He wasn’t taking me seriously. I couldn’t believe it. I almost hung up on him in my hurry to get back to Blenheim Crescent. Selma was alone with Bianca. Noreen would have to manage on her own for the rest of the day. I’d interviewed a woman who was going to come and take care of her for an hour or two every day but she wouldn’t be starting until tomorrow.
I took a cab and picked anxiously at my cuticles as we came off the Westway and ran straight into a bottleneck around Paddington Station.
When we finally arrived at Blenheim Crescent, I let myself into a house that was so clean I barely recognized it. Bianca was calmly chopping vegetables for a stew when I walked into the kitchen. I didn’t have the nerve to confront her with something like So, Bianca, have you been setting fire to people’s houses in between scrubbing and polishing?
“Floor wet. You be careful.” She glared at my feet as she greeted me.
“Is Selma here?”
“She upstairs and she work hard.” Why was it that Bianca always sounded so accusatory? The way she looked at me, I immediately felt as if I’d been shirking my duty in some way, leaving Selma to do all the work.
I scanned a note from my mother: Gone to lunch with your father and if I’m not back tonight, it’s because he wants me to go with him to the West Country to see Aunt Hilda. Hilda was my father’s stepmother, the only remaining member of the grandparent generation of our family. I wondered if they were going to tell her of their separation.
Before going up to the top floor to see Selma, I nipped into my office to call Tommy and explain why I had abandoned Noreen. He said he’d make a point of being home early but he was as dismissive as Max Austin about my Bianca theory.
“I think you’ve gone barking mad,” he said cheerfully. “It sounds like a lunatic take on the butler did it.”
The fact that he showed no concern that I intended to stay in the house with Bianca confirmed that he wasn’t taking me seriously.
Maybe I was overreacting. The more I thought about it, the more ludicrous it seemed and I couldn’t bring myself to share it with Selma. All I said when I finally joined her was: “Selma, I’m back now so Bianca can go home.”
But Bianca was still there at ten o’clock that night having cooked us a meal and cleaned the kitchen afterward. She had pulled up a chair to sit beside the dishwasher and I realized that she intended to stay until it had finished and unload it. She didn’t seem to trust me not to make a mess of the kitchen she now had under her control. Selma pleaded tiredness and asked if I would mind if she had an early night. I didn’t want to be left alone with Bianca, so I followed her up to bed.
I barely had time to register that I too was exhausted. I fell asleep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow.
And then I awoke with a start and glanced at my clock to see it was 2:30 in the morning.
I lay for a second or two wondering why the air was so close that I could hardly breathe and then I shot out of bed as I registered the strong smell of burning. Creature of habit that I am, I automatically reached for my dressing gown and put it on. Then I did what was possibly the worst possible thing to do when a house was on fire. I staggered across the room and opened the door, letting in the air, and a wall of smoke hit me full in the face as I peered out to the landing.
Someone materialized out of the thick black fog that was enveloping me and I felt myself being hoisted up and over his shoulder.
“Breathe into this,” he said, handing me a wet rag and pressing it to my face.
I couldn’t see his face but there was no mistaking Buzz’s voice.
Buzz was carrying me down the stairs in a fireman’s lift. It felt as if we were going down into Hades because there were flames licking the bottom of the stairs and the kitchen already appeared to be a blazing inferno. It was the same scenario as before. There was an overpowering smell of kerosene and once again it seemed as if someone had pushed a torch through the letterbox. Any minute now the fire would reach the staircase and take hold. I took the wet rag away from my face long enough to yell:
“What about Selma?”
“Where is she?” he yelled back.
“Top floor. And Bianca? She was here too.”
“Left a while ago,” he yelled over the crackling of the flames. “I caught her letting herself in to Elgin Crescent and forced her to give me her key to your house. I came over to see Selma again. I let myself in and this is what I found. We don’t want to open the front door and let the air in. Is there another way out of the house?”
