Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

Trial by Fire by Donald Olson

© 1993 by Donald Olson

From Donald Olson we have this month a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing tale. Mr. Olson is the author of seven novels, but his first and abiding love is the short story...

She could have shut her eyes and still known the season. The breath of autumn was on the air, that spicy blend of scents: woodsmoke and ripe apples and hay drying on the hills. But Selena Winship’s eyes were wide open and blue as the glassy surface of the lake she gazed down upon as she waited there in the garden of what she had called, seeing it for the first time three years ago, “the darlingest little house in all the world.” Purple phlox and Japanese iris and hollyhocks glowed against its freshly painted white shingles.

She gave a little start, as if rudely awakened from a pleasant dream, when Rob from next door stole up behind her and tickled the smooth white nape of her neck below a tangle of fiery red curls.

“You’re late,” she snapped. “I told you to be here by ten.”

“They’re not home, are they?”

“No, but they’ve only gone to the market. Oh, good, you brought it.”

Rob set the plastic gallon milk jug on the grass and dropped down beside Selena. “I don’t see why it had to be a milk jug. You’re not supposed to keep gasoline in a plastic container.”

“We’re not going to keep it in there, idiot. I told you it had to be a milk jug. Never mind why.”

Rob’s blue eyes, paler than Selena’s but more striking in his deeply tanned face, regarded the milk jug with a worried frown. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Not getting cold feet, are you?”

“No.”

“You’d better not. I’m depending on you. You’re being very well paid for what little I’m asking you to do.”

“Arson,” he replied peevishly, “is not what I’d call a little thing.”

“But you’re not doing it, are you, Rob? I’m the one taking all the risk.” She looked sceptically at the milk jug. “You’re sure that’ll be enough?”

“Are you kidding? A cup would be enough.”

Selena looked up at the sky, where a lazy flock of white clouds had strayed into the field of blue. “It’s not supposed to rain tomorrow, is it? How ghastly if a downpour ruined everything.”

“With that much gasoline I doubt it would matter.” He sprang lightly to his feet and surveyed the little house with a somber look of regret. “Pity I had to work my butt off for nothing.”

“Work for which you’ll be well paid. And who’s going to think someone burned down a house they’d just repainted?” She tilted her head to one side, admiring the coral-colored door, the gray shutters and white shingles. “You know, from a distance it does rather look like a smaller model of our Valley house. Same colors, anyway.”

Rob turned to look down at Selena with an air of cautious surmise. “Look, Selena, I know I’m not supposed to ask any questions, but I can’t help wondering, you’re always so damn mysterious, I mean about what happened in the Valley.”

Selena’s glance was like the warning flash of a knife. “What about what happened in the Valley?”

Even more hesitantly, Rob said: “Well, I know you were burned out, you told me that much, okay? But — look, now don’t get mad — just tell me the truth. It wasn’t — you didn’t...?”

“Didn’t what?” Selena’s tone was icy.

“You didn’t do it, did you?”

Selena sprang up, one arm flung out as if about to strike. “What a beastly thing to say!”

“Look, I’m sorry—”

“Someone died in that fire. Someone I loved. How dare you even suggest anything so vile?” Bursting into tears as easily as the most accomplished actress, Selena flung herself down again on the grass.

Rob made awkward, fumbling motions without actually stooping to touch her. “Selena, I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t understand you sometimes. You don’t seem to want to tell me anything.”

“Maybe it’s because you’re too stupid to understand, ever think of that?” Then suddenly, as if a cloudburst had passed, she regained her composure, her manner becoming sadder, reflective. “I love it here at the lake. Everything was fine for two years. Beryl and I got along okay. I know she doesn’t exactly dote on me — I’m too smart for my own good she’s always telling me — but she is my mother and she does control the trust fund. Oh yes, we got along — until Gordon came into the picture. A guy over thirty with a pigtail! Isn’t that de trop?”

“What’s that mean?”

“Too much. But I’m a woman of the world. If Beryl chooses to go gaga over some hunk, that’s her business, not mine. But marry him? No way, baby. The minute she dropped that on me I knew I had to do something to stop it. Gordon’s nothing but a gigolo, all he’s after is the money. But it won’t happen, you can count on that. I’m going to get rid of Gordon. No ding-dong wedding bells for that jerk. What happened in the Valley gave me the idea.”

