I wheeled and ran out.
‘‘Tracey!’’
The clouds were heavy and I couldn’t see if the body was still there. The sound had seemed to come from further along, at the corner where the passage branched towards the back of the house. Bump against a chair, push it away, on to the corner.
Corridor was narrow, but there were two good windows in it. I blundered along it to the next turn; another corner and two steps up. When I got there I couldn’t hear anything.
After a bit I held my breath, and a second or so later imagined I heard the creak of a floorboard beyond the steps.
‘‘Who’s there?’’ I said. ‘‘Is it you, Tracey?’’
(Tracey was dead; I’d seen him; are you mad shouting like that?) But his breathing, unmistakable. I went on. This part of the house, the shabby part, I knew less well. Not far away now was the tap—tap—tap … tap—tap.
Stop and take a grip. I’d come out on another landing beside the servants’ staircase. That queer smell again. Five doors here, and the moon squinted through an open fanlight. There was dust in the moonbeams. A deflated looking vacuum cleaner stood beside a cane chair.
The wind leaned against the house, and the old wood creaked. After the wind had gone the rat-a-tat sounded behind the nearest door. I went in.
A box-room of some sort. Between me and the window was a forest of lumber, and in the middle of it all sat two men. I pushed my way in, treading on fishing tackle and knocking over skis. I hit at the nearest man and he fell off the table and broke. Busts that had been relegated here by someone with modern tastes. The window was banging. Struggle through to it, but the catch had rusted off. Outside the trees were waving wildly. Looking back from here, the landing seemed dark. I had a sudden desire not to go back there.
I got out somehow, tried the next door. Locked. The third was a bedroom, smelt occupied, fusty. The fourth had trunks and suitcases on the bed. The fifth—with a window facing the moon—was a sort of sitting-room, with a radio by the door and an electric fire flanked by a couple of down-at-heel easy chairs. There was nobody in it; but on a side table was a small glass-bowled paraffin lamp.
I went in and fumbled with a box of matches. The things were like straws; three broke before I could hold one to the wick. Then a slow warm yellow light squeezed out the moon.
Comforting. It would show me all I wanted to see. I went back into the passage and stared and listened. There was nothing now—no breathing, no cigarette smell; even the window had temporarily stopped. Only that other smell. I looked at the moonbeams in which the dust was still floating. It was too thick for dust. It was smoke.
I ran down the servants’ staircase to the ground floor, came out in a passage with doors, pushed through one, found myself in the butler’s pantry. Wrong. Back into the passage and try the end door. A maid’s sitting-room or something. Beyond that was a room with a welsh dresser, an open fireplace, bulbs spread on trays. More smoke here; I took the door where most of it was coming from—and found myself again in the butler’s pantry.
I coughed and waved away the smoke. Desperately urgent not to be lost in this house any more. I got back into the passage where the stairs were, took the third door. A place for hats and coats; a telephone on a table. Backing out I nearly knocked the glass of the lamp off. I turned back into the butler’s pantry. There were two ways out of it, and I’d only tried—no, the other way led into the room with the bulbs.…
Stop and think. Must go back there. Smoke was thicker now, and as soon as I got into the next room I saw where I had gone wrong. A green baize door. I pushed through it and into the central kitchen.
Smoke in a wave—and heat for the first time. But no fire. A pile of old net curtains on the table, and a smell of paraffin. Coughing, I pushed through the door into the still-room. Less smoke here. Try the larder. No. Another door led to yet another passage and a lower sort of door that fairly obviously opened on cellar steps. Before I reached it I knew. You could hear the noise, a murmuring sort of noise.
The door jammed, but when it came open the heat struck in my face. No need for the lamp. I shoved it on a ledge and went down three or four steps. I’d seen the results of a good many fires these last two years but I’d never seen one at this stage before.
They were big cellars, and this one was supported by two groups of wooden pillars fairly close together and probably under the main stairs. It looked as if two great fires had been built, one within each group of four pillars; but one only was ablaze so far. You could guess what materials had been used to create this furnace of white flames by seeing the other not yet alight: a candle guttering to its last inch amid a mass of shavings and a big precarious pile of plywood boxes and flimsy furnishings, reaching to the floorboards above.
