Suddenly impatient to find out what was going on, she hurried into the bathroom, picking up the pile of clean clothes on her way. There was no one in sight as she went downstairs. She was dying for a cup of coffee, but the door to Neil’s study stood open and she could hear men’s voices coming from inside it.
Rue walked into the study and then came to an abrupt halt as she saw the three uniformed men talking with Neil. Two of them were policemen, and the other one, she guessed, must be the fire officer.
‘Ah, here’s Rue, now,’ Neil told them, interrupting his conversation to turn towards her. He took hold of her arm and gently drew her into the room, pulling out a chair, and almost before she knew what she was doing Rue found that she was sitting down on it.
‘Sorry to have to spring these questions on you while you’re still suffering from the shock of last night,’ one of the police officers said to Rue, ‘but I’m afraid that there are certain questions that will have to be answered.’
Rue looked away from him and said urgently to Neil, ‘The house, the barn…’
‘Your home’s quiet safe, Miss Livesey,’ the fire officer told her calmly, answering her question for her. ‘The barn, I’m afraid, has been virtually gutted, although we have managed to save the shell of it. The fire got as far as the drying shed and destroyed some of your stock, but the building itself is still standing.’
Rue felt so weak that she was glad that she was sitting down. She turned towards Neil, and noticed as she did so a huge pot of coffee on the desk in front of her. Her mouth started to water, and without asking her if she wanted some Neil pulled the tray towards him and poured her a mugful.
‘We’ll be taking criminal proceedings, of course,’ one of the policemen announced, ‘but in the meantime I expect you will want to claim against your insurance for the damage.’
‘Criminal proceedings?’ Rue stared at him in blank shock.
‘Yes,’ the man answered her, apparently unaware of her astonishment. ‘It was very lucky for us that Mr Saxton cared enough about your situation to start making a few enquiries. Without the lead that he was able to give us, I doubt that we’d have been able to find the perpetrators as quickly.’
Rue looked from the policeman to Neil, her thoughts in turmoil.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. The fire was an accident, wasn’t it?’
She made two discoveries simultaneously: one was that she was trembling from head to foot, the other was that Neil had somehow taken hold of her hand and that the heat radiating out from that point of contact was having a very disturbing effect on her already overstrained nervous system.
‘Not exactly,’ the police officer told her gravely. ‘In fact, I’m afraid it looked very much as though the fire was started as a deliberate attempt to intimidate you. Mr Saxton has told us that this wasn’t the first attempt to do so and that your dog was shot quite recently. Thanks to the information he was able to give us, we were able to act very quickly. We caught the two men who started the fire last night. Petty criminals who are relatively well-known to us, and they’ve admitted that they were paid to do the job by David Jenson.’
Rue stared at them. ‘The builder? But why?’ She looked helplessly at Neil. ‘I don’t understand any of this.’
‘It’s quite simple, really,’ Neil told her soothingly. ‘When Horatio had been shot, I made a few discreet enquiries of my own. No one from the village had been out shooting over my land, but someone did mention seeing a couple of strangers parking an old van well off the main road. He saw two men getting out of the van, one of them carrying a gun. What I couldn’t work out at first was who would have a motive for shooting Horatio, and then you yourself answered that question without even knowing you were doing so.’
‘How?’ Rue asked him in bewilderment.
‘You told me that the same builder who had wanted to buy your land and cottage had bought some farm land with no direct access to the main road, or to any road for that matter, and that the only way he could gain such access would be if he were somehow to gain possession of your land. Since I knew for myself how determined you were not to sell, when I discovered that Horatio had probably been deliberately shot I was immediately rather suspicious. Everyone knows how devoted you are to the dog, and it struck
me that the builder may well have decided to institute a campaign of harassment against you, designed to get you to sell to him. The fire served two purposes at once,’ he added grimly, ‘both frightening you and destroying your business. That was one of the reasons I went to London,’ he added obliquely. ‘I have contacts up there who were able to find out much more about Jenson’s way of doing business than I was able to do. When I learned that he didn’t have a particularly good reputation for the way he achieved his business deals, my concern grew.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’ Rue demanded shakily, completely forgetting their audience.
Neil looked at her, his steady grey gaze making her flush slightly. ‘Would you have believed me?’ he asked her quietly.
He had every right to make that quiet challenge. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It all sounds so very far-fetched.’
‘Does it?’ Neil asked her grimly. ‘There was nothing imaginary about that fire last night.’
‘If we could just ask you a few questions, Miss Livesey,’ the police officer put in calmly, ‘it won’t take very long.’
It didn’t, and Rue answered them as best she could, too shocked and astounded by the revelations Neil had made to be able to pay very much attention to the more mundane questions of the police officer.
An hour later, when the three of them had left, she turned to Neil and said shakily, ‘I really ought to go back to the cottage. I must see how much damage has been done. You’ve been very kind, but…’
‘I’ll drive you there after we’ve had something to eat,’ Neil told her tersely.
Now, when she needed his tenderness and compassion the most, to help her cope with the shock of what she had learned, he seemed to be distancing himself from her, deliberately holding himself aloof. It was very hard now, looking into his withdrawn features, to believe for one moment that this man had held her all through the night. That must have been a dream, she told herself tiredly, and the imprint on the other pillow probably her own.
‘There’s no need for you to go to so much trouble, Neil. You’ve already done more than enough.’
She started to shake suddenly as the full horror of what could have happened to her if he hadn’t intervened suddenly struck her. She heard Neil curse as she suddenly swayed on her feet.