“I hope you know you’re playing with fire,” said Rob with a grin.

Selena gave him a withering look. “Is that supposed to be funny? Is that your idea of wit?”

“Oh, don’t be so touchy.”

“I’ve already got him worried. I keep giving him these looks. If Beryl had any brains, she’d know I’m doing her a favor by getting rid of Gordon. She’ll thank me some day.”

“You really hate him, don’t you?”

“With a passion. I mean, a pigtail. Really! And the way he struts around in that bikini. Fancies he’s Mr. Universe or something. God, it makes me sick the way Beryl fawns over him. He deserves just what’s coming to him.” In another lightning change of mood, the fierceness evaporated into a seductive tenderness as she laid a hand on Rob’s thigh. “And you deserve what’s coming to you.”

Rob’s eyes glistened. “I wish it was a Harley, like Gordon’s.”

“Maybe some day, if you’re nice to me.” She looked around as they heard a car door slam beyond the trees. “They’re back already. Now you know what you have to do tomorrow night. And don’t jump the gun. Don’t call the fire department until you’re sure it’s hopeless. Now hide the milk jug. We’ll have our sandwiches here in the garden. I can’t bear to be at the table with him. You should see the way he eats.” She made exaggerated chopping motions with her teeth. They both started giggling.

While Beryl put the groceries away, Gordon stripped off his T-shirt and wandered out onto the deck where he braced his powerful arms against the redwood rail and proceeded to do a series of push-ups until Beryl joined him carrying two glasses. A sleek, well-groomed brunette, she was one of those women who had perfected the art of concealing her age.

“Cocktail before lunch, darling?”

Gordon leaned over the rail, staring down through the trees to the garden below. “I see lunch is already being served. Guess we’re not invited.”

Beryl came to stand beside him, one hand stroking his muscular brown back. “Sandwiches alfresco. How sweet.”

“Wonder what they’re up to now.”

“Oh, don’t start. They’re not getting into any mischief. One would think you were never a child.”

He grunted. “Selena? A child? She’s the oldest twelve-year-old I ever met.”

“An exceptionally bright child. A precocious child. I should think that dreary little Rob would bore her to tears. Cute, I grant you, but dumb as a box of rocks.”

Gordon flung an arm around her shoulders. “Cute but dumb. Like me, you mean.”

“Cute you are. Dumb you are not. Now drink your cocktail.”

Gordon’s darkly handsome face wore a speculative, brooding look. “I’m not so dumb I can’t tell when they’re up to something.”

“Will you stop? What is it you think they’re up to?”

“I wish I knew. It doesn’t seem to bother you at all, what they did to that playhouse.”

“It’s Selena’s playhouse, darling. What was I supposed to do, forbid her to paint it? It did look frightfully shabby, you know that.”

“But using the same colors as the Valley house?”

“You find that sinister? Really, my pet, Selena loved the Valley house. She still misses it.”

Gordon was not to be appeased. “Painting the same number as the Valley house on the door? Morbid, I’d call it.”

Beryl’s tone lost some of its lightness. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“Well, it bothers me — and she knows it. The way she dragged me down there the other day and told me to look in the window. She’d put her daddy’s picture on that little pine table. And another thing. I don’t think you should let her sleep down there.”

Beryl howled. “Gordon, you’re too much. There’s no harm in her sleeping in the playhouse occasionally.”

“You said she was precocious and that Rob kid is a sturdy little runt.”

“Not physically precocious, you idiot. Tell me the truth. What’s really bothering you? You’re not still imagining things, I hope.”

Gordon gave her a darkly portentous look. “Am I imagining things? Are you sure about that?”

The humor altogether faded from Beryl’s tone now. “How many times must I tell you? She was asleep that night.”

“Later, yes. You made sure of that. But earlier...”

“When she came out of her room? All she saw was a shadowy figure in the darkness.”

“She saw what I was holding. She asked you if I was the milkman, for God’s sake.”

“She was half asleep,” Beryl insisted.

“If she saw what I was carrying she could have seen my face,” he retorted, not angrily but with a stubborn persistence.

