The Bilbao Looking Glass (9 page)

“Jesse, take this bucket and fill it with water. Boys, wet these sacks and start beating out the fire over there around the edges. We’ve got to keep it away from the trees. Lionel, give Max the keys to your van. It’s blocking the path so the fire engines can’t get through.”

“No!” shouted her cousin. “I need the van to save the tent.”

“If that gas tank explodes, you won’t save anything, including yourself,” Max told him. “The keys, Lionel.”

Lionel took one look at the set of Max’s jaw and handed over the keys. Max leaped into the high driver’s seat, jockeyed the vehicle away from the creeping flames, and bumped off through the as yet unharmed trees.

Pete appeared about that time, apparently set to loll back and enjoy the show. Sarah handed him a broom and a bucket and told him to get busy.

“Help me with the tent first,” Lionel screamed.

Pete paid no attention to him. Neither did any of his sons. They were much more interested in beating at the flames and daring each other to jump on sparks in their bare feet. Then the pumper lurched into the clearing, Jed Lomax clinging to the back along with a couple of other auxiliary firemen. Their first move was to snatch up Cousin Lionel’s brand-new gasoline stove and lantern, and pitch them down on the rocks. Their next was to ignore his bellows of rage and get busy hooking up their hoses to pump water from the ocean.

“Lucky tide’s on the make,” grunted one of them. “Woods are dry for the time of year. Quit blethering about that tent, Mister. It’s fire-retardant, or ought to be. If not, we’d have to confiscate it anyway.”

Lionel subsided into wrathful mutters and baleful glares as he continued to fuss over the incredible amount of gear he’d thought necessary for roughing it on his cousin’s estate. A second engine with yet more firemen arrived and obliged him by soaking down everything including the sleeping bags, the spare clothing, and Cousin Lionel himself. They tried to make him believe they hadn’t done it on purpose.

With that big a crew, the fire was soon out, although the firemen hung around spraying the clearing for a while and giving Cousin Lionel’s gear another bath or two in the process. They hadn’t been able to save the boathouse. That had already been almost gone by the time they’d got here.

“Any idea how the fire started, Mrs. Kelling?” the fire chief asked her.

“You’d better ask my cousin,” she replied, glaring at the hapless Lionel. “He invited himself to camp here. I’d given him strict warning about keeping his children out of mischief, but apparently it didn’t sink in.”

“We didn’t set it,” yelled Jesse.

“We couldn’t,” squeaked little Frank. “Lionel put all the matches in a waterproof match safe and now he can’t get the top off.”

“Oh yeah?” said the chief. “Let’s see this match safe.”

Sullenly, Lionel fished through his sodden heap of gear and managed to excavate the matchbox. The chief studied it for a second, flicked something with his thumbnail, and the top slid open.

“Lionel’s a jerk,” James observed.

“Why don’t you belt that kid?” suggested one of the firemen.

“I do not approve of using violence against children,” Lionel replied through gritted teeth. “As you see, no matches are missing. I packed them in tightly so that they could not rattle around and ignite by accident.”

“You sure did. The way you’ve got ’em crammed in, you’d probably set fire to the whole boxful if you tried to pry one out. And you don’t have any other matches but these? No cigarette lighter?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“What about your sons? Come on, kids. Which of you had the matches?”

They all poked each other and snickered, but nobody confessed.

“Won’t squeal on each other, eh?” said the chief.

“That’s a change,” Sarah remarked. “Usually they’re blaming each other for everything. Boys, this is no time to be noble. You needn’t think keeping quiet is going to let Lionel off the hook. No matter who set the fire, your father’s going to pay up if it gets me into trouble with the bank.”

That struck the children as hilarious, but still no confession was forthcoming. Jesse peeled off his shorts and jersey, and hurled them at the fire chief’s feet.

“Search me,” he commanded.

Since neither the shorts nor the jersey had any pockets and Jesse wasn’t wearing anything underneath, his point was conclusive. In a moment his two younger brothers were also yelling, “Search me,” and capering around in their mosquito-bitten pelts.

“Shut up and put your clothes on,” Sarah yelled. “What about Woody? Did he have any matches?”

