Thrilling Adventures of Penny, Continued

Hello, and welcome to my 2025 Blogging From A To Z April Challenge! This year, I’ve written you a complete murder mystery novelette. The setting is rural England, a few years after WWI. The extra challenge that I set myself for this story is that the first murder will not take place until the letter “M”–halfway through! And the second murder will happen at “S.” There may be murders after “S,” of course, but they are less structural or foundational or something.

And now, without further ado…

Thrilling Adventures of Penny, Continued

Penny awoke to pain and darkness. At first, the darkness seemed to be absolute, but gradually details emerged. A hulking shape towering over her became an old wooden barrel. A square of brightness impossibly high above her became a tiny cellar window. And behind her–

“The cellar steps,” Penny realized. And then, “Someone hit me over the head and pushed me down them.”

For a time, that was all. Then something bobbed up unbidden, seemed to hover before her eyes. An old woman lying in the middle of a dark pool.

“Someone killed Hettie.” Penny spoke into the dark. It took her another moment to shake off the detachment cushioning this idea. “Horrible—horrible!” she whispered. Ah—there they were. Feelings—pity, horror, disgust, panic—all flooding into her at once. But there was one feeling that rode high above all others, and that was fear.

The killer had pushed her downstairs. What had he done after that? What might he do next? How long had she been lying here?

If she’d been out for hours, she was safe now. The killer could have finished her off while she was helpless, and he hadn’t. Perhaps he thought the fall down the stairs had done it for him.

But what if she’d only been out for a moment? If that were so, he might still be quite near. Maybe just at the top of the stairs, his ear pressed to the door, listening. Or standing there with a knife, steeling himself to come down and slit her throat.

Penny cried out from sheer vexation. Not only did she not want to be murdered, the idea that the killer might murder her unnecessarily really got to her. She hadn’t seen him. She didn’t know who he was. She was no threat to him. And he might kill her anyway, because of an inadequate understanding of these facts. It made her boiling mad.

“I didn’t see you,” she shouted. “I don’t know who you are. You’d better just get. Skedaddle. Shoo.” And then, because she couldn’t help herself, “I think what you did was real bad. Stabbing an old woman like that. Hey—you probably killed Pop, too. He was a nice guy. You killed a nice guy.” She waited, listening. Nothing. “Okay,” she called, “I’m gonna assume you’re gone. I’m gonna come out of the cellar now. I’ve got a big hunk of wood to hit you with if you’re still there! With nails in it. It’ll mess you up, bad.”

As she spoke, she wished fervently that this last improvisation were true—but she didn’t see anything around her that would serve as a weapon.

She got to her feet—and fell, hands outstretched, onto the first step. The world was spinning again. She dragged herself up the steps on her hands and knees—to find the door locked at the top.

“Shoot,” said Penny, and sat on the top step with her head cradled in her hands. But what was that on the far wall? Penny strained her eyes. It was an opening, leading into blackness. Penny sat a moment longer, collecting herself, then stood up and shakily made her way to it. The walls were rough-hewn and chill to the touch.

“Of course,” said Penny to herself, “Rupert was just telling me—the cellars of the old castle.”

There was a story by Edgar Allan Poe–Penny couldn’t remember which–where the main character has to explore a dark chamber, and he does so by keeping his hand on the wall as he goes along, so he can be sure of coming back to where he started. Penny decided that would be a good idea here. She stepped into the darkness, and began to trace out the shape of the room beyond. Soon, she was walking through absolute blackness–and then blackness not quite so absolute. Now why was that? There must be a light source somewhere near her. She walked on.

Suddenly, she tripped over something which made a horrible clatter in the silence. Stooping, she touched it all over, picked it up and brought it close to her face so she could see. A metal bucket, stained with some oily substance. The heavy smell of gasoline was in the air. There was a shape, something pretty big, in front of her. She walked nearer. A steep cellar stair, and a door at the top, with a crack of light underneath.

Penny slowly mounted the stairs and extended a hand. But, just as she was about to open the door, she heard a noise coming from the other side. There was someone there. But who? Penny’s hand fell away from the knob. She slid quietly down the stairs and back into the darkness of the cellar. She felt for the wall and moved on. But she found no other way out, and, quite soon, she was back in Hettie’s cellar.

Penny blinked, confused. It was Hettie’s cellar, all right, only something was different. But what?

And then Penny realized. The door at the top of the steps, which had been locked only a moment before, was now standing open.

Penny’s mouth went dry. She was scared, and she couldn’t put her finger on why. The door was open. She could leave.

Only who had opened the door? Had the body been found? If so, why was the house so silent? Shouldn’t whoever had found the body be doing something?

 “It’s a trap!” some primal part of her was screaming. “A trap! You’ll walk upstairs—thinking it’s freedom—that’s what you’re supposed to think—but the killer is up there, waiting, and he’ll…” and she gasped, as her mind gave her a terribly persuasive sense-portrait of what being stabbed would feel like. 

Abruptly, Penny rebelled. She was tired of running, tired of being scared. She went over to the barrel she’d noticed before and gave it a great kick. As she’d hoped, it was old and rickety, and flew into pieces at once. She picked up a nice big barrel stave and charged back into the dark tunnel. Her hand skimming the wall as a guide, she found the stairs, raced up them, threw the door open, and tumbled into the bright room beyond. 

There, not ten feet from her, was Nigel Grimsby. He had his back to her, but that wouldn’t last. She knew she had only seconds to act before he was fully aware of her. With a wild battle cry, Penny charged, and brought her stave down on his head.

It disintegrated into a shower of shards and a puff of dust.

Nigel whirled, as graceful as a cat. His right elbow caught her in the neck as his left hand swept up a wrench from the nearby table. Penny fell to the floor; Nigel raised his wrench high in the air.