accidents had not after all been of his making. It had been MacMordie who had arranged the riot on their arrival in New York. She could hardly blame Piper for that. If anyone was to blame it had been...
Sonia shut out the thought of her own culpability by wondering about the boat that had careered out of the darkness at them and exploded. Hutchmeyer had said someone had tried to murder him. It seemed an extraordinary notion but then again it was extraordinary that his house had caught fire. Put these two events together and it argued an organized and premeditated action. In that case Piper was not responsible. Nothing he had ever done had been organized and premeditated. He was plain accident-prone. With this reassuring thought Sonia reached the beach and clambered ashore. For several minutes she lay on the ground to get her strength back and as she lay there another dreadful possibility crossed her mind. If Hutchmeyer had been right and someone had really tried to murder him it was all too likely that finding Piper and Baby alone in the house they had first...Sonia staggered to her feet and set off through the trees towards the fire. She had to find out what had happened. And supposing it had been an accident there was still the chance that the shock of being present when the great house ignited had caused Piper to blurt out to someone that he wasn't the real author of Pause. In which case the fat would really be in the fire. If the fat wasn't already. It was the first question she put to a fireman she found dousing a blazing bush in the garden.
'Well if there was he's roasted to a cinder,' he said. 'Some crazy guy loosed off a whole lot of shots when we got here but the roof fell in and he hasn't fired since.'
'Shots?' said Sonia. 'You did say shots?'
'With a machine-gun,' said the fireman, 'from the basement. But like I said the roof fell in and he hasn't fired no more.'
Sonia looked at the glowing mass. Heat waves gusted into her face. Someone firing a machine-gun from the basement? It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. Unless of course you accepted Hutchmeyer's theory that someone had deliberately set out to murder him.
'And you're quite sure nobody escaped?' she asked.
The fireman shook his head.
'Nobody,' he said. 'We were the first truck to get here and apart from the shooting there hasn't anything come out of there. And the guy who did the shooting just has to be a goner.'
So was Sonia. For a moment she tried to steady herself and then she collapsed. The fireman hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her to an ambulance. Half an hour later Sonia Futtle was fast asleep in hospital. She had been heavily sedated.
Hutchmeyer on the other hand was wide awake. He sat naked except for the jerry-cans in the back of the Coastguard launch that had rescued him and tried to explain what he had been doing in the middle of the bay at two o'clock in the morning. The Coastguard didn't appear to believe him.
'Okay, Mr Hutchmeyer, so you weren't on board your cruiser when she bombed out...'
'My cruiser?' yelled Hutchmeyer. 'That wasn't my cruiser. I was on board my yacht.'
The Coastguard regarded him sceptically and pointed to a piece of wreckage on the deck. Hutchmeyer stared at it. The words Folio Three were clearly visible, painted on the wood.
'Folio Three's my boat,' he muttered.
'Thought it just might be,' said the Coastguard. 'Still if you say you weren't on her...'
'On her? On her? Whoever was on that boat is barbecued duck by now. Do I look like I was...'
Nobody said anything and presently the launch bumped into the shore below what remained of the Hutchmeyer Residence and Hutchmeyer was helped ashore, wrapped in a blanket. In single file they made their way through the woods to the drive where a dozen police cars, fire trucks and ambulances were gathered.
'Found Mr Hutchmeyer floating out there with these,' the Coastguard told the Police Chief and
