A Medal For Murder Read Online Free PDF

along the bumpy road as if the devil were after them.
    At the turning for Stonehook Road, he slowed down. ‘It’s not going to let up. Do you want to turn back?’
    ‘No!’
    They continued in silence along the winding road. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Finally the tower loomed in the dark field, lit by the moon. Seeing it at night gave Lucy a jolt. It looked so very different. Menacing.
    Dylan slowed down. He brought the bicycle to a stop by the side of the road.
    Lucy climbed off, shaking away the raindrops. She hopped from foot to foot. ‘Just a mo . . . Let me . . .’ She leaned on his shoulder, shaking her leg. ‘Oh, oh, oh! Pins and needles!’
    The hem of her skirt was soaked from wheel splashes. Dylan leaned the bike against the hawthorn hedge. He unclipped the lamp from the handlebars. ‘There’s still time to change your mind.’
    ‘Don’t be a big baby.’ She took the lamp from him and began to look for the gap in the hedge. ‘My mind’s made up.’
    He followed, reaching out to stop her. ‘Do you have to? Why not be at home when the postman comes in the morning? Intercept the note before your granddad sees it?’
    ‘Dylan! Then I’d be a soppy drip.’ She shook free of him. Let him be a coward if he wanted. He looked the part, only a little taller than she was, skinny, and with something of the child about him still. ‘I can’t see the gap,’ she called. ‘We’ll have to climb the gate.’ Lamp in one hand, she put a foot on the second bar of the gate. ‘Don’t go all useless on me. You said you’d help.’
    ‘That was on a sunny day,’ he said lamely. ‘It seemed a good idea.’
    She was on one side of the gate, he on the other, notmoving. She put her hand on his. ‘I have to do this. I only want what is mine.’
    It was that June Sunday afternoon when they rehearsed together. She had sworn him to secrecy. When she told him she wanted to train as an actress, and had applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she hardly dared hope anything would come of it. When she was offered an audition, she feared she would not find a good enough lie to cover her two-day disappearance, or she would not scrimp together the fare to London. Her grandfather was such a miser, like the miser in the play. But being Lucy, she did find the money. Being Lucy, she was offered a place at RADA, and she intended to take it up.
    On her twenty-first birthday she had asked her grandfather outright for the legacy she knew to be hers. He refused.
    Lucy got the idea for the ransom note from one of Miss Fell’s library books. A thousand pounds would pay her fees at RADA, and her board and lodgings in London.
    Now here she was on this wet August night, struggling to make her dream come true, and with only Dylan to help. He was turning out to be a wet blanket, a cowardy custard.
    ‘What if your grandfather works out that you sent the ransom note?’
    ‘Well then, let him. He’ll know I mean it.’ She began to stride across the field.
    Dylan climbed after her, hurrying to catch up. ‘He’ll call the police.’
    She turned. The moon lit their way. She saw that Dylan was looking at the ground, trying to avoid steppingon buttercups and daisies. ‘Granddad won’t call the police. He will pay up because he is afraid.’
    ‘Of what?’ Dylan asked.
    They were so close that Lucy had the sudden picture in her mind of the two of them as a pair of bedraggled scarecrows in a field. They would cling together against all the birds of prey in the world. But she would have to do the protecting. Dylan had not one ounce of courage or initiative in his body.
    ‘I’m not sure what Granddad is afraid of. Scandal I suppose.’
    Even as a little girl she had known that her grandfather did not want to draw attention to himself. Her low heels sunk into the soft ground. Dampness from the grass tickled her ankles through her stockings.
    Lucy shone a light on the lock in the old oak door. Dylan inserted the heavy iron