DOWNTON ABBEY 1926.

Episode 7. Chapter 1

Thursday September 23 and Friday September 24, 1926

The Fire

It was a harrowing night.

Galvanized by the frantic reaction of His Lordship and Her Ladyship, Miss Baxter ran down the passage and pounded on the door of the bedroom shared by Lady Mary and Mr. Talbot and then burst in to announce to them that Mr. Branson's cottage was on fire. Then she dashed back to find some appropriate clothes for Her Ladyship, knowing that both the Crawleys would want to go to the fire.

They did and this proved a momentary bone of contention between them.

"Robert."

He was throwing on his clothes and Cora spoke to him from the doorway of his dressing room, saying only his name and yet so much more. She knew he would want to be in the thick of things.

He paused. "I'll get the car," he conceded, though not without some disgruntlement.

And as Cora turned back into the bedroom, he pulled on the least formal clothes he could find in the wardrobe and raced out onto the gallery. Henry emerged almost at the same moment, buttoning his shirt as he went, and the two men hurried down the stairs, meeting Barrow at the bottom.

"I've summoned the fire brigade, my lord. They're on their way."

"Thank you, Barrow."

The butler hardly heard the words. With Mr. Talbot beside him and the footmen in tow, Barrow led the way out the front door of the Abbey - it was an emergency, after all - and headed out across country to the quiet service road that led down to Shamrock Cottage.

Despite the urgency of the situation, Cora kept her head.

"Blankets," she said to Baxter. "And coats. They'll need something against the cold." If they got out. She tried to push that thought from her mind.

By the time Cora and Mary had dressed, collected what they thought might be useful, and descended to the main floor. Robert had the car at the door. Though he drove rarely, Robert knew the estate intimately, its roads as well as its paths, and had just turned onto the service road when he had to pull over in the narrow lane to make way for the fire truck. It would be only lightly manned. Many of the volunteers, drawn by the fire bells, would be making their way overland, as Henry, Barrow, and the footmen had done, and join the action when they came to it.

The flames, alarming from a distance, were exponentially more frightening on the ground.

"My God," Robert said in an awed voice as he swung the Rolls into an out-of-the-way spot. "The whole place has gone up."

Mary and Cora were scanning the grounds, desperate to catch a glimpse of Tom, Sybbie, and Mrs. Hutton. They scrambled from the car together, but hung back just a little, cowed by the heat, but also anxious to stay out of the way of the men at work.

"Why is it burning so intensely?" Robert wondered, momentarily distracted by this fact. The cottage was made of stone, though of course all the framing, walls, and floors were wooden. Yet it seemed to him that the inferno raging within the stone framework was too severe.

"Tom!" Cora spotted him. "Sybbie!" The tone of her voice had gone up a pitch, so anxious was she for their safety, so relieved was she to see them alive. She hugged them both tightly, but turned immediately to Mrs. Hutton, draping a warm blanket over the shivering woman who stood next to them.

Robert reached out to take Sybbie from Tom. Crying "Donk!" Sybbie crumpled into her grandfather's warm and reassuring embrace and her already tear-stained face saw a renewed flood of anguish. Robert wrapped his arms about her and the blanket Mary tucked around Sybbie, and then withdrew a little from the group, murmuring soothingly to the agitated child.

Tom accepted a blanket automatically, only glancing at Mary as he did so. It was as though he could not turn his attention from the fire. Mary's gaze, too, turned to the raging blaze. Downton's volunteer fire brigade were distinctive in their uniform hats and coats, and their facility with the pump truck and fire hose made it clear that they knew their business. There were other men there, as well, anyone within hearing distance of the alarm, from the estate and the village. Mary caught sight of Molesley and the man who was working for Carson, and Pratt, who had clearly found his way despite being overlooked by Robert.

But Mary's great concern, now that she knew the residents of Shamrock Cottage were safe, was to find her husband and her eyes tore from one group to another, searching... And then she found him. There was a fire bucket line in place from the old hand pump that had once served the coach house that Tom had converted to a garage. Barrow was working the pump, the footmen and several others forming the chain, and Henry stood at the head of it closest to the flames. He'd thrown on the first shirt that came to hand, one of his dress white ones, and it was now black from the ash and smoke. The extent of the fire was such that the bucket brigade could not themselves hope to put it out; instead they were concentrating on keeping it from spreading, leaving the fire team and their hose to do the heavier work.

