Shortly before lunch, she woke from another nap to find a W.P.C. standing beside her bed.  The young woman looked distinctly uncomfortable, nervous.

When she saw Beryl open her eyes, she became alert again, shaking off humanity and slipping into the professional stance again.

“Mrs Cartwright?”

“I was, last time I looked.” She said with a smile.

“Mrs Cartwright, I’m sorry to have to bother you so soon after such a traumatic experience, but we really need to get the details from you while they are still fresh in your mind.”

“O.K., but before we start, can you tell me where Anth is?  No-one here seems to know.”

“Mr. Anthony Cartwright?”

“Yes, where is he?”

“Mrs. Cartwright, I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, but your husband was found in the hallway outside the bedroom.  The Bedroom door stopped a lot of the smoke from getting to you – but the hallway was full.  I’m afraid that he was already dead when the fire brigade found him.”

A strangely calm, serene look came over her face.  Behind the look, thoughts and emotions were boiling in all directions, a nest of vipers trapped together by their tails but free to writhe where they would from there up.

Her life had been ruled by fear of one man for so long that any love she had held for him at the beginning was now corroded away in fear and frustration and simmering resentment that it had rusted away to a crumbling ball of febrile hate.

But hate alone would have been overjoyed at this outcome of her venture into Birmingham, but tempering that hatred, leaning heavily each upon the other wa a near total dependency upon Anth for almost everything.  He was her only link with life, with humanity.  She knew almost no-one any more.  Her friends had long since stopped calling round – or phoning – and her only contact with anyone else in eighteen months had been during her trip to Birmingham.

She was lost, alone, afraid and through that wilderness of loss, loneliness and fear ran a thin strand of blessed relief.  The whole sensation was further complicated by a range of other emotions that came and went swiftly, flickering in and out of the overall confusion.

She was locked in an emotional stranglehold, unable to react in any way at all – able only to stare out into space and utter a dead calm, emotionless “OH, OK,” as if the policewoman had just told her that her pet dogs fleas had just died.

The poor woman had not known exactly what kind of response she was going to get, of course, but this was the last thing she would have expected, and was not at all sure how to react herself.

“We do, of course, need to ask you some questions about how the fire started.”

“Of course.”

“Do you feel up to answering them now?  We should do it as soon as possible, while it is still fresh in your mind.

“Go ahead.”

Beryl felt suspended above the scene, locked away in the back of her head where she could watch but could do nothing.  Yes, the body was reacting to stimulus from outside itself, but somehow or other her responses seemed to be rather more automatic than natural.  It was as if the intellect had bailed out of  a stricken plane and left it on autopilot to fly as far as it could get before it crashed.

The vacant gaze which Beryl directed towards – or rather past – the officer was focused on some point far in the distance (or maybe close within her skull).

“Mrs Cartwright?”

“Yes?”

“Will you tell me how the fire started?”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t see it start.  I was in the bedroom when it started.”

“What were you doing in the bedroom?”

“I was asleep.  Isn’t that what you normally do in a bedroom?”

“Is it normal for you to sleep with the bed pushed right up against the door?  Why would you need to barricade yourself in the bedroom?”

“I didn’t have the door barricaded against Anth.  I was asleep.  Why would I need to barricade the door against my own husband?”

“I don’t know why.  Would you like to tell me why?  There’s a lot of people that would like to know the answer to that one.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Only that you know a lot more than you are telling me.  Please believe me, Mrs. Cartwright, that we’ve known for a long time exactly what kind of person your husband was, and quite frankly, if I was married to him I would want a great deal more than just the bedroom door barricading.  Now, why don’t you just tell me what happened, right from the beginning huh?”

“OK, but just do one small thing for me will you?  Please?”

“What’s that?”

“Just stop calling me Mrs Cartwright, it makes my flesh creep.  I just want to forget all that.  My name is Beryl.”

“OK Beryl”

The far, distant, unfocused look was beginning to resolve itself as a feeling of determination was slowly filling up the space left by the knowledge of her husbands death.  The vague, out-of-this-world quality to her speech was becoming replaced by certainty.

“Well, I suppose that you could say that it all started when the phone rang.  I have to answer the phone as soon as it starts to ring, cos Anth will phone me up now and then, just to check where I am – was.  I keep forgetting that he can’t do it any more.  It wasn’t Anth, though, it was this guy from Birmingham…………………………..”

 

“…………………………….I was terrified.  I’ve seen him mad before but, God help me, I think he’d have killed me this time.  I broke most of the big rules, you see.  I had been out, I had been in the company of a man (it didn’t matter why), I’d had contact with my family and I’d been given something of value which I hadn’t given to him as soon as he came through the door – so I was keeping things from him.”

She stopped for breath, then carried on.

“I really didn’t know that the fire had started until the smoke started getting into the bedroom.  I was too scared to think of anything except stopping Anth from getting in to me.  I can only assume that it was the chippan.”

The policewomans professional mask cracked, leaving her open to Beryls intense emotional state.  Almost overwhelmed by sympathy with this young womans story, her demeanour softened.

“I can quite understand that, Beryl.” She said.  “We may have more questions to ask you later on, but I think that that will do for now.”

“Do you want to know something odd?”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I’m sorry that he had to die to do it, but I guess, on the whole, that it is a relief to have him out of my life.”

“I’m not surprised!”

“What happens now?”

“Well, there will have to be an inquest to establish the circumstances of his death.  After that, there may be criminal proceedings, but IF the coroners report bears out your story, that is probably unlikely.”

“Oh.  O.K.”  The thought that someone thought her capable of murder stopped her dead in her tracks for a while.

The Policewoman left her there, staring into inner space and trying to come to grips with the conflicting emotions raging within her.  She felt as if someone had pulled the rug out from under her feet – and there was no floor there to catch her.