Ian came striding in a few minutes later. I looked up at him, stunned by the turn events had taken.
‘Where have you been?’ I cried.
He didn’t answer me. He was glowering.
‘You’ve got yourself into a fine mess, haven’t you? You can’t say I didn’t warn you of the danger of playing about with that man.’
I stared at him in bewilderment. Only slowly it dawned on me that he too thought I must be responsible for Leeson’s death—or was pretending to.
‘But you know perfectly well it wasn’t me.’
‘Wasn’t it? Are you sure you didn’t find Leeson too much to handle?’
It was more than I could bear that Ian should accuse me of being involved. It was all so sordid and beastly. Hot tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them back fiercely.
‘Don’t be crazy! But I’ll tell you something. I’m pretty darn sure that Leeson didn’t fall over the edge. I reckon he was pushed.’
I was watching him closely as I said this. His face expressed nothing but astonished disbelief. It was hard to think he wasn’t honestly amazed.
Grimly, I made myself test him. ‘And I’ve got an idea who did the pushing.’
He stared at me. ‘Who? Who do you think it was?’
I sidestepped. ‘You didn’t like George Leeson, did you? Why were you always trying to warn me off him? Was it because he knew something about you that would be dangerous out in the open?’
‘Good God!’ he cried. ‘The girl imagines I killed Leeson.’ He snorted, utterly incredulous, it seemed. ‘What in the name of heaven gave you that fantastic idea?’
‘It... it all fits,’ I mumbled uncertainly.
‘What fits?’
Now I had gone so far, what could I say? The only shred of real evidence I possessed lay in that note of Leeson’s.
‘What is it that fits?’ he demanded again.
He stood there, looming over me, fists dug into his hips. I knew he meant business, all right.
Miserably, I poured out the whole story, from when I missed my pen right through to my trip up the Beacon. And I told him what the Inspector had said, too. I was so pent up it must have sounded garbled and disjointed, but Ian heard me out.
‘Let’s get this straight,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘Leeson sent you a note, and you went to meet him on the Beacon, thinking you were going to find out something about me? Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered unhappily, ‘that’s about it. But Ian...’
He cut right across me. ‘Why didn’t you come straight to me? We could have sorted it out together.’
He stood there watching me fighting to explain, desperately trying to find words. I still didn’t know for absolute sure that I could trust him.
‘Look here, Dulcie,’ he said, in a rough-gentle sort of voice. ‘I think you’d better know where I was last night. It might help you to get things clear.’
I looked up at him, suddenly hopeful.
‘I went over to Oxford to see a friend of mine who’s an expert in ... a particular field. I wanted to consult him about some ideas I’d got. We talked so late that I decided to spend the night at his place, and I drove back here this morning.’
I must have been gaping at him, because he added, ‘If you don’t believe me, you’d better ring him up to check on me. He’s a lecturer at the University, so I suppose you’d accept his word?’
I hesitated, not knowing what to think.
‘Go on,’ he urged, picking up my phone and offering it to me. ‘It’s not a bit of good your sitting there looking miserable.’
I snapped out of it. ‘Don’t be absurd, Ian,’ I yelped. ‘If you say so, that’s good enough for me.’
He slapped the receiver back on its cradle. ‘Now then, I’d better have a look at that note of Leeson’s.’
I gawked at him in dismay. ‘What do you want that for?’
He explained, not very patiently. ‘We want to get to the bottom of this, don’t we? Maybe I can get a clue as to what Leeson meant. Let me have a look at it.’
He held out his hand. I wondered for an instant whether to tell him I’d destroyed the wretched scrap of paper. But I couldn’t. I just didn’t dare lie to Ian.
Unhappily, I fished in my bag and found the crumpled sheet. Ian read it very carefully twice through.
At last he spoke. ‘Why didn’t you show this to the police?’
‘I ... I couldn’t, could I? I mean, I dared not admit I’d been there to meet Leeson.’
‘Why not? You didn’t see him there. Have you so little faith in the ability of the police that you couldn’t trust them with the truth?’
His voice was cold and unrelenting. I just wanted to break down and cry.
‘No...,’ I said. ‘No, it wasn’t that....'
‘What was it then, that stopped you telling them?’
I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t speak at all. A great lump had risen in my throat, and tears welled up and tumbled headlong down my cheeks.
He came and stood by my side, reaching out and gripping my arm tight. But I didn’t notice any hurt.
‘I’ll tell you what held you back, Dulcie,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘You kept your mouth shut because you thought you might get me into trouble. Leeson knew what he was about when he wrote this….’
Your Scottish heart-throb! Through all my fears and misery I blushed at the memory of that phrase. But it was true! I had faced myself with the knowledge that I loved Ian Hamilton. Now I had to be ready to face him, too.
Ian was looking sombre. ‘We’ve made a proper mess of things between us, haven’t we, Dulcie?’
I nodded. He was right about my part of it, but I was none too sure what he meant about himself.
‘You know, I just can’t make you out,’ he was saying. ‘That business with your father. It just doesn’t seem to fit in with your character at all.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I asked him, bewildered by this sudden switch. ‘What business with my father?’
