False fire Read online

Holding up the pink phone, half carrying and half dragging the child, with the towel slipping from her face, Bea set off to the landing … how many doors along? They’d flown along here in a couple of seconds, but it seemed like an hour before they reached a wide, open space. The window, which had been covered by the burning curtain, now let in moonlight of sorts. London is never totally dark. The curtain was a blackened shroud at their feet.

  Was that a hint of flame reviving?

  No, probably not. Hopefully not.

  In which direction did the stairs lie? She was disorientated in the dark. She held the child’s phone up high, and still couldn’t see which way to go.

  The child in her arms coughed and cried out in a choked voice.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Bea, trying to keep the towel over her mouth and nose, hold up the phone and keep an arm around the child. Which way lay the stairs?

  She risked a look back. A humped-back figure was following her, swaying. He must have the other child over his shoulder. Presumably he’d lost his own phone? No light.

  Bea had the only light. But she was so tired!

  If she stopped to rest …

  The smoke would get her if she did.

  The man pushed past her, led the way to what turned out to be the top of the stairs. How come he knew the layout of the house? He wasn’t one of the family, was he? Or was he? She couldn’t remember.

  She hitched her bunched-up skirt higher, took a firmer hold of the child who was slipping out of her arms … don’t do that, dear, or you’ll end up in the morgue … keep going, keep on, keeping on, one foot after the other … the air will be clearer as we go down … won’t it?

  It was so dark! The light she held was hardly helping at all. Low on battery?

  She bumped into the banister. Good. She put her elbow on it, and it helped her to feel for the next step … and the next …

  A pause to take a breath and hoist the child up again. Yes, it was slightly easier to breathe here. She let the towel drop around her neck.

  The child – it was Alicia – moaned and coughed and wept.

  ‘Not much farther,’ gasped Bea, not believing it, but thinking it the right thing to say. How we lie to children! For their own good, of course. And to bolster up our courage.

  The man had stopped moving. He reached back to take the silly little pink phone off her. ‘I’ll lead the way. We turn here.’

  Still no lights, except for the glow-worm in his hand.

  Down, down. Feel for the next step. The child coughed and cried, a dead weight in her arms.

  ‘Turn again … careful!’

  Who was he to tell her to be careful? Teach your grandmother …

  Her tied-up skirt was coming undone. She could feel it flop around her feet. She tried to hitch it up again, nearly lost her balance and fell awkwardly against the wall. Ouch. That hurt. No time to rub it, even.

  Bea didn’t think she could get Alicia up and over her shoulder. Even if she did, she’d probably collapse under the weight. She felt like collapsing, anyway. However many steps? They came to another flat space and turned … however many turns? She’d completely lost her sense of direction. Surely they’d gone down past the main bedrooms by now.

  They hadn’t met the nanny on the way. Presumably she’d got safely downstairs and the others would have …

  That was weird. There was no sound of people below.

  She listened hard. Faintly came pop-pop, swoosh and pop. Outside. Some distance away.

  Bea didn’t understand the silence. If not the guests, then surely there should be firemen and policemen and paramedics …

  Instead, there was a dense, dead quiet.

  Faintly came another set of pops and crackles. Some distance away.

  There had been thirteen people at supper, plus a couple of waitresses. Where were the waitresses? Had they gone when the lights went out? Or before? Bea thought of sci-fi mysteries in which the inhabitants of a mansion disappeared without trace … and then told herself not to be absurd. There’d be a perfectly rational explanation for what had happened.

  Only, she couldn’t think what it was.

  TWO

  Was that a flicker of a light to their left? They were in a larger space, weren’t they? Her night sight was poor.

  A whimper. From the other girl, not the one Bea was carrying. Poor little Bernice, such a brave little soul. Hadn’t she had enough to put up with in her short life already?

  Bea cleared her raw throat. ‘Are you all right, Alicia? Bernice?’

  The man coughed. ‘We’ve got to get out.’ The glow of the phone passed Bea as he moved away from her.

  Where were they? Could they be in the hall? No, they couldn’t, or she’d hear all the other guests. No one moved, no one coughed or spoke.

