Playing for the Ashes (3 page)

He pushed through the drive’s gate. He noticed that it was off the latch and he said, “Gate, gate, gate,” just above a whisper to remind himself to mention it to her. The gate didn’t have a lock, of course, but there was no need to make it easier for anyone who might want to intrude on her privacy.

The cuckoo he’d pointed out to Her Majesty was calling again, from somewhere beyond the paddock that lay to the north of the cottage. The lark’s song had been joined by the twittering of redpolls perched in the conifers that edged the drive. A horse whinnied softly and a rooster crowed. It was, Martin thought, a glory of a day.

He lifted the top of the milk box. He started to place his delivery inside. He stopped. He frowned. Something wasn’t right.

Yesterday’s milk hadn’t been fetched. The bottle was warm. Whatever condensation had gathered on the glass and dripped to the bottle’s base had long since evaporated.

Well, he thought at first, she’s a
fli
ghty one, is Miss Gabriella. She’s gone off somewhere without leaving a note about her milk. He picked up yesterday’s bottle and tucked it under his arm. He’d stop delivering till he heard from her again.

He started back towards the gate, but then he remembered. The gate, the gate. Off the latch, he thought, and he felt a flutter of trepidation.

Slowly, he retraced his steps to the milk box. He stood in front of the garden gate. Her newspapers hadn’t been fetched either, he saw. Yesterday’s and today’s—one copy each of the
Daily Mail
and
The Times
—were in their respective holders. And when he squinted at the front door with its iron slot for the post, he saw a small triangle of white resting against the weathered oak and he thought, She’s not fetched the post either; she must be gone. But the curtains were opened at the windows, which didn’t seem practical or wise if she’d taken off. Not that Miss Gabriella appeared to be either practical or wise by nature, but she’d know enough not to leave the cottage so obviously unoccupied. Wouldn’t she?

He wasn’t certain. He looked over his shoulder at the garage, a brick and clapboard structure at the top of the drive. Best to check, he decided. He wouldn’t need to go in or even to open the door all the way. He’d just need a peek to make sure she’d gone. Then he’d take away the milk, he’d carry the newspapers off to the rubbish, and he’d be on his way. After a peek.

The garage was big enough for two cars, and the doors to it opened in the centre. They usually had a padlock, but Martin could see without a close inspection that the lock wasn’t currently being used. One of the doors stood open a good three inches. Martin went to the door and with an indrawn breath and a glance in the direction of the cottage, he eased it open one inch more and pressed his face to the crack.

He saw a glimmer of chrome as the light struck the bumper of the silver Aston Martin that he’d seen her spinning along the lanes in, a dozen times or more. Martin felt a peculiar buzzing in his head at the sight of it. He looked back at the cottage.

If the car was here and she was here, then why had she not taken in her milk?

Perhaps she’d been gone all day yesterday from early morning, he answered himself. Perhaps she’d got home late and forgotten about the milk altogether.

But what about the newspapers? Unlike the milk, they were in plain sight in their holders. She’d have had to walk right past them to go into the cottage. Why wouldn’t she have taken them with her?

Because she’d been shopping in London and her arms were filled with packages and she’d simply forgotten to fetch the newspapers later, once she’d set the packages down.

And the post? It would be lying right inside the front door. Why would she have left it there?

Because it was late, she was tired, she wanted to go to bed, and she hadn’t gone in the front door anyway. She’d gone in through the kitchen so she hadn’t seen the post. She had walked right by it and gone up to bed where even now she was still asleep.

Asleep, asleep. Sweet Gabriella. In a black silk gown with her hair curled against it and her lashes like buttercup filaments against her skin.

It wouldn’t hurt to check, Martin thought. Most definitely, it wouldn’t hurt to check. She wouldn’t be miffed. That wasn’t her way. She’d be touched that he thought of her, a woman alone out here in the country without a man to see to her welfare. She’d likely ask him in.

He settled his shoulders, took the newspapers, and pushed open the gate. He made his way along the path. The sun hadn’t struck this part of the garden yet, so the dew still lay like a beaded shawl on the bricks and the lawn. Against both sides of the old front door, lavender and wallflowers were planted. Buds on the first sent up a sharp fragrance. Flowers on the second nodded with the weight of the morning’s moisture.

Martin reached for the bell-pull and heard its jangle just inside the door. He waited for the sound of her footsteps or her voice calling out or the whirl and clank of the key in the lock. But none of that happened.

Perhaps, he thought, she was having her bath, or perhaps she was in the kitchen where, perhaps again, she couldn’t hear the bell. It would be wise to check.

He did so, going round to thump on the back door and wondering how people managed to use it without knocking themselves senseless on the lintel, which hung only
fiv
e feet from the ground. Which then made him think…Could she have been in a rush to get in or get out? Could she have rendered her sweet self unconscious? There was neither answer nor movement behind the white panels. Could she be lying this very moment on the cold kitchen floor, waiting for someone to find her?

To the right of the door, beneath an arbour, a casement window looked into the kitchen. And Martin looked into the window. But he couldn’t see anything beyond a small linen-covered table, the work top, the Aga, the sink, and the closed door to the dining room. He’d have to find another window. And one preferably on this side of the house because he was feeling decidedly uneasy about peering through the windows like a Peeping Tom. It wouldn’t do to be seen from the road. God alone knew what it would do to business if someone drove by and saw Martin Snell, milkman and monarchist, having a peek where he oughtn’t.

He had to climb through a
flo
wer-bed to get to the dining room window on this same side of the house. He did his best not to trample the violets. He squeezed behind a lilac bush and gained the glass.

