No Cooperation from the Cat (13 page)

“Put the candle on the high shelf,” I said, hoping that would place it far enough away to throw a faint radiance, but keep that dreadful scent from mixing in with any cooking smells. “Thank heaven you pulled out that camping stove. The gas rings will give us some light as well as cook our risotto.”

“I’m not sure we ought to open the freezer door if the power is going to be off for any length of time.” Martha was fretting over trifles again.

“Relax, dear,” I told her. “I took out a packet of peas and a pound of mince before the lights went out. It won’t be thawed yet, but we can use the old trick of tossing the block of mince into a hot frying pan and scraping off bits as they cook. If we cook the rice separately the usual way and add the peas, then combine it with the cooked mince and throw in that tin of tomatoes and perhaps any herbs you have lying around—presto! We’ve got ourselves a nice big kettle of risotto.”

“But is that really risotto?” Jocasta frowned. “Or would it be Spanish rice?”

“Who cares? It will be a good hearty hot meal. Serve it with a bottle of red wine—”

“Two bottles,” Evangeline corrected. “Possibly three.”

“On a night like this, why not?” I agreed.

“Ah—” Nigel remembered his manners and made a feint towards departure. “Since everyone is all right, perhaps I should—”

“Sit down!” Evangeline ordered. “You’re not walking down all those stairs. We don’t want you killing yourself! Martha is taking the spare room and you can doss down on one of the sofas in the living room.”

“Ah!” Nigel sank back in his chair with relief. “If you’re quite sure—”

“There’s plenty of food,” I assured him. More than he had down in his flat, I was willing to bet—and he had no way of cooking that.

“Furthermore—” I added. A sop to male vanity never goes amiss. “It’s going to be a long night and we’d all feel much safer if you were here with us.”

“Ah! Right! Of course!” Nigel nodded sagely. “Might still be an emergency before the night is over. Of course, you want a man around.”

Evangeline snorted, but didn’t say anything.

I wondered if she had the same mental image that had occurred to me: Nigel, with Evangeline under one arm and me under the other, staggering down fourteen—no, twenty-eight—flights of stairs. And then staggering up again to rescue Martha and Jocasta.

I coughed to disguise the bubble of laughter that threatened to break loose and bent to scraping the cooked mince off the frozen slab, then turning it over to cook another layer. Something brushed my ankles, then twined around them. Cho-Cho had caught the scent of cooking and rejoined the party.

And it was a party—or turned into one. Evangeline opened the first bottle of Sangiovese and poured it into our glasses for sipping while the meal was cooking. Jocasta tended the rice. I indicated the thawing packet of peas and she nodded and put them close to add when the rice was nearly done. Martha opened the tin of tomatoes and found another one, plus some herbs, then began setting the table.

The light from the gas hobs was brighter than the candle glow—and a lot warmer. Cho-Cho purred loudly with an occasional chirrup to remind us she was there. Nigel beamed impartially on us all.

It might have been a potluck, picnic-style meal, but it was delicious. The second bottle of Sangiovese had us nicely mellow and Evangeline trotted out some of her best anecdotes, while Nigel filled us in on the local gossip. Warm enough, well fed, and with the curious intimacy bestowed by the storm closing us in, we knew we were a lot better off than many people this night—loss of electricity notwithstanding. There were worse fates out there in the storm.

I was stifling a yawn and thinking of snuggling into the cocoon of blankets waiting in my bedroom when I saw Evangeline’s jaw stiffen against a yawn and knew that she was ready to call it a night, too.

“I’ll get you a pillow and a blanket,” Jocasta said to Nigel. “Martha, your room is already made up.”

“I’ll say good night then.” I stooped and gathered up Cho-Cho. “I hope everyone sleeps well through all this noise. This rain is—”

A different noise cut me off. A sharp shrill alarm bell drowning out all other sound, even the drumming downpour.

“The fire alarm!” Jocasta shrieked. “Some of that lightning hit us! The building is on fire!”

Nigel’s face froze, a pale green tinge appeared in front of his ears and travelled up towards his eyebrows and down to his chin.

Green around the gills. I hadn’t seen that reaction in years, not since a couple of the most bullying directors in the industry had terrified their last victims. I knew Nigel had suddenly shared my nightmare vision of him trying to shepherd us all down those endless stairs.

