Fire Will Freeze

by Margaret Millar

  Hearst ordered beer but Mr. Aldington wanted whisky and after a whispered conversation with the bartender and the passing of a bill, he got it.

  “Too cold for beer,” he said to Hearst. “What’s this place like, to stay at, I mean?”

  Hearst didn’t know. He noticed that Mr. Aldington was carrying a briefcase.

  Mr. Aldington saw him looking at it and winked. “Stimulant,” he said. “I always freeze in this country.”

  He went over to the desk and registered. When he came back he said, he wanted to go upstairs and deposit his briefcase. Did Mr. Hearst want to come, too, and they’d all have a drink and then go back to the station together?

  It was too cold for beer, Hearst decided, and if Mr. Aldington was going to come up to the Lodge later to see his girlfriend, it would be better to humor him . . .

  The last he saw of Mr. Aldington, Mr. Aldington was disappearing in a grey fuzzy blur which finally wavered and dissolved into nothing.

  Hearst looked around the room and found that they’d left him a coat and a peaked cap and a pair of heavy work boots. He put them on and went downstairs, hanging onto the railing. He walked drunkenly over to the desk and the Frenchwoman who owned

  the Metropole looked up in surprise. She didn’t recognize him at first.

  Then she said, “Why, Monsieur Hearst!”

  “What day is this?” Hearst croaked, swaying on his feet.

  “Drunk,” said Madame Picard sadly. “This is Friday. I did not see you enter.”

  “Where’s Henri?” Henri was the bartender.

  “This is Henri’s holiday,” Madame Picard said. “And I would not allow him to serve you in your condition. A man who must drive a bus, a man who is responsible for the lives and safety of . . .”

  “I’ve been here all night.”

  “Then you owe me money,” Madame Picard said and promptly opened her registry book. There is no record, Monsieur Hearst. You are imagining things. Monsieur Picard, who had his weakness like every man, used to imagine that there were . . .”

  “I’m not drunk,” Hearst said.

  “Ho, ho,” said Madame Picard gaily. “Monsieur Picard to the life! Never, never drunk, until he fell over!”

  Hearst lurched to the door and wrenched it open, and gasped the cold air into his lungs. Then he closed the door behind him and began to run.

  The stationmaster was in his office. When he saw Hearst he regarded him with a frown.

  “It’s about time,” he said. “Train’s been in ten minutes and there’s a gang of weekenders raising a racket for the bus.”

  He pointed to a group of young men and women standing together in one corner, talking loudly.

  “I haven’t got the bus,” Hearst said. “Someone stole it yesterday.”

  “You’re crazy,” the stationmaster said. “Where’s your uniform? What are you doing in that rig?”

  “I’m telling you,” Hearst said wildly. “A couple of men took the bus yesterday and left me doped up in the Metropole all night.”

  “Some kidder you are,” the stationmaster said sourly. “I saw you leave here yesterday. Had a loadful, too, the kind that pay high and like it. And you phoned in like you usually do from Chapelle when the weather’s bad. You said you could make it all right but the roads were bad and you’d be late.”

  “I phoned in?” Hearst said slowly. Mr. Aldington knew his job, whatever it was. Only someone who’d made the trip before could have known that he phoned in from Chapelle when the going was tough.

  “Give me the phone,” he said. “I’ve got to get in touch with the Lodge.”

  “Well, you’d better use pigeons,” the stationmaster said acidly. “The wires are down. I just tried them, to see what was keeping you.”

  Hearst sat down abruptly in a chair and passed his hand over his eyes. The stationmaster watched him with a worried frown.

  “No one else but you could get that bus through the roads the way they were yesterday,” he said.

  “I know,” Hearst said, with mournful pride. “And what did they want with it? Who in hell would want my bus?”

  “Kidnapping, maybe. You’d better phone the police.”

