Smoke Alarm (3 page)

She teased him. He liked nothing better than for her to look keen – and curious – then dangle her on a string. ‘Really,' she exclaimed, her face deliberately bland, ‘so early? I wonder what that can be about.'

‘There's bin a fire in the village,' he announced grandly. ‘A house fire.'

‘Oh, dear.' Martha's thought was inevitable – that as she was a coroner this house fire must have proved fatal to someone. Jericho's next words confirmed her suspicion.

‘People's missin',' he continued, shaking his straggly grey locks.

‘Burnt? In the house fire? How many?'

‘They don't know yet. It's still too hot in there and unsafe.' Jericho couldn't resist embellishing the tale. ‘Beams fallin' in around their heads. Broken glass. Poisonous gasses and the like.' He paused, allowing the graphic description to sink in before adding in something of an anticlimax, ‘Inspector Randall said he'd be over some time this morning to discuss it with you. He wonders if you'll be wantin' to visit the scene of the dreadful fire.'

‘Yes, yes, of course,' Martha responded quickly. She felt vaguely ashamed now of having treated Jericho with such levity when the news was so grim. She couldn't rid herself of the image of a twisted, blackened corpse. There was something about the destruction of a person by fire that conjured up images of screaming, burning martyrs. She shivered. She wondered sometimes where this image, so physically painful, clear and visual, had come from.

Then she remembered.

‘Coffee
and
chocolate biscuits are on your desk, Mrs Gunn.'

She looked at Jericho curiously. Did he know she had this particular horror of fire? Chocolate biscuits were usually the portent of a particularly trying day. And this one had barely begun. ‘Thank you, Jericho.'

DI Alex Randall arrived at a minute past eleven, when she was on her second cup of coffee, but had resisted the biscuits even though they were
white
chocolate – her
absolute
favourite. Jericho announced the detective over the internal phone, his voice holding a tinge of resentment. He considered Martha his responsibility – no one else's. Nevertheless, if someone had to intrude the inner sanctum of the coroner's office, he grudgingly told his friends, ‘it may as well be Detective Randall as anyone else'.

Jericho stood in the doorway peering nosily behind the inspector, who greeted Martha with a grim smile. ‘Morning, Martha. Sorry to be the bringer of such dismal news.'

‘Hello, Alex,' Martha replied, looking up from the pile of letters she was checking very carefully, correcting and signing. Her new typist was, she suspected, dyslexic and adept at ignoring spellcheck. ‘Come in. Close the door behind you.' She could see her assistant's inquisitive face peering round, almost until the door clicked shut.

Alex Randall crossed the room in three long strides, a tall, spare figure in his early forties with irregular, craggy features, a large hooked nose and piercing hazel eyes beneath thick eyebrows, which were now almost meeting in the middle as he frowned. He was a valued colleague who was fast becoming almost a personal friend. Almost. He kept himself very private.

‘Sit down, Alex,' she invited. ‘You'd better fill me in. Jericho tells me there's been a house fire and I assume it was fatal or you wouldn't be here.'

The detective gave a terse nod but remained standing. ‘A neighbour sounded the alarm at a little after eleven thirty last night,' he said, beginning slowly, but his eyes looked troubled.

‘Go on.'

‘It's a family home in Melverley. Melverley Grange.'

Why was he finding it so difficult? Martha wondered. He was a detective inspector – no stranger to violent death and tragedy. She watched him, puzzled.

‘Christie and Nigel Barton, a well-known couple in their early forties, lived there with two teenage children. And Nigel Barton's elderly father, William, lived with them. He had Alzheimer's.'

She waited for him to continue.

‘Some time late last night fire broke out in the two front rooms downstairs, quickly spreading to the upstairs bedrooms.'

‘Two front rooms?'

‘You miss nothing.'

‘It's a big property?'

Alex Randall nodded. ‘A lovely old house. As you can imagine the scene is awful this morning, in broad daylight.' He folded his long frame into the wing armchair and kept his eye on Martha. ‘There's something about fires,' he mused. ‘In the night they're dramatic, exciting, all flashing blue lights and activity.'

