'That's the biggest load of tosh I've heard in years,' Sir Miles roared out before Conrad could even catch his breath. 'The girl's a fool if she believes that Helena had anything to do with it.'
'Mel is no fool,' Conrad said indignantly. 'She is distraught right now, but then it would be strange if she wasn't after narrowly escaping death. As I see it, at the centre of all this is the file of letters Mel found on Bonny's death. Each one of you has been drawn into this business because of them, and someone in this room knows the secret at the core of them which prompted Edward to kill Bonny. Until they are prepared to tell Mel, she would be foolish to trust any of you.'
'She can trust me,' Nick blurted out. 'I've done everything I can to find out. How does she feel about me?'
'Tortured,' Conrad said simply. If he'd met Nick under any other circumstances he would have doubted whether he was capable of loving anyone but himself. But he had felt Nick's love for Mel as Magnus had spoken earlier of all he had done. There was absolute sincerity in those blue eyes, and so far he'd hung on every word Conrad had said as if that made him feel closer to her. 'From the moment she realised you were Magnus's son she lost her peace of mind. Unless she is given hard evidence that she isn't related to you, I don't think she can cope with seeing you again. If you care so much for her you must bring pressure on the other people in this room to reveal what they know.'
No one spoke for what seemed like minutes. Nick looked around challengingly. Magnus was watching Helena as if willing her to speak. Sir Miles was staring at his lap intently, his chin disappearing into folds of loose skin.
'I have that hard evidence.'
Everyone started as Helena's husky voice broke the silence. Nick turned to her eagerly on the settee. Magnus leaned forward in his chair and Sir Miles opened his eyes very wide, looking at her with some consternation.
Conrad looked closely at Helena, suspecting theatricals. Yet her gaze was steady and unwavering, her dark eyes glinting with strange lights. Her full lower lip quivered with emotion.
'I wish I could tell you it all now and be done with this mystery,' she said in a low voice, and her eyes began to fill with tears. 'But what I have to say is for Camellia's ears only. Conrad, you must convince her that my sole reason for that interview was to meet her and tell her my story. She has nothing to fear from anyone in this room.'
Conrad felt elated. He had been intending to threaten them next by saying he was going to take the entire story to the police. He was greatly relieved that this might not be necessary. 'I will pass that on, providing you can tell us now why Manning should want to kill Mel.'
She hesitated for only a second. 'He knew once I'd met up with her that his place in my life would be usurped.'
Conrad was confounded by this reply, but it sounded like the truth. Magnus half rose in his chair as if compelled to reach her. Nick looked as baffled as Conrad felt. Sir Miles looked distinctly alarmed.
Until now Sir Miles had seemed less involved than the others. He had sat in his chair, hands folded across his large stomach as impassive as a judge. But now he was truly participating. There were beads of perspiration on his forehead, he licked his lips nervously and his eyes were firmly on Helena.
Conrad took a deep breath and jumped in before he lost his nerve. 'Well sir! Are you prepared to tell me what part you've played in all this?'
'The fool,' Sir Miles snapped back. 'A stupid old fool who should have faced up to his indiscretions years ago, and taken note of things he was told instead of dismissing them out of hand.'
Conrad was just going to ask him what he meant when he saw exactly what Nick had seen.
The old man's eyes had been almost buried in loose flesh, but as he spoke they opened wider and the truth was there to see. They were almond-shaped like Mel's. The resemblance was uncanny.
'Now Helena has stated her intention, I too must do my part to put things right.' His voice boomed out across the room, clear and unwavering. He looked at the actress as if for approval. 'Like Helena, what I have to say is for Camellia's ears only. But I can tell you now Conrad, that none of us here tonight was involved in any way with Bonny's death, and neither did we know that Manning had intercepted Camellia's letter to Helena. To my shame I have to admit I alone suspected Manning was irrational and unstable and I hold myself accountable for not acting on that gut feeling. But in my own defence I would say that I couldn't conceive of the man planning something like this.'
Silence fell, but the tension remained in the air. Conrad sensed he would achieve nothing by pressing anyone further tonight.
