Gideon's Fire Read online

  Brown had such worried grey eyes. He had such bloodless, helpless looking lips. He moved so quietly. He spent so much time alone in his room, listening to music on gramophone records of a kind which Mrs. Tennison could neither understand nor appreciate although, undoubtedly, it was ‘good’ music. She did not know what his main work was, but apparently he took on all kinds of odd jobs. Sometimes he would work by day, sometimes by night. His clothes were of good quality, his two suitcases and one trunk were of good quality, too, there was something of the gentleman about him, which discouraged too many questions. She felt that she was very fortunate to have such a well-mannered gentleman in the house, and hoped that he would stay for a long time. Certainly he had settled in very well.

  He had been out at work the previous night, had arrived home about four o’clock, and gone straight to bed. She had heard him, of course; decades of listening to the children coming home at different hours had created a habit of catnapping which the years had not broken. Now, instead of counting them one by one until the seventh was home, she waited for the solitary boarder.

  This morning, Brown looked very tired. He had a bandage over his right hand, rather clumsily put on, but he made no comment about it and nor did Mrs. Tennison, who had learned that he was inclined to go silent whenever she asked personal questions.

  She thrust the newspaper in front of him - the Evening Globe, which she fetched most mornings from the corner newspaper shop so that she could look through the fields of the day’s races, and plan her small bets.

  Mr. Brown blinked at the paper.

  ‘I really don’t . . .’ he began, peering shortsightedly, and she was about to draw the paper away when he caught his breath. She thought that the most natural thing in the world, for this was a shocking affair; eight people burned to death.

  Brown was at the table, standing up, one hand on the back of his chair. She still held the newspaper in front of his eyes. He was always pale, but now all the colour seemed to have been drained from his cheeks, his lips were parted as if the horror of what he read struck savagely at him. Mrs. Tennison had never seen anyone quite so rigid looking. After what seemed a long time, he stretched out his right hand and took the paper, put his left hand to his breast pocket for his glasses. He put them on, and Mrs. Tennison was surprised to see that his hand was trembling and the newspaper was shaking; it confirmed her judgment that Mr. Brown was a very kind, good-hearted man, deeply affected by the sufferings of others. He put his glasses on, then read the headlines and began to read the story. Suddenly, he sat down, and dropped the newspaper so that it covered the knives and forks, the plates and dishes all laid for his lunch.

  ‘I was saying to Mr. Hulbert at the shop, it’s the most terrible case I’ve ever heard about. Eight of the poor souls, and they say that some of them were actually screaming. They . . .’

  ‘Don’t!’ cried Mr. Brown.

  ‘I - I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,’ Mrs. Tennison said. ‘I can easily understand it, Mr. Brown, I’m very sorry. Why don’t you try to forget about it? I’ve a nice little fillet of sole and a lovely pork chop . . .’

  ‘I - I’m sorry,’ Brown said, in a choky voice. ‘I don’t feel at all well, Mrs. Tennison. That - that story has upset me.’ He stood up unsteadily and pushed past her. She heard him going up to his room and by the time he was halfway up the stairs, he was almost running. His door slammed.

  Mrs. Tennison stared at the newspaper, and said in a low-pitched, wondering voice:

  ‘I wouldn’t have expected it to upset him like that. If I’d known it would put him off his food, I wouldn’t have brought the paper in.’ She stared more intently, and there was a very thoughtful look in her eyes as she went on: ‘I can’t save the sole, I’ll have to eat that myself, but the chop’ll be all right, he can have that for his dinner this evening. He’ll be famished by then.’ She picked up the newspaper and hurried out to her salvage work in the kitchen.

  Upstairs in his front room overlooking Battersea Park and, in the distance, the pile of the Battersea Power Station, ‘Mr. Brown’ was standing by the window, staring without seeing, his eyes screwed up, his face screwed up, his hands clenched; and he kept muttering to himself.

