Grave Matters (18 page)

The smell of smoke was much stronger here. He looked up at the roof, but it seemed to be all right. Then he walked round to the westerly side of the cottage and what he saw there made his heart plummet. The thick eaves above his head were glowing red, like an inferno, fanned by the prevailing wind towards the rear of the cottage, and as he ran round he could see clouds of smoke billowing out of the thatch. Even as he stood there, horrified, tongues of flame began to dart through the weight of old straw.

‘Ellen!’ he shouted, frantically, first under the windows where he stood, and then at the front of the cottage, but there was no answer from within.

The back door had panels of glass in its upper half; he was wearing gloves, and with his fist he smashed a hole in the pane nearest the door handle, reached in, and turned the key. The door did not yield. Careful Ellen had bolted it. But Patrick was heavy and with his shoulder to the frame he soon broke it open. As it burst inwards and he entered the building he feared the draught might cause a funnel of air to sweep through the house and fan the flames, but there was no sign of any fire in the kitchen. He opened its further door, which led into the living-room, very cautiously. There was a strong smell of smoke here. He knew that there were two bedrooms above. Ellen must have been overcome by the fumes as she lay asleep. He blundered his way up the stairs, groping in the dark, for his torch was in the car, and opened the first door he found, still calling her name.

She was in the room, and did not stir as he snatched her up out of the bed and stumbled back down the stairs again, carrying her. He took her out into the garden, removed his own overcoat and wrapped her in it; she wore only a thin nightdress. Then he gave her a little shake, and she moaned slightly.

‘David,’ she mumbled.

‘Ellen, wake up! You’re all right, Ellen,’ he told her, but she seemed able only to moan. Fresh air was the best thing for her, and she could come to no more harm for a few minutes while he got help to deal with the fire. So far it seemed confined to the roof, and there was just a chance that the telephone might still be working. He laid her on the ground, near the fence in front of the cottage, well away from all flying sparks which would blow in the other direction, and went back into the house by way of the kitchen again.

The telephone, he remembered, was on the window-sill in the living-room above a book-shelf. Arms outstretched, feeling for the furniture standing in his way, he managed to get across the room without more damage than a bruised shin. By some miracle the line was intact, and he dialled 999. Then he moved to the front door, which was close beside him. It was not bolted, merely closed on the yale lock, and the chain was not pulled across. How strange of Ellen to have bolted the back door so carefully and not this one; perhaps she had confidence in its solid oak. As he opened it and pulled it inwards the door caught against something that lay on the floor, preventing it from opening fully. Patrick’s foot brushed against something. He bent down. A solid object lay there; he felt cloth, then hair. It was a human body. Someone else was there in the room.

Patrick dragged the body through the doorway into the garden, and Colin arrived just in time to help him.

‘My God,’ he said. ‘You were right.’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘But I didn’t think of arson. Ellen’s over by the fence. She seems very dopey, as if she’s been drugged. Perhaps it’s just the smoke.’

‘This one’s alive. The pulse is quite strong,’ Colin said. ‘Who is it?’

Grimly, Patrick told him.

‘The fire brigade’s coming, but I didn’t call an ambulance,’ he added. ‘Why on earth aren’t there any coppers down at the church?’

‘Calm down, Patrick. There’s no blaze showing here yet, they wouldn’t have seen it if there had been,’ Colin said.

‘I smelled it,’ Patrick told him. ‘They could have done that.’

But Colin was looking down at the victims of the fire.

‘This must have been planned,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘They’ve both been doped. They’d be coughing and spluttering if the fire had made them unconscious. Look, they’re both stirring. Another half-hour or so and they’d have suffocated. This place will go up like a match-box soon.’

‘Christ, what a devil,’ said Patrick.

‘We’ll get them away,’ Colin decided. ‘Quick, before anyone else arrives here. Our villain will think the scheme worked. It’s most unlikely anyone else in the village knew that Ellen was here. She probably came with David, don’t you agree?’