'I'm very grateful to you all for your honesty,' he said. 'Tomorrow I shall tell Mel everything which has been said tonight and I'll let you know her response.'
'Will you ask her if she'll allow me to bring her back here to recuperate?' Magnus asked, his deeply lined face full of concern.
Conrad remembered how Mel had once described this man as a lion. Now he understood why. It wasn't just the broad nose, the mane of hair or the straight-backed way he sat, but something within him, proud, indefatigable.
'You must ask her that yourself,' Conrad said. 'There is a danger that if Manning isn't caught soon he might come here.'
The police had no leads yet on Manning's whereabouts. Helena had believed him to be in Manchester. The police had asked for the public's assistance in spotting his dark blue Jaguar, but so far none of the reported sightings had been substantiated. Helena hadn't even known he still owned his grandmother's old house. She thought he had sold it several years earlier.
'I doubt that he'll attempt to come here. But I can make Oaklands like Fort Knox if necessary,' Magnus said with the kind of authority that suggested he would kill Manning himself if he as much as stepped over the threshold.
'We'll have to see what Mel says,' Conrad rose to his feet. Such considerations were hardly important at the moment, she would be in hospital for a while yet. 'I would ask though that none of you make any move towards her until she's ready.'
Nick's lip curled petulantly. 'Me too?'
'Especially you.' Conrad got a certain kick out of saying this. He wasn't in the habit of having the upper hand with people of Nick's class and type. 'She's very confused still, Nick. Give her time to hear what Helena and Sir Miles have to say. Give her a bit of space.'
'Conrad's right.' Helena turned to Nick and put her hand over his, squeezing it in sympathy. 'I know if I were in her shoes the last thing I'd need is a young man pressing for a romantic entanglement.'
'I suppose you're right,' Nick shrugged. 'I do have to go back to London tomorrow anyway. I guess I was jumping the gun a bit thinking I could just charge into the hospital and whisk her off somewhere.'
'Just a bit,' Conrad smiled. On one hand he admired the man for being prepared to admit the depths of his feeling so openly. But on the other he was remembering how badly Nick had hurt Mel when he threw her out of Oaklands. Nick needed to put that right before thinking he could whisk her away anywhere.
Magnus stood up. 'Well, son,' he took a step towards Conrad, 'I can see Sir Miles at least is wilting and I'm quite certain you've had enough for one day too. Have we covered everything you intended?'
Conrad felt so small and insignificant next to this man but he wasn't quite finished.
'Almost everything,' he said to Magnus, then looked towards the other three. 'There is one last, very important thing I need to stress. In the six months Mel has worked for me we have become very close. Life has struck her more body blows than most of us could take, but yet she has remained a fine, good person without a trace of bitterness. Right now she is quivering on the edge of a mental breakdown. I want you to bear that in mind, because if one of you should push her over that edge you'll be accountable to me.'
Sir Miles gave a little snort, which could have been confirmation he agreed or irritation that such a little weed was giving orders. Nick looked taken aback. But Helena's fearful expression was the one which floored him. It confirmed at least part of his suspicions.
Chapter Twenty-Five
As the car turned into the drive of Oaklands Mel leant forward in the passenger seat, looking eagerly around her. Touched by her obvious delight to be back Magnus slowed right down so she could see everything.
'There's a badger set over there.' He pointed into the woods to the right of the drive. 'I saw a mother and her babies early one morning back in the summer.'
Mel smiled happily. It was all just as she remembered seeing it for the first time, three years earlier: the leaves changing to gold, orange and deep russet, a smell of damp earth and the soothing sound of wind rustling the tree tops. Even Magnus was much the same – a few more lines on his face perhaps, and his stroke had left him with a slight limp, but he was as rugged as ever. Even his old tweed jacket had that same woody, country smell she remembered from the day he offered her a job at Oaklands.
'Sometimes I doubted I'd ever see you, or all this again,' she said with a deep sigh.