  She could hear the man trying to open a door. Were they in the kitchens, which presumably would be in the basement of the house? The battery was fading in the child’s phone he was carrying.

  She could hear him breathing hard.

  Alicia was struggling feebly, coughing now and then. Bea hefted Alicia higher in her arms and spoke, or rather, croaked, ‘We’ll be out in a minute.’

  Surely someone must have called the fire brigade? Surely one of the guests must have missed them? They wouldn’t have abandoned the house without calling in the fire brigade, would they?

  Bea mopped her face with the wet towel and let it drop to the floor. She began to distinguish black from grey. There was a faint change in the air, a doorway outlined in grey instead of filthy smoke. A dim light beyond. Yes, they were in the hall.

  The man, hampered by carrying Bernice and the phone, was trying and failing to open the front door. The fire must even now be crawling down the stairs behind them. Unless they could get out pretty soon …

  She didn’t want to think about that. Tamping down fear, she took an incautious step and trod on something that slipped under her foot. It gave a loud crack and broke. China? Plates from the dinner party?

  She tried to orient herself.

  She and Leon had been ushered straight through the hall and into the drinks party in the salon, which lay to the left of the front door. The party was to celebrate the two girls’ birthdays. The girls were close friends and had their birthdays within a week of one another. Champagne for adults and Coca-Cola for the children. The men were in black tie, the women in evening dress. The birthday girls – the stars of the show – were showered with presents.

  Then they had all crossed the hall to go into the dining room. She closed her eyes to shut out the faint light of the phone and opened them again. Her night sight was returning.

  Was that a faint glow she could see across the hall? The fire, reignited? Her heartbeat went into overdrive.

  The man held up the child’s pink phone, checking the lock on the front door. Such a weak light. He was a figure from a nightmare, hunched over, powerful. Taurus, the bull?

  Bea’s arms couldn’t hold Alicia any longer. She let the child slip to the floor where she crouched, pressing against Bea’s thigh, quivering and coughing. But alive. Praise be.

  The battery in the phone was definitely fading. The man’s voice ditto. He gasped, ‘I’ll try the fire brigade. Ought to have tried earlier. Can you take the child … if I can get this door open?’

  He dumped Bernice in Bea’s arms. As if she could manage to look after one child, let alone two. Her eyes went to the glow in the dining room, which seemed to be moving … was that another fire?

  Permission to panic?

  Panic not allowed.

  Bernice stirred in Bea’s arms, coughing weakly.

  Alicia stirred, weeping, coughing.

  The children had lost the towels they’d soaked in water in the bathroom … abandoned on the flight down the stairs?

  Bea let Bernice down on to the floor to join Alicia. She knelt, cuddling them both. Her mouth was dry. That flare of light in the dining room … Why hadn’t the man seen it? Possibly because he was holding anoth
er light in his hand, which meant his night vision was even worse than hers?

  The children were wearing velvet dresses, one black, one midnight blue. Their long hair, one nut-brown and one nearly black, had been in shining falls down their backs. Now their dresses felt gritty. Dirty. Their hair was tousled, their cheeks tear-stained.

  Bea tried not panic, but … they had left the fire on the top floor to roar unchecked through the top storey. How soon would it crawl down the stairs?

  She wanted to scream that they must smash a window and get out of the house. Why was the man still trying to get out of the front door instead of looking for another way out? What about trying to get out through the kitchen quarters?

  She told herself to be patient. He was doing his best. She trusted him, didn’t she? Yes, but in a minute she’d have to point out the obvious …

  She listened to the children’s breathing. Not perfect. The odd gulp now and then. It was amazing how quickly children recovered from trauma.

  A clock in the salon opposite chimed the quarter-hour. A sweet sound reminding her of a previous age when dinner parties didn’t end in death.

  The snap, crackle and pop of fireworks being let off had receded into the distance. The fire brigade would be busy tonight.

  The man stood back from the door. He was breathing hard. ‘I think the front door’s been double-locked or bolted. Can you keep the children here while I try to find the door to the kitchens and get us out that way?’

