‘It’s worse upstairs,’ said Nightingale. ‘The arsonist spread petrol all along the upstairs hall so the fire did far more damage up there. I don’t want to go up until the builder’s here. I don’t know if there’s been any structural damage or not.’
‘And you were upstairs when it happened?’
Nightingale nodded. ‘Yeah, it was pretty hairy. But the fire brigade got here quickly.’ He walked carefully across the mud to the section of the wooden panelling that concealed the entrance to the basement library. The wood was still damp from where the firemen had been spraying water, and as he pulled the panel open it pushed back a layer of thick black mud. There was a light switch just inside the panel and he flicked it, half expecting the electricity to be off but the fluorescent lights below flickered into life. Jenny tiptoed through the mud towards him, her face screwed up in disgust.
‘It’s not that bad, kid,’ said Nightingale.
‘You’re a smoker,’ she said, putting her hand over her mouth. ‘Trust me, it’s bad.’
Nightingale went down the stairs and Jenny followed him, holding on to the brass banister with her left hand as she kept her right cupped over her mouth.
The basement ran the full length of the house and was lined with laden bookshelves. Down the centre of the basement were two parallel lines of tall display cases which were packed with items that Ainsley Gosling had collected during a lifetime of devil-worship. At the bottom of the stairway were two overstuffed red leather Chesterfield sofas, one on either side of a claw-footed teak coffee table that was piled high with books.
A smile spread across Nightingale’s face as he realised that there was no major water damage. The ceiling was stained in places and water had trickled down the wall by the stairs but other than that the basement was in exactly the same condition as when he’d last been there. ‘Finally, some good news,’ he said. ‘I half expected it to be flooded.’
Jenny took her hand away from her mouth and sniffed the air cautiously. ‘No smoke down here either. The panel must be a tight fit.’
Nightingale took off his raincoat and tossed it on the back of one of the sofas. He looked at his watch. ‘Shouldn’t be long. I’d offer you coffee but I haven’t got anything in the fridge.’
‘Well, it’s not like you live here, is it?’ said Jenny, sitting on one of the sofas. ‘Seriously, what are you going to do with this place?’
‘I haven’t decided,’ said Nightingale, sitting on the other sofa.
‘You can’t live here, can you? What would you do if you needed milk? Or bread?’
‘Or duck noodles?’
‘You know what I mean. Where’s the nearest shop? How do you get a newspaper? It’d take a paperboy half an hour just to get down the drive.’
‘Now you’re exaggerating.’
‘And could you put up with a commute like that every day?’
‘We could work from here. There’s plenty of room.’
‘So I’d be the one commuting? Every day from Chelsea?’
‘That’s the beauty of having an Audi A4.’
‘You’re not seriously considering it, are you? How would clients get here?’
Nightingale grinned. ‘I’m joking,’ he said. ‘Of course we can’t work from here. But there’s something about the place that pulls me here, you know. It’s like I belong.’
‘That’s a freaky thing to say, Jack, considering that it’s where your father killed himself. Doesn’t that worry you?’
‘Why should it?’
Jenny shrugged. ‘It sort of taints it, don’t you think?’
‘Are you worried about ghosts? Is that it?’
‘It’s not about ghosts. It’s just knowing that in that room upstairs he put a shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. Doesn’t that give you the willies?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ he said.
‘Could you sleep in that room, knowing that happened?’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t.’
The doorbell rang and she jumped, then sighed and patted her chest. ‘I nearly gave myself a heart attack then.’
‘That’ll be the builder,’ said Nightingale. ‘Do you want stay down here or do you want to come upstairs with me?’
‘I’m okay here,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep looking for titles on the list of books that your pal Wainwright wants.’
‘He’s hardly a pal. But yeah, he’s keen to buy and it’s not as if I need a Satanic library, is it?’ He grinned over at her. ‘Not scared, being here on your own?’ He made a ghostly moaning sound and waggled his fingers at her.
‘Behave, Jack.’
‘I’m just saying.?.?. Satanic library, things that go bump in the night.?.?.’
‘Me being a girl and all?’ Jenny picked up a leather-bound book and threw it at him, missing his head by inches.
‘That’s no way to treat an antique,’ he said. ‘And before you say anything, I meant the book.’
Jenny picked up a second book to throw at him but he ran up the stairs and back into the hall. The doorbell rang again as he closed the panel and carefully walked across the muddy floor.
He opened the front door. There was a man in his thirties standing on the steps. He had short blond hair and an impish smile and was wearing dusty blue overalls. He was holding a clipboard and he looked at it and then grinned up at Nightingale. ‘You Mr Nightingale?’
‘Jack,’ said Nightingale. ‘Domino’s Pizza? You’re an hour late so we get them free, right?’
The man looked confused and then realised that he was joking. ‘Chris Garner. I’m here to give you a quote.’ He stuck out his hand and Nightingale shook it. ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said.
‘Yeah, well, wait until you see inside,’ said Nightingale, holding the door open. ‘It’s a bit of a mess.’
Garner walked across the threshold and whistled softly. ‘You’re not joking,’ he said, taking a pen from the pocket of his overalls. ‘What happened? Leak?’
‘Firemen,’ said Nightingale. ‘There was a fire. The firemen were enthusiastic.’
‘Yeah, that’s the way they are,’ said Garner. ‘They do love their hoses.’ He looked down at the floor. ‘That’s marble, though. Should clean up okay.’
‘What about the clean-up? Can you handle that as well?’ said Nightingale.
Garner nodded. ‘Can do,’ he said. He looked up at the chandelier and pointed his pen at it. ‘That’s a professional job, though. You don’t want amateurs messing around with that. It needs to be taken down and done properly.’
‘Do you know somebody?’
‘Let me ask around. So where was the fire?’
‘Upstairs,’ said Nightingale. ‘Most of the damage on the ground floor is from the smoke and water.’
Garner walked over to the panelling by the stairs and ran his finger along it, then tapped it. He was only a few feet from the panel that led down to the basement. He rapped the wood with his knuckles. ‘The wood’s basically sound,’ he said. ‘But you’d be best sanding it all down and revarnishing.’ He made a note on his clipboard.
Nightingale headed up the stairs and the builder followed him, still scribbling on his clipboard. They stopped at the hallway, where the fire had started. The smell of smoke and burned wood was much stronger here. There were darker burn marks running down the centre of the hallway and scorch marks up the walls.
‘How did this start?’ asked Garner, kneeling down to examine the burned floorboards.
‘About a gallon of petrol and a match.’
‘It was deliberate?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘That’s funny. If someone wanted to burn the house down, why pour the petrol up here? They’d have been better off setting the fire downstairs.’
‘Who knows what was going through his mind?’ said Nightingale. Actually he knew exactly what the arsonist had been thinking. Nightingale had been in the master bedroom and if all had gone to plan he would have died in the fire.
‘What about the bedrooms?’
‘Smoke damage, mainly. And water. The water went everywhere.’
Garner opened the nearest door and looked into the bedroom beyond it. ‘What happened to all the furniture?’