AN AIR THAT KILLS
By Margaret Millar
An Air That Kills © 1957 The Margaret Millar Charitable Unitrust
This edition published 2016 by
Syndicate Books
www.syndicatebooks.com
To the Grushes, my favorite house haunters,
Paul
Bernis
Diane
Douglas
Dale
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows;
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
This is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
–A.E. Houseman
ONE
The last time his wife saw Ron Galloway was on a Saturday evening in the middle of April.
“He seemed in good spirits,” Esther Galloway said later. “Almost as if he was up to something, planning something. More than just a fishing trip to the lodge, I mean. He’s never really enjoyed fishing, he has a morbid fear of water.”
This was true enough, though Galloway wouldn’t have admitted it. He tried desperately hard to be a sport. He fished, played golf and cricket in the summers, curled at the Granite Club in the winters, wore a crew cut, and drove his Cadillac convertible with the top down even in weather which forced him to turn the heater on full blast to keep from freezing to death. Now in his late thirties, he still appeared somewhat lacking in coordination in spite of all the exercise he took, and his round face showed residual traces of teenage acne and adolescent uncertainty.
He was packing a duffel bag when his wife, Esther, came into his bedroom. She was going out for dinner and she had on a new pink taffeta dress trimmed with seed pearls and topped by a white mink stole. Galloway noticed the dress and approved of it, but he made no remark about it. There was no point in spoiling women by paying them compliments.
“So here you are, Ron,” his wife said, as if it were a surprising and interesting coincidence that a man should be found in his own bedroom.
Galloway did not respond.
“Ron?”
“Esther, angel, I’m right here, as you just pointed out, so if you have anything to say, go ahead.”
“Where are you going?” Esther knew where he was going, but she was the kind of woman who liked to ask questions to which she already knew the answers. It gave her a sense of security.
“I told you last week. I’m going over to Weston to pick up Harry Bream and we’re driving up to the lodge to do some fishing with a couple of the fellows.”
“I don’t like Harry Bream’s wife.”
“Harry Bream’s wife is not coming along.”
“I know that. I was merely making a remark. I think she’s queer. She called me last week and asked if there was anybody dead I wanted to get in touch with. I couldn’t think of anyone offhand except Uncle John and I’m not sure he’d want to be gotten in touch with. Don’t you think that’s queer, her call, I mean?”
“Harry’s away a lot. Thelma has to do something to keep herself from getting bored.”
“Why doesn’t she have children?”
“I don’t know why she doesn’t have children,” Galloway said impatiently. “I haven’t asked her.”
“You and Harry are such cronies, you could broach the subject to him casually some time.”
“Perhaps I could, but I don’t intend to.”
“If Thelma had children she wouldn’t have time to go around being psychic and making other people nervous. I haven’t got time to be psychic.”
“Thank God for small mercies.”
Galloway fastened the straps of the duffel bag and set it near the door. The act was a definite invitation for Esther to say good-bye and be on her way, but she declined it. Instead, she moved across the room with an elegant swish of taffeta and stood in front of the mirror smoothing her dark hair. Over her shoulder she could see Galloway watching her with a prodigious frown of annoyance. He looked quite comical.
“I’m sick of my hair like this,” she said. “I think I’ll become a blonde. An interesting and psychic blonde like Thelma.”
“You’re psychic enough. And I don’t like phony blondes.”
“What about natural ones, like Thelma?”
“I like Thelma all right,” he said obstinately. “She’s my best friend’s wife. I have to.”
“Just all right?”
“For Pete’s sake, Esther, she’s a fattish little hausfrau with some of her marbles missing. Even your imagination can’t build her up into a femme fatale.”
“I guess not.”
“When are you going to get over these crazy suspicions?”
“Dorothy . . .” She swallowed as she spoke the name, so that he wasn’t sure what it was until she repeated it. “Dorothy had no suspicions.”
“Why bring her up?”
“She didn’t suspect a thing. And all the time behind her back you and I were . . .”
“Be quiet.” His face was white with anger and distaste. “If your conscience is bothering you at this late date, that’s too bad. But leave mine alone. And for God’s sake let’s not have a scene.”