Odd, he thought. He couldn’t see through it. He could see the shape of curtains against it, open like the others, but nothing more. It seemed to be dirty, filthy in fact, which was even stranger because the kitchen window had been clean as brook water and the cottage itself was as white as a lamb. He rubbed his
fin
gers against the glass. Strangest of all. The glass wasn’t dirty. At least, not on the outside.

Something jangled in his mind, some sort of warning that he couldn’t identify. It sounded like a flock of snow buntings in
fli
ght, soft then loud then louder again. The noise in his head made his arms feel weak.

He climbed out of the flower bed. He retraced his steps. He tried the back door. Locked. He hurried to the front door. Locked as well. He strode round the south side of the house where wisteria grew against the exposed black timbers. He turned the corner and made his way along the flagstone path that bordered the structure’s west wall. At the far end, he found the other dining room window.

This one wasn’t dirty, either outside or in. He grasped onto its sill. He took a breath. He looked.

Everything seemed normal upon a first glance. The burltopped dining table, the chairs surrounding it, the open
fir
eplace with its iron fireback and its copper bedwarmers hanging upon the bricks. Everything looked fine. The pine dresser held dishes, an antique washstand displayed the makings of drinks. To one side of the fireplace stood a heavy armchair and across the room from it, at the foot of the stairs the matching armchair—

Martin tightened his fingers against the window-sill. He felt a splinter dig into his palm. He said, “Oh Majesty Majesty Gabriel-la Miss Miss,” and plunged one hand frantically into his pocket, looking in vain for something that he could use to jemmy the casement open. All the time his eyes were fixed on that chair.

It stood at an angle at the foot of the stairs, facing into the dining room. One corner of it abutted the wall underneath the window that had been too dirty to look through. Only now Martin saw from his position on the other side of the house that the window wasn’t dirty at all in the conventional sense. Instead, it was stained black from smoke: smoke that had risen in an ugly dense cloud from the wing-back chair, smoke that had risen in the shape of a tornado that blackened the window, blackened the curtains, blackened the wall, smoke that left its mark on the stairway as it was sucked upwards towards the bedroom where even now Miss Gabriella, Miss Sweet Gabriella…

Martin shoved himself away from the window. He ran across the lawn. He clambered over the wall. He dashed down the footpath in the direction of the spring.

It was shortly after noon when Detective Inspector Isabelle Ardery
fir
st saw Celandine Cottage. The sun was high in the sky, casting small pools of shadow at the base of the
fir
trees that lined the drive. This had been sealed off with yellow police tape. One panda car, a red Sierra, and a blue and white milk-
flo
at were lined up on the lane.

She parked behind the milk-float and surveyed the area, feeling grim despite her initial pleasure at being called out on another case so soon. For information gathering, the location didn’t look promising. There were several houses farther along the lane, timber-framed with peg-tiled roofs like the cottage in which the
fir
e had occurred, but they were each surrounded with enough land to give them quiet and privacy. So if the fire in question turned out to be arson—as was suggested by the words
questionable ignition
scrawled at the bottom of the note Ardery had received from her chief constable not an hour ago—it might prove unlikely that any of the neighbours had heard or seen someone or something suspicious.

With her collection kit in hand, she ducked under the tape and swung open the gate at the end of the drive. Across a paddock to the east where a bay mare was grazing, half a dozen onlookers leaned against a split chestnut fence. She could hear their murmured speculation as she walked up the drive. Yes, indeed, she told them mentally as she passed through a smaller gate into the garden, a woman investigator, even for a fire. Welcome to the waning years of our century.

“Inspector Ardery?” It was a female voice. Isabelle turned to see another woman waiting on the brick path that led in two directions: to the front door and round towards the back of the house. She’d apparently come from this latter direction. “DS Coffman,” she said cheerfully. “Greater Springburn CID.”

Isabelle joined her. She offered her hand.

Coffman said, “The guv’s not here at the moment. He rode with the body to Pembury Hospital.”

Isabelle frowned at this oddity. Greater Springburn’s chief superintendent had been the one to request her presence in the
fir
st place. It was a breach of police etiquette for him to leave the site before her arrival. “The hospital?” she asked. “Have you no medical examiner to accompany the body?”

Coffman gave her eyes a quick rise heavenward. “Oh, he was here as well, graciously assuring us that the corpse was dead. But there’s to be a news conference when they i.d. the victim, and the guv loves that stuff. Give him a microphone, five minutes of your time, and he does a fairly decent John Thaw.”

“Who’s still here, then?”

“Couple of probationary DCs getting their first chance to suss things out. And the bloke who discovered the mess. Snell, he’s called.”

“What about the
fir
e brigade?”

“They’ve been and gone. Snell phoned emergency from next door, house across from the spring. Emergency sent the
fir
e team.”

“And?”

Coffman smiled. “Luck for your side. Once they got in, they could see the
fir
e’d been out for hours. They didn’t touch a thing. They just phoned CID and waited till we got here.”

That fact, at least, was a blessing. One of the biggest difficulties in arson investigation was the necessary existence of the
fir
e brigade. They were trained to two tasks: saving lives and extinguishing fires. Intent upon that, more often than not they axed down doors, flooded rooms, collapsed ceilings, and in the process obliterated evidence.

Isabelle ran her gaze over the building. She said, “All right. I’ll take a moment out here,
fir
st.”

“Shall I—”

“Alone, please.”

Coffman said, “Quite. I’ll leave you to it,” and strode off towards the back of the house.

She paused at the northeast corner of the building, turning back and pushing a curl of oak-coloured hair from her face. “The hot spot’s this way when you’re ready,” she said. She began to raise an index finger in comradely salute, apparently thought better of it, and disappeared round the side of the house.