  ‘I thought it was an empty flat. I thought it was an empty flat. I thought it was an empty flat. I thought the people in the other flats would have plenty of time to get away. I thought . . .’

  He knew, deep in his heart, that he had gone to the wrong floor - the flat immediately above had been empty. But he did not admit his error, even to himself, did not admit that he had been unable to think clearly since his wife and daughter had perished. Soon, he made a strange discovery; the agony was not so great. It was as if the death of the Millers had eased it.

  Across the river, in a small house in North Islington where he lived with his elderly mother and father and his only sister, an ugly, very fat woman of thirty, a man named John Stewart Briggs was reading the Evening Globe. He was sitting at the kitchen table, elbows on the soiled white tablecloth, coat off, sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up over strong, brawny-looking arms which were thick with black hairs. There was something almost repulsive about the hairs on those arms because they were so coarse and matted. He was a plain man to look at, with a blunted nose and a blunted chin - a surprisingly weak-looking chin in a person of such physical strength. His eyes were small and very bright blue, deepset and buried-looking because of his shaggy black eyebrows, rather like the hairs on his arms. The hair grew low on his forehead, and was thick and shiny with grease. He badly needed a shave.

  His sister was dishing up in the kitchen; his mother and father were away, visiting relations. He could hear the clatter of the dishes, and if he had cared to glance towards the scullery, would have seen the steam rising from a saucepan of cabbage.

  He was oblivious of all this.

  He was reading the inside page, and the account of the murder of Ivy Manson. Her picture was there, the picture of a gay and smiling child. He knew her well. She had passed this house every day for years. In fact her parents had pushed her past the house in a pram. He was a delivery van driver for a small firm of wholesalers with warehouses round the corner from here, and Ivy had often passed the van when he had been loading and delivering. Once or twice, he had given her a ride in the cabin - and that was the fact which most worried him now.

  Did anyone know about those rides?

  Nothing in the story suggested that the police had the slightest clue. The details were glossed over, so that people shouldn’t be too shocked, and as he read he seemed to relive the whole thing, from the moment he had crept inside the house and up the stairs. He had put a cloth over the kid’s face and mouth, and drawn it tight so that she couldn’t see who it was, and couldn’t cry out; then he had tied her hands. The cloth had slipped in her struggles, and the light from a street lamp had shone straight on to his face. He had actually seen the gleam of recognition in her eyes. That was the moment she had been done for.

  He could almost feel her struggling, too.

  He wiped the sweat off his forehead, and then his sister came plodding in, carrying a dish of stew with dumplings in one hand, and a bigger dish of cabbage in the other.

  ‘Come on, Jack, put that newspaper away and start serving. Proper waste of time and money, that newspaper. You’ll be a fool if you ever put a penny on a gee-gee again.’ She slapped the dishes down, and it was almost a miracle that she did not spill any of the stew.

  Briggs folded the paper and put it aside. He ladled out stew until his own plate was overflowing, and then began to eat with noisy heartiness. He did not look at the newspaper again until he left for the afternoon round. Then he had it folded to the racing guide, and spent ten minutes on the telephone to a bookmaker before he started his deliveries.

  Another man who read the newspapers with great care that lunch time was Charles Ericson, of the firm of Ericson, Roscoe and Banning. He did not spend much time over the story of the fire or the murder of Ivy Manson; in fac
t he did not spend much time on anything, but he studied each headline with methodical care. He was sitting alone at a small table in the window of the dining-room of his club, a small and exclusive dining club in the City. He was well-dressed in the conventional black suit and striped trousers, one of the few men who stuck to the old convention. He was in the middle-forties, and outwardly very prosperous. He ran a Jaguar, owned a detached house near Esher, one of the more exclusive London dormitories, had a smart, attractive wife with a much keener mind than most - she had been at Roedean and Girton - and a daughter and a son. The son was seventeen, and beginning his last year at one of the middle grade public schools in the west midlands; his daughter was two years older, and at a mannequin school in Paris.

