Smoke Alarm

by Priscilla Masters

  Randall put himself in the operator’s shoes. After an appeal like this they had hundreds of calls. Most of them had no useful information at all but simply wanted to join in what they saw as a TV thriller. Even if it was on the very edge of the drama, the faint connection gave the general public a frisson of excitement. Monica Deverill would not have been the first phone call of the day; neither would she have been the last. Many callers deliberately affected an air of mystery to focus attention on themselves, pretending they had vital information when often they didn’t, merely offering up some trivia about a T-shirt or a car without anything specific or helpful. A phone call didn’t necessarily mean that what the caller had was either of relevance or importance. So many were simply time-wasters.

  Randall replayed the tape, listening hard for a clue, the slightest inflection, a word, a hint of what it was that Monica Deverill had known – if anything. ‘I think I know something about the fire at Melverley Grange.’

  It could have been anything. But during the night her house, too, had been the target of the arsonist.

  Randall took a look at Talith who simply shrugged and looked sympathetic.

  ‘Just our luck,’ Randall said gloomily. ‘If only she’d kept her appointment. At least we’d know whether she did know something significant or not.’

  ‘Well, it’s a start,’ Talith pointed out. ‘It’s a real connection between the two fires.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  But surely this could be no coincidence? Randall was still pondering the point when the phone rang. Surprisingly it was Will Tyler ringing from the fire station and he came straight to the point. ‘I hope you don’t mind me ringing you, Inspector,’ he said in his slow, Shropshire burr, ‘but there’s something botherin’ me.’

  Randall waited. Cases were like this, odd facts surfacing, coming from all sorts of sources. Left drifting they could appear too random to be of any use. But put them together and they started to connect, like a string of pearls. So he listened carefully as Tyler enlarged. ‘The staircase was intact enough for William Barton to have descended, so why didn’t he?’

  ‘Smoke?’ Randall suggested tentatively. He didn’t want to appear to be telling the fire officer his job.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Tyler conceded, ‘but he could have run to the back of the house.’

  Randall was silent for a moment absorbing Tyler’s words. Then he said, ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  ‘He could have escaped. The fire was more at the front. It spread upwards from the lounge and the kitchen to the women’s bedrooms above. I know smoke would have been billowing up the stairs but I still think he could have got out.’

  ‘But didn’t?’

  Tyler gave a little cough. ‘There’s something else. It’s about the two women. You see, I’ve been thinking about the timing. If the women went to bed at eleven and the fire had taken a real hold before twelve the fire-raiser would have to have locked them in as soon as they went to the bedrooms. Waited, as it were, for them to go but not being sure they were asleep.’

  ‘Go on,’ Randall prompted, baffled as to where this was all leading.

  ‘Then there’s the fact that our second fire was started in exactly the same way – splashes of petrol through a front window, the curtains soaked and a light thrown in but evidence of accelerants in more than one room. And believe me, Inspector Randall, this is not the usual way to fire-raise. It’s nearly always petrol through the letterbox which works just as well.’ He chuckled. ‘For some reason arsonists are about the least imaginative of criminals. It’s a strange case.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Alex said gloomily. ‘There’s something else,’ and he related the story of Monica Deverill’s telephone call to the police station the night of the TV appeal, a week before her house had been set alight.

  ‘Ah,’ Tyler said. ‘I couldn’t see what but I thought there had to be a connection.’

  ‘Yeah, but what it actually is is still a mystery,’ Randall said.

  Tyler still seemed to want to offload. ‘Do you know how many house fires we had last year?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Forty. That’s getting on for one a week. Do you know how many of those were fatal?’ Without even waiting for the detective’s response he supplied the answer. ‘None,’ he said, emphasizing the statement with a, ‘not one. We haven’t had a fatal house fire for more than three years in Shrewsbury. They’re rare, thank God, but a high percentage of fatal house fires are very often arson. Now, all of a sudden, we have two house fires, consequent loss of life and someone missing. Doesn’t make sense, does it?’

  Randall had to agree with the fire chief and waited, expecting the word unless, but Tyler simply advised him to ‘think on it’. Randall put the phone down thoughtfully.

