Eight Murders In the Suburbs by Roy Vickers

carried it, to make sure it would not be blown away.
    The system, even if he overworked it a little, had contributed to his success. He had made a niche for himself as a shipping agent, specialising in art objects and merchandise of a costly and fragile nature. By his own methods he had reduced loss and damage to a minimum, with the result that the insurance companies wafted business in his direction. In five years he had twice moved to larger premises.
    It so happened on this windy and vexatious morning that he received a claim for damage which he believed to be fraudulent. He rang his lawyers and by eleven was walking the few hundred yards to their office in Hedgecutter Street. The lawyers occupied two floors in Sebastopol House, a dingy Victorian building, with a wastefully large entrance hall of unredeemable dinginess. The partners communicated with each other by means of a number of speaking tubes, the fore-runner of the house telephone. But their fees were high and their efficiency had been a catchword for three generations.
    He was delighted when they advised him to fight. In the hall, on the way out, he lobbed a half finished cigarette into a huge brass coal vase, placed there for the purpose. He had walked a dozen paces into the wind before the system stopped him short.
    He had thrown the cigarette into the vase, but had not actually seen it land. Lots of fires—some fires, anyhow—were caused by half finished cigarettes thrown carelessly away. Suppose he had missed the coal vase? Suppose the half finished cigarette had rolled along the floor, slipped through a chink in the boards? On a windy day like this, that old-fashioned building would burn like matchboard. He flashed up a pageant of disaster. The traffic cordoned off, the police holding back the crowd of morbid sightseers. He could hear the fire gongs, the cries of the doomed in the upper floors. Why not slip back and make sure about that cigarette?
    â€œI have no reason to believe that I missed the coal vase—a damned great vat like that! It’s simply that I don’t want to alter the system. And I promised Marion I would. Got to begin somewhere!”
    It was not the wind alone that made walking back to his office a trudging labour. The slight feeling of guilt stayed with him until he went out for lunch. His way took him past the corner of Hedgecutter Street. No fire gongs. No police. No morbid sightseers.
    He let out a long breath.
    â€œI mustn’t get worked up like that again! The system cut out all worry. Better watch my step, or I shall get nervy.”
    Having thus warned himself, he was free to enjoy lunch with a director of the insurance company whose support he secured in resisting the claim for damage.
    On the way back after lunch his eye travelled over a display in one of Hoffmeister’s windows, came to rest on a purse-comb in tortoiseshell. It would be fun to give it to Marion, in token that their little misunderstanding at breakfast time had been rubbed out. He gave his name and business address. If they would send the comb during the afternoon he would pay the messenger in currency. The manager insisted on his taking the comb and sending a cheque at convenience. Curwen thanked him and placed the comb—unwrapped—in his breast pocket—inside his note case, to make sure it would not be crushed.
    Approaching Hedgecutter Street, he caught the unmistakable echo of a fire gong. At the corner, the traffic was cordoned off. The fire brigade was in action and the police were holding back the crowd of sightseers. Sebastopol House was in flames.
    In the first confusion, Peter Curwen had the sense of being cheated—as if he had been promised that there would be no fire. While he gaped, his eye took in detail. Above the flames, seen intermittently through the smoke, a man was standing on a window sill on the top floor, steadying himself with one hand on the gable. The escape ladder was swaying towards him. When it