Revenge in the Cotswolds (7 page)

Monday dawned fresh and breezy. Thea enjoyed two minutes of slow awakening before the trouble started. Downstairs, Gwennie began to bark. Not the one-note yap which said
I’m awake, so you should be too
but an urgent string of throaty sounds that suggested there was actually something to be worried about.

Thea got up and went to the bedroom door. ‘What’s the matter?’ she called down the stairs, hoping to quell the animal simply by letting her hear a voice. Instead she heard an odd sizzling sound, which was quickly followed by a bang and the smell of smoke.

‘Hey, Hepzie, come with me. Something’s burning.’

The spaniel eyed her from the foot of the bed and remained where she was. ‘Come here,’ grated Thea, grabbing her by the collar. ‘Do as you’re told, will you?’

Gwennie was still barking, and there were crackling
sounds at the bottom of the stairs. Still half asleep, Thea dragged her dog down the stairs after her, to discover a pool of flame in the narrow hallway. A coat hanging near the door seemed to be on fire, but otherwise it was not spreading. Muttering half-remembered instructions about keeping oxygen levels low and getting everybody outside, Thea dragged Hepzie past the all-too-close flames and smoke, and into the kitchen, where Gwennie was standing with her muzzle in the air, barking and sniffing and making small agitated leaps. ‘Come on, both of you. Out into the garden,’ Thea ordered. She bundled them outside, and went back to the hall. Probably she could smother the flames quite easily with a thick blanket, without the hassle of calling the fire brigade, who would cause much more damage with their overenthusiastic water hoses.

For a moment she stood staring at the fire, which was emitting some nasty black smoke, before remembering a red canister on the wall beside the cooker. Returning to the kitchen, she found a fire blanket, with a metal loop ready to be pulled. When she did so, a rectangle of white material emerged, and she took it back to the fire. It wasn’t big enough, but when she threw it over the centre of the flames, it gave her a sense of control, at least. She had bought herself a bit of time and reduced the smokiness. Reaching carefully over the smouldering coat, she unhooked another garment and threw that over the surviving flames beyond the edge of the blanket. ‘Hasn’t done the carpet any
good,’ she muttered, standing a yard or so away from the conflagration. It was all now subsiding, the smoke swallowed up by the coverings. She’d have liked to stamp out the small tentative flames she could still see, but her feet were bare. After a minute or two, in which she assured herself that it wouldn’t spread any further, she ran upstairs and threw on some clothes and shoes.

Downstairs again, she congratulated herself on her efforts. The fact that the Fosters’ hallway was empty of furniture, and the carpet probably flame-retardant, helped considerably. But if she hadn’t been there, the fire might easily have crept towards the stairs, by way of the coats and the open door into the living room, and perhaps along skirting boards and banisters, until the whole house was engulfed.

She stamped every last flicker into submission and went to find a brush, with the vague idea of restoring some sort of normality to the scene. But then she stopped. This was not an accidental blaze. It was nowhere near a power point or an electrical gadget. It was quite obviously a deliberate act of arson. Something had been pushed through the letter box, containing petrol or similar, and Gwennie had heard it all. If Thea had run through to the front bedroom and looked out of the window, she would very likely have seen the culprit.

‘A Molotov cocktail,’ she said to herself, unsure of exactly what such a thing was, nor whether it would fit through a letter box. Didn’t it involve a bottle, for a
start? She gingerly lifted up the coat and fire blanket, and stared at the awful black mark on the pale-grey hall carpet. In the middle was a misshapen lump of melted plastic, impossible to miss. And she could smell petrol faintly.

Reluctantly, regretfully, she dialled the number for the Gloucestershire police, that was already in her mobile, and asked to speak to Detective Inspector Higgins.

Higgins wasn’t there, and the person who took the call was cautious about putting her in touch with him. She wanted to know name, purpose and level of urgency. Thea paused. She didn’t need Higgins in person, did she? Any police officer would do. She was required to report the fire if only to gain the due paperwork for the Fosters to make an insurance claim. ‘Somebody tried to set the house on fire,’ she said coolly. ‘I’ve put it out, but it was undoubtedly a crime, which I am now reporting. It’s Galanthus House in Daglingworth. Jeremy – sorry, DI Higgins – was here last night, so he was the first person to spring to mind. But it needn’t be him, of course.’