There was a pause, then another burst of unbearable sound. Cho-Cho squirmed in my arms and I tightened my hold on her. She wasn’t going to run away and hide; we were going to leave together.

“Get your coats on!” Martha ordered. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“No, no, it’s all right.” Nigel’s face and complexion began to return to normal. “There’s no fire. That’s the emergency alarm bell for the lift. Someone’s trapped in the lift.”

Chapter Thirteen

I went limp with relief. Cho-Cho dropped to the floor and fled to the sanctuary of our bedroom. I only wished I could follow her, but …

The bell shrilled again, more faintly this time

“Ah! Emergency standby power’s running down,” Nigel diagnosed. “Only enough for a few blasts when the main supply isn’t working.”

That settled to his satisfaction, he turned to Jocasta. “Let me help you with that.” He reached for the blanket.

“Those poor people!” Martha said. “We just can’t stand here—”

“We’ve got to
do
something!” Martha started forward.

“Nothing we can do,” Nigel said. “Not tonight. Not until the electricity comes back on. Whenever that is.”

“Morning?” Jocasta sounded frightened. “Surely in the morning we’ll wake up and find everything working again.”

The persistent drumming of rain on the roof overhead mocked that hope. And morning was a long time away—especially if you were suspended in space in a small dark box. I hoped whoever was in there wasn’t claustrophobic.

“Wouldn’t count on that,” Nigel said. “Too much of London is out and who knows what’s happening in the rest of the country. If the national grid has blown—” He shrugged. “It’s anyone’s guess how long it will take to get back to normal.”

“And, meanwhile, those poor people are going to stay trapped in the lift?” Martha was horrified.

“Ah! Well, when they get the time, the fire department will come and wind the lift down to the ground floor manually,” Nigel said knowledgeably. Too knowledgeably.

“You seem well acquainted with the procedure.” Evangeline had spotted this, too. “Has this happened before?”

“Ah! Well … once or twice. But half the city wasn’t knocked out then. Just a little local difficulty. Just here, in fact. The workmen weren’t very…” He let the thought trail off.

Jasper had hired the cheapest available, I translated. And an incompetent group of cowboys had messed up the wiring.

“Anyway,” he said, “the firemen were pretty prompt and sorted things out. But we’ll be fairly low on the list for rescue here. I mean, it’s not as though a family with children were marooned in a car with the water rising around them.”

“Children!” I gasped, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. There was no danger at all that my grandchildren might have been out in this. Only … who
was
in the lift?

“Do you know who’s in the lift?” Evangeline was having the same thought.

“Ah! No, not really. I could guess, though.”

“Teddy.” I could guess, too. No wonder Nigel wasn’t too concerned.

“Well, I’m going to find out!” Martha swept past us and down the hallway. She was out the door before we pulled ourselves together enough to follow her.

She had her ear against the doors to the lift when we reached her. Faint cries for help could now be heard. In more than one voice. But I couldn’t identify the voices.

“Hello, down there!” she called. “Where are you?”

“In the lift,” came a plaintive reply.

“I know that!” she snapped. “I mean, what floor are you at?”

“Don’t know…”

“Can’t see … it’s too dark…”

“Between floors, I think…”

The voices responded, a faintly hysterical note of relief in them. At last, someone knew they were there.

“They can’t be very far away.” Martha tugged at the sliding doors, trying to pry them open. “We wouldn’t be able to hear them so clearly if they were.”

“Don’t
do
that!” I caught her hands and pulled her back roughly. Perhaps too roughly, but I had a terrifying vision of the doors giving way suddenly and her tumbling through them and plunging down the lift shaft to sprawl, broken and bleeding, on the roof of the lift. And not a thing we could do to help her.

“Really, Mother!” Martha rubbed her wrists as I released her. “That was unnecessary.”

“Ah, no! No, she’s right,” Nigel said. “Those doors are unreliable. They might spring open suddenly. It’s been known to happen.”

The candlelight flickered and flared, then flickered again. The candle was burning down rapidly. We were in danger of losing what faint light we had.

“Hello…? Hello…? Are you still there?” The voice seemed to echo in the distance. “Is anyone going to get us out of here?”

“Good question,” Evangeline said. “Anyone want to answer it?”

