Three Things About Elsie(101)

‘Gabriel Price?’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘Our Gabriel Price?’ As though there was an entire squadron of them somewhere, waiting to be called upon.

The policeman nodded.

Miss Ambrose sent Gloria to go and get him, and everyone looked at each other. Simon resorted to hand-picking the crumbs from the carpet, and Miss Ambrose read a notice she’d written herself only ten minutes earlier. The policemen just waited. They were obviously used to silence, and didn’t feel the need to fill it up with polystyrene words.

When Gabriel Price (or perhaps Ronnie Butler) finally appeared, the police said they were charging him with an arson attack.

‘The ironing board in Miss Claybourne’s front room?’ said Miss Ambrose, which led to a ten-minute conversation with the policemen and a lot of confusion about health and safety.

No, no, they said. This was an incident dating from 1953. A house fire. Someone was killed.

Simon’s mouth opened very slightly.

Ronnie Butler didn’t even skip a beat. He simply straightened his trilby and smiled. He was just about to leave when Miss Claybourne burst through the double doors, spilling over with shouting and hysteria, and carrying what looked like pieces of torn sheet music.

‘Finally,’ she said. ‘Finally someone listened.’

‘Miss Claybourne. Florence …’ Miss Ambrose’s words did nothing to alter the situation, and the first policeman shepherded Ronnie Butler out of the room and into the car park, because it looked as though Florence might launch herself towards him at any moment.

‘He pushed him in,’ she shouted after them. ‘HE PUSHED HIM IN.’

‘No one pushed anyone anywhere.’ Miss Ambrose lowered Florence into a seat and crouched beside her. ‘This is to do with a fire, although I don’t know any more details.’

‘A fire?’ Florence became very still. ‘Which fire?’

Miss Ambrose looked up at the second policeman, who looked at his colleague disappearing from the room and coughed.

‘From a long time ago, from the 1950s. The fire brigade got everybody out, except one.’

Simon started to say something, but changed his mind.

‘How can you possibly connect someone with it after all this time?’ said Miss Ambrose.

‘Oh, Ronnie Butler was a suspect back then. The accelerant was found at his property.’

‘Accelerant?’ said Miss Ambrose.

‘Petrol.’ Simon shuffled his feet. ‘That’s what people usually use. Although it would have still been rationed in 1953.’

The policeman looked over at him. He didn’t look away for quite a long time.

‘I do a lot of reading,’ said Simon. ‘It’s one of my hobbies.’

‘Witnesses also placed Ronnie Butler at the scene.’

Simon watched Florence. She looked as though someone had pressed a pause button. The hysteria was still there, it just seemed to be held in the moment, somewhere behind her eyes and in the lines that gathered around her mouth.

‘Ronnie started the fire?’ she said. ‘It was Ronnie, not me?’

The policeman frowned at her.

‘So why on earth wasn’t he arrested sixty years ago?’ said Miss Ambrose.

The policeman coughed again and looked at his notebook. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘for all intents and purposes, he was dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘Drowned,’ said the policeman. ‘Or at least, that’s what we were led to believe.’

‘Washed up on Langley Beach,’ Florence whispered. ‘The fish ate most of him. My Fred would have been so proud.’

Miss Ambrose glanced at Florence and looked back at the policeman. ‘So how did you trace him here, and why is he calling himself Gabriel Price?’

‘He came to our attention after he was mugged, and we noticed the name Gabriel Price was still on the Missing Persons Register. We questioned him, and something just didn’t feel right.’

‘No,’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘It didn’t feel right here either.’

‘We’ve had a number of phone calls, including one from a retired detective. Perhaps individually they wouldn’t have meant much, but put together … plus, there was some interesting information put forward by North Yorkshire Police. He had a motive, too. He’s still a suspect in a hit and run.’

‘A hit and run?’ Miss Ambrose saucered her eyes.

The policeman looked at his notes again. ‘Also from the 1950s. A young woman was killed by a car, and no one was ever charged. Big investigation. Lots of hearsay, but unfortunately nothing could be proved.’

‘But you think Gabri— Ronnie Butler is responsible?’

‘Almost certainly,’ said the policeman. ‘That’s why he made the arson attack a short while afterwards. He believed there were witnesses in the house.’

‘Belt and braces,’ said Florence. ‘He knew I always stayed over at Elsie’s after the dance. It was me he was trying to get rid of, just in case they eventually caught up with him after all.’

The policeman frowned again, but he didn’t say anything and returned to Miss Ambrose’s questions. ‘We thought we could prove that one.’

‘But he wasn’t charged, because you presumed he’d drowned?’