“Nonsense. She would have said something after the fire, or certainly when you and I ‘met’ — presumably for the first time — a year later.”

“If she was a normal kid, yes.”

“There’s nothing abnormal about Selena. Far from it. Honestly, Gordon, you’re letting your imagination run wild. Or is it some kind of delayed guilt trip? You didn’t mean to kill Marty. It was an accident. You weren’t supposed to show up that night. Marty wasn’t due back from Portland for another day. He heard you come in and thought you were a burglar. He had a gun, he might have killed you. And it was my idea, not yours, about the fire. How many times must I remind you of all this?”

Revealing an uncharacteristic subtlety of insight, Gordon said: “We should have gone off and got married without saying a word to Selena.”

“What’s our getting married got to do with anything?”

“You must be blind if you haven’t noticed the change in her since we gave her the news.”

Beryl shrugged. “Then I must be blind. Far as I can see, she acts no different.”

“On the surface, no. She hasn’t said anything, it’s the way she looks at me. The way she smiles.”

Beryl leaned over the rail, as charmed by what she saw as Gordon was disturbed. The miniature house among the bright flowers, the two children sitting on the green grass munching their sandwiches, the midday sun spreading a kind of golden varnish over the scene.

“Look at them, will you?” she said. “Did you ever see such a picture of innocence? Like an illustration in a storybook.”

“Yeah, very pretty.”

“Oh, do lighten up, darling. Exercise your body instead of your imagination while I make lunch. You’ll love the avocado salad.”

The following day was as warm as midsummer, the evening as delightfully balmy, with a gentle breeze coming off the lake. Ordinarily, Beryl would express no objection to Selena spending the night in the playhouse; she had dismissed Gordon’s quibble as too fanciful to take seriously, yet she felt obliged to offer at least a token maternal resistance.

“Honey, I’m not sure it’s wise for you to be alone at night down there.”

“Don’t be silly, Mother. I’m perfectly safe. There aren’t any grizzly bears.”

“I wasn’t thinking of grizzly bears.”

“Don’t worry, there’s a lock on the door. Besides, I have to sleep there tonight. Tonight’s special.”

“Special?”

Selena regarded her accusingly. “Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“It was three years ago tonight. You know, when it happened. The fire and everything.”

Beryl’s hand rose to her lips. “Oh God, yes, you’re right. Fancy your remembering.”

Selena gave her mother a long, considering look. “Mother, dear, I remember everything.”

“Yes, well, maybe it’s wiser not to remember some things.”

“That all depends, doesn’t it? Anyway, I want to spend tonight with Daddy.”

Beryl made a faint choking sound. “With Daddy?”

“With his picture, I mean. Didn’t Gordon tell you? I keep it right next to my cot in the playhouse.”

“That’s sweet.”

There were times when Beryl could not get out of her daughter’s presence soon enough.

Selena did not go to bed at her usual time that night. There was no point; she dared not risk falling asleep. Instead she sat on the shore below the garden watching the lights in the houses across the lake go out, one by one, as the full moon sank lower among the stars. Selena sometimes wondered if she were some sort of freak, born without nerves; she marveled at the absence of any inner turmoil or excitement as the time grew near when she must return to the playhouse and do what had to be done. Her child-woman’s imagination could foresee no possibility of her plan’s failure, compounded though it was of a bizarre mixture of adolescent logic and adult deviousness.

When the hour seemed right, when the profound stillness of night was invaded by the twittering of those birds that herald the dawn’s approach, Selena ended her vigil and ran lightly across the dew-soaked lawn to the playhouse, where she calmly proceeded to empty the contents of the milk jug over the floor and those few sticks of furniture in the single rectangular room. Then, outside the door, she lit the torch Rob had fashioned for her and tossed it into the room, quickly backing away and removing herself to a safe distance as the flames erupted.

She thought of Rob hidden somewhere in the patch of woodland separating the Winship property from the adjoining modest cottage. Selena was confident he would not disappoint her. He desperately wanted that ten-speed bike.