Esther had been going in for scenes lately, picking at the past like a bird at a stale loaf of bread, dislodging a crumb here, a crumb there. He hoped it was merely a passing phase and would soon be over. The past didn’t often worry or interest Galloway. When he thought of his first wife, Dorothy, it was without pity or regret. Even his vindictiveness against her on account of the divorce had faded with the years. Divorces in Canada are not common or easy to obtain, and the Galloway scandal had been an ugly one, widely publicized throughout the country and the border states.
Esther let her hands drop to her sides and turned from the mirror. “I heard she’s dying.”
“She’s been dying for years,” Galloway said brusquely. “Who told you that, anyway?”
“Harry.”
“Harry’s a pill salesman. He likes to think everybody’s dying.”
“Ron.”
“I don’t want to be rude, but if I don’t start moving, the fellows will be kept waiting at the lodge.”
“The caretaker can let them in.”
“Even so, as the host I should be there first.”
“They’ll be too boozed up to care.”
“Are you deliberately trying to start another argument?”
“No. Really, I’m not. I guess I just wish I were going with you.”
“You don’t like fishing. All you do is sit around moaning about how sorry you feel for the poor little fish and what did they ever do to deserve a hook in the throat.”
“All right, Ron, all right.” She approached him rather shyly and put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “Have a good time. Don’t forget to say good-bye to the children. Next time perhaps we can all go.”
“Perhaps.”
But she looked a little sad when she went out the door, as if she had borrowed some of Thelma’s psychic powers and sensed that there wouldn’t be a next time or even a this time.
Galloway stood in the doorway for a moment listening to the rustle of her dress and the tapping of her heels muted by the stair carpet.
Suddenly, without knowing why, he called out in a loud urgent voice, “Esther! Esther!”
But the front door had already closed behind her and Galloway felt a little relieved that she hadn’t heard
him because he hadn’t planned anything to say to her. The call had come from a part of his mind which was inaccessible to him and he didn’t know what it meant or why it happened.
He leaned against the door frame, dizzy, breathing very hard, as if he had just awakened from a dream of suffocation, and while the dream was forgotten, the physical symptoms of panic remained.
I’m ill, he thought. She shouldn’t have walked out on me like that. I’m ill. Perhaps I ought to stay home and call a doctor.
But as his breathing returned to normal and the dizziness abated, it occurred to him that a doctor wasn’t really necessary as long as Harry was around. Harry worked for a drug company and his pockets were always bulging with pills, his brief case full of pamphlets describing the newest medical discoveries which some of the doctors didn’t even know about until Harry told them, or gave them the pamphlets to read. Harry was extremely liberal with free pills, diagnoses and advice. On occasion, he was more effective than a regular doctor since he was unhampered by training, medical ethics or caution, and some of his cures were miraculously quick. These were the ones his friends remembered.
“I will get some pills from Harry,” Galloway said, and the very thought was soothing. Harry had a pill for everything, even sudden and inexplicable calls to one’s departing wife: It’s your nerves, old boy. Now, my company has just come out with a dandy little item . . .
Galloway flung his trench coat over his arm, picked up his duffel bag, and went down the hall to say good-bye to the two boys. They were ostensibly in bed; that is, the bedroom door was open and the night light was turned on. But they were not asleep. Their low, furious voices bounced across the room and back again.
“Mama said the dog could sleep on my bed tonight. Let go of him.”
“Won’t, won’t, won’t.”
“I’ll scream for Annie.”
“I’ll tell her you pinched me. I’ll tell Annie and Mrs. Browning and old Rudolph and Mama and my Sunday School teacher . . .”
“Why not tell me?” Galloway said, and pressed the light switch.
The two boys stared at him, silenced by amazement. They saw little of Galloway, and when they noticed the duffel bag he was carrying, they weren’t sure whether he was coming or going.
Gregory, who at seven was already an opportunist, made a quick decision. “Daddy’s home,” he shouted. “Goody, goody, Daddy’s home! Did you bring me something, Daddy? What did you bring me?”
Galloway stepped back as if he had been shoved in the chest. “I—haven’t been away.”