“If we can make it to the downstairs cloakroom, we can get out the window onto the terrace and from there go down to the garden.”
“Here’s my cell phone,” he said, thrusting it into the pocket of my dressing gown, “I’m going to let you down over the banisters into the corridor before the fire gets there. You can make it to the cloakroom. Call 999 as soon as you’re outside. Ready?”
And then before I could say another word he had lowered me to the ground and turned around to dash back upstairs to find Selma.
I made it to the cloakroom but I couldn’t get the window open. I had a moment of sheer panic and then I wrapped my thick woolen dressing gown firmly around me and heaved myself at the glass, shattering it in all directions. Then I realized I would not be able to climb out through a single pane so I picked up the umbrella stand and whacked it as hard as I could against the window frame until it smashed. As I climbed out onto the terrace, I could hear the wail of approaching sirens. Someone had beat me to alerting the fire department.
A crowd had already gathered in the road outside the house and their heads were craned toward the upper floors. Selma was at one of the windows and I thought I could hear her screaming above the roar of the flames. The windows of the ground floor had now blown and smoke was billowing out into the street where the heat was palpable.
Suddenly I saw Bianca standing with a policeman and I rushed over to him.
“She started the fire! She caused all this. Don’t let her go.”
He looked at me as if I were the one who was dangerous.
“This lady called the fire department, miss. You’ve got her to thank that they’re on their way.”
I looked at Bianca in amazement. Was this true?
“Who alerted you?” I asked him, still not prepared to let Bianca off the hook.
He looked sheepish. “Actually I was supposed to be here anyway, keeping an eye out for the man who’s in there. I was away from the scene for a few minutes. You know, call of nature.”
“Mr. Buzz make me give him key.” Bianca suddenly came to life. “He hit me the face.” She was crying now, a pathetic tiny figure. “But I follow him and I see fire.”
“Buzz set the fire?” Was this possible? If he was the one then why had he risked his life to save me—and Selma?
“I don’t know,” said Bianca. “I here, fire already burns. I call fire engine. Miss Selma give me phone.” She held up her cell phone proudly. “But Miss Selma in there.” She started wailing and held up her arms as if in prayer to Selma at the window above us.
And then the fire engines began to pour into Blenheim Crescent from Ladbroke Grove. Watching Selma, I felt about as helpless as the time when I had watched on television while a Formula One car exploded in flames on a racetrack with the driver still trapped inside. Selma did not appear to be on fire but she was plainly hysterical, clawing at the windowpane, screaming at us although we couldn’t hear a word. I could see flames through the landing window and knew it was only a matter of time before they reached her.
And then she suddenly disappeared from view and my heart went dead. She must have slumped to the floor, overcome by smoke. All around me people were screaming. The police had arrived and were doing their best to keep everyone on the far side of a hastily erected barrier. Now the road was a mass of hoses being hefted by the firemen and once they went into action, I was staggered by the speed with which they rescued Selma. The ladders went up to the window, the glass was
broken and within seconds a fireman reemerged with her inert body draped over his shoulder like a pashmina shawl. He gave a thumbs-up, she was still alive, and the crowd around me breathed a collective sigh of relief. Five minutes later and it would have been a different story.
The police were having a hard time keeping the crowd that had gathered at bay. A woman standing close to the waiting ambulance suddenly shouted out:
“It’s Selma Walker from Fraternity!” and there was a huge surge forward. I was jostled and buffeted and I began to panic.
I could no longer see what was happening at the entrance to my house and I tried to duck under the arm of one of the policemen.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, wrapping a restraining arm around my waist from behind and pulling me backward.
“It’s MY house,” I said, struggling. “There’s a man trapped inside there. He hasn’t come out.”
God knows how but the crowd heard me above the roar of the fire and suddenly everyone stopped shouting and turned to watch as what seemed like an entire posse of firemen swarmed through the front door dragging a long hose.
