Fire Will Freeze

by Margaret Millar

  “Hell,” she said finally, “you’ll meet some other guy some time. Don’t let it throw you. You just let me know and I’ll introduce you to a whole squadron of them. And with your clothes and looks and figure and everything . . .” Her voice faded.

  Isobel opened her eyes and smiled slightly. “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks, Gracie.”

  “You weren’t honestly stuck on him anyway. It was just a flash in the pan.”

  “A flash in the pan. A very neat description.”

  “Write it off as experience,” Gracie said. “God knows you need some.”

  “Shall we change the subject?” Isobel said with an impatient gesture of her head.

  “We could, but I sort of like this one,” Gracie said cheerfully, “especially now that I know you’re not going off half-cocked. I’m just crazy about romance.” She gazed thoughtfully out of the window. “It’s a funny thing, but I never get much of it. There’s just two kinds of guys in my life, the kind that want to sleep with me and the kind that don’t. So I got to look out for myself.”

  Isobel stirred again. “And you do?”

  “And I do. You want some more cheering up?”

  “No, I guess I’m all cheered up,” Isobel said soberly. She drew in her breath and found she could say his name almost as if it didn’t matter to her. “Crawford—Crawford was Miss Rudd’s brother?”

  Gracie nodded silently.

  “And he killed her, I suppose. He killed her when I asked him to go down and tend to the fire, and then he came up to the kitchen and I talked to him. He was looking for some brandy . . .”

  “No damn wonder,” Gracie said dryly.

  “. . . and he didn’t turn a hair, he was so natural and cheerful.”

  “I guess he was glad to get rid of her,” Gracie said. “It’s kind of hard to have crazy relatives, you know, like my aunt. And Miss Rudd kept giving him away. She kept calling him Harry but nobody caught on except me and then it was too late. I guess he actually was stealing from her, paintings, and furniture and things.”

  “Yes,” Isobel said stiffly. “Yes.”

  “And Floraine helped him. Seems funny though, that he kept up this house when he could have sent Frances away to an institution.”

  “He kept her here because he was ashamed of her,” Isobel said, “and because, I think, this house had been used before by people like Jeanneret, perhaps for political meetings or perhaps for certain people to hide out in. I think Floraine ran the house. I think she was—his mistress.”

  Gracie lowered her eyes and said uneasily, “Yeah, I think she was.”

  “And he killed her because he—well, he might have just been angry with her. He didn’t need a better reason than that.”

  But there was something that didn’t quite fit in and for a minute she couldn’t remember what it was.

  Then she thought, of course, it’s the way he acted when he found Floraine, and brought her into the house. He was shocked, that’s the word. After he killed Frances he acted almost normal, he seemed happy in the excited way Frances herself was happy when she brought the newspapers to Gracie as a present.

  She remembered him looking down at Floraine when she was lying in the hall. He had looked savage and frightened and his voice had been rough: “My nerves are bad and when my nerves are bad I want action, any kind of action . . .”

  He had come over and kissed her then, and his mouth had been hard and cold.

  He was afraid, Isobel thought, that’s what fear does to me, it makes me cold all over. What was he afraid of?

  She remembered then when she had stood outside Miss Rudd’s door and listened to see if she was asleep. It had not been Miss Rudd in that dark room. It had been Floraine, talking to Crawford: “Don’t lose your nerve. She can’t do a thing to spoil it . . .”

  They were talking about me, Isobel thought. And if I had rapped on Crawford’s door then as I intended to, I would have found out he was in there with Floraine. But Joyce came along and interrupted. And Joyce had said, “Don’t rely on Mr. Crawford.”

  Isobel thought, when he came over and kissed me in the hall he was afraid of me. That’s why he did it. He had always to come and meet danger more than halfway. That’s why he paid so much attention to me—he thought I had killed Floraine.

  Gracie said, “There you go thinking about him again. I can tell.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Just asking for trouble.”

  “I believe I am,” Isobel said slowly. “I think I’m going to ask for trouble.”