At the bottom of the steps you weren’t choked so much with smoke, it was the fight and the heat that were intolerable. I put a handkerchief over my eyes and reached forward into the middle of the second fire and snuffed the candle out. That wouldn’t help much because the whole pile would catch alight any moment from the other. I grabbed an iron rod to smash it out of harm’s way, but something slipped at that moment in the first fire and a great mass of loose flame scattered over the cellar. This was no one-man job, if it could be got under at all.
I dodged a piece of blazing rag that was floating down and retreated up the steps. At the top I wiped the tears, took up the lamp, ran back, trying to remember. Passage, kitchen, room with bulbs, butler’s pantry, coat cupboard. No mistake this time. Lift the receiver and dial.
It seemed to take a long time; as I waited I saw a cylinder partly hidden by coats. Fire extinguisher.
‘‘I’m speaking from Lowis Manor,’’ I said, ‘‘near Sladen. A very bad fire’s broken out. In half an hour it’ll be too late to save the house. You’ll need more than one engine. Tell them to hurry.”
‘‘Lowis Manor, near Sladen,’’ said the voice patiently. ‘‘ Yes. What is the name please?’’
‘‘Mr. Tracey Moreton,’’ I said. ‘‘Hurry.”
I slammed down the receiver and unhooked the extinguisher from the wall. Pre-war and a bit rusty, but it might work. In the butler’s pantry was a sink and I turned the water on, pulled open half a dozen drawers, grabbed a towel, soaked it. Then I wound it into a sort of turban-cum-yashmak. The thing wouldn’t stick in place until I found a pin in an apron behind the door. In the silver drawer were an old pair of gloves Elliott probably used; I put them on. I was about to go when I saw a spectacle case in a corner of the shelves; I opened this, put on the spectacles. The room blurred at me but they would protect my eyes.
The extinguisher under my arm, I ran back to the cellar.
The second fire hadn’t caught, and the first didn’t look any worse, but perhaps that was my distorted sight. The protection now was enormous; I could get closer to the blaze. I dropped the extinguisher on its end and the thing worked. I directed the jet at the flames. Wood that had been incandescent became suddenly black and charred. One pillar was put out completely; then I turned the jet upward.
Here the effect wasn’t good. Fighting a losing battle but I couldn’t see why. Spectacles off; at once I saw that the extinguisher wasn’t killing all the flames because most of them were already out of its reach. And the second pile had caught—at the top.
I think it was then that I pretty well gave the house up for lost. The way the fire had been started under the well of the stairs, the wind that was blowing; the great amount of timber.… As the extinguisher gave out, a piece of blazing wood fell across it and nearly knocked it out of my hand. I let it drop. Sparks caught on my sleeve; my coat came suddenly alight. I backed away, rubbed the flames out against a wall. There was nothing more to do. By now, if I wasn’t mistaken, the fire would already have reached the main stairs.
Then I thought of Tracey still lying in the hall, lying there in spite of my imaginings. I wondered if it would be his wish to go with the house, making it a funeral pyre. Whether he would or not, I couldn’t let hi
m.
Crawl up the steps and sit for a minute in the passage, feeling pretty nearly all in. Pull off the towel, the gloves. My coat had lost part of its sleeve; one trouser leg was burned. Not so much smoke was coming out of here now. It meant that the fire had made a new exit.
I got up, spat, tried to set my bearings right. Back through the kitchen.
The house was blazing now. In the kitchen you could hear the roar of it, just as if someone had turned up the draught on the kitchen range. This wasn’t the room I’d come out into when examining the first fire damage. But if I made straight through …
I soon found the other kitchen. A grandfather’s clock was ticking away in it, measuring out the last minutes. This was where the rocking chair was and the bells on the wall. And one of those black wool rugs.…
I opened the further door, and the heat leapt at me like a wolf. My estimate had been underweight. The hall and the stairs were blazing. There was no way through.
I backed out and shut it. There might be other ways from the kitchen quarters to the front of the house, but if so I didn’t know of them. The only other way was to get out of the house, go round.
