Siege at the Villa Lipp (36 page)

Yves was a tryer; no doubt of that. He had much to lose.

I had begun to move and was almost at the door when Henson noticed the fact. As it was important just then that I
shouldn’t have further attention drawn to me, I gave her a meaning nod. I hoped that she would interpret it as the promised ‘word’ and as a sign that the time had come for a diversion.

She did not disappoint me.

‘How do we
know
that the telephone lines are cut?’ she asked Connell accusingly. ‘Have
you
tried them? Has anyone tried them? Because if they haven’t, I don’t feel like taking the man Firman’s unsupported word for it. There may be
one
line still working. If so, I think that Professor Krom should immediately call the police on all our behalfs.’

A good effort. Melanie moved in at once to cover the sound of my opening the door.

‘If anyone is to telephone the police it must be me. Professor, because I am the official tenant here in this villa. It is I also who must telephone the
gérant
acting for the owners so that the damage can be reported and assessed. Please remember, too, if there is a telephone working, which I doubt, that the name of the tenant and present occupier here is not Firman or Wickey-Frey. It is Oberholzer.’

‘Aha!’ said Krom happily. ‘Be sure I shall remember. Oberholzer! How could I forget?’

The jerrican was of metal and a real World War II veteran, not one of the plastic imitations they make nowadays. It had probably been sitting there in the corner of that garage for years; since one of those times when it had been thought prudent to keep a little gasoline put by for emergencies in case the local pumps ran dry. After which Middle East war had it been filled? The 73? The 67? The Suez fiasco of 56?

I hoped that it hadn’t been the Suez, because a top-sergeant who used to flog the stuff had once told me that gasoline stored for years gradually loses its potency: I also hoped that the man had merely been rationalizing his misconduct. Neither of the two cars had much left in its tank, and I wanted an event not an incident; it had to be a huge blaze, one that would quickly be seen and reported but not easily put out.

I was worried, too, about the roof problem. Before I had known that Mat was going to oblige me with fireworks, I had rigged the thing to look like a short-circuit following insulation failure in antique wiring. It wouldn’t have deceived an arson investigator, but I had been prepared to face that difficulty later in return for the presence, when needed, of some fire trucks and their crews along with a back-up force of police cars and gawking spectators. The fireworks had given me a cover story potentially better than the one about antique wiring; but would it in fact be better if there were no hole in the roof to show where the firework had smashed through? Wouldn’t that look fishier than a short-circuit? Even fishier than the remains of The Device?

I thought for a few moments of taking a hammer up to the loft and breaking one or two roof tiles. I didn’t in the end; partly because I couldn’t find a hammer, but mainly because I was, I have to admit, beginning to panic.

The rocket-firing could well have been accompanied by a signal to the waiting clean-up team. ‘That’s zero, kids. Start counting. Give them ten minutes to get themselves together. If the bastards haven’t begun to come out by then, you go right in and start earning your money.’

Or words to that effect. Besides, I didn’t even know if The Device I’d cobbled together would work. I might even have to waste valuable time finding out. Someone - Yves, for instance - might come looking for me while I was doing so. If, through having sweaty hands and being in too much of a hurry, I botched the job, I might end up having to go in there and try blowing myself to bits with lighted matches.

The passage that led to the garage ended at the inner door of what had obviously once been a cubby-hole, with lavatory adjoining, for chauffeurs. Now, it was cluttered with such things as water-skis, old schnorkel masks, a wickerwork chair with a broken seat and a set of golf clubs with hickory shafts. On the wall by the far door were two switches, one controlling the passage lights, the other the lights in the garage. That second switch was necessary because there were no windows or skylights in the garage. When the big outer doors were closed it was pitch-black inside. I made sure that the second switch was in the ‘off’ position.

To arm The Device, I had to enter the garage without the lights on and feel my way around the cars to a work-bench against the opposite wall. On the bench was a trickle charger with spring-clip connectors on long leads for attaching the thing to a run-down battery without removing the battery from the car. The Device was made out of the two spring-clips, three adhesive bandages and one of the cigar-lighters belonging to the Lincoln. It was fastened with a piece of string, just inside the unlatched lid of the jerrican - in the place where the most vapour would be.