‘Careful, Alex,' she said, smiling. ‘You're beginning to sound like an arsonist.'

Alex grimaced and continued. ‘But in the daylight you see the home it once was so completely destroyed. Blackened timbers, soot-stained curtains, broken windows, wrecked furniture.' He met her eyes. ‘All the damage in its ugly starkness.'

She stayed silent. He had seen this. She had not.

DI Randall leaned right back in the chair and half-closed his eyes. ‘Baldly, Martha,' he must have realized she was watching him because he gave her the ghost of a smile, ‘the facts are this: the emergency services took the call at 11.38 p.m. from a Mrs Lissimore, a neighbour, who was returning home after a night at Theatre Severn. The play ended at eleven p.m. and she had driven home. As she turned into the road she saw smoke and flames coming out of a downstairs window. She dialled nine-nine-nine from her mobile phone. By the time the fire services arrived, four minutes later, the blaze had taken hold, engulfing the property. They were able to gain access but only to the rear without risk to life.' Another ghost of a smile. ‘At least, the
firemen
didn't gain access. They were too well trained and sensible. It was one of our PCs. Gethin Roberts, everybody's hero.'

Martha looked at him warmly. ‘I seem to have heard that name before, Alex.'

‘He does seem to have a habit of stumbling right into things.' Alex returned her smile before continuing. ‘As I said, a family lives – lived – there. Nigel Barton and his wife, Christie, their fifteen-year-old daughter, Adelaide, their son, Jude, aged fourteen and Nigel Barton's father, William. Mr William Barton was in his late eighties and has Alzheimer's.' Alex hesitated, as though he was on the point of saying something. Martha waited but Randall didn't enlarge. It could wait, she decided, knowing Alex's habit of holding information back until he was certain it was true. He disliked conjecture.

‘Nigel Barton was away from home, in York. He supplies shops with window advertising. He's worth quite a lot of money. The house is – was – lovely.'

She felt like prompting him again. She wanted him to tell her quickly. Get it over with. Who had died? Had anyone survived? Which of these unfortunate people had been burnt alive? But she held her tongue and waited. And got her answer.

‘Mrs Barton, William Barton and Adelaide are all unaccounted for.'

‘And the son, Jude?'

‘Gethin Roberts,' DI Randall couldn't quite suppress a shadow of amusement, ‘quite against any advice, broke in through the back door and found him in the kitchen near the door. Jude Barton has ten per cent burns, mainly on his hands and arms.' He met her eyes. ‘It's always puzzled me,' he said. ‘How do they calculate the percentage?'

‘It's the rule of nines,' she supplied, almost absently.

‘That doesn't take me much further,' Alex responded with a tinge of another smile.

‘They divide the body into eleven areas, head, right arm, left arm and so on. Each one represents nine per cent. That's how they calculate the percentage of burns.'

‘Oh,' he said, looking a little disappointed. ‘Simple when you know how.'

She gave a short laugh. ‘Then I shouldn't have explained.'

Randall returned to his story. ‘The fire services haven't been able to do a thorough search of the house yet,' he said. ‘It isn't safe. So we can't confirm exactly what happened but it already appears,' he said carefully, ‘that there are troubling features.' His frown deepened so his eyes seemed to sink further into his face. Then he gathered himself together. ‘Basically,' he said, and she could almost anticipate his next words, ‘accelerants were used.'

‘Poured in through the letterbox?'

His frown deepened. ‘No. You'd have to look at the house to understand. It has a huge hall with little furniture and stone walls. Any accelerant poured through the letterbox might well have had little effect.'

‘I see.'

‘One of the downstairs windows had been forced. We think that the arsonist entered the house through the window. It appears that petrol was poured in a number of places but the fire started in the downstairs lounge. Jude Barton has drawn us a plan of the house. The seat of the fire was right beneath Mrs Barton's bedroom.'

Without allowing her any time to absorb this he continued: ‘The old man had a bedroom and a bathroom on the first floor, as did the daughter, Adelaide, and Christie herself. All three, it would appear, died in the fire. Jude, the son, had rooms on the top floor.'

