Free The Reluctant Detective (Faith Morgan Mysteries) by Martha Ockley Page A

know all this? I didn’t even recognize him when I met him.”
    “Well, you should pay more attention,” said her mother. “You’ll be moving in with your sister for the duration, I suppose?”
    Ruth had been very generous. She had assured Faith she could have the spare room for as long as she liked. Faith took a deep breath. The thought of her elder sister scrutinizing her every move and prodding her about Ben as she tried to negotiate the rapids ahead made her heart sink. Still, family were important.
    Her mother was looking right into her.
    Faith got up and sat on the floor beside her mother’s chair and put her head in her lap as she used to do when she was little. Her mother’s hand stroked her hair.
    “So what’s the problem, sweetheart?”
    Faith breathed in her mother’s comforting scent of wool and soap and Yardley’s cologne.
    “I don’t know that I’m up to this, Mum. I’m trying. But I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do – what the right thing is.”
    Her mother placed a kiss on the top of her head.
    “Maybe it’s not a matter of guessing what the right way is,” she said. “Maybe God wants you to be yourself and live life in your own way. We are supposed to be made in His image, after all.” She turned her daughter to face her. “Aren’t we?”
    “That’s a profound thought, Mother.”
    “Thank you, dear. I blame the sherry. Shall we eat?”
     

    After supper, they said their goodbyes and Faith returned to her flat. It was a modern conversion on the first floor of an Edwardian terraced house near her parish church. She had a living room with the kitchen at one end, one bedroom and a bathroom. She liked the high ceilings, and the living room had an attractive bay window. She had left in daylight and the curtains were drawn back. When she closed the door behind her, she didn’t turn on the light at first. She stood in the orange glow of the street lamp, looking around.
    What was she supposed to pack? She didn’t know how long she would be in Little Worthy. She thought of Ruth’s cramped spare room with the Cabbage Patch dolls. She felt a pang at the thought of separation from the things that made her space her own. A pair of nineteenth-century seascapes she’d found in a junk shop in Southampton; the battered trophy she had won in a dinghy sailing competition in the Solent, aged twelve; the illustrated edition of Sherlock Holmes her father had given her when she passed out of Hendon. They were like whorls and loops on the fingerprint of her life.
    The stillness in the flat was palpable. She picked up the phone and dialled.
    “Meg, I am sorry to call so late, but is Jonathan around? I was hoping to speak to him.”
    “Faith! Of course,” said Meg. “We’ve been thinking about you. Here he is.”
    Meg passed the phone over to her husband, and Canon Jonathan’s voice came on.
    “Faith, you’ve been having terrifying times, I hear,” he said in his usual dry way. She felt her eyes tear up.
    “So-so,” she said.
    “Alistair Ingram. He died in the middle of the service?”
    “Yes.”
    She heard the intake of his breath.
    “I knew him – well, I’d met him. Alistair was often called in to address diocesan seminars. He was very good on finances; a wizard at fund-raising. Had some impressive contacts in the city.”
    “He was poisoned. Pesticide in the communion wine.”
    “Dear God! Anyone else hurt?”
    She was finding it oddly difficult to speak. “No. It happened quickly. He drank and that was it.”
    “How are you holding up?” he asked. “How do you feel about being parachuted in to look after the parish?”
    “I’m not entirely sure what I am doing,” she said. Her voice quavered. She paused to pull herself together. She looked around at her flat. “I don’t know what to pack,” she heard herself say, and gave a small, shaky laugh.
    “Right,” he said briskly. Jonathan always understood. “Unfortunately I have to go out now.”
    “Bible class,”