‘That’s all right, madam,’ said the girl inanely. ‘I’ve taken down those details, and somebody will be with you this morning.’

‘Thank you.’ So she would have to stay in, waiting for the visitation which could be hours away. Inevitably there would be a shortage of available officers, given the fact of a murder investigation. She couldn’t even
clean up any more of the hallway, because that would be interfering with evidence. She had probably already done too much.

She let the dogs back in, but confined them to the kitchen. ‘All clear,’ she told them. ‘More or less. Well done, Gwennie – you did exactly the right thing.’ The corgi wagged its few millimetres of tail, which made Thea feel sad. Docking tails was something she deplored profoundly. She gave them some biscuits and a drink, and tried to eat some toast herself. To her surprise, she couldn’t swallow it. Her body was operating on a stubbornly independent track, insisting that the past half hour had been a serious trauma that she would be foolish to deny. Taking more notice than before, she found her heart was beating heavily and quickly, her hands were shaking and tears were gathering behind her nose. The more she noticed, the worse it got. Hepzie came to her side and pressed her soft head against Thea’s leg, which worsened things by another notch. A sudden storm of uncontrollable sobs shook her, and she put her head down on her arms and gave way to it.

Then somebody was knocking on the door. Blearily, she went to open it, finding a man in a fireman’s suit standing there. He introduced himself with great formality as Fire Officer George Kemp. ‘There’s been a fire here?’ he asked, already looking past her at the mess on the hall carpet. She stood back and pointed. ‘Blimey!’ he said, which she thought considerably
more human and pleasingly unprofessional. All defences falling away, she leant towards him, blindly hoping for a hug. ‘Are you all right?’ He peered down at her face and tutted gently. ‘Looks a bit like a shock reaction to me.’

‘You just missed being cried on,’ she choked. ‘I’m all right really.’

‘Sweet tea,’ he prescribed. ‘I can make it for you, if you like.’

‘Go on, then. Mind the dogs.’

He stepped around the blackened patch and let himself into the kitchen, chirping at the dogs. Thea drifted after him, feeling useless. Everything had gone weak – legs, voice, mind. She dropped into a chair. ‘It wasn’t very bad, really. I don’t know why I’m in such a state.’

‘It’s the might-have-beens,’ he explained. ‘That’s what hits you.’

Deftly, he produced a mug of tea, finding things in the strange kitchen like magic. Then he went back into the hall and started a close examination of the after-effects of the fire. ‘Not a very subtle attack. I gather the cops are on their way. They’ll want to give it a really thorough look. Could go down as attempted murder, if they knew you were in the house. Is it just you here?’ He eyed the coats hanging by the door, as if working out the family structure from them.

‘It’s not my house. I’m just the sitter. I’m looking after the dog – as well as the house. They’re not going
to give me a very high score, are they?’

‘They can hardly blame you.’ He licked his teeth ruminatively. ‘And the chances are, surely, that it wasn’t you, but the usual people who were being targeted. Looks as if they’ve upset someone, and this is their idea of revenge.’

‘That’s horrible.’

‘They could have thought the people were away and the house was empty. Where’s your car?’

‘In the garage. They wouldn’t have seen it.’

He made a little shrug and smiled. ‘I’ll leave the questions to the police. You don’t want to have to say it all twice. Congratulations, by the way, on handling it all so capably. Fire blanket and coat – exactly what we’d have recommended. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think you were in much danger. There isn’t a lot to encourage a good blaze just here. Can’t have been too much smoke, either. The walls aren’t black.’

They were, however, smudged with grey blotches in places. ‘The carpet will have to be replaced, though. And one of the coats hanging up was burning when I came down.’

He looked at the coats. ‘Lucky that didn’t spread, then.’

‘It’s not a very
Cotswoldy
thing to do, is it?’ she burst out. ‘I mean – you associate it more with inner cities and family feuds. And gangs. Or insurance scams.’ She remembered a dreadful story of a man who set fire to a house and killed a large number of his own children.
‘And it’s pretty stupid, as well,’ she added with feeling. The sweet tea was evidently working, as she stood in the kitchen doorway filling up with anger.

‘That’s better,’ approved Fireman George Kemp. ‘Look, I’ll stay till the crime chaps show up, if you like. I can sit in there and write my report.’