  Martha’s morning, meanwhile, was punctuated by a telephone call from Mark Sullivan, the pathologist who had performed the post-mortems on the three members of the Barton family. And he was having second thoughts.

  ‘I’ve been looking again at the body of Mr William Barton,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt that the cause of death was smoke inhalation but there is also some damage to the skull.’ She could tell from his tone that he was frowning. ‘I could have put it down to fire damage, the heat causing the skull to split, but I’ve been thinking about it.’ Again he paused before adding, ‘I think he might have been bashed over the head.’

  ‘Are you sure, Mark?’

  ‘It can be really difficult to interpret,’ Sullivan said. ‘Heat damages the bones, changes the microscopic structure so it can be hard to know whether an injury was inflicted pre- or post-mortem. To be honest, Martha, I couldn’t really swear to either.’

  ‘That’s disturbing,’ Martha said. ‘And it makes the case even more difficult. But . . .’ She fell silent. A new and troubling scenario was unfolding in front of her mind’s eye. The fire-raiser entering the house, locking the doors on the women, assaulting a confused old man. Then a couple of weeks later the same assault on the home of a retired nurse.

  She thanked Mark for his call but sensed he was hesitating. ‘Was there something else?’ Still he hesitated so she prompted him. ‘Mark?’

  ‘I wondered if you’d care to have dinner with me one night?’ He’d blurted out the words so quickly she half imagined she’d dreamt them. But she hadn’t.

  The invitation was so out of the blue and Martha was so taken aback that she couldn’t answer at once. And Sullivan took this the wrong way. ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘Very bad idea to mix business with pleasure. Sorry.’

  It made up her mind for her. ‘Thank you,’ she said smoothly. ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Great. We can sort out a time and place soon?’

  ‘Soon,’ she echoed and the phone was put down. Privately she agreed with the pathologist who was a good few years younger than her. This was not a good idea. In fact, it was a rotten idea and she shouldn’t have said yes.

  Even so, she sat at her desk and smiled. Here she was, a widow in her forties, no great beauty, twin teenagers (was there ever anything more horrible?) and she was being asked for a date by a very eligible divorced/newly single man. She frowned. Maybe before she agreed to a specific time and date she should check out what exactly Mark Sullivan’s marital status was. She had no intention of being copped having a sneaky date with a still-married man. Particularly one she worked with.

  She glanced at the door. Jericho would know whether Mark Sullivan was still married but she couldn’t possibly ask her assistant outright. He would smell a rat faster than a terrier would. And he was incredibly protective – one could say jealous – of her privacy both personal and professional.

  She must find a subtle way around it. And if Dr Mark Sullivan was, as he had said, no longer married, well, what was the harm? She smiled to herself, not displeased with the day’s work – so far.

  Her next task was to speak to DI Randall and ask whether she could visit Melverley Grange again and then take up his offe
r of a visit to the site in Sundorne. As coroner she had a perfect right to visit the scene of an accident or crime, anything that had resulted in reportable death, even to instruct that a jury do likewise. She didn’t really want to go back to the terrible wreck of what must once have been a most beautiful house, the scene of such tragedy, but she was very anxious to learn the truth. She picked up the phone, got put through to DI Randall and made her request.

  He was outside her office in forty-five minutes flat, car waiting. While he drove out to Melverley Alex Randall filled her in on the latest events, the connection between the two fires and the puzzling phone call from the fire chief. Martha was both intrigued and reflective. ‘I wonder what it was that this Mrs Deverill knew?’ she said. Then, ‘Do you know anything about this nurse?’

  Randall filled her in on the ‘Merry Widow’s’ family, friends, the two sons but she shook her head. ‘No – I mean, about her. Where she’d worked, who these friends were. Did she have any close relationships? What was in her past life – her husband, things like that.’

  Alex’s face was thoughtful as he pulled into the drive. As always Martha was inspiring him, opening doors and windows on to new possibilities and ideas. He pulled up outside Melverley Grange. They sat in the car and regarded the ruin without speaking.

