Chapter 33

Daly was moving infernally slowly, casting his eyes over anyone they encountered as though trying to ascertain at a glance whether they were up to no good. Monsarrat had to restrain himself several times from urging the man to greater speed. But he feared the police superintendent would abandon the exercise entirely if he brought any further pressure to bear.

‘I don’t know what you expect to find at the Nelson house, Monsarrat,’ Daly said at one point. ‘But I can assure you I expect a scene of domestic tranquility, which is likely to be the last such scene you are privileged to witness for quite some time.’

Monsarrat, in truth, didn’t know what he expected to find either. And he was caught, now, between hoping that he had misinterpreted the situation, and praying he hadn’t. The former situation might leave Mrs Mulrooney without an employer, but the latter might leave her without a life.

Perhaps it was the heat, but it did seem to Monsarrat that Daly’s stride was shortening, his pace slowing, with each passing minute. Then the man stopped altogether, before breaking into a run.

And when Monsarrat followed the superintendent’s gaze, he began to run too – towards the slight rise where the Nelson household commanded views of the town, and from where, now, a column of smoke rose into the air.

*  *  *

It didn’t take long, not nearly as long as she had hoped.

The hot, dry air did nothing to contain the flames, and the wind stoked them until, within minutes, wisps of smoke began curling under the study door. Hannah had tried rattling and pulling at the door, of course. A sturdy little lock, just as Rebecca had promised.

She checked that the windows were indeed painted shut. When she drew aside the heavy green drapes, she saw Rebecca Nelson. The woman was several paces away from the house. She held a flaming branch, which she was using to set light to piles of kindling placed at intervals around the house.

She looked up, saw Hannah and smiled. An approving smile: good, you’re wearing the gift I gave you.

I’m not going to die with this cursed thing on my throat, Hannah thought. So, making sure Rebecca could see her, she took the necklace off, held it up, and then very deliberately threw it on the floor.

Rebecca’s face clouded, her brows drew together like a petulant child’s and she glared at Hannah, clearly offended that such a present should be tossed aside so casually, probably angry that it would not be found close enough to the ashes to allow a definite link to be made between the necklace and the body.

But it won’t be, will it, Hannah said to herself. You’ve no intention of dying today, surely? You’ve survived far worse. Fine words, of course. But what, she asked herself, do you expect me to do about it?

Rebecca had turned on her heel and walked off, setting light to the kindling as she went, and probably thinking that would be the last she would see of the Irishwoman.

Maybe, Hannah thought, the heat was making the lock slightly more malleable? When she reached her hand out to it, however, she snatched it back immediately. It was much too hot to touch and when she placed her palm against the timbers of the door, they too were radiating heat.

The floor. It would buy her a few more breaths, hopefully enough to think of something to do.

But the fire had no intention of waiting for Hannah to gather her wits. As she dropped to the ground to avoid the worst of the smoke and crawled towards the window, dragging herself up on the sill to look out, the flames had already closed ranks and consumed the careful topiary and minutely tended flowers. A shame, she thought. Some poor gardener had worked day after day on those, and in an instant they were ashes.

As you will be soon, if you don’t think of something.

The noise was already beginning to build, a roar gathering in the throat of the fire; the door was beginning to blacken. Yet, thought Hannah, would you not think, with all of that lovely vegetation and newly laid kindling out there waiting to be consumed, the flames would have marched right up to the window by now?

She closed her eyes. Pictured herself walking from the kitchen, where she’d been sent to get the water for Helen. The cup, brought to the pump, to the dripstone. And the pump leaking dreadfully, causing a small rivulet of water to sneak around the side of the house towards the outer wall of the study … And now, in her mind, she came back through the house, past the study. She recalled glancing in, seeing David Nelson, staring at that bronze dog … The bronze dog that even now sat on the desk, waiting to be melted.

You won’t melt today, she said to it. You might not look quite as pretty when I am finished with you, though. She picked it up, hefted it. It was even heavier than she had anticipated, but not too heavy – and almost but not quite too hot to touch – to propel it towards the window, whose frames were now blistering.

*  *  *

The house was fully alight by the time Monsarrat and Daly got near to it, breaching a bank of smoke which instantly turned the bright day into dusk.

The men pushed on through the unnatural nightfall, through the embers which studded the gloom and which, once or twice, settled on Monsarrat’s cheek and would have burrowed in if he had not brushed them away.

He was blinking fiercely now, the heat burning his eyes as he got close enough to see the state of the place. One side of the building sagged: its weakened timbers had collapsed under their own weight. The rumble from the burning house was echoed suddenly by a low, vibrating boom from a nearby eucalyptus. Its sap had vaporised, expanding in the heat, pushing outwards until the tree could no longer hold it, sending large splinters of wood twirling through the air. One of these found a home in the upper arm of the superintendent, who had matched Monsarrat step for step through the smoke. Daly plucked it out as though brushing some dust off his jacket.

‘Well, Monsarrat,’ he called above the fire. ‘I hold out little hope for anyone inside. I am sorry.’

His voice was odd now, an unnatural rasp, lacking any moisture to give it depth or resonance.

‘Little hope, you said, sir,’ Monsarrat yelled back. His own voice sounded no better, and the scalding air he breathed made his throat feel blistered and his lungs labour under its weight. ‘Little hope. Not none.’

