91
The Heart of the Fire
SIDNEY GRICE STARTED humming, scaling hitherto unexplored continents of tunelessness, whilst tapping both feet in different rhythms.
‘Before,’ he broke off, his feet still drumming frenetically, ‘we venture down that thorny path, I should like to consider the condition of Steep House.’
He stood still.
‘Well, maybe I wouldn’t.’ The bootmaker amused himself by wrapping a tress of Lucy’s hair tightly round his fingers, pulling up hard and sawing it off with his knife.
My guardian put his hands on his hips. ‘Let us consider the origins of the fire,’ he persisted. ‘We were expected to believe that it started in a Christmas tree, the candles having been left unattended.’ His hands cupped into a megaphone. ‘Were your parents moronic, Miss Wilde, or, perchance, in the habit of retiring in such states of intoxication that they were unaware of what they were doing? Were they such democratic employers that they sent their servants to bed before they followed suit? If not, did not one of those minions observe that the waxen illuminations had not been extinguished?’
‘The fire brigade and police thought that one of the wicks must have been left smouldering and reignited,’ Freddy explained. ‘And, no, my parents were neither stupid nor drunk.’
His megaphone fell apart. ‘I did not say that they were.’
‘I did not say that you did,’ Freddy whipped back, and Mr G inclined his head.
‘Sehr gut’ He paused admiringly. ‘I have, however, another undisclosed number of difficulties in subscribing even lukewarmly to that scenario. First,’ he held up one finger for the benefit of anyone who was uncertain which number he referred to. ‘The worst fire damage was to the south-east of that, to wit, the right-hand side as one faces the architectural corpse.’
‘There was paraffin stored in the cellar against my father’s instructions by one of the maids – who wanted to save herself having to go outside for it at night,’ Freddy explained. ‘But she paid for that with her life.’
‘And three others.’ Mr G’s right foot thrust out like a big game hunter posing with his first lion. ‘Quite a steep price, some might argue. However, you have yet to convert me to your cause for, when I examined the generously proportioned entrance hall, I was filled with wonder, as Miss Middleton can bear witness, to come upon a varnished floor.’
‘Many places have those,’ Pound objected, ‘including this one and the house I live in.’
‘Oh, Chief Inspector.’ My godfather mimed tossing a weighty object into the air. ‘Must you dominate proceedings with your embarrassing domestic anecdotes? The varnish,’ he continued, before George could reply, ‘was blistered.’
‘Of course it was,’ Lucy rejoined. ‘There was a fire.’
‘Coniferophyta burn with a vigour which may be gratifying or alarming, depending upon one’s aspirations,’ Mr G pondered, lowering his foot cautiously. ‘If I were to set one on fire here and now – though you may rest assured that I have no intention of doing so – I would be overweeningly confident that the intense heat would melt the varnish and set it alight in very short order.’
‘So why didn’t it?’ Pound had slid another inch.
‘The question I asked myself,’ Mr G inclined his head like an adult listening to a shy child, ‘is how did the conflagration travel from the tree to the cellar?’
‘Fire moves in funny ways.’ The bootmaker unfastened another button of Lucy’s dress very gently, and she shivered.
‘No, it does not,’ Sidney Grice argued. ‘Heat and flames move upwards most readily, laterally less readily, and downwards least readily. If you want to burn something quickly you place it above, not at the side of your heat source, and certainly not below it. If the blaze had started in the tree, it would have spread to the staircase and ceiling. Fragments of the staircase still stand.’
‘The ceiling collapsed, though,’ Freddy pointed out.
‘And landed on the non-ignited varnish, the thick plaster-work protecting it from the full effects of the heat.’ Mr G prodded the floor with his boot, as he had when testing the floor of the ruins. ‘Indicating that the fire was on the upper floor first. The logical conclusion, therefore, would be that the fire did not start at the tree.’
‘Does any of this actually matter?’ The bootmaker yawned.
‘I am sorry if we are keeping you awake,’ I murmured.
‘Let us pretend,’ Mr G invited us, ‘that the primary source was in the most readily flammable part of the house, which was where, exactly, Miss Wilde?’
