The Tinder Box

by Minette Walters

  ‘You can’t blame him for that. He’s lived here all his life. I should imagine most of Sowerbridge could name names if they wanted to. At least he’s had the guts to stand by Rosheen.’

  ‘He’s an illiterate oaf with an IQ of ten,’ growled Ian. ‘Rosheen’s not stupid, so what the hell do they find to talk about?’

  Siobhan giggled. ‘I don’t think his conversation is what interests her.’

  Recognizing that she was too hyped-up to sleep, she poured herself a glass of wine and played the messages on the answerphone. There were a couple of business calls followed by one from Ian. ‘Hi, it’s me. Things are progressing well on the Ravenelli front. All being well, hand-printed Italian silk should be on offer through Lavenham Interiors by August. Good news, eh? I can think of at least two projects that will benefit from the designs they’ve been showing me. You’ll love them, Shiv. Aquamarine swirls with every shade of terracotta you can imagine.’ Pause for a yawn. ‘I’m missing you and the boys like crazy. Give me a ring if you get back before eleven, otherwise I’ll speak to you tomorrow. I should be home on Friday.’ He finished with a slobbery kiss which made her laugh.

  The last message was from Liam O’Riordan and had obviously been intercepted by Rosheen. ‘Hello? Are you there, Rosheen? It’s . . .’ said Liam’s voice before it was cut off by the receiver being lifted. Out of curiosity, Siobhan pressed one-four-seven-one to find out when Liam had phoned, and she listened in perplexity as the computerized voice at the other end gave the time of the last call as ‘twenty thirty-six hours’, and the number from which it was made as ‘eight-two-seven-five-three-eight’. She knew the sequence off by heart but flicked through the telephone index anyway to make certain. Liam and Bridey O’Riordan, Kilkenny Cottage, Sowerbridge, Tel: 827538.

  For the second time that night her first instinct was to rush towards denial. It was a mistake, she told herself . . . Liam couldn’t possibly have been phoning from Kilkenny Cottage at eight thirty . . . The O’Riordans were under police protection in Winchester for the duration of Patrick’s trial . . . Kilkenny Cottage was empty when the fire started . . .

  But, oh dear God! Supposing it wasn’t?

  ‘Rosheen!’ she shouted, running up the stairs again and hammering on the nanny’s door. ‘Rosheen! It’s Siobhan. Wake up! Was Liam in the cottage?’ She thrust open the door and switched on the light, only to look around the room in dismay because no one was there.

  Wednesday, 10 February 1999

  Siobhan had raised the question of Lavinia Fanshaw’s heirs with the detective inspector. ‘You can’t ignore the fact that both Peter Haversley and Jeremy Jardine had a far stronger motive than Patrick could ever have had,’ she pointed out. ‘They both stood to inherit from her will, and neither of them made any bones about wanting her dead. Lavinia’s husband had one sister, now dead, who produced a single child, Peter, who has no children. And Lavinia’s only child, a daughter, also dead, produced Jeremy, who’s never married.’

  He was amused by the extent of her research. ‘We didn’t ignore it, Mrs Lavenham. It was the first thing we looked at, but you know better than anyone that they couldn’t have done it because you and your husband supplied their alibis.’

  ‘Only from eight o’clock on Saturday night until two o’clock on Sunday morning,’ protested Siobhan. ‘And not out of choice either. Have you any idea what it’s like living in a village like Sowerbridge, Inspector? Dinner parties are considered intrinsically superior to staying in of a Friday or Saturday night and watching telly, never mind the same boring people get invited every time and the same boring conversations take place. It’s a status thing.’ She gave a sarcastic shrug. ‘Personally, I’d rather watch a good Arnie or Sly movie any day than have to appear interested in someone else’s mortgage or pension plan, but then – hell – I’m Irish and everyone knows the Irish are common as muck.’