  Five minutes later Sergeant Mackay of the Mounted Police arrived at the station. A big, taciturn, weather-beaten man of forty, he listened carefully to Hearst’s story. He knew Hearst as a steady young man who liked his job and drank very little. Every day Hearst’s bus passed the corner where the courthouse was and Mackay often waved to him from his office window. He had waved yesterday. He remembered noticing that the bus was full and wondering what strange urge brought people with money to this wilderness in order to slide down hills and break their necks.

  “Sounds a little crazy,” he said when Hearst had finished.

  “Crazy as hell,” Hearst said wearily. “What did they want—the bus or the people in it or just one of the people in it? And where are the people now?”

  “Frozen to death,” said the stationmaster in a sinister whisper.

  “Keep out of this, George,” Mackay said, and turned back to Hearst. “They may have gotten the bus through all right. We’ve had no complaints from the Lodge.”

  “The wires are down,” Hearst said. “And I guess they figured I just stayed in town on account of the roads. I had to do that once last winter.”

  Mackay took out his notebook. He used the notebook chiefly for grocery lists provided by his wife. There wasn’t much crime in the winter up here. People were too busy trying to keep warm.

  “What did these two men look like?” he said. “Were they French or English?”

  “The big one, Aldington, was English, I think. He had on a grey felt hat and a grey overcoat that looked expensive. Dark skin, black hair, and a lot of teeth.”

  “What do you mean, a lot of teeth?” said the stationmaster.

  Mackay said, “George, you got work to do, do it. Tell that gang over there that there isn’t any bus today. They”ll have to stay at the hotel overnight.” George went away reluctantly.

  “He was toothy,” Hearst said.

  “Age?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe forty, maybe thirty-five. He looked fit, though, and pretty muscular. His eyes were brown, I guess, and he was good-looking.”

  “And the other guy?”

  Hearst looked helpless. “I don’t know. He didn’t talk. He just smiled and seemed kind of half-witted. I figure he was French and didn’t want to be spotted.”

  “He didn’t make any noise?”

  “Well, he laughed once. It was a crazy laugh, sort of high and giggly and shrill. Sounded like Hitler.”

  “Like Hitler,” Mackay said thoughtfully, and stared across the desk at Hearst. “Go on.”

  “He looked as if he’d been outdoors a lot. He had on these clothes I’m wearing so I guess he was a little smaller than me.”

  Mackay ran his eye slowly over the blue serge suit, the peaked cap and the overcoat.

  He said suddenly, “Let me see those shoes. Take them off.”

  Hearst took them off and Mackay examined the shoes and the lining. Then he dived for the Montreal and District telephone directory. Hearst peered over his shoulder and

  noted the page number and saw where Mackay’s finger stopped on the page.

  Mackay said, “Step out there a minute, Hearst. I’m calling long distance on business.”

  “Can’t I . . . ?”

  “No.”

  Hearst, minus shoes, walked over to the main door where the stationmaster was giving the weekenders a long and untruthful account of the missing bus. He told them that the drifts were fifteen feet high, that even the snowplow was stuck, and that the Metropole was one of the finest hotels in the country. They would be, he said, very surprised.

  They certainly will, Hearst thought, watching them troop across the stree
t.

  “You’re some liar,” he said.

  “Sure,” George said. “But look at my results. They’re happy as hell because they got something to tell their friends when they get back.”

  Mackay came to the door. He handed Hearst the boots. “I’m going back to the office. Everything’s settled. I’ve got someone tracing the bus and I know who one of your two friends is.”

  He smiled and walked out.

  “Hey,” Hearst shouted, but the door had closed again.

  “How do you like that?” George said. “No gratitude in him. Wouldn’t even give us a clue.”

  He took one of the boots and examined it but it seemed an ordinary boot. He tossed it back to Hearst who put it on. They went back to the office.

  Hearst picked up the telephone directory and turned to the page Mackay had been looking at. At the approximate place where Mackay’s finger had stopped were three private numbers and the number of a boys’ reform school.

  “For God’s sake,” Hearst said in disgust. “A reform school!”

  “What’s that?” George said quickly, and Hearst told him.