‘Where the paraffin was stored,’ Freddy said, ‘under the front of the house to the right.’
‘Where poor Eric was found.’ Lucy sighed.
‘But why would Eric have gone into the heart of the fire?’ I asked.
‘To try to put it out,’ she replied, as if I were stupid.
‘Or to try to escape,’ Freddy volunteered. ‘There was a window leading into a light-well there. He managed to smash his way into the well but there was a locked grating over it.’
‘And the flames would have been sucked up into the air over him,’ the bootmaker imagined with relish. ‘Roasted like a suckling pig.’
‘Shut up.’ Lucy strained her arms and lowered her head in a hopeless attempt to block the words out.
‘I do not think you are in much of a position to give me orders.’ The bootmaker snatched another fistful of Lucy’s pale blonde hair and yanked her upright. His mouth went to her cheek and I thought he was going to kiss her, but he brushed it against her ear and murmured, ‘Must have made a nice lot of crackling.’
Lucy wrenched her head away and strained at her bonds, a muffled howl escaping from her clenched teeth but failing to drown him out.
‘For pity’s sake, man,’ Pound railed. ‘Have you no humanity?’
‘Some.’ The bootmaker licked his lips showily. ‘But none to spare.’
‘Go on,’ my guardian urged, and mouthed something about control.
‘The flames would go up through the floors until they reached the roof.’ I pictured the wreckage with its still-standing bay, ‘And along each floor and the roof, every layer would have been collapsing onto the one below as it became too weak to support itself. So,’ I tried to superimpose one image on another. ‘New House had a large central skylight. If that collapsed, the top of the stairs could have been blocked quite early on. The flames would have shot through the roof and gone the only way they could – sideways.’
‘Everyone was trapped by the bars on the windows,’ Freddy said miserably. ‘Daddy had them put on after a spate of burglaries in the area. But, because my bedroom was at the side of the house, Fairbank managed to get to me from the servants’ staircase at the back – where the fire was less intense – and carried me out. But I was unconscious, overcome by smoke and pinned down by a burning beam. By then the flames were too intense for him to get back in.’
‘What a touching tale.’ Mr G put his hand to his heart. ‘If only it were true.’
‘But he told me so, and Lucy saw him carrying me out,’ Freddy said.
‘Good old Lucy.’ Sidney Grice waved his handkerchief in celebration. ‘Except that she did not.’
Both women opened their mouths but neither spoke.
‘We went to see Mr Fairbank,’ I explained. ‘And he told us he was in Elderberry House, next door, when the fire started, and Freddy was already lying on the ground.’
‘This is outrageous,’ Lucy blustered. ‘He has been claiming a pension from the estate. He was even given a house as a reward for his bravery.’
‘And he saw you nearby,’ I continued, ‘as soon as he arrived.’
‘The man was a drunk,’ she stormed.
‘And freely admits as much,’ Mr G said. ‘I did not only search through Miss Wilde’s undergarments.’
‘For your diary,’ I explained hastily, and her indignation was transformed into perplexity.
‘I do not keep a diary.’
‘The one you kept in Steep House,’ I said guiltily, for I hated my guardian’s habit of finding and reading mine.
Freddy greeted that news with overt confusion. ‘But it was lost in the fire.’
‘Or possibly stolen,’ Sidney Grice said, and shushed any objections by saying loudly and clearly, ‘Whatever its provenance, it was certainly not stored in your chest. It was charred and yet there was no ash, nor the lingering aroma of combustion in your immaculately laundered and stored petticoats.’
‘But where was it?’ Freddy searched our faces.
‘Well, don’t look at me,’ the bootmaker told her jocularly.
‘I found it and kept it,’ Lucy announced.
‘And partially incinerated it,’ Sidney Grice chipped in. ‘Miss Middleton, occupier but not owner of 125 Gower Street, commented privately to me that the surface was shiny. But she failed – as is her wont – to notice that the lower two thirds of the page were not, and the facing page had only a light sheen. If only – and my life is festooned with such regrets – she had touched it with one of her indifferently manicured fingerplates.’
‘You told me not to,’ I railed.