We waited, spellbound, hands clasped in front of our mouths and eyes pinned to the upper floors of the house. The jets that were propelled up from the engines outside the house had succeeded in dousing the flames that had now reached the roof but through the windows I could still see fire licking its way up the stairwell and enveloping the landing.
After rescuing me, Buzz had gone back up the stairs. A sense of dread began to travel through my body until I was shivering with apprehension.
Responding to some invisible signal, the ambulance men suddenly ran to the top of the steps with a stretcher just as two firemen emerged with Buzz’s body. They laid him on the stretcher and I don’t know how I caught it—my eyes were straining to catch a glimpse of Buzz over the shoulders of the people in front of me—but I saw one of the firemen give an infinitesimal shake of his head. Then he threw a blanket over Buzz’s body. Not just his body, but over his head as well.
It was insane but just as they reached the ambulance, one of the back doors blew shut and they laid Buzz down on the ground for a second. The policeman restraining me did not anticipate my reaction and he let go of me as I shook him off and darted across the road to pull the blanket off Buzz.
I stared down at him for a second and then I started chattering to him like an imbecile. “You’re all right, Buzz. You’re fine. We’ve got you now. You’re going to be okay.” As I spouted this inane gibberish, I registered that his flesh was seared and coated in soot. His hands were red and raw and still slightly clenched. His mouth was a white circle of pain in his blackened face. And as I finally understood that he was dead, it felt as if the flow of blood to my heart had slammed into a high seawall and I slumped to the ground.
I didn’t pass out. I just sat there on the ground, sobbing, and when I could catch my breath, I screamed at the crowd, at the police, at the departing ambulance.
I felt someone put their arm around me and coax me gently to my feet.
Chris had a blanket and he wrapped it around my shoulders and began to slowly lead me away from the mayhem outside my smoldering house.
“It’s okay, love. I’ve got you. Calm down, calm down,” he said over and over again. “You’re in shock. What you need is a nice cuppa tea. My lockup’s close by. I’m going to take you there, okay? Nice cuppa tea, just what you need.”
He talked to me continuously, soothing me, as I allowed myself to be led all the way along Blenheim Crescent to Powis Mews. He had his lockup there in a row of garages where mechanics worked all day long on car maintenance.
“Buzz is dead,” I told Chris. “They rescued Selma but they couldn’t save Buzz.”
“Well, that’s justice, innit?” said Chris, the comforting tone suddenly gone from his voice and replaced with a savage rasp. “He started the fire, didn’t he?”
“Did he—did he really?” Buzz was a monster but I don’t think I had ever really believed he was capable of arson and murder as well.
“Of course,” said Chris, squeezing my arm. “I saw him go into the house, didn’t I?”
“Did you?” What was Chris doing outside my house at two in the morning?
“’Ere we are.” We had arrived at Powis Mews and he had upped his pace. Now he was almost dragging me along the cobblestones. He stopped halfway along the mews, reached down, and pressed a button that released the garage door to his lockup. It rumbled up and back and he propelled me inside into the gloom.
Even though I was in a state of shock I registered that Chris was acting strangely. No longer the comforting presence who had led me away from the scene of the fire, his grip on my arm was now nothing short of brutal and I pulled away from him. This seemed to enrage him and he leapt on me. I kicked him as hard as I could and struggled to break free but he was much too strong for me. I remembered the force with which he had attacked Buzz in my hallway and realized I had no hope of overpowering him.
“Why are you doing thi—?” I screamed at him before he stuffed a foul smelling rag in my mouth, gagging me. He secured it around my head and then pulled the cord free of my dressing gown and tied my hands behind my back with it. Then he ducked outside again, pressed the button, and the door began to descend.
Before I was left in the pitch black of the lockup, in what was left of the light as the door rolled downward, I saw them, standing in a line beside boxes of vegetables: can after can of kerosene.
My wrists were tied but my fingers were free. I didn’t waste a second and began to work my way around the wall in the darkness, searching for the light switch.
If there was one.