  She got off the bed and straightened her skirt. Her head felt too light and her legs too heavy, but she found she could walk.

  “Where are you going?” Gracie said.

  “Just downstairs.”

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “If you’d like to.”

  “I don’t think I will,” Gracie said. “I’m getting damn well sick of that crowd.”

  “You could do your hair again,” Isobel said dryly, “and I have some nail polish in my purse you could have.”

  Gracie brightened. “That’d be swell.”

  The purse and nail polish were found and Gracie settled happily down in her room. Isobel went downstairs.

  Except for Chad and Joyce Hunter, who were still outside, the group was gathered in the sitting room. Herbert and Mr. Hunter had built a fire in the grate on the theory that

  the sight of a nice hearth fire would enliven their spirits.

  Unfortunately the only sight of the fire the others had was obtained by peering around Mrs. Vista’s broad and unbeautiful backside. For Mrs. Vista was not one to consider the comfort of others, and having lived in England all her married life she was well acquainted with the strategy of hearth fires, which is to get there first.

  She rubbed her hands together and said there was nothing like a hearth fire, and when Maudie acidly inquired, “Where is it? What fire?” Mrs. Vista merely thought how ungracious she was. Coarse and ungracious.

  She was rather annoyed to find herself being jostled from the rear and still more annoyed when she discovered that the jostler was Isobel Seton. For no matter how charming Miss Seton’s exterior, Miss Seton was a troublemaker and Mrs. Vista felt unable to cope with any extra trouble at the moment.

  “I want to talk to you,” Isobel said.

  Mrs. Vista closed her eyes firmly and tried to pretend that Isobel was not there.

  But Isobel was there and she proved it by clasping Mrs. Vista’s arm, not at all gently.

  “Did you hear me?” Isobel said.

  “I suppose I did,” Mrs. Vista said sadly.

  “You had the room beside Crawford’s, didn’t you?”

  Mrs. Vista said, yes, it was impossible to forget that because Mr. Crawford had snored off and on all night and she hadn’t had a wink of sleep.

  Isobel said, “You were in your room when you heard Floraine scream?”

  “Yes, I don’t care to think about . . .”

  “And Paula was in the bathroom?”

  “Yes.”

  Paula had overheard and come over to join them. “Why?” she said frowning. “Why all this?”

  “Did you hear Crawford snoring?”

  “Yes, of course. You couldn’t miss it,” Paula said. “That’s why I decided to wake him . . .”

  Her voice died suddenly and she blinked her eyes.

  “And if he was sleeping,” Isobel said, “he wasn’t pushing Floraine off a balcony.”

  “I won’t listen,” Mrs. Vista said. “I will not listen to anything more. I simply refuse.”

  Paula and Isobel looked at each other. Then Paula blinked again and said, “Very likely I was mistaken about hearing Mr. Crawford snore. I can’t be sure.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Mrs. Vista cried. “Nor can I. My nerves . . . I�
�m a very suggestible type. Aren’t I, Anthony?”

  Mr. Goodwin said, “Oh, yes, yes, yes.”

  Mrs. Vista turned back to Isobel and said bitterly, “You cannot leave well enough alone. You are a troublemaker, there is no other word for you!”

  Isobel cried, “And you—you are a . . . !”

  But what Mrs. Vista was to Isobel was not revealed, for a sudden shout rang through the house and Joyce came bursting into the door.

  “A snowplow!” she shouted. “There’s a snowplow coming!”

  Mr. Hunter, who was acquainted with his daughter’s little experiments in psychology, said, “Now, Joyce. You’re sure? You’re positive?”

  “I,” Joyce said, “am always sure.”

  She dashed out of the door again, and the rest followed her, with Mrs. Vista wobbling along in the rear.

  Only Paula and Isobel remained, looking at each other quietly.

  “You know you heard him,” Isobel said at last.

  “I didn’t want to excite everyone,” Paula said. “Mrs. Vista is rather silly sometimes, but in this case I think she was right. Leave it alone until we’re out of this house.”