Martha narrowed her eyes. ‘And he survived?'

Randall nodded.

‘How?'

‘Naturally he's shocked and sedated and very upset but he claims he was awake and smelt the smoke. He says he tried to get down the staircase but the smoke and flames made it impassable. Their cleaner, a lady called June Morrison, rang this morning and has been very helpful with further information about both the house and the family. The top floor was originally the servants' quarters and had a separate staircase which is very narrow and has a stout pitch pine door which opens on to the first-floor landing and is usually kept closed. It was probably this that saved Jude's life – it kept the smoke out of his room. That and, because of the narrowness of the staircase, he says he kept a rope ladder in his bedroom. He climbed down the back of the building on this, anchored to a metal ring which was already attached to the wall.'

‘So how did he get the burns?'

‘He says he tried to get to his mother and sister, entering through the back door into the kitchen, but when he opened the door it was full of smoke. Roberts dragged him out.' His mouth twisted. ‘I can't decide whether to discipline him or give him an award.'

Martha nodded. ‘So it appears that the three people on the first floor all died, while Nigel Barton was away. And Jude? How is he?'

‘He'll be OK. Shocked but the hospital have him stabilized on oxygen and a drip and say he'll be OK. They may transfer him later for surgery on his hands to one of the burns centres, probably Birmingham or Stoke, but for now he stays where he is at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. He's fully conscious, obviously able to give us a statement.'

Martha nodded. And again waited. Something else was troubling Alex Randall. But DI Randall was a cautious man who tended to check his concerns before he voiced them. She had come to realize that about him in the years they had worked together.

He drew in a deep breath, as though about to dive off a high board. ‘One of the fire officers managed to gain preliminary access to the building this morning. Apparently, according to him, the doors to the rooms of Mrs Barton and Adelaide appeared to be locked. The body of a woman was found lying near the door of Mrs Barton's room. We're assuming this is Mrs Christie Barton. Another body was found, again behind a locked door, underneath the bedclothes. It appears that both died from smoke inhalation. Of course we'll have to wait for the post-mortem but we can be fairly sure that these are the bodies of Christie and Adelaide.'

Martha felt a shiver. ‘Why were there locks on the bedroom doors?'

‘According to Jude his family were very security conscious. All the internal doors had locks and when the house was empty the rooms were locked in case anyone broke in through a bedroom window.' He leaned forward. ‘The two main downstairs rooms both had bay windows which did not extend to the first floor. That meant that there were small balconies outside the bedroom windows, though with flames shooting up from below this might not have been a possible escape route.'

Martha needed a few seconds to digest this information. ‘Just a minute, Alex,' she said, ‘are you telling me not only that this fire was
deliberately
started but also that three people were locked in their rooms to prevent their escape?'

Randall looked miserable. ‘Two. The old man's body was found on the landing,' he said heavily, not meeting her eyes.

Again Martha did not quite digest the information. When she did she looked at him.

He read her gaze. ‘We don't know yet.'

‘But it's a murder enquiry.'

‘It will be a major police investigation,' he finished. ‘But . . .'

‘But what? Do the family have any enemies?'

‘Not that we know of yet.'

‘There's something more that you don't like to say, Alex, even to me, isn't there?'

At last he met her eyes. ‘Six months ago,' he said slowly, ‘according to June Morrison, there was a fire at the Barton's house. It apparently started in the old man's room. He was confused, Martha. He said he'd been cold and set fire to some newspapers to get some warmth. Mrs Barton smelt the smoke and raised the alarm. On that occasion there wasn't a great deal of damage and the insurance company paid up. But the family were careful not to let him have lighters or matches. It is possible,' he continued, ‘that he started this fire and possibly accidentally locked the doors. He may have thought he was helping. Who knows? He was very confused.'

‘There's a great deal of difference between a confused old man starting a fire in his bedroom and deliberately igniting petrol and locking your daughter-in-law and granddaughter in their bedrooms to make sure they can't get out.'

‘I know,' he said shortly. ‘Mrs Morrison also said that on a couple of occasions Mr William Barton was violent towards his daughter-in-law.'