“But the firemen are here. They’re trained. They’ve got equipment.”
“But they’re not married to Vivian. It’s been a madhouse. No one in the household knew where anyone was. Even the firemen got lost.”
“You’re joking!”
“No, it happened. Things like that always happen at moments like this.”
Another fireman was going up the ladder, axe in hand. Some of those below turned a hose on the balcony and the open window beyond to clear a path for him.
Hilary’s arm tightened around Tash’s shoulders. “Stop shaking. It will soon be over.”
“Anything I can do?”
Tash turned her head and saw Bill Brewer.
“When it’s all over you might take this girl home to her own place,” said Hilary. “No one will be able to sleep here the rest of the night.”
“Would you like to go now?” Bill asked Tash.
“No.” Tash clung to Hilary. She would understand why. Bill might not.
He was looking up at the open window where smoke still boiled onto the balcony. “They’ve been gone a long time.”
“Not really. It only seems long.” Hilary looked down at the watch on her wrist. “It’s just nine minutes since the alarm went off and just three minutes since Jeremy went back into the house.”
“Three minutes is a long time in a fire out of control,” said Bill.
Hilary looked at him with exasperation. “Will you kindly be quiet?”
He looked at her in surprise, then caught her glance at Tash and understood.
They heard tires scrape to a gritty stop on gravel. Job came around the corner of the house from the front, fully dressed, running at a jog trot.
He swerved when he saw Tash. “Where’s Jerry?”
It was hard to get the words out, but she managed: “He’s in the house.”
“In the house?” Job shouted. “Why?”
“He went back for Vivian,” said Hilary.
“And you let him? Where’s Carlos?”
“In the house with Jeremy.”
For a moment Job looked as if he were going to hit Hilary. “How could you?”
He turned to the nearest fireman. “You know who I am?”
“Yes, sir, you’re Mr. Jackman, the Lieutenant Governor.”
“What the hell are you doing out here? It’s your job to go in and get the Governor out.”
“The Fire Commissioner said—”
“Blast the Fire Commissioner! Take more men and do what I say now.”
The fireman started up the ladder, followed by others. Job was striding through the crowd demanding the Fire Commissioner.
“I had no idea Job Jackman was so devoted to the Governor,” said Bill.
“Job managed Jeremy’s first campaign,” said Hilary. “They’ve been together ever since. It’s symbiosis. Neither can get along without the other. Job is a born campaign manager. As boss of the state machine, he controls party discipline and tactics, but he could never have been elected Lieutenant Governor without Jeremy. He’s the one with mana, so he commands votes. He will always be out in front, but Job will always be in the background. Warwick, the king-maker many times, but never a king himself.”
There was a moan from the crowd like the mutter of distant surf. Tash looked up.
Jeremy was standing on the balcony holding something in his arms wrapped in a blanket.
A fireman ran up the ladder and took the burden from him.
“Have you oxygen tanks?” he asked.
“In the ambulance.”
Tash was afraid to look at the burden the fireman carried, yet she had to.
Strangely, Vivian might have been asleep. Only the edge of the blanket was singed. Something in her room must have protected her face and hair. The Chinese screen around her bed? Could it have protected her from smoke, too?
“She’s still breathing.” Jeremy spoke, as if that were the most important thing in the world—and so it was to him at that moment, and therefore, to Tash as well.
He had fared worse than Vivian. His hair and eyebrows were scorched, red burns blotched his face, his hands were already swollen. The white shirt and slacks were grimy with ash. One sleeve was ripped from shoulder to elbow. Every now and then he had to yield to a coughing spell.
Job thrust his way through the crowd to Jeremy.
“You damned fool! You never should have risked—”
Jeremy turned and looked at Job, and Job fell silent.
Carlos was coming down the ladder in no better shape than Jeremy. He was limping because he had burned his bare feet.
Bill proffered cigarettes. In spite of their coughing, Jeremy and Carlos each took one.
After the first, deep drag, Jeremy saw Wilkes and called out to him:
“Is everyone out now?”
“Yes, sir.” Wilkes came toward them, brushing ash from his sleeves. “The Fire Commissioner says it’s under control now. He also says that if the firemen had been five minutes later the whole place would have burned to the ground.”
Jeremy grinned the grin the news photographers knew so well. “Then the taxpayers weren’t robbed when they spent all that money on a fire alarm years ago?”
“No, but we should have a much more modern alarm now. I can’t understand why this one didn’t go off when the fire first started.”
“Does anyone know how it did start?” asked Tash.
How much Jeremy’s grin hid from the world! When it faded as it did now, his face looked older, sadder.
“That’s a job for the police as well as the fire department,” he said. “Have you any idea now how it started, Wilkes?”
“Not yet, sir. The insurance company will send people here tomorrow. I mean, today. They’re the real experts. All we know now is that the fire started in Mrs. Playfair’s bedroom.”
“How do you know that?”
“It was much fiercer and much farther along there than anywhere else.”
“I noticed a porcelain ashtray on her bed,” said Carlos. “Perhaps she fell asleep with a burning cigarette in her hand and it fell on the floor. She was still in bed when we found her, as if she had passed from sleep to unconsciousness without waking.”
“How could she sleep through the sirens and all the other noise?” demanded Bill. “No one else did.”
“She’d had some form of sedative,” said Hilary. “Her doctor prescribed two pills every night at bedtime.”
“The smoke could have made