  “It’s a clue!” George yelped. “Oh boy, a clue!”

  “A clue, hell,” Hearst said. “If either of those guys came from a boy’s reform school I should be in diapers.”

  11

  “My heart,” said Mrs. Vista, “is not what it used to be. I feel I must have a cup of good strong tea.”

  Mrs. Vista’s heart had never been what it used to be and this announcement failed to electrify anyone. Only Joyce Hunter bothered to reply, and then it was the kind of reply that Mrs. Vista found most unsatisfactory.

  “If you want some tea,” Joyce said moodily, “make it yourself.”

  Mrs. Vista, still seated at the head of the dining-room table, surveyed her regally.

  “You are a rude young snippet.”

  “I don’t know what a snippet is,” Joyce said coldly.

  “You don’t have to know, you are one.”

  “Well, if I’m a snippet, you’re a—a paramour.”

  “A paramour!” Mrs. Vista clapped a hand to her heart and made a little bleating noise. This forced Maudie to make a little bleating noise, too, since she had her status as invalid of the party to maintain. The competition was getting lively when Isobel precipitated herself into the room and slammed the door violently behind her.

  Chad Ross said, “I told you you shouldn’t go out. We’ll all have to stay here until she’s moved into the library.”

  Mr. Hunter rose from the table and helped Isobel to a chair. Then he sat down beside her and patted her hand and made soothing sounds of sympathy.

  “Was it terrible?” he whispered.

  She nodded, half-angrily, and took her hand away. “They’re all taking it so—so calmly. No, not calmly, but as if they don’t care what’s happened.”

  “Why should we?” Mr. Hunter said in surprise.

  “But she’s dead—murdered! Don’t you feel anything at all?”

  “It’s a pity, of course, but I barely knew the woman, and one can’t expect total strangers . . .”

  “But if you saw her?”

  “Precisely,” said Mr. Hunter dryly, “why I don’t want to see her. It’s not unlikely that you’re the one who is wrong. You are making the worst of a bad situation by allowing yourself to become emotional about something you can’t do anything about.”

  He coughed primly and stroked his mustache. “It is far, far better to spend one’s emotions on oneself, like Mrs. Vista and Mrs. Thropple, or not to have any emotions, like Joyce.”

  “Or to close your eyes, like Mr. Hunter,” Isobel added.

  Mr. Hunter smiled benignly and said nothing.

  “And I can do something about the situation,” Isobel said. “Perhaps you’d like to come into the library with me?”

  “No, no thanks. I am happier here. What do you want in the library?”

  “There’s a book there I’d like to see. It’s on local geography and we might be able to figure out exactly where we are and do something about it.”

  “I prefer to wait for the rescuers,” Mr. Hunter said blandly.

  Isobel glanced at her watch. “It’s ten o’clock. The rescuers are taking their time, aren’t they?”

  Mr. Hunter was beginning to be annoyed. “Kindly lower your voice. You wouldn’t like to put the women in hysterics, would you?”

  “I’d love it,” Isobel said through her teeth.

  “You’re a very odd woman,” Mr. Hunter said. She had gotten up from the chair and was looking down at him with contempt. “I earnestly advise you to stay in here with the rest of us.”

  “Your daughter has more spunk than you have,” Isobel said witheringly.

  “I’m sure of it,” Mr. Hunter replied with sorrow. He watched Isobel move towards the door. There was a noticeable reluctance in her step, but once the door was opened she swung out into the hall, almost gaily.

  She felt better in the hall, even with Floraine there, even with Crawford in a savage mood.

  The others, encased in their four stone walls of indifference, irritated her. They aren’t human, she thought, except Gracie and Miss Rudd and maybe Crawford. Even Paula Lashley, who seemed like a nice girl, could not disentangle herself from her own mesh of problems long enough to act human.

  “You back again?” Crawford said. He had propped a kitchen chair against one wall and was leaning back, with the bottle of brandy in one hand. Isobel saw with a shock that the brandy was nearly half gone and that Crawford was actually smiling.

