Murder by Mistake Read Online Free PDF Page A

around his legs. Midge – a misnomer if ever there was one – approved of Thomas because he had a frontage large and comfortable enough to sit on.
    The door to the kitchen quarters opened, and Mia crept out into the hall. Thomas checked for a moment, taking in the fact that they had a visitor, and then – blessed man that he was – held out his free arm to Mia. ‘Lovely to see you, my dear. How are you doing?’
    Mia wasn’t afraid of him, much. She didn’t take his hand, but she didn’t run away, either. ‘Fine, thanks. And thank you for having me to stay. You’ve heard what happened?’
    He swept them both into the sitting room. ‘Sort of. Tell me all.’
    He sat with his arm around Ellie on the big old settee, while Mia perched a little way off on a stool. Six months ago she had been ‘a little cracker’, as one of her admirers had put it; a stunningly beautiful girl with long dark curls, peach-like skin and eyes which were at once soft and intelligent. She’d been studying modern languages at Thames Valley University while living at home with her mother, her wealthy stepfather and two stepbrothers.
    She and her best friend Ursula had been part of a bright, party-going set until, at a party on New Year’s Eve, Mia had been drugged and offered to a local councillor in an attempt by her family to influence the outcome of a controversial planning permission. If it had stopped there, it would have been bad enough, but a young man who’d tried to come to Mia’s rescue had been thrown from the top of the building and killed. Worse; still drugged out of her senses, the girl had been taken home and locked in her bedroom for further abuse by her family and their friends. After all, as one of her stepbrothers had said, she was second-hand goods by then, so what did it matter?
    She’d survived after a fashion, but it was only Ursula’s insistence that something terrible had happened to her friend which had brought Ellie into the picture. It had taken a lot of hard work to find Mia, and then more hard work to mend the broken doll. For she had been broken and, despite a long stay in a clinic and a lot of therapy, she would never be the same bright, carefree girl again.
    Nowadays she crept around with her eyes down, cringing if a man came anywhere near her. She’d chopped off her long hair after her ordeal, but though it had grown again, it was now pulled back untidily into a band. Her skin looked unhealthy, and she no longer cared how she dressed. Today she wore a long-sleeved black T-shirt over jeans, but had lost too much weight to look good in them.
    Ellie watched as Thomas’s large heart filled with pity for the girl. ‘Tell me,’ he said, using his gentlest voice rather than the lion’s roar which he could employ on occasion.
    Mia twisted her hands together between her knees. ‘They tried to kill me again today.’
    MONDAY EARLY EVENING . . .
    She’d escaped! Grinding his teeth, he wondered what it took to kill one woman. He had her in his sights, and then – that big black man had leaped up from nowhere and shoved her out of the way. Infuriating!
    Worse. Catastrophic.
    If she didn’t die soon, he was going to be totally up the pole without a safety net.
    Well, if at first you don’t succeed . . .

THREE
    Monday evening
    T homas’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Someone tried to kill you today?’
    Ellie said, ‘Well, I don’t really think so, Mia. It was the most awful accident, and I’m sure it wasn’t aimed at you.’ She explained what had happened.
    Thomas gave her another of his bear-like hugs and said again, ‘I turn my back on you for five minutes!’ Then to Mia, ‘And you, my dear? Not hurt?’
    Mia shook her head. ‘A bit bruised. Not that that matters. I know I’m on borrowed time. I don’t really expect to live long enough to give evidence.’
    Thomas rubbed his eyes. He’d had a tiring journey and didn’t really need to cope with this at the end of the day. ‘Well, my dear, as far