Watching Henry heaving bucket after bucket into the flames, his expression one of such determination despite the sweat rolling down his face from the extreme heat and his proximity to the blaze, Mary was overcome with admiration and awe. He was right in the thick of it. What courage! It had been the same when he had thrown himself into the firestorm of Charlie Rogers' car wreck at Brooklands. He did not hesitate to act, even with the memory of Charlie's death so vivid in his heart. Mary could not stop looking at him.

"I should be helping," Tom said suddenly. "It's my house." And he made to join the other men though, attired in his pajamas and two different shoes, he was hardly in a fit state to participate.

"No, Tom!" Cora caught hold of his arm. "Think of Sybbie," she begged him.

Robert, perhaps discerning Tom's intent, came up with the child lying more quietly in his arms now, her head on his shoulder. "There's nothing you can do," he said firmly.

And there was nothing any of them could do. Nothing, that is, but contain the fire and let it burn itself out within the cottage walls.

"We should take Sybbie back to the Abbey," Robert went on, turning to Cora. "Before she catches her death of cold."

Cora nodded her agreement. "I'll get Mrs. Hutton." The housekeeper was standing a few feet away, warmer now with the blanket around her, but still shivering in shock.

"Tom?"

Tom did turn now to face Robert and to assure himself that Sybbie was all right. "Of course," he said, somewhat disjointedly, pulling the blanket up a little over Sybbie's shoulder. "I want to stay here. Until it's all over."

"I'll stay, too," Mary put in. "Henry's here," she said by way of explanation.

Robert accepted this. "We'll wait up," he said.

Afterwards

After seeing Sybbie tucked in upstairs, Robert and Cora took up a vigil in the small library, the windows of which looked toward the cottage and from which they could see the glow from the fire. Miss Baxter had taken charge of Mrs. Hutton, leading her to the servants' quarters to settle her in a room there. Mrs. Patmore, who believed that all crises were better faced with a hot cup of tea and some biscuits, had provided them for His Lordship and Her Ladyship. They were greatly appreciated. Mrs. Patmore retired with their thanks and then took herself up to the attic rooms with a tray for the housekeeper of Shamrock Cottage from whom she hoped to hear the story in full.

The dregs of the tea had long since cooled when Cora caught sight of the several figures moving toward the Abbey in the pre-dawn light and nudged a drowsing Robert awake. Together they hurried out to meet them. The group was strung out in a ragged line. Henry and Mary walked arm in arm. Tom, who had taken up a coat and shed the blanket Mary had given him earlier, walked beside them, his head down. Barrow and Andrew were shoulder to shoulder, Lewis a little apart from them. All wore grim visages.

Cora went right to Tom and put her arms around him, a gesture more heartfelt and eloquent than any words she could have uttered.

Relieved to see them all, Robert turned first to his staff. "Barrow, Andrew, Lewis. Thank you for your tremendous efforts this night. You have our deepest gratitude."

This bolstered the three men a little and they stood straighter with his words, but Robert could see that they could hardly hold their eyes open. "We are all of us exhausted," he added. "Go to bed and we'll see if we can get things back on track at midday."

Grateful for this dispensation, butler and footmen murmured their thanks and faded away.

Withdrawing from Cora's embrace, Tom fixed his eyes upon her. "Where's Sybbie?"

"In the nursery with George, fast asleep," Cora told him, with a semblance of a smile. She was glad to have some good news for him. "She drifted off right away.'

"We should go up, too," Robert suggested, as the family moved into the Great Hall.

"I think I'd like a drink," Mary said, responding to her father but looking at her husband. They led the way to the library and the others followed.

Tom, moving as though in a dream, let Cora lead him to the sofa. Henry, his face and clothes covered in ash and damp from his long night on the bucket brigade, went to stand by the fire place.

"What's the report?" Robert asked, handing a glass to Tom.

