On the morning after the fire, Algy Cartwright was the only one from the houses in Wynton Lane to walk through the Belfield Grove Estate. He had had a breakfast of fried eggs and bacon, had washed up, and hadn’t turned the television on even for the news headlines. Now he was on his way to buy tobacco and his morning paper at the newsagent’s on Grange Street. At the blackened shell of the Phelans’ home he paused for some time, listening to the comments of the little knot of spectators, mostly women with small children, and unemployed men. At the newsagent’s he bought the Yorkshire Post as well as his usual Daily Mail, to see if it had anything about the fire.
None of the residents of the Wynton Lane houses spoke to each other face to face that morning, but there was a great deal of telephone activity.
“Mr. Cartwright? Algy?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Lynn—Lynn Packard here.”
“Oh, good morning, Mr. Packard.”
“Just a small point, Algy: I don’t know if you’ve heard about the fire last night.”
“Aye, I have. I’ve just been past there.”
“Ah. . . . It did occur to me when I heard—Jennifer phoned a few minutes ago; she’d heard about it from our cleaning lady—it did occur to me that we should . . . distance ourselves, as far as possible.”
“How do you mean?”
“I shouldn’t have to sp— . . . Sorry, just talking to one of the assistants. What I meant was that we shouldn’t shout it from the rooftops that we were . . . well, strongly opposed to his moving into the Lane.”
“Oh, aye, I get your drift.”
“Because he was, I believe . . . the main casualty.”
“That’s right. I heard the women talking on the Estate. The wife’s in hospital too, though, I gather, and very poorly.”
“Yes, well, I think we should be careful, because people could, well, get the wrong impression.”
“I reckon you’re right, Mr. Packard.”
“Of course, the likelihood is that it’s completely accidental, especially granted the man’s likely habits when he’s drunk . . . ”
“Oh, aye, that’s true enough.”
“But still, as I say, I think we should be careful. I thought perhaps you could talk to Mrs. Bridewell, as an old friend.”
“Yes, I could do that, though she’s a woman who knows her own mind, Mr. Packard, and you’ve got to remember she’s on the Council. I could ring Mrs. Eastlake, too. She’s the one who—”
“Started it. Right.”
“She’s taken a big interest. She was actually out in her garden the other day, so Mrs. Bridewell says.”
“Really? Well, I’ll ring the son. He seems to be a bit lacking in backbone. And I’ll ring Copperwhite too.”
“Yes, I’d rather you rang him, Mr. Packard.”
“We need to present a united front. It’s nothing to do with us, and we don’t want to get involved.”
“Right. Pity the thing came up really.”
“Yes . . . as it’s turned out.”
“Of course, I agree there’s no point in running along to the police and saying ‘We were trying to stop him buying a house in Wynton Lane.’ But you’ve got to remember I’m on the Council, Algy. I have to be very careful, the newspapers being what they are. I certainly couldn’t have anything to do with concealing things from the police.”
“No, no, I’m sure that’s not what Mr. Packard has in mind. Just that we shouldn’t go—”
“Advertising the fact? Well, that’s fair enough. But aren’t we jumping the gun a bit? Is there any evidence that the fire wasn’t completely accidental?”
“Mr. Packard made that point. All I have to go on is the women talking—the women from the Estate, as I walked through to get my paper. They were convinced it was arson. One of them thought they’d got the wrong house—there’s a black girl lives next door, apparently. But the rest thought it was the Phelans who were aimed at—and ‘good riddance’ was the general feeling as far as Jack Phelan was concerned, though it was thought terrible that the kiddies might have been hurt.”
“Yes, but can they know it was deliberately started? The man was probably drunk and started it with a lighted cigarette or something. Investigations by Fire Officers take quite some time, as a rule, so I don’t see how they can know.”
“I suppose they were just assuming. All the more reason, if it’s not certain yet, for us to sit tight and say nothing.”
“Quite. And I can stir things up a bit at Housing and see that something is done about getting the Phelans rehoused.”
“The remaining Phelans.”
“Yes. The remaining Phelans.”
“Mr. Copperwhite? It’s Lynn Packard here. I don’t know whether you’ve heard?—”
“Yes.”
“Right. It’s a bit of a stunner, isn’t it? Well, I’ve been talking to Algy Cartwright, who really started all this—”
“Ah.”
“—and we agreed that the best thing we can do is to keep quiet about our little efforts to . . . stop the Phelans moving into The Hollies.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“It’s not, after all, as if we found there was very much that we could do, is it?”