  ‘You’ll have status enough when Patrick comes to trial,’ said the inspector with amusement. ‘You’ll be the one providing the alibis.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to if we’d managed to get rid of Jeremy and the Haversleys any sooner. Believe me, it wasn’t Ian and I who kept them there – we did everything we could to make them go – they just refused to take the hints. Sam and Nora Bentley went at a reasonable time, but we couldn’t get the rest of them to budge. Are you sure Lavinia was killed between eleven and midnight? Don’t you find it suspicious that it’s my evidence that’s excluded Peter and Jeremy from the case? Everyone knows I’m the only person in Sowerbridge who’d give Patrick O’Riordan an alibi if I possibly could.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘It means I’m a reluctant witness, and therefore gives my evidence in Peter and Jeremy’s favour more weight.’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘I think you’re making too much of your position in all of this, Mrs Lavenham. If Mr Haversley and Mr Jardine had conspired to murder Mrs Fanshaw, wouldn’t they have taken themselves to – say, Ireland – for the weekend? That would have given them a much stronger alibi than spending six hours in the home of a hostile witness. In any case,’ he went on apologetically, ‘we are sure about the time of the murders. These days, pathologists’ timings are extremely precise, particularly when the bodies are found as quickly as these ones were.’

  Siobhan wasn’t ready to give up so easily. ‘But you must see how odd it is that it happened the night Ian and I gave a dinner party. We hate dinner parties. Most of our entertaining is done around barbecues in the summer when friends come to stay. It’s always casual and always spur-of-the-moment and I can’t believe it was coincidence that Lavinia was murdered on the one night in the whole damn year for which we’d sent out invitations – ’ her mouth twisted – ‘six weeks in advance . . .’

  He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘If you can tell me how they did it, I might agree with you.’

  ‘Before they came to our house or after they left it,’ she suggested. ‘The pathologist’s timings are wrong.’

  He pulled a piece of paper from a pile on his desk and turned it towards her. ‘That’s an itemized British Telecom list of every call made from the manor during the week leading up to the murders.’ He touched the last number. ‘This one was made by Dorothy Jenkins to a friend of hers in London and was timed at ten thirty p.m. on the night she died. The duration time was just over three minutes. We’ve spoken to the friend and she described Miss Jenkins as at “the end of her tether”. Apparently Mrs Fanshaw was a difficult patient to nurse – Alzheimer’s sufferers usually are – and Miss Jenkins had phoned this woman – also a nurse – to tell her that she felt like “smothering the old bitch where she lay”. It had happened several times before, but this time Miss Jenkins was in tears and rang off abruptly when her friend said she had someone with her and couldn’t talk for long.’ He paused for a moment. ‘The friend was worried enough to phone back after her visitor had gone,’ he went on, ‘and she estimates the time of that call at about a quarter past midnight. The line was engaged so she couldn’t get through, and she admits to being relieved because she thought it meant Miss Jenkins had found someone else to confide in.’

  Siobhan frowned. ‘Well, at least it proves she was alive after midnight, doesn’t it?’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. The phone in the kitchen had been knocked off its rest – we think Miss Jenkins may have been trying to dial nine-nine-nine when she was attacked – ’ he tapped his fingers on the piece of paper – ‘which means that, with or without the pathologist’s timings, she must have been killed between that last itemized call at ten thirty and her friend’s return call at fifteen minutes past midnight, when the phone was already off the hook.’

  Five

  Tuesday, 9 March 1999, 0.32 a.m.

  Even as Siobhan lifted the receiver to call the police and report Rosheen missing, she was having second thoughts. They hadn’t taken a blind bit of notice in the past, she thought bitterly, so why should it be different today? She
could even predict how the conversation would go simply because she had been there so many times before.

  Calm down, Mrs Lavenham . . . It was undoubtedly a hoax . . . Let’s see now . . . didn’t someone phone you not so long ago pretending to be Bridey in the throes of a heart attack . . .? We rushed an ambulance to her only to find her alive and well and watching television . . . You and your nanny are Irish . . . Someone thought it would be entertaining to get a rise out of you by creeping into Kilkenny Cottage and making a call . . . Everyone knows the O’Riordans are notoriously careless about locking their back door . . . Sadly we can’t legislate for practical jokes . . . Your nanny . . .? She’ll be watching the fire along with everyone else . . .

  With a sigh of frustration, she replaced the receiver and listened to the message again. ‘Hello? Are you there, Rosheen? It’s . . .’