  Isobel shrugged and said, “All right. Shall we go and look at the snowplow?”

  “No.” Paula turned her face away. “I’m not sure I want to see it. I’m not sure . . .”

  Isobel went out and met Gracie plunging down the stairs trying to talk and blow on her nail polish to dry it at the same time. They went out onto the veranda and watched the snowplow come slowly along the road and almost up to the veranda steps.

  The whirl of snow stopped and two men got out of the truck. One of them was in uniform. He waved his hand and then began plodding his way through the snow towards the house. They seemed to move with inexorable slowness, like two fates.

  “Ahoy!” Mrs. Vista shouted, and the man in uniform raised his arm and smiled. “Ahoy! You the Lodge people?”

  Joyce stood apart from the rest of them, her dark eyes taking in their faces one by one, almost absently.

  She knows, Isobel thought, watching her. She knows it wasn’t Crawford. She’s waiting for one of us to crack . . .

  But no one did crack, not even Maudie, who, faced with the choice of fainting from excitement or powdering her nose, powdered her nose. Mrs. Vista tucked in a few stray wisps of hair. Mr. Hunter stroked his mustache thoughtfully. Gracie admired her nails. Mr. Goodwin had retreated into the vast chasm of his own mind.

  And Isobel stood with her eyes fixed on the snow and for a minute she thought she saw Crawford poised against the sun, a strange glittering man who fled from hell to hell and had no peace anywhere.

  She was barely conscious of the arrival of the two men on the veranda, the explanations, the questions, all shouted at once in every pitch.

  “He went that way!” Mrs. Vista shrieked. “Hurry up and catch him!”

  “There are two of them!” Maudie said shrilly.

  Under this battery of noise Sergeant Mackay did not even blink. When things had quieted down he coughed and said in a dignified voice:

  “Mackay, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This is Mr. Hearst, who drives the Lodge bus.”

  There was a short silence. Then Gracie said brightly, “Gee, we’re glad to see you! I’m just crazy about policemen!”

  17

  “. . . an ill-timed remark,” wrote Mrs. Vista to her sister, in the knotty pine writing room of the Lodge. “It set the mood, as it were, for the subsequent events, and Sergeant Mackay became friendly, not to say intimate. (I do not quite trust a friendly Scot, do you?) Practically in front of everyone I was forced to explain all about Cecil and Anthony and why I came here in the first place. One thinks one has nothing to hide and then it turns out that one has! Too humiliating!

  “While we were all answering this policeman’s questions, the young man called Hearst drove away in the truck and came back with our lost bus.

  “And so here we are! We arrived about six o’clock and after the rigors to which I have been subjected I was delighted to find that the Chateau is quite a civilized place, and the apparent ruggedness remains, as ruggedness should, only apparent. Sergeant Mackay made no objections to our coming here, so I presume the mystery, for him at least, is adequately explained. At any rate we have no policemen around guarding us, as frequently happens in fiction. But perhaps even policemen have some sense and Mackay is only too glad to be rid of such traitors and agitators as Floraine and Jeanneret and that man Rudd.

  “It was sheer ill-luck that we were so involved in the events. I am still just a little foggy on the explanation, but it seems that this man Jeanneret was a very dangerous agitator who was interned somewhere near Montreal in a reform school converted into an internment camp. At any rate Rudd helped him to escape in a laundry truck, and they managed to get as far as Briaree, which is where the Montreal train line ends and where the snow bus met us.

  “The laundry truck broke down and there was a blizzard coming on, and Jeanneret conceived the idea of stealing the bus which, beside the snowplow, was the only vehicle which could get through the roads. Jeanneret could not go back in the direction of Montreal where they were on the watch for him, and besides, Sergeant Mackay believes that he was on his way to the important new mining area north of here. Something to do with the war, but that, of course, is a secret! How one goes about agitating in a mining area, I don’t know. One can only say that it takes all kinds to make a world!