  Ericson earned about four thousand pounds a year, less tax; and he spent over five thousand pounds a year.

  That was why he and Roscoe had planned the share issue so carefully, handling everything they could themselves, arranging a cover with a firm of solicitors who were old-fashioned enough and sufficiently impressed by the name of Ericson and Roscoe to back the issue without taking too much trouble to check that all was well. It was one of the oldest tricks: Roscoe, the engineer of the partnership, had been abroad, and had come back with some faked, or partly faked, reports on iron ore in land owned by the company in Central Africa. They had spent a lot of time and thought before deciding that it should be iron. The more rewarding and quicker yielding ores had been tempting, but had also been more likely to be suspect. Iron had a reassuring solidity; who would pretend that such a prosaic commodity was there if it wasn’t?

  Ericson, the secretary and accountant, had had legal training and had spent years in a broker’s office some time ago. He had worked out the details of the plot, knowing at the time how often it had been done before. He had been fully aware that there was a risk, but he had not expected it to come so quickly after the issue had been floated and heavily subscribed; investors had also been fooled by the names of Ericson and Roscoe and the law firm acting for them. Ericson did not yet know why the police were suspicious, but two detectives had asked some awkward questions. The law firm had been quickly alarmed; to reassure it, Ericson had stated flatly that so far as he knew, the whole thing was absolutely genuine; there was iron ore in the range of hills.

  The police and the solicitors wanted to talk to Roscoe. They were undoubtedly looking for him, now, but hadn’t found him yet; at least, there was no mention that they had in the Evening Globe.

  Ericson finished his meal with a morsel of Danish Blue, a biscuit and some coffee, and went out into the narrow streets of the City of London. A few acquaintances, club members and servants nodded, smiled or bowed to him, for there was not yet the slightest rumour in the City that anything was wrong. If a rumour ever started, Ericson believed that he would notice the effect at once.

  It was a very pleasant, warm afternoon.

  He went into his office, on the top floor of an insurance building, where there were two ledger clerks, an assistant surveyor, and his secretary, little Miss Goudge. No message had come in. The police had been discreet in all their inquiries, he knew, and were not likely to say anything to the staff unless they felt very sure of themselves.

  ‘I think I’ll play truant for the afternoon,’ he said to Miss Goudge. ‘If Mr. Roscoe calls from Paris, have the call transferred to my home, will you?’

  ‘Yes, Mr. Ericson.’

  ‘If anyone else wants me, say I’ll be in tomorrow morning,’ added Ericson.

  He went out, collected the black Jaguar from a parking lot near London Bridge, and drove home in the warmth of the afternoon. When he pulled into the private road where his house was situated, be saw his wife kneeling in front of the herbaceous border which was not yet showing much flower, although there were some clumps of polyanthus and forget-me-not, some daffodils, narcissi and grape hyacinths. Two small magnolia trees in full bloom graced the beautifully kept lawn. His wife heard the crunch of the wheels on the gravel, looked round, and immediately waved.

  The only thing that Ericson had ever needed was more money. Everything else in life was exactly as he wanted it, and as he approached Joan, whose dark hair was a little rumpled, whose make-up needed repairing, but whose eyes had a glow of welcome, he felt a pang of something akin to despair.

  ‘You’re all right, darling, aren’t you?’ asked Joan, and he knew that she had seen the sudden change in his expression.

  ‘Perfectly,’ he told her, and kissed her, and deliberately held her close to him, moving slightly to and fro so that he could feel the yielding firmness of her bosom. ‘It was a glorious afternoon, I thought I’d play truant and come and be spoiled. Michael is out, isn’t he?’

  Joan laughed.

  ‘He’s at the club, playing tennis, and while Joanna Sparshott is there he’ll haunt the place. It won’t be too long before you have a bad case of a lovesick son on your hands.’

  ‘At the moment, you have a lovesick husband,’ Ericson said. ‘How long must you spend in the garden?’