It was the second of October, eight days since Edward took her away from Fulham. She had been kept in hospital when the deep wound in her foot became infected. But she'd been glad to stay there. It gave her body a chance to heal, and time to think things through.
When Conrad had told her about the meeting at Oaklands, just before he returned to London, she had been stunned by his audacity, but the knowledge she had one true friend on her side soothed some of the pain within her. As Conrad went on to tell her how Nick had traced her life back to try and find her, she was shaken to the core. She had imagined he was still harbouring bitter thoughts about her. The next morning a long and loving letter arrived from him, giving her all the details of his search. He spoke of his deep sorrow about the cruel things he'd said when he made her leave Oaklands and of his hopes that they could start afresh when she was better.
Mel was now intensely curious about what Helena and Sir Miles had to tell her, but during her stay in hospital it had been enough to have Magnus coming to see her every day. Their reunion had been an emotional one. While she was thrilled to see Magnus had made such a good recovery from his stroke, he was horrified by her scarred face and felt himself to be partially responsible. But with each successive visiting time, the sad parts of the last year were wiped out. Each day she felt both the external and internal scars fading. The mysteries of the past, and what might happen in the future, could wait.
'Well, here we are.' Magnus halted the car just before the house so she could see the view of the valley. 'I think the weathermen must've known you were coming home today and arranged the sunshine specially.'
Mel's eyes prickled, not just because everything was even lovelier than she'd remembered, but because he called it home. The sun was a fiery orange ball, about to slip down behind the green lush hills. Wispy pink cotton wool clouds scudded across a still bright blue sky. Here and there, between trees, she caught glimpses of the river, sparkling in the sunshine, and fronting all this was the autumnal magnificence of the gardens. Heavy rain hadn't spoilt the display of huge chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies, and there were still a few roses lingering. The Virginia creeper was fiery red on the walls of the house, the pyracantha was studded with scarlet berries and each tree seemed to have selected a different shade of yellow, orange or gold to outdo its neighbour.
'Oh, Magnus,' she whispered. 'It's heaven.'
'It's a chilly heaven,' he laughed. 'And Joan and Antoine will be champing at the bit to see you.'
Magnus had never found it easy to talk about his feelings. Ruth had teased him about this many times, often jokingly claiming he didn't have any. While Mel had been in hospital Magnus had talked her through all the recent events, but he had found it impossible to describe the emotional switchback he'd found himself on in the past few weeks.
Helena's arrival had been the start of it. Dining with her, helping her settle into her cottage, visiting her film set to watch her work and above all sharing the anticipation of finding Mel had drawn them closer. He couldn't begin to explain the excitement they had both felt as they opened the package of letters from the
News of the World.
There were dozens, nearly all from stage-struck teenagers. Sadder still were the ones from ex-dancers, women Helena had never met, claiming they had been in shows with her. But the excitement turned to acute disappointment when they realised there was nothing from Mel.
As the days passed after the article and they realised Mel had either not read the paper, or worse still didn't want to get in touch, the sorrow grew even deeper. Helena was all for hiring a private detective and bombarding the newspapers with messages in the personal columns. Her determination kept Magnus's spirits up, but meanwhile he was developing an intense dislike for Edward, which at times bordered on hatred.
With hindsight he could see he had picked up on the man's true character, but at the time he had seen himself merely falling prey to jealousy. He hadn't liked the bumptious way Edward arrived at Helena's cottage, assuming not only that he could take up residence there for the duration of the filming, but making it quite clear Magnus wouldn't be a welcome visitor. The man's good looks, impeccable clothes and starchy manner all irritated, but it was his possessiveness towards Helena that most riled Magnus.
It was around one in the afternoon, some hours after Mel had been found by the farmer, that the police called at Oaklands to question Magnus. To have the news thrust at him that Mel was injured, lying in hospital in Bath was bad enough, but when he was told Edward was responsible he felt murderous. Then to be told the next day that Mel had refused all visitors plunged him into despair.
Now he thanked God for Conrad's intervention. He obviously cared deeply for Mel, and he had true guts to insist on that meeting.