  Even from the outside Martha could still see the effects of the fire, from the boarded windows to the police tape which marked out a corridor of access, workmen’s vans, and still the forensic vans parked outside. There was an aura of sadness and already neglect around the house that must once have been so beautiful. It was already hard to imagine that a family would ever live there happily again.

  Alex Randall followed her gaze. ‘Still a bloody mess,’ he commented.

  Martha couldn’t help but agree. ‘It is that.’ He handed her a hard hat and together they walked inside.

  The scent of smoke was still pungent and strong but fading now, the atmosphere inside gloomy. ‘It’s hard to get rid of the smell of a fire,’ Randall commented. ‘It seems to seep into the woodwork, the bricks, the mortar.’ He gave a harrumph of a laugh. ‘You can paint, decorate, put up new curtains and replace the damaged woodwork but you never get rid of the smell of a fire.’

  ‘Or the aura it leaves behind,’ Martha added, glancing at the detective sharply. There was a sadness in his voice that made her wonder if he had had personal experience of a house fire. But she said nothing.

  The lounge still looked dingy, smoke-marked and hardly better today than it had on the morning after the fire except that now there were new marks, sinister in their significance: white patches where pieces of furniture had been removed for forensic examination, circles marked where accelerant had been found. The broken window had been completely removed and replaced with a sheet of hardboard. The carpet was still cold and sodden. It was obvious that the entire house would have to be stripped right down and redecorated. It was hard to imagine that it would ever be restored to its former beauty or completely lose the smell of smoke.

  Martha walked through all the downstairs rooms, not really knowing what she was looking for: some small thing that would lead her towards understanding the sequence of events on that terrible night. Alex followed behind her, keeping quiet, eyeing her curiously, not quite sure what she was looking for either, yet hoping that she would pick up on something he had not.

  They climbed the stairs and came to the spot where William Barton’s body had been found. At last Martha began to see something. ‘Show me again which way he was facing, Alex.’

  ‘Like this.’ Alex indicated the feet towards the stairs. ‘Head towards the bedroom, arms outstretched.’

  And Martha began to wonder if they had misunderstood the evidence they had found. ‘So he was approaching the women’s bedrooms, probably trying to get them out,’ she said.

  Randall agreed without any idea of what this might mean.

  She told him then about Mark Sullivan’s call – at least the bit about William Barton’s possible head injury – not the bit about dinner. Randall was thoughtful and unwittingly echoed her private thoughts.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, recalling the unspoken detail of Tyler’s telephone call, ‘we’ve been looking at this the wrong way round.’

  ‘That was what I was wondering.’

  It was as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘The old man was a victim,’ he said quietly.

  They were standing in the room where Christie Barton had died. Martha looked down at the bunch of scented white lilies and read the card out loud. ‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ it read. ‘Love, Nige X’

  ‘Sorry for what, I wonder?’ Martha commented.

  Randall gave a loud sigh and filled her in on Mirabelle. ‘The oldest cliché in the book,’ he said wearily. ‘We’ll be getting a statement from her.’

  But Martha’s attention was distracted. ‘The key to her bedroom,’ she said. ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The entire door must have been ablaze. We found the key in the ashes.’ Alex looked disturbed as he took in the carnage.

  ‘And you found traces of accelerants in both downstairs rooms and splashes on the stairs?’

  Randall gave her a sharp look. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Any inside either of the bedrooms where the women died?’

  Slowly he shook his head.

  ‘Anywhere else?’

  ‘Stairs, hallway, lounge and the sofa in the front room where the blaze was started was soaked in the stuff.’

  ‘Petrol can?’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Was there one in the garage – a petrol can, I mean? Or one in the house?’

  He scrutinized her. ‘What are you getting at, Martha Gunn?’

  She gave him an innocent half smile. ‘Just trying to get a more complete picture, Alex.’

  He grinned. ‘I know you, Martha. And I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you.’

  ‘I’d better lose weight then so you’ll be able to throw me further.’

  They both laughed at the weak and silly quip. Then looked around them and sobered up instantly. The sooty blackness gave their surroundings a look of hell. The work of the devil, everlasting flames, purgatory and all the other horrors that religion can throw at you. Behind their natural revulsion crept a sense of doom, of destruction, burning martyrs and the Spanish Inquisition.

