Murder Among Us (31 page)

was a fire door insulating the back half of the house from the front. This too he wedged open, using a handy fire extinguisher.

A few more steps and he emerged into the main reception hall at the foot of the wide main staircase, an impressive sweeping construction intended to accommodate crinolines. Here he splashed the rest of his paraffin across the carpet, across the walnut antique table at which the snooty receptionist presided by day, across the lower treads of the staircase and up the carved oak banister.

The paraffin container was empty. Now speed was of the essence. He darted away, running back the way he'd come, down the corridor, through the opened fire doors, through open dining-room doors into the dining room. There he tossed aside the empty bottle. He fumbled, a flame flickered in his hand as he stooped. There was a sudden whoosh, a rush of heat and a sheet of blue and yellow flame which leapt into the air, its violence causing him to spring back at first in alarm and then with exultation.

He wished he could have stayed here to watch it, but its heat already scorched his face. He ran across the dining room and scrambled panting from the forced window out into the open air. Even as he did the alarm bells, activated by smoke and heat detectors in the dining room ceiling, began to ring shrilly.

But they could not quench the progress of the fire he had left behind him as it retraced its creator's steps. It danced from table to table fuelled by the paraffin-soaked linen and out of the dining room doors. Drawn faster by the draught of air rushing from front to back of the house through the opened doorways and broken window, it hopped nimbly down the corridor along the trail of paraffin, ran across the carpet and licked up the banister of the staircase. Well away now, it seized on the walnut table making the polished veneer crack and split as the flames chuckled throatily and the smoke billowed about

their skirts and rose to blacken the ornamental plaster of the ceilings.

In the garden and safe from its hungry progress, the man who had set it and run from it could no more have left it to its devices than he could have flown. It was his creation and he would stay to watch it grow and do its work. Perversely the fog had started to lift and the house appeared as a dark block against the lightening skies. But it was still cold and damp, eating through his heavy leather jacket and into his bones. He was oblivious of it as, at a prudent distance, he stopped, drawing deep, ragged breaths, and crouched down among the bushes to watch Springwood Hall burn.

Twenty-Three

Meredith was dreaming she was back in her early years at boarding school. She was in the dormitory asleep in one of its neat little white-enamelled iron bedsteads and someone had decided to hold the once-a-term fire drill. The alarm bell had been set ringing, awakening her from slumber and ordering her out of the snug spot under the bedclothes to face the rigours of the chill corridors and eventual night air in the school's quadrangle.

She woke up and for a split second believed it was all true, she was back at school and the fire-drill bell was ringing. But for some extraordinary reason she was alone. Everyone else had already quit the dormitory and left her there to sleep on.

Then reality struck and she sat up with a gasp. It was a fire alarm all right. But it rang in Springwood Hall hotel. Meredith threw back the bedclothes and jumped out, her toes feeling for her slippers. It took a further second to switch on the bedside lamp and grab her wris-twatch. It was nearly half past three in the morning.

The bell still rang insistently. It could be a malfunction but if so, surely someone would have shut it off by now? She pulled on her dressing gown and set off towards the door, tying her belt as she went and muttering at the inconvenience.

The corridor was empty but from below came the sound of a shout and doors slamming. A twinge of alarm dismissed her first thought, that the bell had been set off by some electrical quirk. It seemed there was some minor emergency or other. Memory of a previous injunction against using lifts in the case of fire led Meredith

to run to the top of the main staircase. There was a curious odour in the air and a sinister crackling from below. She began to descend to see what was wrong and suddenly found herself met by a wall of smoke which sent her coughing back up to the top.

Now there was no doubt. Springwood Hall was on fire. But that was not a reason to panic yet. There was another staircase, the small back stairs at the other end of the corridor which ran down the side of the house and a fire exit indicated by arrows at the other lateral end of the building. But first she had to find Leah.

Leah was, she knew, the only other person sleeping on this floor at the moment and her bedroom door was shut fast. Meredith ran to it and beat on it with her clenched fist.

"Leah! Leah, wake up!"

