Read A Medal For Murder for Free Online

marry. People can say “I do not” as well as they say “I do”. Anyway, don’t think about that. It will give you nightmares.’
    ‘You should go now, Dylan.’
    ‘Let me stay and look after you. I’ll watch you as you sleep.’
    ‘You’ve done enough. You need to be fine and frisky for work tomorrow. The girls will be swarming to the window of Croker & Company to catch a glimpse of you.’
    ‘I doubt it.’ Reluctantly, he turned up his collar.
    She followed him down the stairs.
    He would not take the lantern. ‘The moon will be out again soon. Goodnight, Lucy.’
    ‘Goodnight.’ She turned the key in the lock, went back up the stairs and watched him cross the field. At the gate, he looked back and waved.
    For a moment she thought he would turn tail and hurry back to her.
    Yesterday Lucy had purloined her grandfather’s army groundsheet and khaki blankets. She had borrowed a bike and brought what she needed to the tower. Her chosen spot was by the wall on the top floor, the level below the parapet. Her tapestry shoulder bag formed a pillow.
    She had taken a big gamble, she knew that. What if, when Granddad opened the ransom note, he set asidethe habit of a lifetime and went to the authorities? Well, they would not find her. No one would. This place had been abandoned years ago.
    Of course tomorrow was Saturday and he could not go to the bank. But she had thought of that. Let him sweat. Let him fester all day Saturday and all through Sunday. Let him run mad in his mind. He would be knocking on the door of the bank first thing Monday morning.
    She frowned. Of course it was always possible that he really did not have her legacy, that he had gambled it away, or spent it, that he had been leading her up the garden path all these years, saying there was something substantial for her in that dim distant future that had arrived with the break of dawn on the 6th of August this year, her twenty-first birthday.
    In that case, he had better know how to get some money, because she would have it. She would live her life, away from him and his weapons, uniforms, medals, his ancient nonsense.
    Something touched Lucy’s face in the darkness. Something scuttled by her hair, a stealthy creature pitter-pattering. She lay very still. The tower moved and breathed. Its nooks and crannies held the scent of long-ago harvests. She could taste dust and hay-making in the back of her throat. The grey stone walls reeked of eternity, and the wooden floor of pity and decay.
    ‘Fallen into disuse,’ was how Dylan said he would describe it if the tower found its way into the files of Croker & Company, House Agents.
    She had chosen the tower as her hiding place after elimination of other possibilities. Dylan would have risked his job if he hid her in his rooms above the houseagent’s offices. Girl friends would not understand her determination and need for secrecy. They had mothers who would not keep her confidence.
    There was another reason that had nothing to do with logic or sense. All through her childhood, Lucy adored fairy tales. She felt the ring of truth that chimed with something in her own soul. A fairy tale girl, miller’s daughter or princess, would somehow find her true self, would be granted her deepest wish. But before that, a trial must be endured, a solitary struggle with no certainty of success.
    Without being able to put it into words, Lucy knew that if she could pass three nights in this tower, the future would fall into the palm of her hand. And it must be three nights, the magical number three. Tonight, Friday, her grandfather would sleep soundly, suspecting nothing. On Saturday morning, when the note dropped onto the doormat, he would begin to stew. All Saturday he would plot and plan how to get the money, the thousand pounds. He would take out his bank books and do calculations. The thought of parting with the smallest sum always gave him the runs. When a bill arrived, the lavatory flushed so often, the house