‘You don’t have to. I’ll be all right. It’s lucky I managed to get myself dressed before you got here. I came down in bare feet, when I realised what was happening. As it is, these are yesterday’s things. I need to go and change.’

He smiled distantly. ‘I’ve known people die because they stopped to get dressed. Amazing, when you think about it.’

‘The power of cultural taboos,’ she agreed. ‘I can see that a lot of people would rather die than stand in the street stark naked.’

‘We give them blankets. One of the first things we do. I’ll just hang on for a bit, while you sort yourself out,’ he finished kindly.

She went upstairs and pulled on the warmest clothes she’d brought with her, hoping to stop the shivering that still beset her. Hepzie went with her, leaving Gwennie to guard the fireman. Gwennie seemed to be rather enjoying the whole business. Thea’s thoughts remained scrambled, fixated on the mentality of a person who could deliberately fill a bottle with petrol and push it into a house, quite unable to predict the exact consequences. Not least, she realised, a very
long prison sentence if they were caught. Throughout history, the setting of fire to things had been considered a heinous crime. Children with arsonistic tendencies must always be firmly quelled – she remembered her own brother, in a rare moment of disobedience, getting into extreme trouble at school for throwing a lighted match into a roller towel in the boys’ lavatories, and causing a minor conflagration. She had been impressed and rather amused at his mortification. But the abiding lesson was that fire had a mind of its own, and quickly got out of control. You treated it with respect and kept matches in a safe place.

Downstairs, she encouraged George Kemp to get back to his duties and leave her to gather herself together. ‘I’m perfectly all right now,’ she said.

‘If I were you, I’d bale out, and let the house fend for itself. You’ve earned your fee already, and you’re going to be shaky for a day or two yet.’

‘I can’t do that,’ she said, automatically. ‘They won’t do it again, will they?’

‘I don’t suppose they will,’ he agreed. ‘But the cops’ll tell you the same thing.’

‘I can manage them, don’t worry.’

Two unfamiliar police officers arrived at eleven-fifteen, and elicited the whole story from her. Their eyes widened with admiration at her capable behaviour, but they said little. They gathered fibres and carefully bagged the melted plastic bottle. The fire officer
had left them an official report, which they read attentively. They measured and re-enacted, one of them going outside and operating the letter-box flap. ‘Pretty amateurish,’ one of them muttered. ‘Lucky – or
un
lucky, I should say – the thing caught light at all. It’s not as easy as people think to burn a house down.’

‘Was it petrol, then?’ Thea asked. She had hovered and watched them, despite being well aware that they would rather she didn’t.

‘Probably,’ said one. ‘Put it in a bottle and fit a bung of cotton wool or something. Set light to it and throw. It generally explodes and spreads the flammable fluid over a wide area. Plastic doesn’t work as well as glass.’

Rather belatedly, she thought, they asked for contact details for Mr and Mrs Foster. ‘Do you have to tell them? It’ll spoil their holiday,’ she pleaded.

The men gave her a look, almost identical on the two faces. ‘This is a serious crime, madam. We have no choice in the matter. We need to know whether they have any ideas as to who did this.’

Thea gave them the Australian phone number the Fosters had given her and left the rest to them. ‘They’ve gone to a wedding,’ she said. ‘It’s in the middle of this week. I think tomorrow, actually. You won’t want them to come home early, will you? All that way!’

They were interrupted by a woman approaching from the road. The white coveralls worn by the officers were as big a giveaway as there could ever be, Thea realised. ‘What in the world happened?’ asked
Sheila Whiteacre, her blonde head jutting forward in her eagerness for information.

‘Just a little—’ Thea began, before one of the men laid a hand on her arm.

‘Can’t tell you just yet, madam,’ he said. ‘Nothing to be concerned about. Might you be a neighbour?’

‘Not really. Baunton.’

‘Right. But you know Mrs Osborne, do you?’

‘We met yesterday.’ Wide-eyed, she gazed through the open door at the blackened hall carpet. ‘Was there a
fire
?’

Thea nodded briefly, feeling like a traitor.

Sheila evidently had little fear of contravening police orders. ‘Somebody tried to burn this house down? With you in it? Good God, that’s appalling!’