  Crawford noticed her glance. “I am quietly getting a snootful, Isobel. I’d ask you to join me but I have already drunk from the bottle and I don’t approve of women drinking. Cuts down my supply.”

  Isobel edged along the opposite wall, carefully avoiding Floraine’s body.

  “Where are you going, Isobel?”

  “To the library,” Isobel said coldly.

  “For a good book to read. I agree, there’s nothing like a good book when you find yourself cooped up with one, maybe two, homicidal maniacs, and a cold-storage corpse.”

  “Getting drunk isn’t going to help.”

  “Sure it’s going to help, it’s going to help me. The rest don’t matter.”

  “A very refreshing viewpoint,” Isobel said and turned her back on him. But she didn’t hurry into the library.

  “Except possibly,” Crawford added thoughtfully, “you. You may matter. I shall try to find out.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “No bother at all,” Crawford said graciously, and took another drink. “I have always had difficulty with my women. I think the reason is that I’ve never done enough reconnoitering. Take a gun, for instance. When you buy a gun you don’t go into a store and pick out one because it has such a cute little trigger. No ma”am. You scout around first.”

  “Thanks,” Isobel said. “I’ll remember that.”

  “Do.”

  “By the way, where is your gun?”

  “Here.” He patted his pocket. “Snug as a bug.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  He grinned and looked at her owlishly. “Now, Isobel. You’re plying me with liquor to make me talk. I won’t talk, Isobel, but you may have my card. Have a bunch of them, take them home to your friends.”

  He tossed some cards across to her. She stooped and picked them up. The first one said, “M. R. MacTavish, Insurance Adjustor.” The others included an Oriental Rug Dealer called Marink, a Mr. Kelly who ran a Finance Company, and a Mr. Hugh Henderson whose business was not stated.

  Isobel let the cards fall to the floor. She said dryly, “A man of many moods, apparently.”

  “That’s me,” Crawford said. “Never a dull moment. And think of it—if you marry me you can pick your own name.
Not many women have such a glowing opportunity. Which name do you like best?”

  “I’ll have to think it over,” Isobel said.

  “Pick any one you like,” Crawford said with a vague sweep of his hand.

  Isobel gave the cards a kick and walked rapidly into the library. Her face was flushed and she felt warm and a little shocked at herself because Crawford had made her forget Floraine.

  She sat down in one of the sheet-covered chairs and thought about Crawford-Kelly- Marink-Henderson-MacTavish. After a time her face cooled, and she noticed that the room was very cold and thought suddenly about the furnace.

  She rushed out and told Crawford. Crawford said he personally felt very warm but if Isobel would like to fix the furnace he offered no objections.

  “Why should I have to fix it?” Isobel cried. The house is practically swarming with able-bodied men and I have to do everything! It’s not fair.”

  “I know it isn’t,” Crawford said and took a gulp of brandy. “It’s a damn shame. But it’s life,” he added sadly, and waved her away.

  She strode angrily down the hall and flung open the door into the kitchen. She found Mrs. Vista trying to make herself some tea on the stove, but she swept past her without speaking and hurled herself down the cellar steps.

  “Really,” said Mrs. Vista pensively, “how very strange everyone else is.”

  Isobel opened the heavy door that led into the furnace room. She expected a gust of warm air to meet her, but instead there seemed to be a very cold draught sweeping across at her and the cellar was quite bright.

  She looked and saw that the door at the head of the short stairway leading outside was open.

  There was a man standing in the doorway. He was watching her, motionless, as if he had frozen there.

  Isobel took a step back. Neither of them spoke. The man, outlined by sun, seemed enormous and sinister. He was dressed in skiing clothes and he still had his poles strapped to his wrists. He moved suddenly and leaned against the door as if he were unutterably weary. One of the poles slipped off his wrist and clattered down the steps.

  The man stared at it a moment, then he began to lumber down the steps after it, hanging on to the wall.