False fire

by Veronica Heley

  Sunday morning

  Bea came awake, feeling that something was amiss … and smelled bacon. The ‘something amiss’ was that neither Bernice nor Alicia was in bed with her, but the bacon still smelled delicious.

  The two girls came in, one holding Teddy and the other holding a mug of tea with a saucer on top. They were both properly dressed in T-shirts and jeans, their hair was brushed out and braided and, if they looked a little heavy-eyed, they also had some colour in their cheeks.

  ‘Time to get up!’

  ‘Breakfast in ten minutes.’

  ‘He’s doing it in relays. We’ve had ours.’

  ‘He says to ask you if you want one egg or two? He’s doing sausages and tomatoes and mushrooms and hash browns as well.’

  Bernice said, ‘I asked him if he knew how to make hash browns because you have to cook the potatoes first, don’t you? And he said you can buy them frozen.’

  ‘He’ presumably was William. Bea sipped tea and told herself she’d wake up soon.

  Alicia said, ‘Mel braided our hair for us. She’s wearing glasses today, and so is Uncle Steve. They’re having their breakfast now. I asked if they were an item, and she said I had to ask him that, so I did, and he said they were if she thought they were, and I thought they’d go on like that for ever—’

  Bernice interrupted, ‘And he asked her if he should grow a beard because he hasn’t got any shaving things with him.’

  ‘Grandpa has shaved!’

  ‘Yes, but he was up ages ago and has even been out to the shops.’

  It was a Sunday but nowadays there were shops open twenty-four hours a day, even on Sundays. Bea wasn’t sure this was altogether a good thing, while realizing it could be useful in an emergency.

  She tuned out the girls’ chatter and forced herself to get out of bed. She noted she was still wearing her dressing gown over her nightie, and caught sight of herself in the mirror … which led to her deciding that there was no way she was going to expose herself to the sight of any of her guests until she’d had a shower, washed her hair, and made up her face. Oh, and dressed in something which didn’t remind her of the fire and its aftermath.

  Breakfast in ten minutes? No way. More like half an hour. She set off down the stairs, closely followed by the girls.

  Her own bedroom. How grateful she was to have such a beautiful room. And, praise be!, it was in perfect order, the bed made and all sign of an overnight masculine presence removed. The only remembrance of the recent invasion was a neat pile of children’s clothes in one corner. She showered and came out to find the two girls sitting on the edge of her bed, waiting for her.

  ‘We want to watch you put on your makeup,’ said Alicia.

  ‘We think you do it rather well. You don’t overdo it as some old people do,’ said Bernice.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bea, accepting the compliment in the spirit in which it was intended. She dressed in her favourite pale green silk shirt and grey skirt. Grey suede boots. Perhaps a cashmere sweater over all? Yes. She took her time over her makeup.

  The two girls came to stand one on either side of her, breathing on her, watching every move.

  ‘Have you tried Botox?’ That was Bernice.

  Bea said, ‘Can’t be bothered. If the object is to appeal to men, then I’ll give you a piece of advice. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. He can be fooled for a while by a pretty face but, when his stomach growls, if he’s any sense he heads for the kitchen. And if he hasn’t any sense then he’s not worth hanging on to.’

  ‘Marriage is supposed to be for ever.’ This from Alicia, who had seen marriages fail.

  ‘It is supposed to be.’ Bea sighed. ‘Girls, not everyone keeps their marriage vows. When you grow up, choose wisely. Choose someone who wants the same things out of life as you do.’ She picked out some fake pearl earrings to wear until she remembered Faye and her pearls. She decided to wear her diamond drops instead. She stood up and inspected her front and back view in a long mirror. ‘Before you leave your bedroom, check yourself out front and back, and then forget what you’re wearing.’

  Bernice said, ‘You were married to the man in the picture downstairs? He looks nice.’

  Alicia said, ‘Can we be bridesmaids next time?’

  ‘What?!’ Does she mean William – or Leon? Actually, I don’t really fancy either. Not for keeps. ‘Sorry. I’m not planning on marrying again.’