He ran to the side, skirting the perimeter of the worst of the blaze, looking for a way in, a way out, any weakness in the fire’s armour which might help him.

What he found was Grogan.

The man was striding purposefully, seeming unaffected by the ember-strewn air, as though he was expecting Monsarrat. As though he was coming to meet him.

Odd to see Grogan here, walking towards him as though he was starting up the road to collect Hannah. And this was, Monsarrat thought, the man who had collected Hannah, brought her here, where he very much feared she remained.

Grogan was saying something, but the scream of flames and the now-regular pop of the trees were drowning it out. Then he got close enough to hear.

‘Stay away! Mrs Nelson’s orders – no quarrel with you. Go back, or I am bound to stop you.’

‘I couldn’t care less about Mrs Nelson’s orders!’

Monsarrat stepped to the side, gathering pace as quickly as he could, trying to run around the man. Grogan was bigger, though, and had anticipated resistance. He sped up too, and more quickly than Monsarrat. He propelled himself towards the clerk, drawing back his fist as he ran, and then shooting it forwards to connect with Monsarrat’s jaw.

The blow threw back Monsarrat’s head and knocked him down. For a moment he could see small fragments of blue above the smoke. His teeth jammed together, snipping off a small part of the side of his tongue, and his mouth filled with blood, which ran down his chin when he opened his mouth to speak.

It was a futile gesture – there was nothing to say. The words with which he customarily constructed his barricade against the world were useless against this man who was now bearing down on him, having availed himself of a smouldering branch which, Monsarrat suspected, was being aimed at his head.

It never got there.

From his prone position, Monsarrat couldn’t see exactly how fast Daly was running, if such a thing were possible, requiring as it would great gulps of air, which would take more than they gave as they clogged the throat with ashes. But Daly must’ve built a reasonable amount of speed because he knocked this human bullock off his feet, when the bigger man was braced with one stout leg on either side of Monsarrat’s torso, raising the glowing branch while sparks dripped down from it onto his shirt, which had once been white but never would be again.

He must have hit his head when he fell backwards. At any rate he felt no urgency to stand, to run, to do anything except realise in wonder that the man who had threatened to remove his freedom, who’d wanted him back on the work gangs, was rolling on top of Grogan and driving his knee down on Grogan’s arm, making the driver’s fingers reflexively release the branch in protest.

He’s done that before, thought Monsarrat idly, weakly swabbing his slick forehead with the back of his hand and wondering if there was any part of him not covered in a film of moist grime. Not something I would have thought to do, or known how, he thought. He turned his head, peeling his cheek away from the dirt, to see if he could spot any more patches of blue through the smoke.

He fixed on one, and decided it was a nice sight to drift off to. If only that voice would stop barking at him.

‘Get up, man! For God’s sake, get up! I don’t know how long I can hold this brute!’

Monsarrat had just enough energy to look for the source of the voice. Why on earth does he want me to get up? he wondered.

‘Monsarrat, if you don’t get up, I will hit you with this stick myself! If there is any hope for your housekeeper, it is quickly diminishing. Get to your feet!’

And then Monsarrat remembered where he was, and why.

After that, it was the work of a moment to make his legs bend, to get his brain to control the mechanics sufficiently to bring him to his feet. He did, however, feel somewhat concerned about leaving Daly to wrestle with a man almost twice his weight.

‘Are you …’

‘Yes, I am well able to manage here! Now go!’

Monsarrat went.

The narrow avenue he had noticed around the side of the house was baking hot, embers littering the ground. This side of the house was still standing, but it could not long remain so, Monsarrat thought. Beyond it, extending to the back of the house, the small gap in the fire persisted. It seemed to Monsarrat that there were two burning entities struggling to meet each other, one consuming the house and the other the garden, and each being prevented for some reason from joining hands. But they would achieve their objective soon, he had no doubt.

He stumbled down the narrow space between the two, holding his breath as much as he could. The heat of each wall made him dizzy, and the sweat in his eyes would have blinded him even had he been able to see through the smoke.

A moment later, he felt a minute reduction in temperature, a tiny easing of noise. He lifted his ruined shirtsleeve to his eyes, wiping the sweat and soot away, and blinked. He was in the yard behind the house, the one that led to the kitchen. The kitchen outbuilding itself was not yet aflame but the fire was hurling embers towards it, scouting parties before the major assault.

He could barely see the green of the kitchen’s paint through the smoke. The fact that he could see at all, though, told him the worst of the fire was behind him. And as he stumbled on through the smoke, a scrap of white near the ground began to emerge. It was not any white Mrs Mulrooney would have approved of. Smudged and streaked and torn, rendered utterly useless as an apron.

The skirts were hitched up slightly, revealing a pair of shredded feet. The toes of one were facing their counterparts on the other, in a manner which was not supposed to be possible. Their owner was sitting on the ground resting her back against the blistering paint of the kitchen, her eyes closed, her lips slightly parted but slack.

No, he thought. You are not allowed to do this. I refuse my permission as your employer. You are not dismissed.

Monsarrat knelt, taking Mrs Mulrooney under the arms and hoisting her over his shoulder. As he stumbled away from the worst of the smoke, he prayed to a God to whom he rarely spoke (and usually had no wish to, if He was happy for the likes of Bulmer to represent Him). He prayed for the sting of a rolled cleaning cloth against his temple and a dressing-down for having the hide to lug a woman around as though she were a sack of grain.