  ‘Five minutes,’ Joan replied.

  Then, and as he watched her, and as he lay with her, and as they sat and talked idly afterwards, the sun playing on them through the leaded panes of the bedroom window, he felt a deep need of her, and realisation that the need would become greater with the years. He was beginning to realise exactly what it would mean if the fraud became public knowledge. He found himself thinking in desperation that he must find a way of making sure that it did not. It wasn’t only the thought of disgrace, there was this awful danger of being parted from Joan.

  If she were surprised by his mood or by his passion, by his silences or by his trick of looking away from her, as if he could not bear to study her face more closely, she said nothing. When the telephone rang, about half past five, he started violently, and knew that she must have noticed it. He controlled himself, got up, and went to the telephone by the side of the bed.

  ‘Charles Ericson speaking.’

  If this was the police . . .

  ‘Hallo, Dad, you’re home early!’ It was Michael. ‘I say, four of us are making up a party for supper and a show in town tonight. I won’t be home till late. Knowing how worried Mum gets if I’m late, I thought I’d better tell you.’

  ‘Fine, Michael, thanks,’ Ericson said.

  ‘Everything’s all right, isn’t it?’ asked Michael. ‘I mean, you don’t mind. Er - it’s a mixed foursome, and . . .’

  ‘It includes Joanna Sparshott.’

  ‘Good lord ! How did you know?’

  Ericson chuckled.

  ‘If you’re going to be home much later than eleven o’clock you’d better ring again,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell your mother.’ He put the telephone down and forced himself to smile across at Joan. He was fiercely glad that they were to be alone for the evening, for he had a presentiment that any moment some awful eruption might blast them apart.

  About sixty miles away, in a small house on the outskirts of Brighton, without a view of the sea but with easy access to it, Tony Harrison breezed into the kitchen where his wife Pamela was ironing. He was always over-hearty with her; it was the only way he could keep up any pretence at being contented. Pamela remained something of an enigma to her husband; she had been for a long time. Years ago she had discovered that he could not keep his hands off other girls, and there had been a dreadful quarrel. Their first child had been on the way at the time, and he had been alarmed in case she carried out a threat to kill herself.

  She had not.

  But the child had seemed to reconcile her to his roaming habits, giving her an interest when he was away. Gradually they had developed a kind of double-life, Pam’s with the children and the home, his partly around the cars, the dance halls and the varied amusements of the big seaside resort. With him, Pam was almost docile, submissive whenever he wished - when he made no demands she knew quite well that there was another woman - and apparently content, provided she had enough money for her own and the children�
�s needs.

  For a few years, this had satisfied Tony Harrison. In fact, during the years when their two children, a boy and a girl, were growing up, he had been contented, being genuinely fond of the children, especially Timothy. The boy was now eighteen, and had announced quite calmly, only a few months ago, that he was going to join the Army. He was already a regular soldier, stationed in the north of England, and apparently happy enough.

  Then Harrison’s daughter Jenny had decided to go to work in London, and came to Brighton only for an occasional week-end.

  Now there was only Pamela to go home to, and Harrison not only began to hate going home to his spiritless wife and the quiet rooms, but he began to hate her. He persuaded himself that she had driven the children away from home, by making it so dull for them, the bitch, just as she had made it too dull for him. He felt bitter and vengeful, and there were times when he could have screamed at Pam, could have shouted out the hideous truth of his hate for her.

  There was a dreadful irony in the situation which Harrison did not fully comprehend. To keep his home and his children, he had first committed murder.

  It seemed so long ago, that he had almost forgotten what had screwed him up to the pitch of the crime, but twice since he had killed for much the same reason: a girl he had put in the family way had threatened to break up his home. He could remember one thing clearly: how cool and clear-headed he had been at the times when he had decided that this must not be allowed - for the children’s sake partly, but for his own, too. Pam would get the children if she divorced him, and he would have a crippling burden of maintenance to pay.