‘Well, I mean ... ignoring him like you did all those years. The old man was very cut up over it, I know. He never talked to me about you—I suppose he was ashamed to admit to a daughter who wouldn’t have anything to do with him. But it slipped out once—he had to call off a dinner date because he wanted to watch a play you were in on television.’
‘Ian!’ I cried in dismay. ‘You couldn’t have thought such a thing of me.’
I told him how it had really been. I explained that the first I had known of my father being alive all through those years was when I received the letter from the lawyer. ‘My father rejected me,’ I said sadly. ‘Not I him.’
The words had a curious effect on Ian. He gave an odd little smile, as if he was pleased with what I had told him.
‘Lord, what a fool I’ve been,’ he said. ‘It never occurred to me it could be that way round. And to think I’ve been fighting against you ever since you came here.’
I said quietly, ‘Yes, you have been pretty stubborn.’
‘Stubborn! I don’t mean that. I mean that ever since you came here I’ve had a job convincing myself I hadn’t fallen for you. I had to make myself believe that I couldn’t be so attracted. Not to a girl whose attitude to her father I despised.’
I bent my head down because now, when a tiny flicker of hope was stirring, I was crying again.
‘But that wasn’t all,’ Ian said. ‘It looked to me as if you were deliberately encouraging that swine Leeson. You’ve explained about him, now, but what about Tyler? That night I saw you in his car...? What in heaven’s name is the matter with you, Dulcie? Can’t you leave men alone, is that it? I can’t bear to think about it.’
I told him of Max’s unexpected proposal. ‘I think he was trying to stampede me into saying yes.’
I wasn’t sore with Ian for misjudging me, because I could see how it must have looked. And I could understand too how he might have been attracted to me while at the same time believing I was worthless. Emotions can’t be switched on and off to order. I’d discovered the truth of that. I loved Ian, although for a short while I had believed—or at any rate half believed—that he was capable of killing a man. I had loved him when I had thought it was possible that he was a thief. Whatever he might have been, whatever he might have done, I loved him.
Ian bent down towards me, and I let him tilt my head. He looked at my ravaged face gravely. ‘Yes, Dulcie, I’ve loved you all along, I think. I couldn’t make myself stop loving you. But I tried to.’
I thought he was going to kiss me, but I didn’t want him to—not then. I wanted Ian’s strength, not his passion. I needed to turn to the man I loved for support.
He must have sensed this. ‘Just now we’ve got to be practical,’ he said gruffly. ‘We’ve got to decide what to do.’
I had almost forgotten I was suspected by the police of being responsible for Leeson’s death. A coldness gripped me and I shivered violently. ‘I suppose…,’ I said hesitantly, ‘I suppose I must tell the police everything, like you said?’
But Ian shook his head. ‘No. Not for the moment, anyway. Whatever they might suspect, Dulcie, they haven’t anything definite to go on. You didn’t do it, and they can’t prove you did. I’ve discovered something that makes all this business a lot more ... well, I suppose sinister is the word.’
‘What do you mean? Have you found out something about the thefts?’
Ian nodded. ‘This past week I’ve been setting up experiment after experiment—trying to pin down what’s so valuable about those damned Physolaria plants. Mrs. Truscott gave me a lead, but it was a very tenuous one—not much to go on. In the end, though, one of the battles proved most interesting. After steeping the Physolaria in a certain chemical solution, I dried it very rapidly and crushed the result.’ He paused, and sighed. ‘What I then had was a very potent drug.’
‘A very potent drug?’ I echoed, thinking furiously. ‘You mean the sort that could be addictive?’
‘That’s it, I’m afraid. When you know how, it’s really a very simple process. All you need is standard laboratory equipment, and supplies of Physolaria. Of course drug like that aren’t really in my line, and that’s why I went over to Oxford to have a talk with Harry Weston. He’s a friend of mine from student days, and he won’t talk out of turn. I took some of the stuff with me, and he confirmed what I thought.’
Ian frowned. ‘You realize what this means, Dulcie? We’re up against drug trafficking, and that’s really big business. They’re ruthless people in that game. I suppose Leeson made some little slip or other and had to be disposed of. That’s what it looks like.’
‘I don’t get it,’ I said, puzzled. ‘If the stuff is so mighty simple to make, why should they trouble to use Leeson, or even this firm at all? Why not just make it themselves?’
‘Because we have a perfectly innocuous excuse for importing large quantities of Physolaria. Awkward questions might be asked if they applied for an import licence. They wouldn’t dare run the risk. They prefer to rely on our respectable background. I’m sure that’s the answer.’
I still wasn’t satisfied that Ian was on the right track.
‘But how would Leeson have got in on it? Mrs. Truscott told us that Father discovered this process years ago and Leeson only joined the firm a couple of years back.’
‘Yes, I’ve thought about that. It’s always possible that Leeson stumbled on the method by accident—there might have been some rough notes in existence that your father overlooked. But I think it’s much more likely he was told about it by someone else, and I’ve got a pretty shrewd idea who it was. There’s a man who was overseer here before Leeson came.’
‘You mean the guy who runs the drug-store at Lechford—Eric Reade?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Did you know your father had to sack him for theft?’