“He didn’t have no more on than these kids here,”

Pete Lomax put in, as if he felt he might owe Woody a favor after having almost dismembered him. “At least not when I seen him up at the main house,” he amended lest anybody think him too forthcoming.

“Was that the one I seen goin’ down the drive?” his uncle asked. “Skinny runt in his bare feet like these here? Wearin’ one o’ them striped tops like the bathin’ suit my Uncle Arch used to sport around in long about 1910, except Uncle Arch’s suit had longer pants to it?”

“That must have been Woody,” said Sarah. “Where did he go, Mr. Lomax?”

“Dunno’s I could say. He didn’t come back this way, nohow. Went straight on past me an’ turned up the road toward the village. He didn’t look none too happy, but he wasn’t runnin’ nor nothin’.”

“How come Woody was going to the village?” Jesse demanded. “He told me he was going up to use Sarah’s phone. He wanted to call his bookie.”

“Woody has a turn for finance,” Lionel explained. “He is conducting experiments involving various forms of speculation.”

“He’s got a tip on the fifth at Suffolk Downs,” Jesse interpreted. “He’s trying to raise enough money to run away to Bora Bora while he’s still eligible for a kid’s rate on the plane fare.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Max Bittersohn remarked.

“Yes, well, I’m afraid I stifled his initiative,” Sarah said. “I told him he’d have to go down to the pay station in the village. If I’d known the call was for a worthy cause, I might have reconsidered. How long ago did he leave here, and did he go into the boathouse alone before he went?”

“We all explored the interior together,” Lionel told her.

“Yeah, Lionel showed us where the can was,” James giggled. “What do we do now, Lionel? Head for the bushes?”

“I’d suggest you head straight back to Cambridge,” was Sarah’s solution. “You’ll never get those sleeping bags dry enough to use tonight and I’m certainly not going to ask you up to the house after this even if I had enough bedding, which I don’t. When I said you wouldn’t be allowed to stay here if you caused any trouble, I meant it.”

Little Frank snorted. “Jeez, what a dope. She still thinks we torched the joint.”

“If you didn’t, who did? There was no electrical wiring in the boathouse. I can’t think what else could have gone wrong enough to start a fire. Can you, Mr. Lomax?”

“What about the plumbing?” the fire chief interrupted. “How did that work, Mrs. Kelling?”

“Water had to be pumped up by hand from an underground well. It was an old system and I’m sure it was ruined by the fire. Honestly, Lionel, I’d like to strangle you!”

“Yay,” shouted Jesse. “You heard her, everybody. Now we can murder Lionel and lay the blame on Sarah.”

“That’s right, lads,” said their father with a painful attempt at a smile. “Get those nasty old aggressions out of your systems before they have a chance to build up and cause trouble.”

“I’m not getting rid of mine until I’ve heard what the insurance people have to say,” Sarah told him.

“My dear Sarah, if you can explain to me how I or any of my sons managed to start that fire when we had nothing to light it with, I shall be entirely amenable to paying whatever damages have been incurred.”

That was a facer. Lionel must be alarmingly confident of his position or he’d never make such a statement in front of witnesses. Kellings were not apt to go out on limbs when questions of cash disbursement were being discussed, and Lionel was considered a touch on the near side, even for a Kelling.

But if the boys hadn’t started the fire, who had? Sarah couldn’t believe it had been set off by sunlight focusing through a broken bottle or any such fluke as that, because the day had been overcast ever since Aunt Appie had drizzled that lukewarm tea down her neck. Nor could it have been spontaneous combustion because there’d been nothing in the boathouse to combust. Alexander had always been careful about keeping oily rags or inflammable substances around, and so had Mr. Lomax.

“Mr. Lomax,” she asked, “when did you last check the boathouse? Before this morning, I mean.”

“On my reg’lar rounds yesterday,” he told her promptly enough. “In the mornin’ when I come to make sure things was ready for you, ’cause I knew you’d be comin’ along.”

“If you knew we were coming, why didn’t you have the electricity turned on?”

That was Max asking. Sarah herself wouldn’t have embarrassed the caretaker by raising the question in front of his buddies from the fire department. Old Jed was not unnaturally resentful.

“What do you mean, why didn’t I? O’ course I turned it on, same as I always do.”

“Then somebody else must have turned it off again because the lights weren’t working when we got here. Remember, Sarah?”

