The task of clearing valuables from the vast mansion was eased by the fortunate fact that many of the rooms were awaiting redecoration and still empty. As the pressure on the salvage operation lessened Lindy watched in fierce trepidation as jets of water were directed into the burning building and billowing clouds of black smoke poured into the night sky. Even the smell of the smoke in the air made her feel queasy.
‘The fire’s travelling through the roof void,’ Atreus ground out.
‘Did the cat get out okay?’ Lindy asked, belatedly recalling Dolly, the animal the housekeeper had mentioned.
Atreus urged her back onto the lawn as the orange glare behind a sash window loudly cracked the glass. ‘What cat? I don’t have animals in the house.’
Lindy dealt him a look of consternation and raced over to Phoebe. A storage lorry was reversing in readiness to load the paintings stacked on the tarpaulins that had been spread on the grass.
‘Did Dolly get out?’ Lindy asked frantically.
‘Oh! I forgot about her!’ the older woman admitted guiltily. ‘I closed her in the kitchen for the night. I didn’t want to risk her getting out and wandering round the house.’
The fire team in the hallway told her she couldn’t enter the building. Tears of frustration in her eyes, Lindy pelted round to the back of the house. Would she really have the courage to go inside? she asked herself fiercely, doubting her strength of will in the face of such a challenge? The back door lay open. Her legs felt weak and woolly. She thought about the cat and, sucking in a deep jagged breath, conquered her paralysis and stumbled forward to race into the house. She sped down the flagged corridor and past innumerable closed doors. For a split second she froze in fear, for the smell of the smoke was rousing ever more frightening memories. But commonsense intervened and she snatched up a towel in the laundry room and held it to her face because the acrid smoke was catching horribly at her nose and her throat. Long before she reached the kitchen door, it had become a struggle to breathe.
She could hear a dull roaring sound behind the kitchen door and her courage almost failed to her, but she was powered by an image of Dolly’s terror and the sick memory of herself as a child, trapped in a burning house. Using the towel to turn the door handle, in case it was hot, she opened the door just as a man shouted at her from behind.
‘Don’t open the door…no!’ he roared, but she was on an adrenalin rush and she did not even turn her head.
She was shaken by the discovery that the ceiling was on fire. Although there was a scattering of small burning pieces of debris on the floor, the kitchen was still eerily intact within that unnatural orange glow of impending destruction. The heat, however, was intense. Dolly had taken shelter under the table. An elderly black and white cat, with big green eyes, she was clearly not her usual placid self. A smouldering piece of wood lay nearby and Dolly was snarling at it, with her hackles lifted and her fur standing on end.
Lindy surged forward and snatched up Dolly just as the most dreadful rending noise sounded from above her. Inadvertently she paused and obeyed a foolish compulsion to look up. Someone lifted her bodily off her feet and hauled her backwards. A burning beam fell on the table and rolled off again, showering sparks and choking dust only feet away from her. She had been right in its path, and the fear of what might have been hit her hard and left her limp.
Atreus carried Lindy and the struggling cat to safety and withstood a volley of reproof from the fireman who had followed his rescue bid. She was coughing and spluttering as Atreus lowered her to the cobbled yard outside, and she breathed in the clean air with feverish relief.
‘How could you be so stupid?’ Atreus yelled at her, full volume. ‘Why didn’t you stop when I shouted at you?’
‘I didn’t hear you shout!’
‘You risked my life and your own for an animal!’ Atreus launched at her in condemnation.
That verbal attack shocked her, and at the same moment she feverishly fought disturbing recollections of the household fire that had many years earlier taken her father’s life. The combination made her eyes prickle and overflow and she flung him a speaking glance of reproach. ‘I couldn’t just leave Dolly to die in there!’
The cat was now curled up in Lindy’s arms, with her furry head tucked well out of view. She was paying not the smallest heed to the crackling flames leaping through the roof of the west wing, or to the noise and activity of the human beings rushing around. Dolly had had enough excitement for one day and recognised a safe haven when she was offered one.
‘You could have been killed or at the very least seriously injured,’ Atreus admonished fiercely.