  William had prepared a highly satisfactory full English breakfast for her, which he decreed she was to eat, not in the kitchen, but in solitary state at the table in the sitting room. Accompanied by the Sunday papers. What luxury!

  She hadn’t realized how hungry she was, and had completely forgotten what a treat it was to be cooked for. William was more than paying for his overnight stay.

  By the time she’d mopped up the last piece of toast, the scent of freshly ground coffee drifted across her nostrils and she almost swooned with pleasure, feeling that she might be able to cope with life again soon.

  The only problem was the elephant in the room. The fire.

  The children had made themselves a nest on one of the settees while Bea ate. Bernice set to work brushing Teddy’s fur with what looked very much like one of Bea’s shoe brushes; not one she used for polishing, but the one for buffing up her suede boots. Had the child been into every cupboard in the house? Alicia sat beside her, wearing an expression of wide-eyed innocence, which was possibly misleading … and which caused Bea to wonder what the girls had been up to … or were planning to do?

  Bernice said, ‘Can we have the telly on?’

  ‘Must you?’ said Bea. Then nodded permission, thinking that at least if they were watching television, they wouldn’t be getting up to any mischief. She piled her breakfast things on a tray and took them out to the kitchen, where everyone else had congregated.

  William took the tray from her, and piled the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, assisted by Mel. And yes, both Mel and Steve were wearing glasses today. Steve looked older and almost middle-aged in his horn-rims; Mel looked dainty but business-like – an intriguing combination – in her rimless ones.

  Steve’s eyes still looked slightly swollen. He fingered his phone. ‘I rang Gideon and told him about Mrs Frost. He didn’t know. He wants to meet at the house soonest. There’s so much needs to be done that I … I said I’d catch up with my voicemail, then get back to him. The fire investigator has left an urgent message, wanting to know if we’d hired an electrician to do something in the house recently, which we had. She wants me to ring her back with his number, which I don’t have on me. Does she really think the fire was caused by an electrical fault? And if so, are we covered by insurance?’

  Bea said, ‘Could an electrical fault have caused the lights to fail as well?’

  ‘Lights? I’m missing something.’

  William poured coffee for them all. ‘Ah, Steve; you left before Act II started. I think we’d better bring one another up to date. Act I was the scene in the dining room, when the curtain caught fire, causing Josh and Daphne to need hospital attention. You think that was an electrical fault? Could be. But the fire investigator talked to us about fireworks. Wanted to know if the children had been playing with them.’

  William was looking gaunt today, with two deep lines between his eyes above his nose. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep, had he? In spite of being in Bea’s bed.

  Bea’s mind slid away from the thought of William in her bed. She had more than enough on her plate without thinking of … well, of that!

  Steve looked puzzled. ‘Fireworks? There were fireworks outside, but surely the curtain catching fire was due to an electrical fault? As I said, I haven’t got the electrician’s number on me. I’ll have to go back to the house and rummage around in Dad’s office to see if I can find it.’

  Bea said, ‘It’s not an electrician you’ve employed before?’

  ‘The people we usually employed had moved or retired. I think it was Daphne who s
aid someone had recommended these people, and indeed they did a good job in record time – or so we thought.’

  ‘What job?’ said Bea.

  ‘Replacing the wiring on the kitchen circuit. One of the lights in the kitchen had been on the blink for a while. The electrician did say the lighting in the rest of the house ought all to be redone because it hasn’t been touched for maybe forty years. My father didn’t want that because of the upheaval it would cause. Redecoration, and so on. He said just to do the kitchen circuit straight away and he’d think about doing the rest later.’

  ‘You organized it?’

  ‘No, Mrs Frost did.’

  ‘You think the downstairs lighting circuit was dicey, and that some fault in that caused the fire in the dining room? You put out the fire downstairs with the extinguisher, so what caused the fire upstairs?’

  ‘What fire?’

  He really didn’t know? Oh.

  Bea said, ‘Steve, things happened after you left. Things you need to know. After you dealt with the fire in the dining room, your priority was to get Daphne and your father to hospital straight away. Panic stations. Quite right, too. The waiting staff also left. Only Faye stayed to search for her broken string of pearls, right?’