  ‘Don’t leave us!’ Bea thought it, but it was one of the children who said it. Bea angled her wrist to look at her watch. She couldn’t see it in the semi-dark. The glow from the dining room was growing brighter … or was it that their eyes were becoming used to the dark?

  She glanced back at where she knew the stairs to be. Was that a wisp of smoke curling down from above? No, she was imagining it.

  A phone rang in the dining room. They all jumped.

  Someone swore.

  ‘Faye!’ said Bernice, and without warning stood up, facing the dining room.

  Alicia also scrambled to her feet. ‘Don’t leave me!’

  ‘Come on then!’ Bernice, extending her hand to her friend.

  Was that Bea’s own phone ringing? It sounded like it. Bea said, ‘Stop!’ She staggered to her feet and gathered the remains of her skirt around her.

  ‘Boo!’ cried Bernice, jumping into the dining room.

  The phone stopped ringing. Bea leaned against the doorway, her hand pressed to her heart.

  The man came up behind her, surveyed the scene and said, ‘Humph!’

  With which sentiment, Bea agreed.

  The pretty blonde who’d been helping Leon to control Daphne was on all fours under the table. The children’s appearance startled her so that she jumped up, hitting her shoulder on the dining table. ‘Ouch! You didn’t half give me a fright!’

  Faye something. Wasn’t she supposed to be a model? Girlfriend of Gideon, one of the sons of the house and therefore not family exactly?

  The man asked, ‘Can you show us how to get out? Is a fire engine on the way?’

  ‘What? No! Why should it be?’

  ‘There was a fire, two fires—’

  ‘The fire was put out ages ago.’ Faye sounded so sure of herself that, in spite of everything she’d seen, Bea relaxed.

  The man said, ‘What! Have they been and gone? So quickly? But … well, where is everyone?’

  ‘Hospital, of course.’

  ‘Hospital? What, everyone?’

  ‘Sure. The old man was having another heart attack, so off he goes with his entourage. Ditto Daphne. There was blood everywhere. She’d done her best to sever an artery, always the drama queen. Look!’ She indicated some spots of blood on her arm and shoulder. ‘My dress is ruined.’ Her little black dress was minimalist, and very tight. If it was spotted with blood, Bea couldn’t see it in that light.

  ‘Mum’s in hospital?’ Alicia’s voice quavered.

  The man patted her shoulder. ‘Best place, if she’s hurt herself. Faye, we need to be sure. Did everyone get out safely?’

  ‘Of course they did. Help me look for my pearls, why don’t you?’

  ‘Pearls?’

  ‘Daphne broke my string of pearls, so when they abandoned me, I bolted the front door and stayed behind to look for them.’

  Bea was confused. There’d been a real fire on the landing, hadn’t there? Yes, the man had stamped it out. And all that dense smoke had been coming from the children’s room, hadn’t it?

  The man frowned. ‘Was Steve able to find a second fire extinguisher?’

  Who was he? Ah, Josh’s other son. He had two sons, didn’t he: Gideon and Steve?

  Faye was back to searching the floor. ‘What on earth for?’

  Bea tried to work it out. The fire which had attacked the curtain in this room had long since died out. The remains of the expensive fabric hung in shreds at the window. The fire extinguisher which had been used on the curtain lay on the floor nearby. Faye seemed to be saying that Steve had dealt with everything. The curtain on the upper landing as well?

  Wait a minute! How could he have been in two places at once? Bea’s brain zigzagged, trying to make sense of the situation. Faye was so calm, surely there couldn’t be anything to worry about now. Could there?

  The girl held up a wineglass with what looked like white beads rolling around in it. ‘Don’t just stand there! Come and help me! I need to find all my pearls so they can be restrung.’

  Bea cast her eyes around the room. Even in that poor light, she could see there was a trail of loose pearls behind one of the overturned chairs, and a couple more under the table. There was also a broken glass, smashed plates, and food on the floor. There was what looked like splashes of blood on the table, the carpet and the chair where Daphne had been sitting.