Arming it meant connecting the mains lead of the charger to the light-bulb socket above the bench. That was its regular source of power. There was no wall outlet. Switching on the light would then do one of two things; either blow a fuse somewhere in the house or, more likely, cause the cigar-lighter filament to heat up and ignite the gasoline vapour.

I could smell the vapour as soon as I opened the door. If the stuff had deteriorated in storage, it still smelled like gasoline, almost overpoweringly so. But could one tell by the smell of it? On the way around the cars I was tempted to take the caps off the tanks or loosen them. I didn’t do either of those things though. A tank with no cap on it, or no signs of having burst under pressure, would be the sort of thing an arson man would spot instantly. Forget it.

Even if I’d had a flashlight, I doubt if I’d have used it. The night was very warm and the sun had been on the loft roof directly above for most of the day. The place fairly reeked of gas. I’d have been afraid of even the tiny little spark there might be inside the flashlight’s outer case. The faint light from the door into the house, although most of it was blocked off by the cars, gave some help. Memory and the touch of sweaty fingers had to do the rest.

Finding the light-bulb socket over the bench was the most difficult thing. Standing there with one hand above my head, groping for the damned thing, I began to feel disoriented. Twice, I had to stop and find the edge of the bench again to make sure that I was still facing the right way. Once, when I had found the light socket, I dropped the charger lead and had to start all over again. But it was done at last. Only halfway through my sigh of relief did I remember that, now, if Yves or Melanie came along the passage looking for me, and switched on the light by the door before I could stop them, The Device would . . .

I scrambled out of there so fast that I bruised myself quite badly against the rear end of the Lincoln. I also gashed a shin in falling over the foot of the loft stairs. Panic. Bloody stupid panic.

Back outside the door again, with only a residual smell of gas still clinging to me and the pains in my left arm and right leg beginning to make themselves felt, I was suddenly quite sure that none of it was going to work, that I’d forgotten something of crucial importance.

Wearily, I leaned against the door and pressed the switch.

The passage light went out but nothing else happened. I had pressed the wrong switch.

I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and pressed the right one.

The
whoof
of the ignition felt like someone putting a shoulder to the door, not to try to force it open, just to see if it were latched.

Very gently, I unlatched it. It tried, equally gently, to close itself again. I used the handle of a ping-pong bat to keep it from closing completely, and then opened the lavatory window to make sure that there would be no shortage of oxygen inside.

I shut the inner door behind me as I left.

There were raised voices coming from the hall, but I had no way of getting up the stairs without being seen.

‘It is for Mr Firman and no one else,’ Melanie was saying, ‘to decide what shall be done and when it shall be done. He’s your host, and you, while you are his guests, must respect his wishes.’

Her defiant whine suggested that she was losing the argument. It was no surprise to find that she was losing it to Krom.

‘As we are in danger,’ he said acidly, ‘such niceties of etiquette hardly seem relevant.’

‘Quite right,’ I said.

They stared at me with understandable curiosity. As well as having torn slacks, I must also have looked filthy and my shirt was black with sweat.

The curiosity changed to suspicion.

‘What have you been trying to do?’ asked Connell. ‘Make it through the enemy lines?’

‘No. Looking for the cavalry.’

Melanie was holding my tape-recorder. I
had left it in the dining-room earlier. I took it from her, then turned to Krom.

‘I have to tell you,’ I said, ‘that it will shortly become necessary for us to leave here. All of us. Any further meetings, if there should be any, will have to be held in another place.’

Krom started to open his mouth. I talked him down by raising my voice.

‘No argument. You have time, I think, to collect your passports, money, notebooks and other valuables from your rooms, but no time to pack anything. I must ask you to assemble here in no more than ten minutes.’

When Krom again opened his mouth, I let him speak.

‘May guests be permitted to know, what fresh disaster now postpones our detailed examination of your criminal past?’

‘Certainly. The house is on fire.’

For a moment I thought that his tic had returned. Then, a most curious muscular spasm flattened the circumflex of his upper lip and covered the teeth behind it.

