True Love Ways Read Online Free Page A

about his old cases.”
     
    “Old policeman talk about their cases all the time,
dear. Like old soldiers reliving battles. They don't all get stabbed for it.”
Aunty Peg sat in a huge chintz covered chair, with her foot, incased in
plaster, resting on a stool. As far as Meredith could see, she had not changed
at all. Her strawberry blonde hair was a little greyer, but her lined face
still had tremendous vitality, and her green eyes sparkled with intelligence.
     
    “There was an atmosphere, Aunty Peg. I could feel
it.” Meredith told her aunt about the old policeman's pause when he mentioned
murderous vicars.
     
    “I know of Turner,” said Aunty Peg. “He was
stationed in Hereford, but sometimes they came out this far out to help us in
our own enquiries, Hereford being the largest headquarters in the area. He was
a rather stupid man, talked far too much about the case to all and sundry. A
detective, I believe, should always keep their cards pretty close to their
chest. But as I say, he’s retired, and all old policeman discuss their cases.”
     
    “He obviously never got on the same train as one of
the murderers before. If that is what this is about,” said Meredith.
     
    “You're not certain, dear?”
     
    “The knife that killed him belonged to Jimmy. There's
something going on between Betty – Jimmy's girlfriend – and his best friend,
Bert. It occurred to me that if Jimmy didn't do it, then Bert might have.”
     
    “To get Jimmy out of the way, you mean. Yes, that is
possible, and more likely than Turner suddenly coming face to face with a
killer after so many years. A bit tawdry perhaps, but murder is seldom a classy
affair.”
     
    “But,” said Meredith, who was enjoying herself far
more than she felt she ought to, “it might not be that long. He retired just
ten years ago, and when he was speaking, he didn't give details of how long ago
things might have happened, and he didn't mention names at all.”
     
    “No. That makes it difficult. List for me again what
cases he mentioned.”
     
    Meredith ticked them off on her fingers as she
spoke. “There was a housemaid who murdered her employer, but too soon to get
the money. Oh, before that he mentioned a man who murdered his wife but got
away with it. Then some teenager who stabbed a dozen people...”
     
    “We could probably half that figure, allowing for
exaggeration,” said Peg. “Not that stabbing six people isn’t bad enough.”
     
    Meredith nodded in agreement. “He also said
something about a child. He didn't think much of children at all, and claimed
that a parent was hanged for the murder of the other parent, but he thought the
child did it. Then there was the bit about vicars with their hands in the till.
But he was also talking to someone in the corridor. He mentioned religious
mania, someone stealing a car and going to sea. Someone hitting someone else
with a hammer then returning it. Oh, he said something about twenty thousand
pounds before that. Then he went on about never forgetting a face, and that
something had come back to him like a flash. I wasn't really listening Aunty
Peg.”
     
    “No, that young man who carried your bag from the
station was rather handsome, wasn't he? I suppose you were talking to him.”
     
    Meredith took her aunt's teasing on the chin. “And I
thought you were in your chair the whole time,” she laughed.
     
    “I was, dear, but it's very easy to look out of the
window from here.” To illustrate she turned slightly and proved that she had a
pretty good view through the front window. “Tell me who was in the carriage
with you.”
     
    “There was Drew.”
     
    “Your young man.”
     
    “He isn't my young man. He's a vicar for a start.”
     
    “Vicars need love to. And they make very nice
husbands.”
     
    “Aunty Peg, I only met him today. His name is Andrew
Cunningham, and he's a … what was the word he used? Troubleshooter. That's it.
A troubleshooter for the Church of