Sarah had to nod. She distinctly recalled flicking the switches in vain when Max had wanted to examine the elegant relic they’d so mysteriously found in the front entryway. That was why Mr. Lomax had found them out on the front lawn with Jofferty a little while later. They’d been so intrigued by the Bilbao looking glass then that she hadn’t thought to mention the oversight. She and Max had wound up later on throwing the main switch themselves.

It hadn’t been like Mr. Lomax to forget. It was even more unlike him to be so positive now, unless he knew for an absolute dead certainty that he’d done the job he was supposed to do. So Lomax must have turned on the electricity when he claimed he had and somebody else had come along shortly afterward and turned it off again. Whatever for?

The obvious culprit was his nephew Pete, but why should Pete have pulled a silly trick like that? Of course if Sarah had happened to come and catch him at it, he could have pretended to be changing a blown fuse or something. As to getting access to the fuse box, the pair of them might have been in and out of the house two or three times that morning, making sure the water was running properly and whatnot. They wouldn’t have locked up until they were ready to leave.

But what would Pete have gained by turning off the lights? He might have done it just to be nasty, she supposed, or to make it look as if his uncle was getting beyond the job and a younger man such as himself ought be hired instead. Or he might not have wanted Sarah to come into that dark entryway and switch on the lights in time to catch him hanging a Bilbao looking glass he’d just swiped from Miffy Tergoyne’s.

It was not wholly beyond the realm of possibility that somebody had sneaked in and stolen the glass right after Miffy and Alice B. had taken inventory, since they’d no doubt gone straight to the kitchen afterward for a late breakfast and an early pick-me-up. But why bring the thing here, knowing Sarah would be along soon?

Why not think of something more sensible, like calling in the electrician to check the wiring? Maybe there was a loose connection in the main switch or something. Anyway, whatever had happened to the lights yesterday at the main house couldn’t have any thing to do with the fire down here today. Could it? Sarah wished she could believe the boys were lying about not having any matches, but she had a nasty feeling they weren’t.

“I don’t suppose we have an arson squad at Ireson Town,” she said to the fire chief, “but could you possibly call in someone from somewhere? I hate to be more of a pest than I’ve been to you already, but the insurance company will be on my back about this. So will the bank people. I must have some kind of answer for them.”

“Wasn’t any gasoline or oil stored here?” he asked her. “For a boat, I mean?”

“The family hadn’t owned a boat since long before I was married. To the best of my knowledge, there was nothing here that could have been considered burnable except the boathouse itself. If Mr. Lomax says he inspected the place yesterday morning, you can be absolutely sure he did. That means there wouldn’t have been any unauthorized person camping here, either. We have been bothered with them sometimes in the past; that’s why Mr. Lomax is always so particular about checking around down here. Furthermore, he and his nephew have both been spending a lot of extra time here lately because we’ve had so many projects going. I’ve been coming out most days myself, although I just moved in officially, as you might say, yesterday. Oh, and this is my tenant, Mr. Bittersohn.”

“Isaac Bittersohn’s boy from Saugus,” Mr. Lomax amplified.

“Hell, yes, I heard you were in town,” said the chief. “How’s your father? Say, did anybody ever tell you about the time we got Isaac to put a new roof on the fire station?”

The firemen clustered around, off on a long-winded saga. Max was smiling and nodding and having his hand shaken and his back slapped and being invited to drop over and meet the firehouse dog whom they’d named Isaac as a gesture of highest esteem. Sarah was out of it again. While the men chatted and laughed, she poked among the warm, wet ashes of the boathouse, and wondered.

“A
T LEAST THAT ILL
wind blew some good.”

Sarah and Max were having a picnic lunch by themselves out by the cliff, where they could look down at the water and forget the devastation below the hill. Cousin Lionel had loaded his wet camping gear into the van, rounded up his tribe, and gone off to run the sleeping bags through the dryer at the village laundromat, as Sarah was so inconsiderate as not to own one and the sun wouldn’t oblige by coming out and doing the job for nothing.

No doubt he’d stop at Miffy’s on his way. He’d stand a fat chance of getting to use any dryer of hers. He might get lunch for himself and the boys, though, and he’d surely give his mother an earful about the unkind reception they’d received from Sarah.