  ‘Right. She wanted Gideon to stay behind and help her, but he wanted to go with Dad. He said she could let herself out when she’d finished. I gather she got out all right.’

  ‘Sort of. While you were looking after your father and sister, William and I went upstairs to check on the girls. When we got to the top floor, we found Mrs Frost had broken her leg and was lying on the floor—’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Steve. ‘I really have to get on to—’

  ‘Just a minute. A second curtain was on fire on the landing behind her. We got her started on her way down the stairs when the lights went out and the corridor leading to the children’s room filled with smoke. We took some towels soaked with water from the bathroom and got to the children’s room, which was where the smoke was coming from. We got the girls out, staggered back to the landing and down the stairs, completely missing Mrs Frost, who had collapsed and fallen to one side … to find Faye still in the dining room, searching for her pearls by the light of her phone.’

  Steve gaped. ‘There was another fire on the landing, apart from the one in the dining room? And the children’s room was on fire by the time you got there? But …’

  There was a stir in the doorway and the children came in. ‘I’m bored,’ said Bernice. ‘There’s nothing on the telly.’ She was tossing Teddy around from one side to the other. Poor Teddy.

  ‘Alicia,’ said William, tell your uncle Steve what happened to you and Bernice after you were sent up to your room?’

  Alicia went dumb on them, eyes downcast. ‘Dunno. Can we go out to play?’

  ‘No,’ said Bea and William together.

  Bernice shrugged. ‘Keep your hair on. Mrs Frost said she’d fetch us a hot drink and a tray to put the fireworks on from downstairs and not to open the box till she’d got back—’

  Steve said, ‘Of course! I’d forgotten you’d been given—’

  ‘And we didn’t,’ said Bernice. ‘The box exploded and we tried to phone for help but they didn’t believe us. Then it all went dark and chokey and we sort of went to sleep until they came and got us out.’

  Steve was trying to put it all together. ‘The house went dark? The electrics went out when you were upstairs … after we’d got Dad and Daphne away? It must have been an electrical fault!’

  ‘Possibly, for the lights,’ said Bea. ‘Although it’s hard to see how one electrical fault in the dining room could set off another at the top of the house, never mind exploding a box of fireworks in the children’s room.’

  Steve gaped at her. ‘You really think the fires were set deliberately?’

  The answer was ‘yes’, but he didn’t want to believe it.

  Bernice said, ‘Can I have some Coca-Cola?’

  ‘May I?’ corrected Bea. ‘No, I don’t have any. You may have milk or orange juice. Choose.’

  They chose orange juice. William got a bottle out of the fridge, and poured it into two glasses, one for each child. Giving it to them, he said, ‘I have to tell you something sad. You remember Mrs Frost broke her leg? Well, it didn’t mend, but sent a clot up to her heart, and her heart couldn’t cope. I’m sorry to say, she didn’t make it. I know you liked her, Lissy. Such a shame.’

  Bernice shrugged. She had no strong feelings about Mrs Frost, but Alicia’s face crumpled in on itself. William scooped her up in his arms and gave her a cuddle. ‘There, there. She was good to you, poppet, wasn’t she? Now we want to contact her family but don’t know where they might live. I wonder if she ever talked to you about them?’

  A sniffle. ‘Mm. She said her husband was “a scumbag who took off to Spain” and she didn’t ever want to see him again. She told me about him after Mummy said we weren’t going to live with Alaric any more.’

  ‘I see. That’s really helpful. Did Mrs Frost say she got divorced, too?’

  ‘Yes. All she’s got left is a son in Dublin. She said he worked in a hospital and I said was he a doctor, but she said No, he was a nurse, which was a bit surprising because I thought only girls could be nurses. But she doesn’t like his girlfriend that he lives with because she drinks too much.’

  Steve muttered, ‘“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.” With that information, we should be able to trace him.’