Mary gave Henry his whisky and remained at his side. "The cottage is completely gone," she said to fill the silence Tom left open. "The stone walls were falling down at the end. I thought the fire would burn forever."

Robert recalled his puzzlement earlier at the vigour of the blaze. "Why is that?" He was only wondering aloud, for they could not really know at this point, or so he thought.

"Because it was deliberately set," Henry said fiercely, eyes flashing in a face streaked black from the fire. "There was petrol all about."

"What?"

Cora, Robert, and Mary stared at him, stunned. Only Tom, his eyes still wide with the shock that had not diminished the whole long night, did not look his way.

"Petrol?" Cora's faced contorted in confusion. "But what...?"

"Petrol!" Robert spoke the same word at the same time, but there was a rising fury in his voice. He had just sat down and now was on his feet again. "We must have Sergeant Willis up here immediately. Petrol!" He paused and then looked to Tom, almost in disbelief. "This was attempted murder!" The thought was inconceivable, but if the evidence supported it...

"It wasn't," Tom said abruptly. "Attempted murder. It wasn't. He ... didn't want us to die."

This was almost as extraordinary a statement as the one Henry had just made.

"He...?"

"What?" Mary said again.

The three of them looked from Tom to Henry and back again.

Tom did not meet their anxious gazes but continued to stare unseeing across the room, frowning as though trying to remember, as though it were an effort to remember.

"I was in bed, asleep, when the fire started. We all were." He spoke slowly, his mind racing ahead as the words fell from his tongue. "And ... then there was a rock ... through my bedroom window and someone yelling Fire! Fire! I came right awake..." Had he not been uneasy in his sleep for weeks now, since the other rock incident? "... and before I could get to the window, I saw the flames." He looked round at them now, his eyes falling on each in turn. "I started shouting and I ran to Sybbie, scooped her out of her bed, and then we tore downstairs to Mrs. Hutton's room. She's just off the kitchen, at the back, and ... she hadn't had warning and we had to wake her up. The front of the house was already filling with smoke when we came down the stairs, but the back was still clear at that point. We climbed out the window in Mrs. Hutton's room and came round the front ... more, I think, to see what was happening." There was a bewilderment in Tom's voice as though he still couldn't believe the events of the night.

"But ... who woke you?" Cora asked mystified.

Mary, as riveted to this narrative as her parents, frowned. "Are you saying it was the person who set the fire?"

"Yes."

"But ... why?" Cora persisted."Perhaps they ... he didn't know you were there and suddenly realized it?" She was trying to make sense of something that wasn't sensible.

"I don't know," Tom said hollowly.

"That's not quite so." Henry pushed away from the mantle and moved to stand more closely to the others. He was staring hard at Tom.

Robert looked from one to the other. "What's this all about?" he demanded, almost crossly, discerning that there was more going on than he and Cora and Mary knew.

"Tell them," Henry said simply, his gaze boring into his brother-in-law.

"Tell us what?" Robert pressed.

Mary's eyes rested on her husband, considering him for a moment, and then turned with her parents to Tom.

Cora, beside Tom, was as perplexed as the other two but took a more sympathetic approach, gently squeezing his arm. "Tom?"

He seemed to be labouring under a great burden, his shoulders weighed down with it. Then, with a great sigh, he told them.

They listened in stunned silence as he recounted the litany of incidents he had determinedly framed as pranks - the cow patty in the car, the ink on his office desk, his jacket tossed in a muddy puddle, the rock through the window at the Abbey, the dead grouse in his car at the cottage, the grit in the gas line of his car at the shop in York.

"And you didn't think to tell anyone?" Robert was incredulous, almost as much at Tom's reticence as at the events themselves.

Mary turned to Henry. "You knew." It was clear from her tone that she thought his silence a transgression.

"Don't blame him," Tom cut across her firmly, showing fire for the first time. "Henry didn't know everything, not until last week. And then he insisted we go to the police, which we did." Tom nodded in Robert's direction at this. "In York. But there wasn't much they could do except to advise me to stay on the alert and to summon them or Sergeant Willis if I saw anything suspicious."