‘Yes, I do.’ I told him I’d heard about that from Mrs. Cass.
‘You see,’ Ian went on, ‘if Reade was on to that process, he might well have got into league with Leeson to ensure his future supplies. With his own dispensary at the shop, he could set up the necessary equipment without arousing suspicion.’
‘Poor Janet,’ I cried involuntarily.
I explained to him that she was engaged to Eric Reade. ‘This is going to shatter her, if it’s true.’
But Ian was considering the facts. ‘I don’t know so much. It all ties in. Being on those sort of terms with a girl who works in the house, Reade would have no difficulty getting into the lab. I’d decided that it had to be one of the lab staff, and Leeson was the obvious choice. But it could be that he wasn’t in on it at all.’
‘Then why was he killed?’
‘Because he had stumbled on what was happening. It makes sense, don’t you see, Dulcie? Leeson would have realized how dangerous such knowledge was, and that’s why he wanted to meet you in such an out-of-the-way place.’
‘Hey! Aren’t you forgetting something?’ I felt my colour rising, but I had to say it. ‘That note mentions you, not Eric Reade.’
That pulled Ian up short. He pondered, running his fingers through his tousled hair. Then he yelled in triumph, ‘I’ve got it! Leeson didn’t write that note at all. It was someone else.’
‘But I don’t understand. Why should anyone want to do that?’
‘Don’t you see? Leeson had to be disposed of, so they used a trick to get him up on the Beacon. Then they sent a note to you, to get you blamed for his death.’
I remembered how I had seen Eric Reade hanging about suspiciously yesterday. With Janet’s help he could easily have left that note—and pocketed my fountain-pen too. Janet knew about that distinctive pen of mine.
“But why try to involve me? Why me?’
‘They’re probably scared of the way you’ve been probing into the administration.’ Ian looked serious. ‘You’re in danger, Dulcie. You simply mustn’t stay alone at Malverton any more.’
I wasn’t so brave that I could brush this aside lightly. ‘But where could I go?’ I asked doubtfully. ‘And anyway, Mrs. Cass is always in the house with me.’
‘But are we absolutely certain we can trust her?’
‘Surely! Why on earth not?’
‘Well,’ said Ian thoughtfully. ‘Janet is her niece, after all. Mrs. Cass might be in the plot with them. It might even be her, and not Janet, for all we know.’
I sat there staring down at my desk miserably. The world was dissolving around me. It was difficult to know who could be trusted any more.
‘I’m going to pack you off to Mrs. Truscott’s,’ said Ian decidedly.
I looked up. ‘But I can’t land myself on her just like that.’
‘Of course you can. I’ll fix it.’ He went towards the door. ‘I’m off now. I want to go to Reade’s shop, to see if I can spot anything suspicious.’
‘Oh, do be careful, Ian.’
‘Don’t worry.’ He grinned at me. ‘I can look after myself—and you too, Dulcie. See you later.’
He was gone. But his presence still hung in the air, enormously comforting. He seemed to be so strong, so utterly determined to thrash this matter out.
I sat there in a daze for minutes on end. Then I pulled myself together—there was work to do. For one thing, I really should tell Max about Leeson. He was my partner, after all. I had no idea of his address in London, and I decided the only thing to do was to call Valerie Carstairs. I had no wish at all to speak to her, but in the circumstances I couldn’t let my feelings stop me.
Having something definite to do was a relief. I grabbed the phone and was put through to the farmhouse. I had to wait while Valerie was fetched from the stables.
She adopted a sort of sweet-and-sour tone with me—sweet on the thinly brittle surface, and sour underneath. ‘Dulcie! Haven’t seen you in an age.’
I asked her at once where Max was staying, and she hated having to admit that she didn’t know. ‘What did you want him for, anyhow?’ she challenged me.
I didn’t bother to satisfy her curiosity.
The morning began to hang heavily. I went into the house at about eleven-thirty, on the excuse of finding a handkerchief. Talking to Mrs. Cass, I watched carefully for some tell-tale sign of her complicity.
“That Leeson!’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t say I’m really surprised. No one deserves to be killed like that, but if anyone had it coming to him, he did.’
I didn’t doubt for a single moment that she knew all about the tales buzzing round the neighbourhood. She’d have heard too of the police inspector’s call on me, but she didn’t say a word. Was it sympathy, or was it something else?
Thwarted, I escaped back to the oppressive silence of my office. When at last Ian returned, my relief was so great that I rushed forward to meet him. 'I was getting worried about you.’
He looked down at me, surprised and pleased. ‘I’ve been gone less than an hour, you know, and I had to phone Mrs. Truscott as well. Not that I told her much, but enough to make her understand. It’s all fixed for you to go there as soon as you finish work today.’
‘And Eric Reade?’ I asked. ‘What about him?’
‘I got nowhere. He had to go across to the Post Office to change the ten pound note I offered him for sticking-plaster, which gave me a good chance to look around. I nipped into the dispensary, but there’s nothing there. He’s either very clever, or we’re all wrong about him.’
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘I don’t know, Dulcie,’ he said candidly. ‘Just at the moment I’m stumped for a lead.’