  Bernice stood on tiptoe to whisper that Teddy needed to go to the toilet. Bea nodded and escorted her upstairs … and waited outside, thinking the two little mites were having to go through a lot, and Bea wasn’t at all sure what could be done about it.

  She heard her landline ring and someone answer it. And then she heard William on his phone … and Steve on his. They all sounded as if they were at the end of their tether. Ends of their tethers?

  Something had to be done. But what? Bea sent up an arrow prayer for help.

  When Bernice emerged, looking paler than ever, Bea said, ‘Do you know how to get the attention of a room full of people? No? I’ll show you, shall I? Take a hold of my skirt so I don’t lose you, right?’

  The child needed something to hang on to apart from Teddy.

  Steve was striding back and forth in the sitting room. ‘Yes, but … Can’t you, just for once …?’

  William was at the back door, looking down over the garden. ‘No, I really think …!’ with Alicia clinging to his neck.

  Mel was on the landline, looking flustered. ‘No, but … in a minute! I’ll call her …!’

  Bea picked up an empty glass and tapped it with a spoon. Instant silence.

  Bea said, ‘This is important. Which of you is on the phone to the fire investigator? William? Let me speak to her, please. The rest of you, please put your phones down, turn them off and mute the sound.’

  ‘What!’ They all looked stunned.

  ‘Why?’ William handed his phone over to Bea and the others slowly obeyed her.

  Silence.

  Bea spoke into the phone. ‘Is that Manisa? Mrs Abbot speaking. I know it’s Sunday but can you get over here, soonest? And I mean immediately? Emergency.’

  TWELVE

  Sunday morning

  ‘Please!’ Bea made it an order. ‘Whoever rings you, don’t answer. Let them leave a message on voicemail and we’ll pick it up later. Trust me. I have a very good reason for making this request, which I’ll explain when Manisa gets here. In the meantime, let’s have some coffee and attempt to relax.’

  It was William who made the coffee. Bea reflected that some men had their uses and someone who could make good coffee without a fuss was high up on her approval scale. Imagine Leon being asked to make coffee! Well, no; you wouldn’t ask him, would you?

  They gathered in the big living room. The girls sat close together on one of the settees, with Teddy on Bernice’s lap. Steve sat nearby, fingering his phone, but not venturing to turn it on. Eventually
he muttered an excuse, fetched Bea’s scratch pad from the kitchen and started making a list of things he had to do. Mel sat near him, not touching but near enough that he could reach out to touch her if he wished to do so.

  Bea made small talk with the children. Which Disney film did they like best? What did they want to see first when they went to Disneyland? What food did they like best? Was it McDonald’s? Did they like cheese? Could they imagine a world without cheese?

  From being two scared little rabbits, they gradually relaxed. Bea suggested they might like to take Teddy into the garden to see if they could find the cat. She said she was worried about him because he hadn’t turned up for his breakfast.

  Privately, Bea knew he’d taken refuge in the stationery cupboard downstairs for the night and would most likely have been fed by William, who’d been first up that morning … and yes, there was William opening his mouth to tell her that. She silenced him with a frown. It was important to get the girls out of the room before Manisa came, and they couldn’t come to harm in the garden, could they?

  Mel found the girls their jackets, and they clattered off through French windows at the back of the living room and down the iron staircase into the garden … where Winston was probably stalking birds and terrorizing the neighbourhood cats.

  William said, ‘I’ll keep an eye on them,’ and stationed himself by the windows.

  Steve lifted his phone to make a call, and Bea said, ‘Hold on, will you, Steve? I think that’s Manisa at the door now.’

  It was indeed Manisa, who seemed not best pleased to have been called out. She said, ‘You said it was an emergency? Are the children all right? You have some new information for me?’

  ‘They’re playing outside. You’ve met Steve, haven’t you? William Morton you know. And this is Mel, who has very kindly agreed to help look after the children. Yes, we have something new for you. The hospital rang early this morning to say that Mrs Frost, the family’s housekeeper, has died as a consequence of injuries she received on the night of the fire. You already know that Josh, our host, has died? That makes the case a double manslaughter. Do you have to turn it over to the police now?’