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‘Dee,’ she heard Ralph Livesey saying sharply, before turning to the policeman who was still there and telling him, ‘I’m afraid she’s in shock. I’ll take her home with me and give her something to help her calm down.’

Once he had bundled her into his car Ralph Livesey was grimly relentless with her.

‘Whatever you might think, Dee, so far as the rest of the world is concerned your father died in a tragic accident. I don’t want to cause you any more pain. I can understand how upset you are, but for your father’s sake you have to be strong. To make wild accusations won’t bring him back, and could actually do him a lot of harm.’

‘Harm? What do you mean?’ Dee demanded.

‘There’s already some disquiet in town about...certain aspects of your father’s professional relationship with Julian Cox.’

‘Julian tried to deceive Daddy. He lied to him,’ Dee defended her father immediately.

‘I’m quite sure you’re right, but unfortunately your father isn’t here to defend himself, and Julian Cox is. To suggest that your father might have taken his own life will only exacerbate and fuel exactly the kind of gossip he would most want to avoid.’

‘You mean that Julian is going to get away with murdering him?’ Dee protested sickly. ‘But...’

‘I understand how you feel, Dee, but Cox did not murder your father. No one did. My guess is that he slipped off the bank whilst he was fishing. We’ve had a lot of rain recently, and the ground is treacherous. He lost his balance, fell into the river, probably knocking himself unconscious as he did so, and whilst he was unconscious, very tragically, he drowned.’

Dee looked at him with huge pain-filled eyes.

‘I can’t believe it was an accident,’ she whimpered to him. ‘Dad was a strong swimmer and—’

‘It was an accident,’ Ralph Livesey told her firmly.

‘That is my judgement as a doctor, and I believe it is the one your father would have wished for.’

It was almost a week before Dee was able to leave Rye and return to Lexminster. There were formalities to attend to—formalities relating to her father’s business affairs which, as Dee might have expected, had been left in meticulous order. Meticulous order, maybe, but someone would have to take over the business, someone would have to stand in her father’s shoes. Dry-eyed, Dee had calmly made a brief list of those who might be able to do so, and then equally calmly she had put a cross through them all. There was only one person who could be trusted to carry on the work her father had been so dedicated to—only one person who could ensure that his memory was forever enshrined in the hearts and minds of the townspeople with all the respect and love to which he was entitled—and that one person was her.

Once she had made her decision she made it known to her father’s solicitors, now hers, and all those people he had worked most closely with.

‘But, Dee, whilst I applaud your desire to do this, it really isn’t practical,’ her father’s solicitor told her. ‘For one thing you’ve still got your finals ahead of you, and for another...’

Dee closed her eyes, and on opening them looked at him and through him.

‘I’m not going back to university,’ she told him distantly. How could she? How could she leave Rye? How could she leave her father’s name and reputation unprotected and vulnerable to the likes of Julian Cox? She had made the mistake of leaving her father unprotected once, and look what had happened. She wasn’t going to do it again. It never occurred to her that she might be in shock, or that her emotions might be warped and twisted by the sheer intensity of what had happened.

She had made her decision.

Hugo would have to be told, of course, but she doubted that he would care very much. If he cared he would be here with her, wouldn’t he? If he cared he would have saved her father, wouldn’t he? But he hadn’t done. Had he?

Two days after her father’s death, and the day before his funeral, she had a telephone call from Hugo.

‘Dee, what on earth...? I’ve been ringing the house for the last two days. What are you doing in Rye?’

‘I had to come home,’ she told him bleakly.

‘Look, I’m not going to be back for another few days. Whilst I was having my interview they told me that someone had dropped out of one of their training programmes, and they asked me if I’d like to take his place. It will speed things up by about six weeks, since they only run these induction programmes every two months, but of course it’s meant that I’ve had to put everything else on hold.

‘They do it here in London, in-house, and they’re putting me up with one of the guys who works for them. Dee, it’s fascinating, but it makes me feel so inadequate. There’s just so much to learn and know. Some of these people are still farming using methods that date back to biblical times, and...’

Still numb from the trauma of her father’s death, Dee was only distantly aware of Hugo’s selfish absorption in himself, and his total lack of awareness of her own need, her own pain and anger—emotions which fused

together to make her feel that she had to protect her father, not just from Hugo’s lack of love for him but also from his patent lack of awareness that anything was wrong with her. And so, deliberately, she said nothing—after all, why should she? Hugo quite obviously didn’t care. Somewhere deep inside she knew that somehow this discovery was going to hurt her, and very badly, but right now all that mattered was her father—not her, and most certainly not Hugo and his precious interview!

‘Hugo, I’ve got to go,’ she interrupted him unemotionally.

‘Dee...? Dee...?’ she heard him demanding in astonishment as she replaced the receiver.

The phone rang again almost immediately, but she didn’t answer it. She couldn’t.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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