It was silly fumbling with the catch of the windows, but respectable habits still clung. I pushed the thing open and slid through. It was pitch dark where I got out, and I nearly fell down some area steps. I drew away from the house, skirting the greenhouses where I’d met Sarah that first day, rounded a potting shed, the wind putting cool fingers. Clouds were heavier than ever, the house nearly as black. The window I’d left glimmered, where the paraffin lamp still burned, and, as I looked, there was a sort of flicker at another window further along, a pretty golden flicker like the winking of an eye. That was all.
I began the circuit of the house.
At the dining-room where I’d broken in I stopped and looked. You couldn’t of course see the front of the house from here, but you could see part of the front lawns and the trees at the end. They weren’t quite dark any longer, and it wasn’t the moon that was lighting them.
I put my leg over the sill to climb in again, but there I stopped, listening. An unmistakable bell. It was half a mile I away yet.
I had to make up my mind quickly. Meet the brigade and tell them lies. Meet the brigade and tell them the truth. Or go. Nothing more I could do. The firemen would get Tracey’s body out. Better to go. No questions asked. None to answer. Sarah could do that. I had to see what Sarah would do.
I brought my leg out, and, as the fire engine came in under the gatehouse and stopped—they had to take off their ladders to get through—I slid silently back through the herb garden towards the muddy lane and the car.
It wasn’t quite as easy as that. The clamour of the bell had already caught people’s attention; as I was going to drop into the lane I saw two figures coming from the direction of Lowis Farm. They stopped quite close to me, peering over the hedge; then, when they saw the fire engine come slowly in, they scrambled over the wall, pushed their way towards the house. One passed me within a yard; I thought he must see me. That sort of thing makes you feel more like a felon than anything else.
I slid down, getting muck on my trousers, made for the car. As soon as I was in the road the moon came full out; you could see two or three other people hurrying towards the fire. One looked like a policeman on a bicycle. I kept in the shadow as much as I could, until I came to the car. Just as I was getting in I saw someone coming along the road towards me.
I shut the door quickly and shoved in the ignition key. As he came up I switched on the side lights.
He stopped, stared in at the car.
‘‘Somethin’ wrong, mister?’’ he shouted through the glass.
He was a tall red-faced chap with a bright red neckcloth, and he was wearing a sack round his shoulders. I pretended not to hear, shouted something back at him. I started the engine.
‘‘What’s amiss up at the Manor?’’ he asked. ‘‘What’s all the commotion?’’
‘‘Fire engine,’’ I shouted. ‘‘Just turned in there. Don’t know what’s wrong.”
I put in the gear and swung the car off the grass verge. He stepped back in a hurry as if he thought I might run him over.
I didn’t know where this road led southwards, but I couldn’t turn and repass the gatehouse. The sooner I got clear of this scene and changed my clothes the better.
After about half a mile I slowed down and turned my head, but the trees blocked the view. I don’t know if it was imagination, but the clouds just there seemed to be tinged with yellow.
Chapter Thirteen
I didn’t sleep that night or try to. As soon as I got back I stripped off my clothes and climbed into a bath and lay there trying to relax, trying to get calm. I had a burn about eight inches long on my right forearm, but apart from that there was nothing to show. My eyelashes would soon grow again.
I lay there till the water began to grow cold and then towelled myself down, put on clean linen and a dressing-gown. The burnt suit I wrapped in a brown paper parcel and put on top of the cupboard in my bedroom. The night air was chilly, and I lit the fire and chain-smoked till dawn. I smoked a packet of twenty and five over.
The call was later coming than I expected. I’d made myself some tea and was trying to drink it when the phone bell began to trill.
I waited a good half minute before I took the thing up.
‘‘Oliver Branwell speaking.”
‘‘This is Michael, Oliver. Rather an early call for you, I’m afraid.”
So they’d got through to him first. ‘‘I don’t think I’m going to be very helpful, but what’s on the books to-day?’’
‘‘Rather a nasty shock for you, I think. It’s Lowis Manor. The Moretons’ place.”
