Smoke Alarm

  Again she felt she could knock down any barriers between them because she didn’t care enough. ‘I don’t think they’ll mind you having sex, Simon – they just don’t want you to marry again. They’ll be suspicious that the woman is simply after your money.’

  He looked peeved. ‘Do you think I’m so very unattractive?’

  She didn’t even attempt to answer this one, merely bounced the question straight back to him with a facial expression and a shrug. What do you think?

  She had driven herself in to the town and parked right outside Drapers’ Hall. They finished their meal with plenty more friendly banter. Driving home Martha reflected that they were friends and would never be anything more than that. The chaste kiss he had given her on their parting defined the borders of their relationship. But now she realized she did like him. And this was the first time she had ever admitted it. In fact, it was an enormous step forwards. She smiled at herself, catching her eyes in the rear-view mirror and tempted to wink.

  So now she bounced the very same question back to herself. Do you think I’m so very unattractive?

  TWENTY-THREE

  It was mid-April before Martha held the inquests on the deaths of the three members of the Barton family. Predictably it was attended by the press and many others. Alex had told her privately that Jude was still being assessed by a mental health team who could not agree as to whether he was fit to plead.

  ‘Personally I think he has a personality disorder,’ he said. ‘In which case he will manipulate the psychiatrists and they will never agree.’

  There had been no more shared confidences but somehow Martha didn’t think that Alex regretted the one time he had confided in her. If anything his manner seemed easier with her and he dropped in even more frequently, staying a little longer. She never asked after his wife but realized she didn’t need to. The days he wore his haunted, unhappy expression were his wife’s bad days; the others less so. She smiled and teased him a little. ‘And what are you basing this diagnosis on, Alex?’

  ‘He starts talking rubbish, fantasizing and saying odd things only when he remembers and when plenty of the right people are around. The rest of the time he’s pretty normal. The officers at the remand centre all say that. He’s clever, knows what to say to make people think he’s crazy. But –’ He held up his index finger. ‘When I said to him that he could be consigned to Broadmoor for life it made him think. He isn’t crazy, Martha, he’s evil.’

  ‘That makes the tragedy all the worse.’

  Alex nodded.

  In Martha’s mind the verdict of the three deaths was never in any doubt – two homicides and one misadventure and once the witnesses, mainly Mark Randall, the pathologist, and fire personnel had given their evidence everyone in the room looked satisfied with the verdict.

  Nigel Barton sat on the front row, shrunken and miserable, a young woman beside him – the secretary, presumably. Occasionally she touched his hand but he continued to stare at the floor, his shoulders bowed. Martha didn’t think the relationship between these two would be a particularly happy one. Its foundations were set in too dark a place.

  Three rows behind him DI Randall pointed out Monica Deverill flanked by two still very angry-looking men.

  He leaned across. ‘Her sons,’ he said.

  Martha had struggled to decide whether she should mention the roots of the fatal arson attack and resurrect the Shelton fire of the sixties. She and Alex had discussed this at length. In some ways it would be inappropriate yet in others the case made no sense at all if the fire at Shelton was left out. There were Monica Deverill’s feelings to be considered. But the press were already making the connection between the fire at Sundorne and the Melverley Grange tragedy. Martha made her decision and summed up the evidence. ‘Three family members died in one night in a house fire which was started deliberately. One of the people who died that night had been a fire officer who attended the fire at Shelton Hospital in 1968 which resulted in twenty-four people dying in a locked ward. I don’t need to give you a full resumé of the story except to tell you that the two recent fires and the Shelton fire are linked.’

  The woman Alex Randall had identified as Monica Deverill shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  Martha resumed her summing up. ‘These deaths have some explanation in mental illness – initially a fire where people died because they had been incarcerated consequent of some abnormality in their psyche and more recently William Barton, an old man diagnosed with dementia, who reminisced about his brave role in the Shelton Hospital fire as a fire officer. William Barton was decorated for his consideration of the patients and his bravery on that night.’ She paused. ‘And now I want to make a point.’ She looked around the room. ‘Not to make a dogmatic statement but to provoke thought. Most of the people who were locked in Beech Ward on the night of February the twenty-fourth, 1968 would almost certainly be out in the community today.’ She frowned. ‘And perhaps, when you think of those events, in some ways they would have been safer.’ She smiled. ‘We like to believe we are more enlightened these days. But there is a tendency today to despise care in the community, the cynical amongst us wondering whether it is simply a cost-cutting exercise. As I see it the reason we are so scathing about care in the community is because when something goes wrong everyone knows about it, whereas in a mental institution it all takes place behind closed doors. Much of what happened was concealed. Well, now it is all out in the open.’

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  On the twenty-fourth February, 1968 there was a major fire at Shelton Psychiatric Hospital on Beech Ward, a locked or closed ward for very disturbed females. Twenty-four people died and eleven were seriously injured. Due to overcrowding some beds had been placed ‘top to tail’ along the window wall. All patients sleeping in those beds died of asphyxia and carbon monoxide poisoning. The severely disturbed patients who were locked into single bedrooms survived because they slept on the floor, on mattresses for their own safety, behind thick wooden doors. There were forty-three female patients resident on Beech Ward the night of the fire.

  Although the ward had open fires it was not believed that this was the cause, but a lighted cigarette smouldering in a chair for some time before igniting.

  Patients were led to safety via the fire escape with difficulty as many were heavily sedated due to their mental state. Others were bedridden.

  Several members of staff were subsequently awarded bravery medals. It appeared they were heroes.

  Newspaper articles, however, painted a slightly different picture. A report in 1963 by the Shropshire Fire Service was clear that nurses should be trained in fire procedure but this was found to be lacking. It recognized a delay of ten minutes between the night nurse in charge first noticing smoke and then calling the fire brigade, although there were other factors beyond her control. The report also found the level of staffing at the hospital to be low. Locking patients into their ward was not unusual – although the 1959 Mental Health Act called for this to be avoided as much as possible.

  Fire safety procedures at hospitals in the Midlands were reviewed after the Shelton fire. Hospitals today have learnt much about fire safety checks. The Shelton fire is a dreadful and tragic fact.

  This story is pure fiction.