‘I told you to be careful but, if you had performed that unchallenging action, you would have realized that this glossy area was oily from the drip-dripping of candle wax, the page having been deliberately burned to conceal Miss Wilde’s report of a conversation.’
I quoted from memory: ‘he told me, “I hate Steep House and everybody in it. I shall destroy them all’”
Freddy’s lips parted, but my godfather’s arm shot out towards her in a Roman salute. ‘Oh why, oh why – and you may answer this at my earliest convenience, Miss Freda Tulsima Darovena Wilde – did you start your sentence with a lower-case h?’
‘It said She.’ Freddy tried but failed to wipe her inflamed left eye on her shoulder. ‘Lucy made that threat, but my diary went on to say that it was just because she was angry at not being invited with me to the New Year’s ball, and I knew she did not mean it. After all,’ she continued less certainly, ‘it was Lucy who saved my life.’
‘At the risk of my own,’ Lucy pointed out.
‘I also took stock of the contents of your trunk, Miss Bocking,’ Mr G, closely watched by the bootmaker, slipped a hand gingerly in and out of his breast pocket, ‘whilst my inelegant and sometimes mendacious godchild was regaling you with a bawdy ballad.’
‘I think not.’ Lucy smiled uneasily. ‘The padlocks were not broken and only I have the key.’
‘Grice knows no locksmith.’ Fie flicked his cigarette case open to display the picks. ‘Though that is not literally true. I know of seven hundred and three, and have met one hundred and eighty-six. It is just that I was trying to coin a neat turn of phrase.’
‘You did very well,’ I assured him.
‘Was that sarcasm?’
‘It was not.’
‘Thank you.’ He made a slight bow before raising his voice. ‘You could not bring yourself to throw it away, could you, Miss Bocking – the notorious yellow dress that meant so much to you.’
Lucy flushed. ‘I rescued it from the fire,’ she said.
‘But where did you find it?’ Freddy asked.
‘In the garden. It must have fallen out,’ Lucy blustered. ‘I saved it for you, Freddy, and then I thought it might upset you too much, so I locked it away – along with your diary.’
‘The hem was badly scorched,’ Mr G told her.
‘Of course it was,’ she responded incredulously. ‘It had been in a fire.’
‘But why only the hem?’ I pressed. ‘Oh, Lucy, Mr Fairbank saw you wearing it.’ I did not know if that was true but Lucy soon confirmed my hunch.
‘He is a liar,’ she spat. ‘He always has been. My father nearly sacked him several times but always felt sorry for him. That man has been trying to blackmail me with false allegations for years.’
‘Then why not cut off his allowance?’ I asked. ‘Or is it paid to keep him quiet?’
‘My father set up a fund that I cannot touch. I should have. . .’ Lucy began, and I could only guess what she thought she should have done to her father’s old butler.
‘Shall I tell you what I think happened?’ I said.
‘I wish somebody bleeding would,’ the bootmaker complained. ‘I’m itching for my fun.’
‘Fun?’ Sidney Grice mused. The word held a special meaning for him.
‘That’s right.’ The bootmaker took a breath and drew his knife across Lucy’s throat.
92
Below the Blade
LUCY SCREAMED AND Freddy sobbed out, ‘No!’
‘It is all right,’ George Pound held up his palms and pushed them down in a calming motion. ‘He is using the blunt edge.’
‘What?’ Lucy looked at him wildly, gasping, and trying to bury her head in herself before she absorbed what he was telling her.
‘Got you going, though, didn’t I.’ The bootmaker smirked.
‘If by that you mean Misses Bocking and Wilde, you may be correct,’ Sidney Grice said amiably.
‘Shall I tell you what I think?’ I began, but had a better idea. I unclipped my handbag.
‘What’s she doing?’ The bootmaker gestured angrily.
‘I just want to show you something.’
The stuffing was first out again. I rammed it back in and delved deeper. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ I rooted through all my paraphernalia until I found the cold metal handle. ‘Oh, here it is.’
I brought out the starting pistol.
‘What’s the idea?’ The bootmaker looked rattled for the first time.
‘Let us call it my insurance policy,’ I suggested, levelling the barrel in his direction. ‘I shall not make the first move but, if you should decide to use the other edge, I will kill you.’