There was no response from within. The smell of smoke grew more intense. As yet it was all coming up from below and on this floor there was no fire. But there was no way of telling the extent to which the ground-floor conflagration had taken hold. Meredith hammered on Leah's door again to no avail. She seized the handle and tried to turn it but the door was locked.

"Damn!" she said forcefully. She remembered now with sinking heart that she had advised Leah to take an aspirin and that Leah herself had spoken of having pills. Presumably she had taken Meredith's advice and a couple of pills and was sleeping like a baby.

If so, she could well be suffocated by smoke as she slept. Already it was creeping up the main stair as Meredith, casting a wild glance in that direction, saw. Curling grey wisps floated out on to the upper landing.

This was no time to respect the fabric of the hotel or Eric's property. Luckily the doors of the bedrooms were of traditional type with panels. Meredith seized a particularly hideous ormulu clock, probably part of the Hall's original furnishings, from a table in the corridor and holding it by the chaste Diana the Huntress who perched

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atop it, swung it as hard as she could at the door panel by the lock.

Two more blows and considerable damage to Diana's hounds and the clock's innards and the wood splintered. Meredith thrust her hand through the gap, oblivious of scratches and splinters, and felt for the lock, praying Leah had left the key in the door.

Thank goodness, she had. Meredith turned it and burst into the room, her fingers fumbling for the light switch. "Leah, wake up!"

The electrics on this circuit were still unaffected and the room was bathed in light. Leah sprawled sound asleep on one of the twin beds. Denis's untenanted pyjamas were set out neatly and pathetically on the other. How on earth could Leah still sleep on?

Meredith ran to the bed and shook the sleeper's shoulder. "For God's sake, Leah—"

And then she saw the empty pill bottle on the bedside table and the envelope propped against the lamp and addressed in a large, free hand to "Chief Inspector Markby, Bamford CID."

There was no time to panic. Meredith snatched up bottle and envelope and thrust them into her dressing-gown pocket. She hauled Leah upright and supporting her with one hand, ruthlessly slapped her face with the other.

"Come on, dammit, you've got to wake up!"

Leah moaned and turned her head which then flopped forward on to her chest.

"No, no! You can't sleep! It's not allowed, do you hear? On your feet!"

She dragged Leah bodily out of the bed, coughing as a wisp of smoke snaked its way into her lungs. Somehow she hauled Leah to the bathroom, feet trailing across the carpet, turned on the shower tap and shoved Leah's head under it.

Leah jerked, shuddered and made a faint, incoherent protest.

"Good enough!" said Meredith grimly. "Now then,

you can walk—come on! It's me, Meredith, and you're going to do exactly as I say!"

4 'Sleep ..." muttered Leah, sagging.

"Oh, no, you don't!" Meredith manhandled her charge back to her feet and propped her against the wall while she took brief stock of the options open to her.

The main staircase was blocked. That left the narrow back staircase and the fire escape, a metal rung ladder. She might just, with God's grace, get Leah down the small back stairs. She'd never get Leah down the fire escape. The back stairs it was.

She propelled Leah across the bedroom and out into the corridor. Leah alternately sagged forward and lurched back. Meredith's arms ached and she would have been surprised at her own language had she had time to consider it. Luckily the back stairs were not far away but if getting Leah there was awkward, getting Leah down them promised to be a nightmare.

Meredith draped one of Leah's arms round her neck and encircled Leah's waist with one of her own arms. Gripping the banister rail with her free hand they began the hair-raising descent.

They didn't get far. Leah lurched down a couple of steps, twisted out of Meredith's grip and sagged in a dead weight to the ground, propped against the banister. Desperately Meredith hauled her up and they tried again. This time Leah toppled forward and there was nothing Meredith could do but let her go or she would have lost her own footing and been carried down with Leah headlong.

Leah rolled and bumped to the foot of the stair and lay there inert amid a cloud of swirling smoke. Meredith, her heart in her mouth, hastened down and was met by a blast of heat. Spluttering and wincing, she bent over the fallen figure. Leah opened her eyes and moaned before coughing and then closing her eyes again, her head lolling.