‘Yes,’ Patrick said. ‘But to dope her and leave her here like this – wait till I get my hands on that—’

‘Stop. Try not to think of what might have happened,’ Colin said. ‘We’ve got to get our evidence. Our villain’s going to lie low pretending not to know what’s happened here. The whole village will be in a state of shock anyway, after the murder of Mrs. Bradshaw. You came down to see Ellen but as you could get no answer you thought the cottage must be empty. Then you found the fire, but you still didn’t suspect that anyone was here. You’ll have to stay here – I’ll get these two away before the fire brigade arrives – and for God’s sake keep your temper.’

As he spoke they could hear the fire engine’s bell as it raced towards the village along the main road. Pretty quick, Patrick thought, bundling Ellen into Colin’s car. She was able to sit up now and murmur, and the other victim was stirring too, and groaning.

‘If our villain makes no move tonight we’ll pay a call in the morning,’ Colin said, getting into the car. ‘They’ll be expecting some enquiries after the discovery of two charred corpses in the cottage. Keep your head, Patrick, these two will be all right, I’ll have them at the hospital in no time, and I’ll get back as soon as I’ve sorted out the local boys.’

He drove off, and had just cleared the end of the lane when the fire engine turned into it. Eleven minutes had passed since Patrick had telephoned.

He could do nothing for Ellen. He thought then of the books, still stacked along the walls of the sitting-room. There might be time to save them.

A fireman climbed a ladder to the thatch, and with an immense pair of wire-cutters tackled the wire netting which covered the roof of the cottage. It had rotted through and rusted in many places, and soon some of the men were tearing it away, then raking down the burning straw in great bundles which lay smoking on the ground, to be soused with water from their hoses. Two more fire engines arrived, more hoses were run out, and as water poured on to the building searchlights were rigged up to light the scene. Patrick carried armfuls of books to his car, and the firemen worked on. Suddenly, as they tore a great hole in the centre of the thatch in an attempt to confine the blaze to one end of the roof, the whole thing went up in a burst of flame like a very successful bonfire. It would be a miracle if even the shell of the cottage were saved, Patrick thought, plodding on.

He noticed, almost absent-mindedly, Cicero’s
Orations,
the blue Oxford edition, as he carried them out, and as he laid them in his car he saw that volume five was there, restored to its proper place among the others. He got all the books out, and most of the furniture from the sitting-room, helped by Fred Brown who had seen the flames from the pub and come to lend a hand. They stacked chairs and tables on the lawn.

Before they left the cottage for the last time, Patrick, standing in the kitchen, looked for anything else of value, and saw a coffee pot with the dregs of coffee still inside it, on the stove. On the drainer, washed and standing upside down to dry, were three cups and saucers and three spoons.

Something struck Patrick as odd about this, but he could not pinpoint what it was. He glanced round again. The sugar bowl was on the dresser, and beside it was a book. It was volume five of Cicero’s
Orations.
A second copy.

Patrick and Colin spent what was left of the night in the spare room at the Meldsmead Arms. The firemen eventually stopped Fred Brown and Patrick from entering the cottage again because the ceiling might fall in. They had raked the whole roof free of straw; it lay in sodden, smoking heaps around the cottage, which looked like a stage set in the beams from the searchlights; paper peeled from the walls, and upstairs the wrecked bedroom furniture was heaped anyhow in the two rooms as the men trampled back and forth with their hoses. A few charred rafters speared upwards into the sky.

‘Looks like a bomb’s hit it,’ muttered Fred. ‘Glad the old lady never saw it. Pitiful, isn’t it?’

And it was: the burnt, frayed remnants of the curtains hung sodden in the window frames, water poured from every crevice, and above all was the acrid smell of the smouldering straw.

The lane was blocked solidly by fire-engines, and at least one of them would be remaining throughout the night in case the blaze broke out again. Patrick’s car was hemmed in by them. He locked it, and left it there, filled with the books. As an afterthought, he removed from its place in the set volume five of Cicero’s
Orations.
It fell open in his hand, and out dropped an envelope. It was addressed in neat copper-plate
To Miss Ellen Brinton or Whomsoever Else it May Concern,
and had been opened, but the letter it contained was there. Patrick took it and the two copies of the book back to the pub. A police guard was set up at the end of the lane where it joined the main road, and, belatedly, a second guard was placed at the church. Colin brought Patrick’s coat back from the hospital. He had left Ellen, half-conscious, muttering something about a letter, and was relieved when Patrick produced the one he had found in the Cicero.