The candlelight flickered and flared some more. I glanced at it nervously and discovered that it was actually a fairly fresh candle, not guttering out at all. The effect was caused by Jocasta’s twitching.

“Hello … hello … has everyone gone and abandoned us?”

“They
don’t
sound too far away,” Nigel admitted. “Let’s just see. If we can.” He advanced on the doors.

“So it’s all right for you to fool around with those doors,” Martha said bitterly. “But not for me.”

“Ah! But I know what I’m doing.” He dropped to his knees and fumbled with some sort of concealed latch near the floor.

The lower third of the door slid apart slowly, revealing that something I had thought was just fancy trim actually concealed the divide.

“I say, you chaps—” he called, leaning into the shaft cautiously. “Any idea at all where you might be?”

“Tom says he noticed that we’d passed the tenth floor”—the furious snarl couldn’t belong to anyone but Mick—“just before the lights went out and we stopped.” He almost choked in his fury. What a situation for a troubleshooter—hopelessly frustrated by a trouble he couldn’t shoot.

“Ah!” Nigel withdrew from the shaft and turned to us.

“They’re somewhere between the eleventh and twelfth floors, from the sound of it, I’d say.”

“That’s quite close.” Martha pushed him aside and knelt to take his place.

“Hello—” she called. “Are you all right? How long have you been there?”

“Days … weeks … months…” a plaintive voice answered. “We’re starving—”

“I knew Teddy was here!” I’d felt it all along and now I knew for sure. That was his voice.

“Is there enough air?” Always practical, my Martha. Foodie, she might be, but she realised that air came first. Then water. “Are you thirsty?”

“We’ll survive,” a dry voice answered. “Plenty of air. We opened a panel in the roof. Thought it was an escape hatch, but it’s not big enough. It let a lot more air in, though.”

“What time is it?” Tom’s voice asked. “How long have we been in here?”

“Weeks … months…” Teddy bleated.

“Oh, belt up!” The other two voices spoke as one. Teddy was having his usual effect on people. Even more so, if you were shut up in a small space with him for hours. The thought made me wince.

“I’ll make some sandwiches,” Martha said. “If we wrap them well and lower them onto the roof, do you think you can get them in through that hatch?”

“We’ll manage—”

“No! No!” Teddy was cracking up. “We can’t stay here! Never mind sandwiches—get us out of here!”

“Sorry, old chap.” Nigel took over, a new authoritative note in his voice. “No can do. Power’s out all over town. Lightning strikes. Flooding. Emergency services at full stretch. You’re in the warm and dry. You won’t rate high on their priority list.”

“No! No! There must be something—”

“Belt up or I’ll scrag you!” Teddy wasn’t the only one losing it.

“Steady on,” the other one said. “Count your blessings. At least we’re only stuck in a lift with him. Imagine if he’d been on the expedition.”

“Hah!” There was an explosive snort. “He wouldn’t have lasted twenty-four hours!”

“That long, you think?”

“Stop talking about me as though I weren’t here!” It was perilously close to a shriek.

“Wishful thinking—”

“I’d better go and start those sandwiches,” Jocasta said. “They’ll all feel better when they get something to eat.”

She started away, but I caught her arm and took the candle from her. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

“We need this more than you do,” I said. “You’ve got more in the kitchen. And the light from the gas stove.”

“You don’t need to stay here, Mother.” Martha urged me along. “You’ll be more help in the kitchen right now.”

“I suppose so.” She was right, as she so often was. “But we’d better let them know.” I stooped to the opening and called down:

“We’re organising some food now. We’ll be back soon.”

“No! No!” Teddy’s anguished wail drifted up to me. “Don’t go! Don’t leave us! Don’t—
Owwww
!”

“Teddy, are you all right?”

“Come on—” Evangeline tugged at my arm. “You don’t want to know. There’s nothing you can do, anyway.”

She led me to the kitchen saying, “Be with you in a minute” to the others as we passed through.

“Right,” Martha answered absently, groping in the fridge to discover what she could find.

“I don’t want to get their hopes up,” Evangeline said as we went into her room. “But I’ve just remembered our reading book lights. I’m pretty sure there’s still some life in my batteries. How about yours?”

“I think so.” I should have thought of that myself. When you’re travelling, your own reading light and a paperback with decent-sized print is essential for those unexpected airport delays and the time aboard when the lights go down for sleeping.