Murder by Mistake Read Online Free PDF

as I know, all the men who hurt you are now locked up in jail.’
    ‘Yes, but they have friends who could act for them, don’t they? That’s why I was so glad to leave London for a while, with only the police and Ursula knowing where I was.’
    ‘Where were you? Can you tell us?’
    ‘I have an aunt whom I hadn’t seen for ages, though we’d always kept in touch with birthday and Christmas cards. When I was convalescing I realized I’d missed her birthday, so I wrote and told her what had happened. She invited me to stay if I’d help with the housework. I needed to be somewhere quiet away from London. It seemed a perfect solution to the problem of what to do with myself until the trial. So I went.
    ‘She lives in a big house in Cambridgeshire, the nearest village nearly a mile away. She’s very frail. At first I was so grateful to her for taking me in that I couldn’t do enough for her. I took on the shopping and cooking, and kept the house going as best I could. I wasn’t strong enough to do the garden as well, but she had a couple of lads come over now and then to mow the lawn. They heard what had happened to me and assumed that I would like them to . . . Oh, it was horrid.’
    ‘Didn’t your aunt stop them?’
    ‘She is of the old school. She means well, I suppose, but . . . when we went to church that first Sunday, she told everyone what had happened to me. Gossip like that spreads. She really believes I’m ruined. Maybe I am.
    ‘I’d written to tell Ursula where I was. She replied, asking me to keep in touch, but though I wrote back, she didn’t reply. I tried phoning her mobile, but the number was no longer obtainable. I thought she probably didn’t want to be friends with me any more. My aunt had a landline phone which she kept for emergencies only. She was always on about the cost of everything, and I didn’t like to ask if I could use it just to keep in touch with my friends. I tried my best to please her, but she became more and more demanding. I hardly had any time to myself, and then I was so tired in the evenings I just went to bed and slept. I didn’t notice how the weeks had gone by until one day I realized I hadn’t heard from Ursula for ages.
    ‘I asked my aunt if I might use her phone for one call. She didn’t like it, but eventually she agreed. I rang Ursula’s mother, who gave me a new mobile number, and when I got through to Ursula, well, did I get an earful! She’d been writing to me and ringing me and why hadn’t I replied? Was I or was I not going to be her bridesmaid when she got married? I didn’t even know she’d got herself engaged!
    ‘My aunt had been intercepting my mail and phone calls. I understood why. I’d been her unpaid carer for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which had made it possible for her to stay on in that big house. The next day Ursula arrived and there was the most almighty row.’
    Ellie smoothed out a smile, and Thomas guffawed. ‘I can imagine. If you’re going to get into a fight, you need someone like Ursula by your side.’
    ‘Yes.’ A tiny smile. ‘She is rather wonderful, isn’t she? She tore into my aunt, who had an attack of hiccups and swore she was going to die. She didn’t, of course. Ursula told me to pack up and return to London with her. She said I could sleep on the settee at her mother’s for the night, and she’d find somewhere else for me to stay next day. She demanded the letters which my aunt had intercepted. There were six from Ursula and two from a solicitor here in Ealing.’
    Mia stirred, uneasy. ‘The solicitor is the one my stepfather used. I didn’t want to open those letters and I didn’t want to come back to Ealing, but Ursula isn’t afraid of anything, is she? She opened the letters and made me read them. The solicitor wanted to see me because one of the men who . . .’ She gulped. ‘I used to call him Uncle Bob. When he went abroad, he used to bring me back little presents. He