‘‘What’s wrong?’’
‘‘Practically burnt to the ground. At least that’s what the police say, but they’re always pessimistic. And there’s another thing——’’
‘‘It’s a good job the Moretons were away,’’ I said. ‘‘Were the servants all right?’’
‘‘Oh, you knew that …? Well, I’m sorry to say it wasn’t quite like that. Apparently the servants were away—but Moreton hadn’t left. He’d been delayed over something, and it was he who gave the alarm. The brigade was there pretty quickly but … Moreton himself.…”
‘‘Good God,’’ I said.
‘‘Yes.… They found his body.”
‘‘Good God,’’ I said again. It really wasn’t hard to say the thing I’d been saying to myself all through the night.
I’m sorry because I know they’re particular friends of yours. I think it’s a good reason to go down pretty soon. I should——’’
I stared at the receiver. ‘‘And Mrs. Moreton?’’
‘‘I believe she was in Yorkshire or somewhere. Anyway there was no one else in the house. It’s probably better to go this morning.”
‘‘I can’t,’’ I said. ‘‘ I ricked my ankle last night. I haven’t slept all night.”
There was a pause. ‘‘ Oh, hell,’’ he said. ‘‘ Bad luck. I suppose that means I must go. Hell. And I had a date for a foursome. I suppose I’d better go straight down. How do you get there?’’
I told him.
‘‘Is this thing likely to lay you up for a long time?’’
‘‘I’m not sure yet. The doctor said he’d know this morning.”
Michael grunted into the telephone: ‘‘I hope it won’t put you out for the dinner on Friday.”
I said: ‘‘Will you ring me when you get back from Lowis? I’ll be very anxious to have the news.”
‘‘All right, Oliver. I’ll do that. ’Bye.”
He rang off, and I put down the receiver.
Well, it was a good act in one way, and a pretty cheap act in another. But what else could I do? The choice had been made last night.
What I hadn’t counted on was Michael calling in to see me on the way home. It was after one, and I was still smoking, when the bell rang. I dragged a c
hair across for my foot, slid off the slipper, and covered my foot with a towel.
‘‘Come in! The door isn’t locked.”
Michael came in, stooping from instinct, looked at me rather resentfully.
‘‘Oh, you are up. How does it feel?’’
‘‘Could be worse. Well?’’
He took off his motoring gloves. ‘‘Not too good, old boy. The place is a ruin. They saved the oldest part, that stone-built hall with the barrel roof. Otherwise it’s gone. It was the worst possible night, of course.”
‘‘And Moreton?’’
He sat down and shrugged. ‘‘Apparently he was caught in the house and fell trying to get out. His wife went up to Yorkshire in the morning and he said he’d follow later in the day. The police had just got her address from a servant when she phoned the police station to ask if they knew where her husband was.”
‘‘What time would that be?’’
‘‘What? I don’t know. Early hours of the morning, I imagine. Why?’’
‘‘You saw her?’’
‘‘Yes.” He vee’d his eyebrows at me. ‘‘She was at the local pub at Sladen with her brother-in-law. She was pretty upset, of course. She asked where you were. The brother’s Victor Moreton, the K.C. Didn’t know that. He’d just been in and identified the body.”
I said: ‘‘ Was Mrs. Moreton there? Tracey’s mother, I mean.”
‘‘I think she was just arriving as I left. There was another tallish chap there who seemed to be a friend of the family. Fresh complexion—rather bossy type.”
‘‘Fisher,’’ I said, and a sharp stab of jealousy went through me. It was that whether I liked it or not.
‘‘There’s no way of telling how the fire started,’’ Michael said, swinging his gloves by the fingers. ‘‘I imagine it must have begun in the cellar from the way the whole centre of the place collapsed. Of course I couldn’t get near enough—the firemen were still working and there was a dangerous wall; but in a day or two … One instinctively thinks of short circuits in a timbered place, but young Mrs. Moreton said they’d had decorators in and seemed to think some of the men had been down in the cellars on Friday evening. I expect some damn’ fool chucked away a cigarette end.”
Fortune Is a Woman Page 10