  Martha voiced both their feelings. ‘What an awful sight,’ she said. ‘How completely awful to die like this, terrified, disorientated.’ Disorientated? But Christie Barton had made it to the door. And her daughter to the only place of safety she could imagine. They had not been so disorientated. Merely trapped.

  This room was still patently smoke-wrecked, the windows cracked and stained. Even the winter sunshine couldn’t penetrate the blackened windows. And everywhere the pall of smoke seemed still to be present. The air was not quite clear and clean but had remained hazy, whispering secrets it had witnessed. Hell itself, in the form of smoke and water, had crept in under that door, like the serpent of Genesis, slithering poisonously towards its victim. Martha took a last look around, conscious still that something was gnawing away at the back of her mind like a persistently hungry rat. She frowned. What on earth was it? What was here? She took in the bed between the two chests of drawers, the windows, the curtains, melted and scorched, the layer of wet, oily char that lay over all. A white space where a picture had been removed.

  What did it all mean? And now a new question was hammering in her mind. What contribution had Monica Deverill been about to make before she vanished?

  Next they entered Adelaide’s room, where the poor child had cowered. Pink wallpaper stained with soot. This time Martha couldn’t help but imagine Sukey in this situation and found the room unbearably poignant and painful. It almost moved her to tears. She had to leave.

  Alex was watching her curiously. ‘Found what you were looking for?’

  She took a last sweep around the girl’s room. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I ju
st don’t know. Except . . .’ He paused, waiting for her comment. ‘It’s all here, Alex. It has to be.’

  ‘Do you want to go up there again?’ He indicated the door which led to the attic stairs and she nodded. Three people had died in this house. She had a duty to find out the truth.

  The rooms still held a vague scent of smoke but it was not pungent and overpowering as it had been on the first two floors. She seemed drawn to the hook from which had hung the rope ladder. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘It must have been quite a drama, a boy climbing down a rope ladder through the smoke, escaping from a burning house where his mother and sister were trapped. On that night the rope ladder could only have been used at the back of the house.’

  Again, wondering what exactly she was getting at, Randall made no comment but simply waited for her to continue. ‘The rope ladder could only have been used at the back of the house.’

  Randall’s eyes narrowed.

  She studied the beam in more detail, noted that the screws had been inserted recently. They were sharp and shiny. ‘And it has been put in recently.’ She peered round the room. Jude obviously hadn’t returned to collect his belongings. It was all still here: computer games, a TV set, random clothes scattered around the place, books, DVDs. In here there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was a typical teenage boy’s room. Except the teenage boy was still exiled. ‘I take it the Bartons, father and son, are still in the private hotel?’

  ‘And likely to remain there for some months. It may well be a year before Melverley Grange is habitable again.’

  Poor house, she thought and wondered whether father and son would ever be able to bear living here again. It would always be a blighted home and for the boy a terrible memory. They descended the stairs and out into the welcome crisp air of a March day. Martha felt relief to escape the atmosphere of the ruined house.

  TWELVE

  ‘Shall we move on to Sundorne?’ Martha asked shakily and took up her seat in the front of the police car. She was quiet as Randall drove but minutes later as she was chauffeur driven through frosty Shropshire countryside her mood lightened. ‘Oh, what it is to be chauffeur driven,’ she murmured, enjoying the luxury. The journey was relaxing. Randall was a careful, smooth driver. Twenty minutes later they had reached Battlefields roundabout, entering the town from the north-east, passing Tesco’s superstore on the right-hand side. Just past Morrisons Alex Randall turned down a side street and pulled up outside another house wrecked by fire, this time a neat semi. But the destruction was even worse than the damage affected at Melverley Grange. If Monica Deverill had been inside when the fire had torn through her home she could not have survived. It was a much smaller, more modest house than the Grange and a higher percentage of it had been completely destroyed. The roof had fallen in, the joists now blackened ribs bared to the sky. Even the house that joined Monica Deverill’s had suffered extensive damage too. It was probable that both would have to be demolished. Two families would lose their homes.