  A phone rang again, plaintively. Bea looked around. Hers? Where was it? She’d left her pashmina and evening bag hanging on the back of her chair, hadn’t she? She’d been sitting on the far side of the table, with her back to the window. Ah, there was her bag on the floor.

  ‘I’ve found one!’ Bernice darted forward to pick up a pearl. A fragment of glass shattered under her shoe and Alicia squealed, ‘Watch out, Berny!’

  Berny? The girls were indeed good friends if they’d got as far as shortening their names.

  ‘Careful, kids,’ said the man. ‘Broken glass. Faye, we need to be sure—’

  ‘I’m flying out to the States tomorrow,’ said Faye. ‘I have to find all my pearls, now!’

  Bea rescued her evening bag and retrieved her phone, which had stopped ringing. She switched it on and held it up high, doubling the amount of light in the room. Good. She hesitated. Who should she ring first? Leon. She tried his number.

  Faye was aggrieved. ‘I asked Gideon to stay behind and help me find my pearls, but his father twitched his little finger and that was that.’

  Gideon? Bea thought, let’s get this straight. She’d been seated between two beautiful young men at the table. The one on her right had been absorbed in entering a note of everything he ate into his iPhone. Bea had understood he was Daphne’s toy boy. His name was … no, she couldn’t for the moment remember.

  The one on her left had spent the meal texting someone on his phone, and receiving texts in return. Bea had eventually worked out that he was texting Faye, the blonde sitting opposite him on the other side of the table. Sly glances, and lots of eye-rolling between them. Honestly! At a family dinner party!

  So the man on Bea’s left was one of the sons of the house, and called Gideon.

  Leon’s phone was engaged. Bother. A sudden nasty thought. Bea said, ‘Faye, what happened to Leon? He’s not gone to the hospital too, has he?’

  ‘Yes, of course. He took Josh and Gideon.’

  Bea relaxed again. At least Leon was safely out of the house.

  Sir Leon Holland had been part of Bea’s life for some years. Now and then he said he would very much like to be mor
e than just a friend, and at one time she’d been tempted to encourage him. Nowadays she was content with things as they were.

  Leon had been invited that evening because Bernice was his great-niece and there were no other members of her family available to attend this splendid grown-up ‘do’ for Bernice and her best friend, Alicia.

  Bernice had been staying with Alicia for the half-term holidays because her much younger half-brother had the chicken pox, and her mother was unable to cope. Leon had suggested taking Bea to the party because he liked her company and because she knew the Holland family’s past history, which had made boarding school the only option for Bernice. Also because he could get Bea to do the boring bit by buying presents for them to take.

  Bea’s phone rang under her hand. ‘Hello? Leon?’

  ‘Where are you? Why didn’t you answer your phone?’ Then speaking to someone at his end, ‘No, I’ll … in a minute.’ Then back to Bea, ‘I thought you’d follow me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The doctor’s just … but Steve needs … I’ll ring you back shortly.’ He switched off.

  The man said, ‘Girls, come away from there. There’s broken glass everywhere and you don’t want to land up in hospital, too. Faye, I must have dropped my phone upstairs. Can I use yours for a moment?’

  ‘Can’t you see I need it?’

  He said, ‘You said Steve put out the fire down here, and I put out the one on the landing, but …’ he stopped and stared at Bea, who stared back.

  ‘You think we ought to check the top floor?’ she said. ‘What made all that smoke in the girls’ room?’

  Bernice said, ‘It frighted us.’ She had a surprisingly deep voice for a young child.

  Alicia said, ‘It crawled all over us.’

  ‘A lot of smoke doesn’t make a fire,’ he said, but began to move to the doorway.

  Faye was sharp. ‘For heaven’s sake, I told you! Steve put the fire out! And, as you’re here, you can help me find my pearls.’

  Bea said, ‘Steve put the fire out down here, but there was another, perhaps two more, upstairs.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Faye. ‘We all saw it. A firework. These two stupid girls tried to upset us by playing a practical joke, and look at the trouble it’s caused! They’re going to be in deep doo-doos for that, aren’t they? So—’