I’d been down Powis Mews before. I’d seen these lockups. Once the door was up, the owners didn’t need any more light to find the box of carrots or lettuces they’d come to get. Had I ever seen a lightbulb dangling? I couldn’t remember.
I felt the splintered wood of crates containing apples and then there was a gap. No shelves. Moving along with my back to the wall, my hands reached down and found what seemed to be the fabric of an old armchair. I almost tumbled into it and my fingers touched something that, when I understood what it was, caused me to silently scream and moan in panic behind my gag.
My fingers were resting on hair. Human hair, dry and unhealthy as if it had been over-bleached. Moving downward I felt skin—a nose, a mouth gagged with something, like mine was.
I fought to hold back the vomit that rose in my throat before it seeped into the gag.
I was trapped in a lockup in total darkness with a body—a body that no longer responded when touched.
I recoiled, stumbling backward into a crate on the floor and losing my balance. I hit the ground with a sharp bump to my right hip and lay there for a second, shaking. I inched my fettered body across the floor like a slow-moving snake until I was on the other side of the lockup to the body in the armchair. Then I flinched as it occurred to me that there might be other bodies lurking in the darkness. There was a stench in the place and while I was not familiar with the smell of dead human flesh past its cremation date, I was pretty sure that what caused my nose to twitch was the stink of rotting vegetables. So how long had the body been dead? If indeed it was dead. I knew I should slither back across the floor and touch it again, try to wake it up but nothing on earth would persuade me to do so.
As I lay there in the darkness I heard a little beep somewhere in the region of my left thigh and I remembered that Buzz had given me his cell phone to dial 999. What I had heard was the little beep that tells you to check your messages.
I rolled over, frantic, wriggled about until the phone fell out of my pocket onto the floor. Then I rolled back and over until my fingers found the phone. But it was useless. I am pretty hopeless at dialing a tiny cell phone with my stubby fingers at the best of times but trying to find the TALK button to turn it on and then the 999 digits, fumbling in the dark with my hands tied behind my back, was impossible. And in any case, e
ven if I had been able to roll over quick enough to get my mouth to the phone, I was gagged so all the emergency services would have heard would have been muffled grunts.
I had to keep calm. I had to stop myself from imagining what Chris had done to the figure in the armchair, what he would do to me. I had never been in a place that was so totally unilluminated. It had to be near dawn. Light seeped into bedrooms whatever kind of blackout you installed. You could always see something. Now, lying in this dank, foul-smelling lockup, I was as good as blind. And of course my imagination began to run riot, producing rats waiting in the blackness to come forward and nibble me. I moved a little to ease the stiffness that was beginning to invade my joints and my fingers touched something slimy.
I screamed behind the gag and then relaxed. It was a leek. I reached farther, searching for something that would in some way enable me to escape, maybe a crack in the wall I could poke through, and encountered more fallen fruit and vegetables. An onion, a big round football of a cabbage, oranges with firm skin and similar smaller objects, lemons or maybe limes. Pointy carrots, stubbier parsnips, and hard little garlics.
Having fallen to the ground, I couldn’t get to my feet again and I lay there, exhausted and semiconscious until the sound of the mechanics arriving for work told me that the long night was over. I heard the sound of garage doors rumbling up and open, and the wheels of the milkman’s van trundling over the cobbles delivering to the back entrances of the houses on the other side of the mews. I couldn’t shout out.
Then Buzz’s cell phone rang.
I thought fast. I rolled over, raised my upper body as if I were doing push-ups and crashed my face down onto the phone, hoping I’d hit the right button. I heard a voice say hello. I groaned and moaned and coughed, knowing it was futile but convinced it was better than doing nothing.
“Are you okay?” I heard a woman’s voice say and I shouted “Help!” aware that it sounded like “He—.”
Suddenly the lockup was flooded with light as the door rolled up and Chris came in and kicked the phone across the floor away from me.
How to Seduce a Ghost Page 34
