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water,
pattering on to a carpeted floor. It had a splashy quality to it that told me
the carpet was already soaked through.
    ‘What do you make of that?’ I asked
Dan.
    ‘I don’t know. You’re the plumbing
expert. Burst pipe, maybe?’
    I crossed the kitchen again and
found the light-switch. I flicked it down, but all that happened was that the
lights shone dimly for a moment, and then fizzled out. A small shower of blue
sparks danced from the switch and there was a smell of burned plastic. The
water must have short-circuited the wires.
    ‘I have a flashlight in the glove
box of my car,’ I whispered to Dan. ‘Why don’t you go get it, while I see if I
can find where this water’s coming from?’
    ‘Sure. But take care. It sounds like
the whole place is leaking.’
    Dan went out of the back door, and
the screen banged again. Myself, I waited in the darkness of the kitchen for a
moment, and then I ventured out into the hallway.
    The hall was almost totally dark.
Only a thin blue reflected light from the frosty ground outside filtered in
through the crescent-shaped window over the front door. An antique warming-pan
gleamed copper-and-blue in the shadows, and on the
opposite wall there was a dim painting of Lake Candlewood. I touched a potful
of feathery pampas grass as I crept along towards the stairs, and I practically
suffered a heart attack where I stood. But at last I reached the foot of the
stained-oak staircase, and looked up to the landing above.
    Less bravely, I called: ‘Jimmy? Are
you up there?’ knowing damned well that he wasn’t. I think I just wanted to
hear the sound of my own voice. Out of the darkness, however, there were no
answers, no whispers, no reassuring hellos. Only the dripping and trickling of water, and the spongey noise of
rugs soaking it up.
    I placed my foot on the first stair,
and it made a squelching noise. I reached down and the stair-carpet was sodden.
It seemed as if the water was trickling down the stairs in a slow cataract, and
that meant the whole of the landing must bex flooded.
    Right then, Dan came through from
the kitchen with the flashlight.
    ‘Will you look at this place?’ I
told him. ‘It’s almost afloat.’ He shone the flashlight on to the red-patterned
stair carpet. It was glistening and dark with wet, and the stain was already
spreading across the hall.
    ‘This isn’t a burst pipe,’ he said.
‘This is more like Niagara Falls.’
    I looked around. It wouldn’t be long
before the water poured out of the hallway and into the living-room, and that
would mean that the Bodines’ furniture and carpets and drapes would be ruined.
‘What I want to know is where are Jimmy and Alison ?’ I
said. ‘If this is a burst pipe, it’s been leaking like this for hours. You
can’t tell me they went out for the evening and left their house full of water.
It just doesn’t make any sense.’ Dan glanced apprehensively up the stairs. ‘I
guess we’d better go see what’s happening up there.’
    We hesitated for a moment, not sure who
was going to go first. ‘You’re the plumber,’ said Dan, handing over the
flashlight, and that’s how I volunteered. I led the way cautiously up the
soaking stair carpet, my feet squeezing out water with every step, and by the
time I reached the darkened landing at the top of the stairs, my shoes were
letting in the wet.
    ‘Is there anybody there?’ asked Dan,
in a heavy whisper. ‘Maybe a killer whale or two,’ I told him.
    ‘There’s enough water for them.’
    I flicked the flashlight beam
around, at the panelled walls, at the oil paintings of Connecticut scenery, at
the small semicircular table at the far end of the hall with its copper vase of
dried flowers. There were five doors leading off the landing -three to the left
and two to the right, and the two on the right were both ajar. Everything
looked quite normal. It was only when I shone the light downwards at the dark
reflecting lake of water that covered the whole floor