The Tinder Box

by Minette Walters

‘To be sure, it was Rosheen who did it. The petrol spilled all over the floor as she fell and the lighter sparked as it hit the quarry tiles.’ A flicker of amusement crossed her old face as she looked at him. ‘Ask young Kevin if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I already have. He agrees with you. The only trouble is, he breaks out in a muck sweat every time the question’s put to him.’

  ‘And why wouldn’t he? It was a terrible experience for all of us.’

  ‘So why didn’t you go up in flames, Bridey? You said your skirt was saturated with petrol.’

  ‘Ah, well, do you not think that was God’s doing?’ She crossed herself. ‘Of course, it may have had something to do with the fact that Kevin had managed to free himself and was able to push me to the door while Liam smothered the flames with his coat, but for myself I count it a miracle.’

  ‘You’re lying through your teeth, Bridey. We think Liam started the fire on purpose in order to hide something.’

  The old woman gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Now why would you think that, Inspector? What could two poor cripples have done that they didn’t want the police to know about?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Never mind a witch had tried to rob them of their only son?’

  Friday, 12 March 1999, 2.00 p.m.

  ‘Did you find out?’ Siobhan asked the inspector.

  He shrugged. ‘We think Kevin had to watch a ritual burning and is too terrified to admit to it because he’s the one who took the petrol there in the first place.’ He watched a look of disbelief cross Siobhan’s face. ‘Bridey called her a witch,’ he reminded her.

  Siobhan shook her head. ‘And you think that’s the evidence Liam wanted to destroy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gave an unexpected laugh. ‘You must think the Irish are very backward, Inspector. Didn’t ritual burnings go out with the Middle Ages?’ She paused, unable to control her amusement. ‘Are you going to charge them with it? The press will love it if you do. I can just imagine the headlines when the case comes to trial.’

  ‘No,’ he said, watching her. ‘Kevin’s sticking to the story Liam and Bridey taught him, and the pathologist’s suggestion that Rosheen was upright when she died looks too damn flakey to take into court. At the moment, we’re accepting a plea of self-defence and accidental arson.’ He paused. ‘Unless you know differently, Mrs Lavenham.’

  Her expression was unreadable. ‘All I know,’ she told him, ‘is that Bridey could no more have burnt her niece as a witch than she could get up out of her wheelchair and walk. But don’t go by what I say, Inspector. I’ve been wrong about everything else.’

  ‘Mm. Well, you’re right. Their defence against murder rests entirely on their disabilities.’

  Siobhan seemed to lose interest and fell into a thoughtful silence which the inspector was loath to break. ‘Was it Rosheen who told you Patrick had stolen Lavinia’s jewellery?’ she demanded abruptly.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I’ve never understood why you suddenly concentrated all your efforts on him.’

  ‘We found his fingerprints at the manor.’

  ‘Along with mine and most of Sowerbridge’s.’

  ‘But yours aren’t on file, Mrs Lavenham, and you don’t have a criminal record.’

  ‘Neither should Patrick, Inspector, not if it’s fifteen years since he committed a crime. The English have a strong sense of justice, and that means his slate should have been wiped clean after seven years. Someone – ’ she studied him curiously – ‘must have pointed the finger at him. I’ve never been able to work out who it was, but perhaps it was you? Did you base your whole case against him on privileged knowledge that you acquired fifteen years ago in London? If so, you’re a shit.’

  He was irritated enough to defend himself. ‘He boasted to Rosheen about how he’d got the better of a senile old woman and showed her Mrs Fanshaw’s jewellery to prove it. She said he was full of himself, talked about how both old women were so ga-ga they’d given him the run of the house in return for doing some small maintenance jobs. She didn’t say Patrick had murdered them – she was too clever for that – but when we questioned Patrick and he denied ever being in the Manor House or knowing anything about any stolen jewellery, we decided to search Kilkenny Cottage and came up trumps.’

  ‘Which is what Rosheen wanted.’

  ‘We know that now, Mrs Lavenham, and if Patrick had been straight with us from the beginning, it might have been different then. But, unfortunately, he wasn’t. His difficulty was he had the old lady’s rings in his possession as well as the costume jewellery that Miss Jenkins gave him. He knew perfectly well he’d been palmed off with worthless glass, so he hopped upstairs when Miss Jenkins’s back was turned and helped himself to something more valuable. He claims Mrs Fanshaw was asleep so he just slipped the rings off her fingers and tiptoed out again.’

  ‘Did Bridey and Rosheen know he’d taken the rings?’

  ‘Yes, but he told them they were glass replicas which had been in the box with the rest of the bits and pieces. Rosheen knew differently, of course – she and Jardine understood Patrick’s psychology well enough to know he’d steal something valuable the minute his earnings were denied – but Bridey believed him.’

  She nodded. ‘Has Jeremy admitted his part in it?’

  ‘Not yet,’ murmured the inspector dryly, ‘but he will. He’s a man without scruples. He recognized a fellow traveller in Rosheen, seduced her with promises of marriage, then persuaded her to kill his grandmother and her nurse so that he could inherit. Rosheen didn’t need an alibi – she was never even questioned about where she was that night because you all assumed she was with Kevin.’