The firemen found her, seemingly in a state of shock, cowering at the edge of the lawn. They could make little sense of her incoherent babbling, which instantly dried up as Beryl and Gordon came racing down from the house. Beryl whisked Selena away, and after getting her tucked into bed found one of the firemen, apparently the one in charge, waiting for her on the terrace, where he was looking down on the smouldering ruins of the playhouse.

“She’ll be all right,” said Beryl, plainly in shock herself, or close to it. “I gave her a sleeping pill.”

“Lucky kid, Mrs. Winship. She must have a guardian angel to have got out of there alive. Place must have gone up like a torch.”

Beryl couldn’t stop trembling. “It’s too terrible. I can’t bear to think about it. But who called in the alarm?”

“A neighbor. Didn’t give his name.”

“But how did it start?” cried Beryl. “There’s no electric power down there. No candles.”

“One of our men did get a few words out of the girl. None of it made much sense. One thing, she kept asking if we’d got her daddy out.”

Beryl’s head jerked back as if he’d slapped her. “Her—? Oh, his picture. She meant his picture. She kept a picture of her father in the playhouse. I still can’t understand how it could have happened.”

“I’m afraid it didn’t just happen, Mrs. Winship. The fire was deliberately set. We found a plastic milk jug on the grass a few feet from the structure. It reeked of gasoline.”

Beryl seemed about to faint, reached out blindly for support. “Oh God.”

“That’s not all. Your daughter said something else. She said, ‘I saw him. It was the milkman. I saw his face.’ Does that make any sense to you?”

Beryl clutched her throat, as if to prevent a scream from reaching her lips. Then she said weakly, “No. No, it doesn’t. No sense at all.”

“Like I say, she was pretty incoherent. The inspector can question her later... and the police.”

“Gordon’s gone,” announced Selena with the faintest of pussycat smiles. It was late afternoon. She and Rob were sitting on the shore tossing pebbles out into the lake.

“Gone for good?”

“Good is the word. Rode off into the sunset on his beloved Harley.”

“What happened?”

“Let’s just say Gordon decided it might be healthier somewhere else. You know what a health nut he is.”

“Come on, Selena, tell me the truth.”

Selena giggled. “The truth, dear boy, is not for your tender ears. I’ll tell you this much. There’ll be no more Gordons. Not ever. Beryl will be a good little mummy from now on.”

“But what did you tell them, about the fire?”

Selena examined an especially interesting spotted pebble before tossing it into the water. “What I told them? Or what I told Beryl? What I told Beryl is that I woke up and looked out the playhouse window and saw this man standing on the lawn in the moonlight holding a milk jug. I said I got scared and crept out and ran down and hid by the lake before the playhouse went up in flames. I told her the man wore his hair in a pigtail. And then she called me a liar and a wicked girl and I had to remind her that the fire sparked — pardon the pun — certain memories, but not to worry. I wouldn’t want to get her into trouble.”

Rob’s pleasant but somewhat dull features betrayed a mental struggle to comprehend all this, as if it were the plot of a story beyond his intellectual grasp. “What memories?”

“None of your business. Anyway, we had a cozy little chat and I promised I’d tell them I must have been dreaming, and as for the milk jug on the lawn, we’d say you left it there after mowing. Remember that, in case you’re asked. As I told Beryl, that’ll be my story as long as I don’t see that man with the pigtail again. Ever. Poor Beryl. She ran out of the room crying and shortly after that I looked out and saw Gordon strapping a knapsack on his Harley and off he went.”

“You mean he got scared off just because he thought they’d believe you if you told them he set the fire? What a wimp.”

“Well, there’s a little more to it than that, but I’ll spare you the sordid details. That’s history. Oh, by the way, I’ve got a present for you.”

She drew Beryl’s check from her pocket and handed it to him. “Gee, great,” he said with a beaming smile. “I wasn’t sure you’d keep your end of the bargain.”

“Thanks a lot. I told Beryl I’d promised to pay you for painting the playhouse. Oh yes, we had a most satisfactory talk. She’s raising my allowance and agreed to see the family lawyer about making certain changes in the trust fund. Beryl’s rather a dear — when she has to be. And I do have to protect her from rats like Gordon.” Her smile, both pious and resolute, betrayed only the faintest shade of satire. “A daughter’s duty, you know.”