‘Sensible girl. She put the book back in the one place where no one would think of looking for it: its proper one,’ he said. He showed Colin the second copy, and told him about the three cups and saucers, the spoons and the coffee-pot. ‘They’ll still be there in the morning, unless the firemen knock the whole lot over,’ he added. ‘The kitchen wasn’t touched by the fire. But they’re tramping in and out all the time and pouring water everywhere. The coffee-pot wasn’t washed.’

‘There won’t be anything in it. The cups were washed because two were doped,’ said Colin. ‘Those two were loaded with barbiturate.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Patrick. ‘It shouldn’t be difficult to trace the sale of this second copy of the
Orations.
It must have been quite recent. Our case is building up.’

‘Yes. If we can only get that final link in the morning,’ said Colin. He had spent hours with the local Chief Constable and on the telephone to his own Superintendent, but after he and Patrick had read the letter written by Miss Forrest and concealed in the Cicero, he rang them both again, before he and Patrick at last went to bed.

In the morning, a telephone call to the hospital brought news that both the patients were improving. This made it possible for Patrick to enjoy the splendid breakfast provided by Fred Brown’s daughter, as he and Colin sat down to plates of two fried eggs each, crisp rashers of bacon, tomatoes and fried bread, and a huge pot of tea.

Then they set forth on foot. The single fire tender outside Mulberry Cottage took up most of the narrow lane; past it, towards Abbot’s Lodge, Patrick’s car was pulled in tight against the fence. In the morning light the cottage was a sad sight; the mounds of straw on the ground around it still smoked, and the air was full of its smell. The scene that had made Patrick think of a stage set in its unreal light the night before was now like a ruined doll’s house. He could see a broken chair in an upper room; the bed from which he had snatched Ellen was on its side, charred. Through the middle of the building the chimney rose up, gaunt, unsupported by any roof on either side. A fireman walked about up there, picking up bits and pieces that lay strewn around, then throwing them down, uncertain what to do about these vestiges of human occupation.

‘The fire people’s forensic boys will be over sharpish this morning,’ Colin said. ‘No one was saying much last night, but I think they’ve a shrewd idea of how it began.’

The rescued furniture stood about the garden in a forlorn fashion, looking like job lots waiting for an auction and damp with dew, though saved from the deluge of the firemen’s hoses.

‘We should have found something to cover them with,’ said Patrick, regarding the collection glumly.

‘They’ve been saved. A bit of polish will soon put them right,’ said Colin, in a housewifely way. ‘People’s effects always look pitiful after anything like this. When you go through pockets and handbags after accidents and list the contents, they’re always pathetic.’

‘Haven’t you got used to it yet?’

‘Only up to a point,’ said Colin wryly. ‘Come on. There will be plenty of time to sort all this out later, and we’ll make some arrangements for storing them. The forensic chaps may want to look at them. At least it’s going to be another fine day.’

It was true. The cloud that had filled the sky earlier was already drifting away. They walked on down the lane and through the gates of Abbot’s Lodge. One of the garages was closed. Outside the other stood Carol’s car, parked on the concrete wash. They walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

Carol Bruce opened the door. She wore slacks and a sweater, which showed her figure to be slim and boyish. On both the other occasions when Patrick had met her, she had worn a dress. His final doubt about how everything had been managed disappeared.

She looked at them both enquiringly.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early, Mrs. Bruce,’ said Patrick. ‘This is Inspector Smithers.’ For the time being they had decided to suppress Colin’s connection with the C.I.D. and drop the Detective part of his rank.

‘Oh? What can I do for you, Inspector? If it’s about that dreadful accident in the church yesterday, I can’t help you. I was in London all day, as I’ve already told the police.’

‘It’s not about that, madam.’ Colin put on his most official manner. ‘It’s about last night’s fire at Mulberry Cottage. Do you know where we can find Miss Valerie Brinton? Dr. Grant thought you might know her address and telephone number.’