However, as far as Meredith could tell, it seemed that completely relaxed like a drunk, Leah had managed to

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take a potentially dangerous fall without seriously injuring herself. But the new danger in which they found themselves made short shrift of any relief Meredith might have felt. The bottom of the staircase debouched into a corridor and a little way down it was the guests' entrance to the dining room. Not that Meredith could see it because they had reached the scene of the fire.

The heat was intense and the smoke swirled ever thicker. She could hear the flames crackling in the dining room and see flickering long tongues of sinuous flame darting in and out of the smoke haze. The corridor leading past the dining room to the front entrance hall of the house was similarly blocked by smoke and flames. But off to the left ran the corridor leading to the kitchens. This, Meredith saw when she staggered to the corner and peered round it, was still free of flames and less smoke-filled.

Somehow she managed to get Leah to her feet by dint of the kind of superhuman effort only dire emergency calls forth. She began to haul her along, away from the roaring inferno behind the dining-room doors. Sweat ran down Meredith's body. Her eyes wept copious blinding tears from the effect of the smoke and she could hardly draw breath. Her sense of direction was letting her down and for the first time she really began to believe they were not going to make it. She yelled hoarsely, "Leah— come on! You must try and walk!" But Leah slumped down again and this time did not move or make a sound and Meredith's muscles no longer had the strength to wrestle with her.

Then a voice answered, not Leah's but a man's and it came from the kitchen corridor. "Miss Mitchell!" it roared.

"Over here!" cried Meredith painfully, her throat feeling as if it were stripped raw.

A dark shape loomed up and a body crashed into her, knocking her sprawling. Arms seized her and dragged her upright. "This way!" ordered Eric hoarsely. He gripped her forearm and urged her forward.

"I've got Leah Fulton with me, she's unconscious—" Meredith gasped.

Eric pushed past her. "I've got her... Hold my sleeve—come on!"

She stumbled blindly after him, the blood pounding against her temples. As far as she could tell he had slung Leah over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. As they blundered along Meredith could hear the fire gaining strength behind them. This whole wing of the hotel was burning, well alight, she thought. The horror of it seized her and she almost fell.

"Nearly there!" gasped Eric. "Keep going!"

A sudden blissfully welcome blast of fresh air hit Meredith's face, its icy cold touch like a slap. She staggered towards its origin and suddenly they were out of the building through the rear entrance.

Other hands seized her and guided her forward but the tears streaming from her stinging eyes prevented her seeing the faces. Then she found she was sitting on the damp lawn and Leah was stretched on the grass beside her with Eric kneeling over her. Behind them the horrid crackle of the flames and the dull roaring of the fire sounded like a whole pack of wild beasts clawing at their cage for release.

Eric raised Leah's head and gasped, "She's inhaled the smoke!"

"No!" Meredith fumbled in her pocket. "She took pills—these! Over-dosed, do you understand? We must get her to hospital!"

Ulli Richter the chef was a poor sleeper. He lay awake that night in his tiny flat at the top of the building and thought about his kitchens and the next day's menu. He was a man whose entire life revolved around his profession. When Ulli thought about anything, he thought about food, its preparation and presentation, the efficiency of the kitchens, the manifold shortcomings of his underlings.

He also thought now, as he had done many times,

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about the murder. A murder committed with one of his knives! His knife! A cherished implement of his trade and now sullied by being used to butcher a stupid woman! He, Richter, the master chef associated with a sordid crime! At the thought of the insult, he sat up in bed and swore aloud in his native Schywzer-deutsch.

Whenever he couldn't sleep, Ulli got up and made himself a tisane in the tiny kitchenette of the flat. But often he took his herbal infusion downstairs and sat in the hotel kitchens to drink it, calmed by the familiar surroundings. Away from his kitchens, Ulli always fretted. They were his refuge, his place of safety and he crept into them as a hermit crab into a convenient shell and was happy.

Richter switched on the light, wrapped himself in a voluminous towelling robe and set off downstairs to his beloved domain. He would make a tisane down there. Potter about amongst the shining surfaces of stainless steel, of mottled marble and brightly polished tiles. He would realign all the pots on their shelves, check the store cupboard. He would find peace.