He was trying to stop himself giving me a smile of resignation.

The departments of Var and Alpes-Maritimes in southern France have suffered much from forest fires involving buildings and lives. As a result, the regional fire services are well equipped and well trained. On the Fourteenth of July an exceptionally high state of readiness is always maintained.

Our fire was first spotted by a man in a villa up on the corniche to the east of us. He reported it promptly, no doubt, because there was a slight breeze blowing from us to him, and because we might have been out for the evening. Fire travels quickly in those parts.

The braying of the approaching fire trucks and police cars began as I was stepping out of the shower.

Yes, I showered. I put on clean clothes too. Anyone who believes that the best way of convincing the police that you’re not an arsonist is to look as if you’ve been in there fighting the flames with a wet towel and a garden hose, has to be mistaken.

By the time the leading truck turned into the driveway, I was ready to greet it. All I had had to do first was park my small bag with the tapes and other oddments I would be needing later in a safe place on the terrace. There was no point in lugging the recorder along too, so I opened it to remove the last cassette. Someone had already taken it.

Yves? That wasn’t the moment to ask. I went downstairs. When the first police car arrived, I was out there with Melanie, wringing my hands, getting in the firemen’s way and generally behaving just as any other right-minded person would have behaved in those circumstances.

My story was simple. Madmen on boat. Dud rockets. Old stabling converted for use as garage probably tinder dry. Hadn’t seen the fire start at back because dealing with burning cushions on terrace. Phones by then out of order. Witnesses, including distinguished Professor, would confirm. Thank God you’re here.

I named the boat and told them to look for burn marks on her deck. No, they wouldn’t be the kinds of burns you could wash off with soap and water. Power tools and much time would be needed to get rid of those scars. When they caught the villains, as they surely must, I would dearly like to be on hand with a shot-gun. Yes, I
understood that one mustn’t take the law into one’s own hands and that I was overwrought, but no doubt they understood my feelings.

I needn’t have worried about there being no hole in the roof to show where the spent rocket had smashed through. When the firemen got there most of the roof had already fallen in. They concentrated on trying to contain the blaze and on confining it to the older, un-remodelled part of the building. The senior fireman thought they would succeed, but it would be a long job, and some of his men would have to stay with it to watch for flare-ups. No, he certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to sleep in the house. The fire had already got to the main electricity cable, and, when the pipes began to melt, the water would have to be turned off. Better start thinking about a hotel.

Since I didn’t intend to be available when the insurance investigators started wondering how best to avoid paying out on the owner’s claim, that left the cut phone lines as the likeliest source of trouble with local officialdom. If they could be seen to have been cut, there would be unpleasant questions asked and suspicion aroused prematurely. I consulted Yves.

‘It’s all right,’ he said; ‘the lines came in by the garage and that’s where I cut them. The fire won’t have left anything for anyone to see.’

‘Good. Now I’ll take that cassette.’

‘What cassette?’

‘The one that was in my recorder. The call from Mat.’

‘Krom took that. He thinks nobody saw him. It’s in his shirt pocket. You could try snatching it. I’ll bet he won’t give it to you.’ His eyes narrowed maliciously. ‘Did you know, Paul, that all that beautiful equipment of mine was charged to Symposia? You’ve lost that lot of tapes too. Bad luck.’

I tried to look as if he’d driven yet another nail into my coffin.

A gendarmerie radio van had arrived to handle communications with the various authorities along the coast who would be concerned with tracking down the
Chanteuse
and bringing in her passengers and crew for questioning.

The cook and her husband returned on their motor scooter, having heard in the village about the fire. The extension to the house that contained their apartment, though badly scorched on the outside, was otherwise undamaged. After preliminary lamentations, they set about malting a list of the valuable personal possessions they had left in the kitchen, the laundry, the wine-cellar, the pantry and one or two other rooms adjacent to the garage which had also suffered. A colour TV set, that they claimed to have bought themselves and installed in the pantry next to the freezer, was high on their list. The insurance investigator who diagnosed arson would have a choice of suspects.