Page 96 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
Stef sat back in her chair, stunned by the baldness of this statement. It had a ring of truth about it. ‘Professor West!’ She was outraged. ‘Even if you were concerned for her, going over her head like that is inexcusable.’
‘I thought someone should take responsibility for her.’
‘Was she not capable of taking responsibility for herself?’
Professor West refused to look at her and she knew he was being as slippery as ever.
But now came the most important moment of all. She had one more card to play. ‘You know,’ she said conversationally, ‘I’ve spent some time recently in the archives of ICP.’ Finally, he met her eye and she continued. ‘The staff were very helpful once I explained what I was looking for. I think because it was so long ago and so much water has passed under the bridge. Everyone knows about the damage that organophosphates do to the environment, even the ones that are still in use.’ She paused. He cleared his throat but said nothing. ‘They’re in the process of digitizing their archive, but hadn’t got back as far as the fifties. The file I was looking for was in an old cardboard document box. Nancy’s report was in there among a sheaf of related correspondence.’
She closed her eyes briefly and smiled, rememberingNancy’s face when she’d told her the news last week. At first, her expression had been shocked, then disbelieving and then, finally, joyful.
‘ICP withdrew Zalathion from the market at the start of 1955. That was several months after Nancy’s report reached them. The correspondence explains it all. The Chief Scientific Officer read Nancy’s report, then passed it to a colleague for assessment. That colleague, one Eric Frank, was away on holiday and by the time he replied to his boss, Nancy had left ICP’s employment. There was then lots of to-ing and fro-ing between people higher up and the outcome was that though other organophosphates continued to be used, Zalathion was declared too powerful, too much of a risk. Nancy had, in fact, succeeded!’
Professor West stared at Stef. He gripped the arms of his chair and pushed himself up straighter. His lips moved, but no sound came out, so that Stef was concerned that he was having some kind of seizure. But then he recovered himself.
‘I’m…’ he said weakly, ‘so glad. That’s wonderful.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Stef said triumphantly. ‘She was overwhelmed.’ She thought tenderly of how happy the old lady had been. Her work all those years ago had been noticed, corroborated and acted upon. If only ICP had let her know.
‘And what’s more, ICP have just given permission for the evidence to be included in my book.’ The important email had arrived just before she’d left for America. ‘Nancy’s discovery will be publicly acknowledged. Of course, as her supervisor Staunton won’t come out well, but he died thirty years ago, leaving no heirs. I’ll try to deal with him fairly, but—’
‘He was a mean-spirited sort of chap,’ West muttered. ‘A stickler for hierarchy.’
‘Well then.’
‘I’m glad to hear this news, though.’ He sounded sincere. ‘Nancy was treated roughly, I always thought. I won’t say my own part in the affair was blameless, but I’m not as bad a fellow as you and she seem to think.’
It was Stef’s turn to be surprised. Where was the fierce, litigious ogre Professor West had been painted to be? He did seem genuinely pleased at Nancy’s belated success.
‘I was extremely fond of Nancy and would have married her, but I was young, we were both very young, and my career was important to me. I simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to come here. I regretted her loss, but it was she who broke off the relationship and I resent any suggestion that I’d betrayed her. At the time, I thought I’d acted in both our best interests. Now I can see that I was possibly wrong to go over her head like that.’
‘You mean you admit—?’
He held up his palms. ‘I admit nothing. You must remember that old adage that “all is fair in love and in war”. We were in love, but we were also at war with one another, and neither of us would back down.’
You wily old prevaricator, Stef thought. She had seen the letter James had written Nancy after their break-up. He was, even now, after all these years, impossible to pin down. Would she and Nancy ever know the complete truth? Probably not.
‘So,’ he said, sitting back, his gnarled hands gripping the arms of the chair, ‘I think we must come to an arrangement.You may write about this matter, but there must be no implication that I acted, er, unprofessionally in it. I’ve made some notes on your draft chapter.’ He stood up stiffly and went to collect the document from his desk. ‘Perhaps we could discuss them,’ he said, passing it to her, ‘and arrive at some agreement.’
An hour later, Stef stepped down into the street with the strange sense that she’d faced some hugely important adversary and emerged with life and limb intact. They’d argued over every line in which his name was mentioned, but she’d gradually whittled down his opposition and had a signed agreement to let her publish. He would not allow any implication that he’d stolen Nancy’s notes from her laboratory, nor that he’d collected the typed reports from Miss Bateman. But his enigmatic meeting with Staunton and the fact that he’d entered the laboratory ‘to look for Nancy’ could remain. Stef was to quote his insistence that he’d supported and encouraged Nancy and that the rift in their relationship was ‘inevitable given their youth and respective ambitions’. Any intelligent reader, Stef thought, might still work out from Nancy’s evidence what had really happened.
There was one thing he’d requested of her that she wasn’t sure of being able to grant, and she considered the matter as she walked back to her hotel through the autumnal streets.
He had asked to meet Nancy again.
Fifty-Seven
Easter 2011
‘Do I look all right, Stef?’
‘Of course you do.’
Nancy had been nervy all morning, her face unusually pale. She was sitting in her favourite chair by the fireplace in the bungalow, adjusting the knot of the gossamer scarf at her throat. Stef, perching on the chair opposite, thought the old lady looked beautiful in her sky-blue woollen dress and neat navy shoes. Nancy had made herself up carefully and combed her silver hair into flattering waves, beneath which a pair of diamond earrings glinted. The living room had been swept and polished, and a vase of fresh spring flowers stood on the mantelpiece. Tabitha the cat was curled up on the sofa, deeply asleep.
A sleek shadow fell over the room. ‘I think this is him now,’ Aaron murmured from his post by the window. ‘Yes,’he confirmed, as the black saloon car pulled up outside. He went to open the front door. Stef and Nancy watched as the driver assisted an elderly gentleman in a cream linen suit and a Panama hat. He straightened and glanced at the window, and Stef heard Nancy draw a sharp breath. ‘It’s him,’ she whispered, her face pale under the powder. ‘James. It’s really him!’ Outside, Aaron was shaking the elderly professor’s hand, then showing him into the house. Stef whisked out to the kitchen to tell her mother that the visitor had arrived.
It had taken months to arrange this meeting and everything had been carefully planned. Nancy had initially not wanted to meet James again, but then, at Christmas, when Stef and Aaron were visiting, she’d suddenly said she would. ‘If he’ll come here, of course,’ she said regally. And James, who still sometimes travelled to attend conferences around the world, had readily agreed.