  She had been so sure it was Liam the first time she heard it, but now she was less certain. The Irish accent was the easiest accent in the world to ape, and Liam’s was so broad any fool could do it. For want of someone more sensible to talk to, she telephoned Ian in his hotel bedroom in Rome. ‘It’s me,’ she said, ‘and I’ve only just got back. I’m sorry to wake you but they’ve burnt Kilkenny Cottage and Rosheen’s missing. Do you think I should phone the police?’

  ‘Hang on,’ he said sleepily. ‘Run that one by me again. Who’s they?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said in frustration. ‘Someone – anyone – Peter Haversley patted Cynthia on the back when the roof caved in. If I knew where the O’Riordans were I’d phone them, but Rosheen’s the only one who knows the number – and she’s not here. I’d go back to the fire if I had a car – the village is swarming with policemen – but I’ve had to leave mine at the church and yours is at Heathrow – and the children will never be able to walk all the way down the drive, not at this time of night.’

  He gave a long yawn. ‘You’re going much too fast. I’ve only just woken up. What’s this about Kilkenny Cottage burning down?’

  She explained it slowly.

  ‘So where’s Rosheen?’ He sounded more alert now. ‘And what the hell was she doing leaving the boys?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She told him about the telephone call from Kilkenny Cottage. ‘If it was Liam, Rosheen may have gone up there to see him, and now I’m worried they were in the house when the fire started. Everyone thinks it was empty because we watched them go this morning.’ She described the scene for him as Liam helped Bridey into their Ford estate then drove unsmilingly past the group of similarly unsmiling neighbours who had gathered at the crossroads to see them off. ‘It was awful,’ she said. ‘I went down to collect Patch, and bloody Cynthia started hissing at them so the rest joined in. I really hate them, Ian.’

  He didn’t answer immediately. ‘Look,’ he said then, ‘the fire brigade don’t just take people’s words for this kind of thing. They’ll have checked to make sure there was no one in the house as soon as they got there. And if Liam and Bridey did come back, their car would have been parked at the front and someone would have noticed it. OK, I agree the village is full of bigots, but they’re not murderers, Shiv, and they wouldn’t keep quiet if they thought the O’Riordans were burning to death. Come on, think about it. You know I’m right.’

  ‘What about Rosheen?’

  ‘Yes, well,’ he said dryly, ‘it wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Did you check the barn? I expect she’s out there getting laid by Kevin Wyllie.’

  ‘She’s only done it once.’

  ‘She’s used the barn once,’ he corrected her, ‘but it’s anyone’s guess how often she’s been laid by Kevin. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny they’re tucked up together somewhere and she’ll come wandering in with a smile on her face when you least expect it. I hope you tear strips off her for it, too. She’s no damn business to leave the boys on their own.’

  She let it ride, unwilling to be drawn into another argument about Rosheen’s morals. Ian worked on the principle that what the eye didn’t see the heart didn’t grieve over, and refused to recognize the hypocrisy of his position, while Siobhan’s view was that Kevin was merely a bit of ‘rough’ that was keeping Rosheen amused while she looked for something better. Every woman did it . . . the road to respectability was far from straight. In any case, she agreed with his final sentiment. Even if it was Liam who had phoned from the cottage, Rosheen’s first responsibility was to James and Oliver. ‘So what should I do? Just wait for her to come back?’

  ‘I don’t see you have much choice. She’s over twenty-one so the police won’t do anything tonight.’

  ‘OK.’

  He knew her too well. ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  She wasn’t, but then she was more relaxed about the way Rosheen conducted herself than he was. The fact that they’d come home early one night and caught her in the barn with her knickers down had offended Ian deeply, even though Rosheen had been monitoring the boys all the time via a two-way transmitter that she’d taken with her. Ian had wanted to sack her on the spot, but Siobhan had persuaded him out of it after extracting a promise from Rosheen that the affair would be confined to her spare time in future. Afterwards, and because she was a great deal less puritanical than her English husband, Siobhan had buried her face in her pillow to stifle her laughter. Her view was that Rosheen had shown typical Irish tact by having sex outside in the barn rather than under the Lavenhams’ roof. As she pointed out to Ian: ‘We’d never have known Kevin was there if she’d smuggled him into her room and told him to perform quietly.’

