“I know, but we had nothing to do with it.”
“Doesn’t mean she won’t hold us responsible.”
The fire engine departed, the guests went back inside, undaunted by the soot and the smell of charring. Bertha was sent home with five pounds from the till by Shirley. In her absence, several guests volunteered to continue making the sandwiches. It never ceased to surprise the Cokers how willing nightclub patrons were to pitch in behind the scenes. For the novelty of it, rather than altruism. They loved a disaster.
* * *
—
“Everything all right?” Nellie asked when Shirley and Betty arrived at the Amethyst. She was referring to the Pixie and the Foxhole, not their state of health or heart or mind. Those things were rarely enquired after by Nellie. She had a little glass dish of cream toffees in front of her and chewed one thoughtfully while scrutinizing her daughters. Nellie had a way of making you feel as though you were lying, even when you were telling the truth.
“A small fire in the kitchen at the Pixie,” Betty said stoutly, resilient in the face of the nightly maternal audit.
“Extinguished straight away,” Shirley added hastily. “Although…”
“Although?”
“It seems it was started deliberately.”
“Well, well,” Nellie said and popped another toffee in her mouth. “Give me the details.”
* * *
—
Nellie was not a stranger to fire. She had owned a club—the Lucky Cat, acquired not long after the Amethyst—that had burnt down to the ground shortly after it had closed for the night, several years ago now. The Lucky Cat was indeed lucky, because only a few weeks before its destruction Nellie had taken out an insurance policy against just such an eventuality. The fire was ruled an accident, Maddox had been an instrumental witness. （“I noticed faulty wiring.”） There had been no loss of life, except, ironically, the cat that lived on the premises to keep the rodent population in check. A few spindly bones were raked out of the ash. Nellie told her concerned girls that the cat had escaped and gone to live elsewhere. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” she said to Maddox. She did not believe that. What you didn’t know was almost bound to hurt you. Nellie liked to know everything.
Nellie continued to brood on the news from the Pixie in her cashier’s booth. It had been a clumsy assault, but nonetheless without Bertha’s quick wits everyone in the club could have been burnt to a cinder and Nellie would probably have been found guilty of negligence, if not manslaughter, even murder, and put out of business. Which was the whole point presumably. It was Maddox, wasn’t it?
* * *
—
Ramsay was about to leave the Sphinx for the night when there was a tremendous commotion. It was heralded by a klaxon, like a clown horn, from up the stairs （later he realized it was a signal from the doormen）， followed by the floor juddering and shaking as if an earthquake were in progress. There was a grinding of gears and then the bar and all its bottles—along with Gerrit, who was still standing behind it—began to disappear.
It took Ramsay a good few seconds of readjusting his baffled brain to realize that the bar had in fact revolved, like a train engine on a turntable, or a theatre flat changing. It reminded him of a play he had recently seen where the whole stage had spun round to reveal a completely different set. The “earthquake” was the hidden engine that drove the mechanism. Now, where the bar once was, there was only a painted wall, and the bar—and Gerrit along with it—had disappeared. Ramsay felt an odd disappointment that the barman hadn’t waved farewell as he passed out of sight. Where had he gone? Would he come back?
While Ramsay was being transfixed by this cunning vanishing act, the girls and porters and waiters, not to mention the Sphinx’s own patrons, had been conducting a well-drilled performance, sweeping up glasses and bottles and any other signs of transgression against the licensing laws. By the time the police plodded clumsily into the club there was nothing illicit in sight, only a bogus air of virtue.
The red velvet curtain was pushed aside and Gerrit sauntered in from the storeroom like a bad actor coming on stage and said, “Is there a problem here, officers?” Ramsay stared at him, speechless. There was a secret door into the store cupboard? And no one had seen fit to tell him about the trick with the bar? What else didn’t he know? He was supposed to be in charge, for heaven’s sake.
“All right, my man?” Gerrit said, slapping him again （rather forcefully） between the shoulder blades. “Clever, eh?”