Murder Among Us Read online

  They sat in silence for a while, watching the log Meredith had put on the fire as it was slowly consumed by the flames.

  "I wish ..." said Leah quietly.

  "Wish what?"

  "Just that. I wish. Are you one of those people, Meredith, who believes in reincarnation?"

  "That we've all been here before?"

  "Rather that we'll all be here again, get another chance."

  "Not really," confessed Meredith. "Anyone who ever admitted those sort of views to me seemed to believe they were Cleopatra or Julius Caesar. None of them believed they were previously a complete nonentity. It's comforting, I suppose, to think we'll get another crack at life. Most of us think we've messed up this time round."

  "Yes. That's why I hope it's true, the reincarnation theory," said Leah. "Then perhaps I'll do better next time. I hope I do." She smiled suddenly, her wide beautiful smile which Meredith recalled had been so striking when she had first met Leah. "It's late. I think I will go to bed, go to sleep and stop thinking. Yes, you're right. Goodbye, Meredith."

  "Goodnight," said Meredith. "Sleep tight."

  "Oh yes, I'll do that." Leah got up and walked across the lounge. At the door she hesitated but then, without looking back, turned the handle and walked out. A faint aura of perfume lingered in the air, a testament to her presence. Meredith frowned.

  Markby tapped on his niece's door and put his head round. "Your mum sent me up to say it's time to stop reading and settle down."

  Emma was sitting up in bed, pink as a freshly boiled shrimp from her bath, frowning over a venerable tome with yellowed pages.

  Markby came in and sat down on the rather uncomfortable beanbag on the floor. "What's the book?"

  She held it up silently.

  "Oh, Black Beauty, about a horse, I should have guessed! That looks like a pretty old copy."

  "It was Mummy's when she was a little girl."

  "Oh, yes, I seem to remember it. It made her cry."

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  "That's because it's sad." Animation entered Emma's tense little face. 'They were horrible and cruel to cab and carriage horses in the Victorian days!"

  Markby laced fingers and said gently, "Being horrible and cruel is sadly part of human nature sometimes. But only a part. Humans also do lots of fine and good and beautiful things."

  "Zoe does lots of good at the Rest Home."

  "Yes, she does. But you know how some of the animals there have been damaged by bad handling in the past? That can happen to humans, too. If so, it's much better if it's dealt with straight away and put right."

  She looked away, back at her book, but she wasn't reading. Her mouth quivered.

  "It's better to talk about it than think about it all alone, Emma."

  "I don't want to."

  There was a silence and then he said, "I think your mum coloured in the frontispiece of that book."

  Emma turned back to the picture facing the title page, luridly crayonned purple and green by a childish hand. "Vicky does that to my books. She does it to Matthew's as well. She mucks things up."

  Markby, well aware of his younger niece's predisposition to wreck everything, sighed. "I know. She'll grow out of it."

  "He was sort of ill, wasn't he? The man in the woods."

  "Yes. 111. An unhappy person. Do you dream about it?"

  "Only once, the first night after I got back home."

  "We all have bad memories of one kind or another, Emma. The thing to do is to let them go. It's not easy. But it can be done. Just think of them being like boats. You untie them and let them float away out of sight."

  "It's already a funny fuzzy sort of memory. I never saw his face. But I don't like the dark much. I imagine shapes in it. Will you light that little lamp for me? I leave it on all night."

  "Sure/* He got up and switched on the little lamp with its lower-wattage bulb. Then he turned out the main light. "Good night, sweetheart. Sleep tight. Even in Black Beauty, things all turned out all right in the end/'

  "Yes, I know. Good night, Uncle Alan."

  Laura waited at the foot of the stairs. "Did you switch the lamp on?"

  "Yes, yes. Don't fret. She's a sensible kid. It will take a little while but she'll get it out of her system eventually. It's a pity she's reading such a lachrymose book— Black BeautyF '

  "She only reads about horses." Laura rubbed her forearms.

  "You too," her brother said. "You'll get over it."

  "No, never!" Laura said fiercely and tossed back her long fair hair. She looked for a moment very like her own little daughter. "Alan, did I hear right that you've hauled in Denis Fulton?"

