You still have a lot to learn. If you go undercover, you must look the part.’

      ‘You have not told me anything about going undercover.’

      ‘Well, what do you expect me to do? Go downstairs, stand next to the guy handing out the cow bits and say: By the by, we think somebody died here, say twenty-five years ago, or maybe she was murdered, or maybe it was just an accident, but in any case we’d like to know more about her and the baby she might or might not have borne.’

      Alkmene saw his point. ‘That would probably get you lynched.’

      Jake lifted a shoulder. ‘Maybe not that bad, but I would be taking a bath in that horse trough outside this inn. One authentic detail of Cunningham that I am not eager to get closely acquainted with if I can help it.’

      Alkmene frowned. ‘That woman was hostile enough, but we can’t be sure all people here are the same. It seemed those folks downstairs had eaten their fill, had some beer and were happy with their meat. Maybe if you mingled and started up some conversation, you’d be getting somewhere.’

      Jake nodded. ‘Maybe.’ He picked up the knife and skilfully sliced off a chunk of bread, covering it with two slices of cheese. ‘You can feed yourself without cutting off a finger?’ he asked.

      Alkmene made a hitting gesture at him. ‘Will you go now?’

      Laughing, he trotted off, carrying his meagre dinner with him.

Chapter Seventeen

      While Alkmene was chewing on some of the very heavy bread, the woman brought her hot water. It was in a low porcelain basin with a crack in the edge. She put it on the table, still carrying that hateful look.

      Alkmene said round the bread, ‘I’m sorry if you take offence to questions being asked about things that happened here that were not…right. But not everybody has the same opinion about everything. And not everybody is after a sensationalist tale, you know. Maybe we are here in the interest of someone who was treated unfairly and who should, after all those years, be vindicated.’

      The woman stared at her as if she didn’t understand what Alkmene was talking about. ‘Just remember what I said,’ she snapped and left the room, dragging the door to a resounding close.

      ‘It was too obtuse,’ Alkmene said out loud in the empty room. She felt again like she had felt when in school, where the girls had all been well-bred but none had the extensive vocabulary – full of outdated words – that Alkmene had, being raised by her widowed father with his love of ancient textbooks and botany volumes from ages of old. The girls had laughed at her and avoided her.

      This situation was just like it. The people downstairs had studied her like she had come from another era. Jake had said she knew nothing about being undercover.

      And of course he was right. She knew nothing about that. She had thrown herself into this adventure with her usual careless idea it might be fun and she’d cross each bridge as she came to it. But the atmosphere in this village was hostile and not just because Jake and she were from the city: strangers, outsiders.

      No, these people all remembered a past, something that had happened to one of them, one of whom they had been protective, because she had been one of their own. How would she have felt if somebody she had known for all of her life had died ruined, because of a man who had cared more for his reputation than for her life and that of her unborn child?

      Letting the hot water sit on the table unused, Alkmene stood in front of the window and stared out over the darkening moors, watching how the golden sunshine changed to orange and blood red, how the skies became purple, then a deep velvet, full of stars. It would be a clear night, with a half moon giving its cold silver light.

      Suddenly there was the slamming of a door below, raucous voices calling out.

      Alkmene pushed her forehead against the windowpane to look straight down on the scene in front of the inn.

      Men came out, carrying a form in their arms.

      A struggling form.

      Someone called something she could not make out. Then the carried form was dropped into the horse trough that Jake had mentioned earlier. The men jeered a few moments, then turned and went to the inn again, laughing and slapping each other on the shoulder.

      The form in the trough sat up, wiping water from his eyes.

      The light from the lanterns by the inn’s door illuminated his profile and his tall build as he rose and stood in the trough, dripping.

      Alkmene suppressed a giggle. Turning away from the window, she grabbed the rough towel that the woman had put beside the basin with her hot water and rushed downstairs.

      Nobody paid attention to her as she walked to the door and went outside.

      Jake had clambered out of the trough and stood on the square’s cobbles, water seeping from his clothes.

      Alkmene handed him the towel. ‘I suppose they weren’t eager to talk?’

      Jake cast her a look, then accepted the towel and rubbed his face and hair. He sighed. ‘Oh, one of them was, but the others didn’t like it.’

      His breath was laced with alcohol, not beer, but strong liquor. Apparently he had felt obliged to drink to induce confidentiality in his drinking buddies.

      Alkmene tilted her head. ‘What happened exactly?’

      Jake lowered his voice. ‘One man in there seems to know a whole lot about what happened back then. He began to tell me about it, but the innkeeper’s wife was not happy that he did. She kept prodding her husband with her elbow. Then he talked to a few men, they came over and dragged me out for this soaking. I think it is just a first warning. I am sure that if I were to go back in there and try again, they would add some bruises and a black eye to the account.’

      Alkmene nodded. ‘I think this was enough for tonight. We have to see what we can do in the morning. Do you know the name of this man who was talkative?’

      Jake nodded. ‘Wallace Thomson.’

      ‘Then we will