Losing Ground by Catherine Aird

Sloan.
    ‘Comes to the same thing,’ snorted Leeyes.
    ‘Which means that they’ve more or less left the field free for us.’
    ‘Keep me in the picture, Sloan,’ said Leeyes. ‘I’ll be in my office.’
    Resisting a strong impulse to respond to this, too, Sloan turned back to the fire officer at his side. ‘You were saying…’
    ‘That there’s one thing I can tell you for free,’ said Charlie Burton as Dr Murphy went over to greet her assistants.
    Sloan maintained a commendable silence. He wanted to know more than one thing, much more.
    ‘And that’s that we were meant to put this fire out before it had spread too far,’ said Charlie Burton.
    This was something that Sloan had already worked out for himself. So, no doubt, had Dr Murphy.
    ‘If,’ said Burton, ‘we hadn’t had that three nines call from the telephone box the whole place would have gone up in smoke before anyone knew there was a fire there.’
    ‘Talking of smoke,’ said Sloan, ‘surely that would have been seen from the road sooner or later?’
    ‘You must be joking,’ said the fire officer. ‘No one would have seen anything from the road until the building here was practically a burnt-out wreck.’
    ‘Which, oddly enough,’ murmured Sloan pensively, half to himself, ‘doesn’t seem to have been what the arsonist had in mind.’
    Charlie Burton jerked a thumb. ‘Remember, when that pile was built the distance from the gate to the house was what mattered to snobs like the Filligrees. The longer the better if you wanted to keep up with the Joneses.’
    ‘You knew them, did you?’ said Sloan, straight-faced.
    ‘Not exactly,’ said the fire officer, shaking his head, ‘but my wife’s granny was a skivvy there when she was a girl. Before the war.’
    ‘What happened to them?’
    ‘Dunno. Died out, I expect.’ He pushed his helmet back on his forehead. ‘She used to talk about the grand parties they had there in the old days, although she’s really lost it mentally now. All the maids would have new outfits for a really big do.’
    ‘Other times, other days,’ said Sloan absently. ‘Tell me, does this fire have any of the hallmarks of an insurance job to you?’
    The fire officer shook his head again. ‘The place was empty, wasn’t it? Not full of antique furniture or anythinglike that. And that doesn’t explain the heap of bones or why they’re sitting on what looks like a heap of old bits of seashell.’
    ‘Nothing,’ declared Sloan fervently, ‘explains either.’
    ‘Now who’s coming?’ grumbled Detective Constable Crosby as Dr Colleen Murphy’s two assistants hastened to her side. He was looking back down the drive to the point where it joined the road to Tolmie. ‘If anyone else turns up we’ll have to start a queue.’
    ‘You’re a long way from being into crowd control,’ said Sloan with some asperity. ‘And never forget, Crosby,’ he added, quoting his old Station Sergeant and early mentor, ‘interested parties are always of interest in any police investigation.’ He wouldn’t be surprised if that applied to arson, too.
    In spades.
    Had there been any doubt about whether Randolph Mansfield, architect, and Derek Hitchin, project manager, were interested parties, they very soon dispelled it.
    ‘We shall need to brief the insurance assessors,’ began Mansfield.
    ‘And see whether we need to get the structural engineers in…’ chimed in Hitchin.
    ‘The safety aspect, too…’ said Mansfield. ‘That comes into it.’
    ‘And see where we shall need to deploy our resources…’ Hitchin was already peering round the site.
    ‘Conservation area…’ That was the architect.
    ‘Planning people…’ That was the project manager.
    ‘But safety comes first,’ said Randolph Mansfield.
    ‘I’m sure it does,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘but our investigations take priority and everything else will have to wait.’ From where he stood he could see Dr Murphy and her assistants hard at