  "You legal eagles have wonderful ears. But he isn't asking for legal aid. He's got his own solicitor coming down from London tomorrow."

  "You take care!" she warned. "You can't mess around. You have to follow all the rules, Alan!"

  "Dear little sister, I'm well acquainted with the Police and Criminal Evidence guidelines! I can hold him for twenty-four hours. I am obliged to fetch his solicitor once he requests him and I may not ask him any questions till that solicitor arrives. If I want to hold him longer, I have to get authority from above and if I want a yet further extension I have to get it from a magistrate. But it won't come to that. Twenty-four hours will do it."

  "It won't come to that because Fulton's legal adviser won't let it!" Laura opened the front door and a swirl of fog drifted into the hall. "Ugh! Thickening fast. Drive carefully and mind how you go!"

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  Springwood Hall and its gardens slept in a silent cocoon. Down at the Alice Batt Rest Home the animals hardly stirred. The distant pine plantation was wrapped in eerie gloom. The whole countryside was held motionless as if suspended in time.

  Only one creature was wakeful. He kept a lonely vigil, yet comfortable enough because he'd broken into the building housing the swimming pool. Inside, warm and safe from the unhealthy mist, he relaxed on one of the poolside recliners with his hands behind his head. Occasionally there came a gurgle from the pool's pipe system. Odd creaks and rustles sounded among the potted palms and the cooling central heating system. A tap dripped in the shower by the changing rooms.

  He waited patiently. He even dozed off for an hour but awoke at an inner reveille call set into motion by his own pent-up excitement. He consulted the illuminated dial of his wristwatch. Twenty to three in the morning. An excellent time to make his move. He got up, stooped to retrieve the plastic bag which stood by his chair and set off with it for the hotel.

  As he quit the pool building the cold dank night air struck his face and the intrusive fog filled his nostrils. But he didn't mind. The murk could only help him. Marooned out here in clammy cottonwool amidst invisible fields, the Hall was at his mercy and any help summoned from Bamford would be hampered by the poor visibility and slow in arriving. He counted on that.

  The ground plan of the whole place, Hall and gardens, was imprinted on his memory, the result of endless visits here during the period of the Hall's conversion to hotel. He turned his steps confidently towards the Hall and when he reached the spot he judged the corner of the building, he stopped and stretched out his hand. His fingers made contact with rough masonry. No more than he had expected but all the same, he smiled to himself in the darkness, a smug, self-congratulatory smirk of satisfaction because everything was going according to his plan.

  270 Ann Granger

  Now it was easy. He had only to follow the wall of the house along to the next corner, turn right, along past the kitchens, turn right again—and now he was on the further side of the house alongside the dining-room windows.

  A desire to keep the character of the old house had led to retaining the original frames and windows. Modern ones might have given him more trouble. Historical accuracy and old world charm have their price. Reflecting censoriously on this, he set down his bag and felt inside it, withdrawing a glass cutter and a roll of heavy duty sticky tape. He used the glass cutter to incise a nea
t circle in a pane by a window latch. Careful, now. Cautiously he picked up the sticky tape and affixed it to the pane covering the scored circle. A single sharp tap in the centre and the glass circle came away but, held in place by the sticky tape, did not fall. With infinite care he peeled away the overlapping ends of the tape and it lifted out the glass circle intact. He laid it on the grass, reached through the hole in the pane and released the catch.

  Noiselessly and painlessly, he had obtained entry to the house, and taking a large bottle from his bag and holding it clasped to his chest, he climbed in.

  He was in the dining room. This he knew but he took a flashlight from his pocket and splayed the beam around. There were two sets of doors. One led into the kitchen for staff use; the other, admitting the diners, into the corridor which ran to the front entrance hall and main staircase. The tables were ready, set with crisply ironed damask cloths and napkins. He unscrewed the top of the bottle and splashed the paraffin it contained freely across a line of table linen to the doors into the corridor. These doors he then propped open using a dining-room chair.

  Stepping through them into the corridor, he was confronted by a small staircase, the former servants' back stairs. He ignored it and set off down the ground-floor corridor, splashing paraffin as he went. Half way down

  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.