  ‘It’s just that I’m tired,’ she lied, knowing she could never describe her sense of foreboding down the telephone to someone over a thousand miles away. Empty houses gave her the shivers at the best of times – a throwback to the rambling, echoing mansion of her childhood, which her overactive imagination had peopled with giants and spectres . . . ‘Look, go back to sleep and I’ll ring you tomorrow. It’ll have sorted itself out by then. Just make sure you come home by Friday,’ she ended severely, ‘or I’ll file for divorce immediately. I didn’t marry you to be deserted for the Ravenelli brothers.’

  ‘I will,’ he promised.

  Siobhan listened to the click as he hung up at the other end, then replaced her own receiver before opening the front door and looking towards the dark shape of the barn. She searched for a chink of light between the double doors but knew she was wasting her time even while she was doing it. Rosheen had been so terrified by Ian’s threat to tell her parents in Ireland what she’d been up to that her sessions with Kevin were now confined to somewhere a great deal more private than Fording Farm’s barn.

  With a sigh she retreated to the kitchen and settled on a cushion in front of the Aga with Patch’s head lying across her lap and the bottle of wine beside her. It was another ten minutes before she noticed that the key to Kilkenny Cottage, which should have been hanging on a hook on the dresser, was no longer there.

  Wednesday, 10 February 1999

  ‘But why are you so sure it was Patrick?’ Siobhan had asked the inspector next. ‘Why not a total stranger? I mean, anyone could have taken the hammer from his toolbox if he’d left it in the kitchen the way he says he did.’

  ‘Because there were no signs of a break-in. Whoever killed them either had a key to the front door or was let in by Dorothy Jenkins. And that means it must have been someone she knew.’

  ‘Maybe she hadn’t locked up,’ said Siobhan, clutching at straws. ‘Maybe they came in through the back door.’

  ‘Have you ever tried to open the back door to the manor, Mrs Lavenham?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Apart from the fact that the bolts were rusted in their sockets, it’s so warped and swollen with damp you have to put a shoulder to it to force it ajar, and it screams like a banshee every time you do it. If a stranger had come in through the back door at eleven o’clock at night, he wouldn’t have caught Miss Jenkins in the kitchen. She’d have taken to her heels the minute she heard the bansh
ee-wailing and would have used one of the phones upstairs to call the police.’

  ‘You can’t know that,’ argued Siobhan. ‘Sowerbridge is the sleepiest place on earth. Why would she assume it was an intruder? She probably thought it was Jeremy paying a late-night visit to his grandmother.’

  ‘We don’t think so.’ He picked up a pen and turned it between his fingers. ‘As far as we can establish, that door was never used. Certainly none of the neighbours reported going in that way. The paper boy said Miss Jenkins kept it bolted because on the one occasion when she tried to open it, it became so wedged that she had to ask him to force it shut again.’

  She sighed, admitting defeat. ‘Patrick’s always been so sweet to me and my children. I just can’t believe he’s a murderer.’

  He smiled at her naivety. ‘The two are not mutually exclusive, Mrs Lavenham. I expect Jack the Ripper’s neighbour said the same about him.’

  Tuesday, 9 March 1999, 1.00 a.m.

  People began to shiver as the smouldering remains were dowsed by the fire hoses and the pungent smell of wet ashes stung their nostrils. In the aftermath of excitement, a sense of shame crept among the inhabitants of Sowerbridge – schadenfreude was surely alien to their natures? – and bit by bit the crowd began to disperse. Only the Haversleys, the Bentleys and Jeremy Jardine lingered at the crossroads, held by a mutual fascination for the scene of devastation that would greet them every time they emerged from their houses.

  ‘We won’t be able to open our windows for weeks,’ said Nora Bentley, wrinkling her nose. ‘The smell will be suffocating.’

  ‘It’ll be worse when the wind gets up and deposits soot all over the place,’ complained Peter Haversley, brushing ash from his coat.

  His wife clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘We’ll just have to put up with it,’ she said. ‘It’s hardly the end of the world.’