‘But you shook your bag out.’
‘I pinched the leather to hold the gun inside.’
‘You did it very well.’ The bootmaker threw me a morsel of praise and I forced myself to reward him with a wink.
‘Do you want to give that to me, March?’ George suggested, for he knew how unintentionally dangerous I could be with firearms.
‘No, thank you, Chief Inspector,’ I said stiffly, for it might look too obviously light in his strong grip. ‘I should not like you to get into trouble for bearing arms whilst on duty.’
‘Well, we seems to have reached an impasse,’ the bootmaker conceded. ‘Let us see who blinks first, shall we?’
Mr G made as if to sweep dust off his left lapel and shot me an anxious glance. ‘Then the metaphorical floor, Miss Middleton, is yours.’
‘Is it?’
‘You were about to tell us what you think,’ George prompted.
‘Oh yes,’ I remembered. My throat was dry. ‘I think Lucy went in and dragged Freddy out, which is how she burned the hem of her dress.’
Lucy puffed out her cheeks. ‘You are right, March, I did. But, when Fairbank turned up and begged me not to tell anybody he had been absent, I felt sorry for him and let him take the credit.’
‘What an exemplary client you could be.’ Mr G made a clapping motion with his left hand. ‘Brave and generous – if only you were not such a liar.’
‘How dare you?’ she exploded. ‘Nobody speaks to me like that.’
‘I do.’ Sidney Grice treated us to a rare, though not jolly, smile. ‘Would you like me to leave?’
‘Why were you wearing the dress, Lucy?’ I asked.
‘I liked it,’ Lucy faltered. ‘I should not have taken it, I know, but I was young and girls do silly things.’
‘They certainly do,’ my guardian concurred wholeheartedly, and the bootmaker snuffled in amusement.
‘Why did you change the dress before anybody else turned up, Lucy?’ I asked, keeping my gun trained on him.
‘So that I did not get into trouble,’ she said simply. ‘And that is why I let Fairbank take the credit. We did each other a favour, really, keeping each other�
�s secrets.’
‘But, Lucy,’ Freddy said in bewilderment, ‘the dress was in my wardrobe that night. How could you possibly have got to it?’
‘Unless you were in the house before the fire,’ I concluded.
And Lucy hung her head. ‘I went in earlier and took it. I was going to put it back. But I had nothing to do with the fire, I swear.’
‘That’s funny,’ George Pound mused. ‘Nobody said you had.’
Lucy slapped the arm of her chair as much as her restricted movements allowed. ‘Well, that was the implication of their questions.’
‘Sounded to me like they were asking about some stupid dress,’ the bootmaker chipped in. ‘But now it sounds like you started that fire and I know how to prove it.’ The bootmaker rotated his knife so that the point rested under the angle of Lucy’s jaw. She winced. ‘Here’s the deal,’ he said. ‘You tell me the truth and I don’t dig this in any deeper. Tell me one lie and I do, and it’ll be too late for your plank-faced pal to do anything about it.’
‘I am not bluffing,’ I bluffed.
‘Ditto.’ The bootmaker winked back.
‘But how can you know if Lucy is telling the truth or not?’ Freddy asked nervously.
The bootmaker shrugged. ‘Well, everything she’s said so far that they’ve caught her out on, I’ve known in advance. So let’s play.’ He applied a little pressure and I saw Lucy’s skin indent. ‘Did you set fire to the house?’
‘N—’ was all Lucy managed before she jumped in pain. ‘Yes, yes, I did.’
A drop of blood sprang up just below the blade.
‘No court will ever take this as evidence,’ Pound warned, and the bootmaker tossed his head.
‘Let me put it this way. I’m not coming forward as a witness for the prosecution.’ The bootmaker gave his attention back to Lucy, who was squirming in pain as her blood broke through, hanging like a teardrop. ‘How and why? And no more porkies, girl, or the next one might be your last.’
‘Take the knife away,’ Lucy begged, ‘and I’ll tell you everything.’
‘See?’ The bootmaker grinned. ‘There isn’t anything to being a detective after all.’
Dark Dawn Over Steep House Page 37