“No. Perhaps fortunately, as it turned out.”
“Right. We said some rather silly things at our last meeting—”
“We did.”
“—but we did recognize there was nothing we could do. The question is, how many people know?”
“I was just going to bring that up. There’s the estate agents and the building society people, of course. No reason why they should say anything. But then there’s Dr. Pickering.”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking about him.”
“So far as I know he’s not the police doctor, but he did tell Adrian Eastlake he was the Phelans’ doctor, so it’s quite possible the police will talk to him.”
“Yes . . . He wasn’t very cooperative . . . ”
“Maybe we expected too much of him. It was his pocket that would have been hit, when all’s said and done. It’s not a seller’s market any longer, with interest rates soaring. But the point is, I have the impression that he’s a mite touchy, and if we approached him—”
“To keep quiet?”
“Well, yes—he might well get on his high horse. Could even talk about medical ethics, and so on. My feeling—it’s no more than that—is that we should let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I think you’re right. Of course, there may be others who know. Cartwright’s the sort of person who goes to pubs. He may have talked in the Belfield Arms. Then there are the people in the basement flats . . . ”
“Yes. They certainly know. Would they have talked? It hardly concerned them, really. Cartwright’s tenant seems to have a padlock on his mouth, I don’t know the woman in The Hollies, and then there’s the teacher in Daphne Bridewell’s basement.”
“I could ask Jennifer to have a word with her. Oh, yes, and I presume you’ll have a word with your wife.”
There was silence at the other end.
“Sorry, I meant your good lady.”
“Yes, of course. Well, I’ll try.”
“Adrian? Lynn Packard here. I suppose you’ve heard?”
“Heard?”
“About the Phelans.”
“What about them?”
“There was a fire at their house last night. He’s dead.”
“Oh my God! How . . . terrible.”
“The rest of the family were all right, or weren’t there, I don’t know the details. The mother, though, is in hospital and seems pretty ill, from what I heard.”
“Just him. We don’t know anything about the fire yet, I mean how it started and so on, but we thought it best to be on the safe side—”
“The safe side?”
“About our . . . endeavors to keep him out.”
“I get you. Yes, absolutely.”
“We thought we wouldn’t rush into saying anything about those. They’ve got nothing to do with the matter.”
“Absolutely not!”
“They may come out, of course. It may be that there’s more who know than we’re reckoning on. And there’s Pickering . . . ”
“Yes.”
“Nothing to be done there, we decided. Anyway, all we’re saying is, we’re not rushing in to talk about it.”
“Right.”
“So keep mum, eh? Absolutely mum.”
“Not a word. . . . It’s terrible, but I’m glad he’s dead.”
“Absolutely quiet.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Eastlake, it’s Algy Cartwright.”
“Oh, hello, Algy. I’m afraid Adrian is at work, if it’s him you’re wanting to talk to.”
“No, it’s you, Mrs. Eastlake. I don’t suppose you’ll have heard about the fire at the Phelans’.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You mean you have?”
“Yes. I saw from the window that there’d been a fire on the Estate, and I waited downstairs for the milkman.”
“I see. So you’ll know that Jack Phelan is dead.”
“Yes. What a blessing . . . I mean that the others were saved. Though, really, to be absolutely honest, when I think how Adrian hated and feared that man—”
“What I’m ringing about, Mrs. Eastlake, is that we think we should be very careful about what we say.”
“But, of course.”
“We don’t know anything about what started the fire as yet, but we don’t want it thought that we were in any way involved.”
“Naturally.”
“It’s not something we’d have had anything to do with.”
“No . . . though it does seem in a way providential.”
“It’s that sort of talk we have to be careful about, Mrs. Eastlake. It’s very important you say nothing that could bring this thing back . . . well, to us here in Wynton Lane.”
“Oh, I quite understand. And you know that I don’t talk to anyone.”
Except, Algy noted, the milkman.
Thus the phone conversations on the morning after the fire. It was a brave effort, but quite unavailing. For, unseen by Lynn Packard as he drove off that morning, unseen by Algy Cartwright as he came down the slope from the Estate deep in the Yorkshire Post, unseen by Adrian Eastlake as he walked up Wynton Lane toward his bus stop, a message had been spray-painted in red on the side wall of Daphne Bridewell’s house—the first house in the Lane and the one whose wall faced up toward the Belfield Grove Estate. The message read:
ONE OF THIS LOT KILED MY DAD