  ‘On the principle that shagging Kevin was the only thing that interested her,’ agreed Siobhan. ‘She was clever, you know. No one suspected for a minute that she was having an affair with Jeremy. Cynthia Haversley thought she was a common little tart. Ian thought Kevin was taking advantage of her. I thought she was having a good time.’

  ‘She was. She had her future mapped out as Lady of the Manor once Patrick was convicted and Jardine inherited the damn place. Apparently, her one ambition in life was to lord it over Liam and Bridey. If you’re interested, Mrs Haversley is surprisingly sympathetic towards her.’ He lifted a cynical eyebrow. ‘She says she recognizes how easy it must have been for a degenerate like Jardine to manipulate an unsophisticated country girl when he had no trouble persuading sophisticated – ’ he drew quote marks in the air – ‘types like her and Mr Haversley to believe whatever he told them.’

  Siobhan smiled. ‘I’m growing quite fond of her in a funny sort of way. It’s like fighting your way through a blackened baked potato. The outside’s revolting but the inside’s delicious and rather soft.’ Her eyes strayed towards the window, searching for some distant horizon. ‘The odd thing is, Nora Bentley told me on Monday that it was a pity I’d never seen the kind side of Cynthia . . . and I had the bloody nerve to say I didn’t want to. God, how I wish—’ She broke off abruptly, unwilling to reveal too much of the anguish that still churned inside her. ‘Why did Liam and Bridey take Kevin with them?’ she asked next.

  ‘According to him, they all panicked. He was scared he’d get the blame for burning the house down with Rosheen in it if he stayed behind, and they were scared the police would think they’d done it on purpose to prejudice Patrick’s trial. He claims he left them when they got to Liverpool because he has a friend up there he hadn’t seen for ages.’

  ‘And according to you?’

  ‘We don’t think he had any choice. We think Liam dragged him by the noose round his neck and only released him when they were sure he’d stick by the story they’d concocted.’

  ‘Why were Liam and Bridey going to Ireland?’

  ‘According to them, or according to us?’

  ‘According to them.’

  ‘Because they were frightened . . . because they knew it would take time for the truth to come out . . . because they had nowhere else to go . .
. because everything they owned had been destroyed . . . because Ireland was home . . .’

  ‘And according to you?’

  ‘They guessed Kevin would start to talk as soon as he got over his fright, so they decided to run.’

  She gave a low laugh. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Inspector. If they released him because they were sure he’d stick by the story, then they didn’t need to run. And if they knew they could never be sure of him – as they most certainly should have done if they’d performed a ritual murder – he would have died with Rosheen.’

  ‘Then what are they trying to hide?’

  She was amazed he couldn’t see it. ‘Probably nothing,’ she hedged. ‘You’re just in the habit of never believing anything they say.’

  He gave a stubborn shake of his head. ‘No, there is something. I’ve known them too long not to know when they’re lying.’

  He would go on until he found out, she thought. He was that kind of man. And when he did, his suspicion about Rosheen’s death would immediately raise its ugly head again. Unless . . . ‘The trouble with the O’Riordans,’ she said, ‘is that they can never see the wood for the trees. Patrick’s just spent nine months on remand because he was more afraid of being charged with what he had done . . . theft . . . than what he hadn’t done . . . murder. I suspect Liam and Bridey are doing the same – desperately trying to hide the crime they have committed, without realizing they’re digging an even bigger hole for themselves for the one they haven’t.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Siobhan’s eyes twinkled as mischievously as Bridey’s had done. ‘Off the record?’ she asked him. ‘I won’t say another word otherwise.’

  ‘Can they be charged with it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but I doubt it’ll trouble your conscience much if you don’t report it.’

  He was too curious not to give her the go-ahead. ‘Off the record,’ he agreed.

  ‘All right, I think it goes something like this. Liam and Bridey have been living off the English taxpayer for fifteen years. They got disability benefit for his paralysed arm, disability benefit for her broken pelvis, and Patrick gets a care allowance for looking after both of them. They get mobility allowances, heating allowances and anything else you can think of.’ She tipped her forefinger at him. ‘But Kevin’s built like a gorilla and prides himself on his physique, and Rosheen was as tall as I am. So how did a couple of elderly cripples manage to overpower both of them?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘At a guess, Liam wielded his useless arm to hold them in a bear hug while Bridey leapt up out of her chair to tie them up. Bridey would call it a miracle cure. Social services would call it deliberate fraud. It depends how easily you think English doctors can be fooled by professional malingerers.’

  He was visibly shocked. ‘Are you saying Patrick never disabled either of them?’

  Her rich laughter peeled round the room. ‘He must have done at the time. You can’t fake a shattered wrist and a broken pelvis, but I’m guessing Liam and Bridey probably prolonged their own agony in order to milk sympathy and money out of the system.’ She canted her head to one side. ‘Don’t you find it interesting that they decided to move away from the doctors who’d been treating them in London to hide themselves in the wilds of Hampshire where the only person competent to sign their benefit forms is – er – medically speaking – well, past his sell-by date? You’ve met Sam Bentley. Do you seriously think it would ever occur to him to question whether two people who’d been registered disabled by a leading London hospital were ripping off the English taxpayer?’