  “There is a delightful man here, who teaches skiing. He escaped from Austria just after the Anschluss. I wonder if perhaps a little skiing might bring down my weight . . .”

  Mrs. Vista stared thoughtfully out of the window and saw two beginners at the top of a gentle slope. One of them started down and landed almost instantly, skis waving in the air. Mrs. Vista returned hastily to her letter.

  “. . .or perhaps I shall simply go on a diet. This will be difficult, as they have a magnificent cuisine here, and this morning I had real Quebec maple syrup—simply crawling with calories, of course, but perhaps I shouldn’t worry about my weight at all. One is not expected to look like a girl at forty-five!

  “The Austrian ski-meister is called Putzi, I don’t know why. But I shall find out . . .”

  Mrs. Vista looked up at the sound of ski boots tramping across the floor. It was Paula Lashley and she looked very pale, Mrs. Vista thought. She laid down her pen.

  “Hello, my dear,” she said heartily. “Are you going to write a letter?”

  “No.”

  Paula went over to the window and glanced out. “I’m waiting for the bus to leave.”

  “Leave! Why we only came yesterday.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Paula said curtly. “I haven’t got time for skiing this winter.”

  “Is your young man going, too?”

  “He’s not my young man. He’s staying here.”

  Paula continued to stare out of the window, watching Mr. Hearst tinkering with the engine of the bus. She tapped her foot impatiently and she looked as if she didn’t want to talk. But Mrs. Vista never allowed such considerations to interfere with her own desires.

  “Of course he’s your young man,” she stated firmly. “I have observed the nasty way he looks at you. It is a sure sign.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Of course I am not an old woman, but I have lived. And one has only to look around one to interpret the signs of love. In just that way, Cecil used to look at me. Among lesser animals, too, my dear. Has one ever seen a gorilla give his mate a really friendly look? One has not!”

  “I am not interested in gorillas,” Paula said coldly, “with or without red hair.”

  She looked out again and saw that Mr. Hearst was still fooling with the engine of the bus. She began to fidget, pushing her hands in and out of the pockets of her jacket.

  “I cann
ot understand anyone who is not interested in animals,” Mrs. Vista said severely. “It would not surprise me to learn that you are a vivisectionist.”

  With this cutting reply, Mrs. Vista gathered up the sheets of her letter and sailed out into the lobby. She caught a glimpse of Chad Ross hurrying towards the writing room and regretted her own departure, for she dearly loved scenes. But still there was nothing to be done about it, it would be far too crass to go back now.

  Ah, well—she would find Anthony and he would read one of his poems to her—poor Anthony, what a pity he didn’t look like Putzi . . .

  “So you’re leaving,” Chad said from the doorway.

  Paula turned with a start. She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Chad crossed the room, impatiently kicking aside a chair that was in his way.

  “What,” he said, “if I don’t let you?”

  “Let me!”

  “You heard me.” He reached out and grabbed both her wrists and held them. “Now scream, baby.”

  “You’re hurting me. Let me go.”

  “Hell, that’s not loud enough. Come on, louder.”

  He bent down and looked savagely into her face. “Scream, baby. Go on.”

  “I—I—I can’t,” Paula said in a strangled whisper. “My voice . . .”

  “You can’t, eh?” He let go of her wrists and stood back from her. He was smiling grimly. “You can’t, eh? Not a sound?”

  Paula opened her mouth, but even the whisper was gone now.

  “This,” Chad said, “is my lucky day. Get going.”

  She looked at him, her eyes wide, and her mouth moving soundlessly.

  “Ladies who can’t scream are my meat.” He took her arm and half-carried her across the room. “Now listen. We’re going through that lobby and you’re going to be a nice quiet girl.”

  Paula shook her head violently.

  “Yes, you are,” Chad said, leering at her. “Or I’ll tell them you’ve been hitting the bottle or having an epileptic fit. Come on.”

  His hand tightened on her arm and they went across the lobby very quickly, Paula stumbling as she moved.