"But why did you say nothing to us?" Robert demanded, struggling to suppress anger. "This ... culprit has clearly been operating around the estate, sometimes in broad daylight. If more people had known, if we had all been alerted to this business, there would have been that many more eyes to keep a lookout." It seemed so obvious to him. He made a sound of disgust.

"They were pranks," Tom said emphatically. "You don't call the police in for a cow patty or spilled ink."

This arrested Robert for the moment, but Cora spoke up then. "But the rock through the window."

"That one did trouble me," Tom admitted.

"The week before you moved to the cottage," Robert noted, connecting the dates. "Why," he was trying to choose his words carefully, "would you have moved out of Downton into a much less secure situation after that?"

The atmosphere in the room had changed. It was one thing for Tom to take risks with his own life, as foolish as that had proved to be. But to have knowingly exposed Sybbie to a hazardous situation... For Robert this resurrected memories of Tom's misadventures in Ireland when he had abandoned his wife, Robert's daughter, the very pregnant Lady Sybil, in a bid for his own freedom after having been implicated in illegal and violent actions there. Robert had overcome the fury he had felt toward Tom at that time, but perhaps not really forgiven him for it.

Cora sensed that this part of the past was roiling its way to the surface. They had come a great distance together, Robert and Tom, to the point where Robert considered Tom as a son, but this was the kind of thing that might very well create a wedge between them. Cora knew Tom well enough to believe that he might have suppressed the rock incident precisely to avoid having to delay his departure from Downton.

"They were aimed at me," Tom said sharply, responding to Robert. "They were silly, small things, and they were aimed at me." It was an explanation that would have held more water only the day before.

"Do you think this might have been another ... prank ... that got out of hand?" Cora asked, trying to defuse the situation. "That perhaps that's what prompted him to raise the alarm?"

"Splashing petrol about is not the modus operandi of a prankster," Robert said curtly. "It may be that this ... assailant did not want to kill you, but the means in this instance are clearly criminal. Setting fire to someone's home is a criminal act, whether or not anyone is harmed. I'm going to call Sergeant Willis." He strode from the room.

Cora, deciding that she could best serve in the immediate situation by calming Robert, followed him.

"But ... who would want to harass you?" Mary asked. "You're hardly a figure of local opprobrium. The tenants and villagers all like you and the local establishment have more effective ways by far of expressing their disapproval than putting cow dung in your car or throwing rocks."

Before any of them could remark on this, a clock chimed and Mary was suddenly alert to a different imperative. "Six o'clock!" she said, getting rapidly to her feet. "I must see to Stephen." She paused, closed her eyes and took a deep breath as though to summon strength in her exhaustion, and then moved off.

Left alone for the first time that night, Tom and Henry exchanged long sober looks.

"I should have told them sooner," Tom conceded, with an acknowledging nod to his brother-in-law.

Henry shrugged. "You couldn't have known. I was troubled by what was happening, too, but no one could have predicted this." He paused. "But ... he ...," he used the pronoun deliberately, as Tom had done, "...gave you warning. He didn't want to kill you. He wanted ... what?" Henry was wondering aloud more than asking a direct question. "Still no idea, then, who it is? You didn't recognize the voice?"

Looking frustrated, Tom shook his head. "No. It was male. And," he added, recalling the theory Cora had advanced about the warning, "he wasn't ... alarmed. It wasn't a prank gone wrong. It was as though...," Tom was only coming to this realization as he said it, "with the strategic placing of the petrol, ensuring that we had a way out, waking me up, that it was all ... deliberate. Just as you said." He swallowed the remainder of his drink and stood up.

"We ought to go to bed," Henry said, putting down his own glass.

"We can't. Sergeant Willis will be here shortly. As if that will be any help in sorting this out."

The sun hadn't begun its ascent yet, but Tom went to one of the windows and drew open the shutters, a task routinely performed by the maids who would be wanting to get in here soon as they made their rounds. After the night just past it felt somehow wrong that the sun should still come up and that a day that promised fair weather should be dawning.

"I've seen a house burn before," Tom said meditatively, looking out onto the grounds. "I didn't know ... I couldn't know that it would feel like this."