  ‘Jesus!’ He shook his head. ‘But why did they need to burn the house down? What would we have found that was so incriminating? Apart from Rosheen’s body, of course.’

  ‘Sets of fingerprints from Liam’s right hand all over the door knobs?’ Siobhan suggested. ‘The marks of Bridey’s shoes on the kitchen floor? However Rosheen died – whether in self-defence or not – they couldn’t afford to report it because you’d have sealed off Kilkenny Cottage immediately while you tried to work out what happened.’

  The inspector looked interested. ‘And it wouldn’t have taken us long to realize that neither of them is as disabled as they claim to be.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And we’d have arrested them immediately on suspicion of murder.’

  She nodded. ‘Just as you did Patrick.’

  He acknowledged the point with a grudging smile. ‘Do you know all this for a fact, Mrs Lavenham?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Just guessing. And I’m certainly not going to repeat it in court. It’s irrelevant anyway. The evidence went up in flames.’

  ‘Not if I get a doctor to certify they’re as agile as I am.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove they were agile before the fire,’ she pointed out. ‘Bridey will find a specialist to quote psychosomatic paralysis at you, and Sam Bentley’s never going to admit to being fooled by a couple of malingerers.’ She chuckled. ‘Neither will Cynthia Haversley, if it comes to that. She’s been watching them out of her window for years, and she’s never suspected a thing. In any case, Bridey’s a great believer in miracles, and she’s already told you it was God who rescued them from the inferno.’

  ‘She must think I’m an absolute idiot.’

  ‘Not you personally. Just your . . . er . . . kind.’

  He frowned ominously. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Siobhan studied him with amusement. ‘The Irish have been getting the better of the English for centuries, Inspector.’ She watched his eyes narrow in instinctive denial. ‘And if the English weren’t so blinded by their own self-importance,’ she finished mischievously, ‘they might have noticed.’

  Author’s Note

  In 1998 CPNB, the Organization for the Promotion of Books in the Netherlands, invited me to write a promotional suspense novella for the 1999 Book Week. I called the story The Tinder Box and it first appeared in Dutch translation under the title De Tondeldoos. I was already working on ideas for my next novel, Acid Row, and I took the opportunity of the novella to explore themes of prejudice, incitement and vigilantism that would re-occur in the novel. The Tinder Box portrays immigrant Irish tinkers as hate figures in a wealthy Hampshire village, but a similar hatred is demonstrated against a convicted paedophile in a sink estate in Acid Row. Both stories depict the dangers of ignorance, and how unrelated, misunderstood events combine to trigger violent reactions. Re-reading The Tinder Box for this publication, I was struck by how little human nature changes. When I conceived the idea for the plot, the Good Friday Peace Accord had just been signed, and the people of these islands were optimistic that terrorism was at an end. How quickly that optimism was dashed when the twenty-first century exploded in flames across our television screens.

  Minette Walters

  Praise for Minette Walters

  ‘A staggeringly talented writer’

  Observer

  ‘Humane intelligence enables Walters to twist and turn her plot in ways that haul the reader through the pages. It’s a breathtaking achievement’

  Daily Telegraph

  ‘Minette Walters succeeds in creating a chilling, claustrophobic world where death comes almost as a relief from the sense of focused evil she builds with consummate authority’

  Daily Express

  ‘The only factors that unite Minette Walters’ works are her penchant for dark psychological perception and their excellence’

  The Times

  ‘Minette Walters patrols the darkest areas of the human heart. Her writing demonstrates an acute grip on psychological truth at the point where violence meets domestic Gothic’

  Daily Mail

  The Tinder Box

  With her debut, The Ice House, Minette Walters won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Award for the best first crime novel of 1992. Rapidly establishing a reputation as one of the most exciting crime novelists writing today, her second novel, The Sculptress, was acclaimed by critics as
one of the most compelling and powerful novels of the year and won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best crime novel published in America in 1993. In 1994 Minette Walters achieved a unique triple when The Scold’s Bridle was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. Her following five novels, The Dark Room, The Echo, The Breaker, The Shape of Snakes and Acid Row were also published to further critical acclaim throughout the world and her ninth novel, Fox Evil, won the 2003 CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction.

  Minette Walters lives in Dorset with her husband. Her latest novel, The Chameleon’s Shadow, is out now in Macmillan hardcover.

  Also by Minette Walters

  THE ICE HOUSE

  THE SCULPTRESS

  THE SCOLD’S BRIDLE

  THE DARK ROOM

  THE ECHO

  THE BREAKER

  THE SHAPE OF SNAKES

  ACID ROW

  FOX EVIL

  DISORDERED MINDS

  THE DEVIL’S FEATHER

  CHICKENFEED (Quick Reads)

  THE CHAMELEON’S SHADOW

  First published in Dutch 1999 by De Boekerij bv, Amsterdam

  First published in English 1999 in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, New York

  First published in Great Britain 2004 by Macmillan

  This paperback edition first published 2005 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2011 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-447-21371-0 EPUB

  Copyright © Minette Walters 1999

  The right of Minette Walters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.