“Well, then, you’re going away.”
“Yes.”
“So if you’re going away you’ve got to come back.”
“Yes, I guess I do.”
“So when you come back will you bring me something?”
Galloway’s face was flushed and a nervous tic nagged at one corner of his mouth. That’s all I mean to them, he thought.
Or to Esther. I’m the guy who brings them something.
“You could bring everybody something,” said Marvin, who was five and a half. “Annie and Mrs. Browning and old Rudolph and my Sunday School teacher.”
“I suppose I could. What do you think they’d like?”
“Dogs. Everybody would like dogs.”
“Everybody? You’re sure?”
“I asked them,” Marvin lied emphatically. “I asked them what did they want brung in a suitcase, and they all said dogs.” To prove his point he ran over to his brother’s bed and flung both arms around the little dachshund. The dog was quite used to these outbursts of affection and went on placidly chewing a corner of the blanket. “Everybody could have a dog like Petey on their beds every single night, even old Rudolph.”
“Rudolph says dogs dig holes in the flower beds.”
“Petey never digs holes. I dig holes. I dig about a million holes a week.”
Galloway smiled sadly. “That’s a lot of work for a little man like you. You must be pretty strong.”
“Feel my muscle.”
“Feel mine too,” Greg said. “I can dig a million holes too if I want.”
Muscles were being duly tested when Annie, the maid who looked after the boys, appeared in the doorway. During the daytime when she wore her blue and white uniform, Annie was prim and self-contained and respectable. Tonight, dressed and groomed for an evening out, she was barely recognizable, with her mouth swollen by lipstick, and her eyebrows coyly arched in black, and her eyes cavernous behind a coating of mascara.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Galloway. I thought the boys were alone arguing about that dog again.”
“They won’t have to argue about Petey much longer. I have orders to bring them another dog when I come back.”
“Indeed.”
“Surely you want me to bring you something too, Annie? Everyone else does.”
She looked a little startled and disapproving. “I have my wages, thank you, sir.”
“I’m certain you could think of something if you tried, Annie. Perhaps a necklace? Or a bottle of perfume to stun the senses of the local boys?”
“Bring Annie a dog,” Marvin shouted. “Annie wants a dog!”
“I do not want a dog,” the girl said sharply. “Nor anything else. Now you two settle down and go to sleep without any more nonsense. My boyfriend’s waiting for me, but I’m not going to set one foot outside this house until you two are quiet.” To Galloway she added in a whisper, “They get overexcited sometimes.”
“You want me to leave, is that right?”
“I really think it would be better, sir. They were tucked in an hour ago.”
He looked over Annie’s head at the two boys. For a minute, before Annie came on the scene, he had felt quite close to them, he had thought what handsome and precocious children they were. Now, once again, they were strangers to him, a couple of little barbarians who wanted nothing from him but presents, who liked to see him go away because he would come back with something in his luggage.
The dizziness returned, and with it a sharp sour taste in his mouth. He said quickly, “Good night, boys,” and stepped out into the hall and moved unsteadily toward the stairs. The duffel bag was like lead in his hand. He walked like an old man.
I must get some pills from Harry. Harry has all kinds of pills.
Esther’s pink and cream De Soto was missing from the garage, but Galloway’s Cadillac convertible was in its place with the top down, freshly washed and waxed, the way old Rudolph liked to keep it, as if it were an irreplaceable heirloom instead of something that would be traded in within a year.
It was cold, even for April. But Galloway left the top down and climbed, shivering, into the front seat.
Upstairs, the two boys continued their argument but its content had changed.
“What if he forgets to bring the dogs?”
“He can’t forget.”
“Or maybe he will never come back, like old Rudolph’s wife.”
“Oh shut up,” Gregory said fiercely. “When you go away, you got to come back. There’s no place else to go, you got to come back.”
For Gregory it was that simple.
TWO
When Galloway referred to his friends as a group he usually called them “the fellows.” Two of the fellows, Bill Winslow and Joe Hepburn, drove up together from Toronto and arrived at the lodge, which was located on Georgian Bay a few miles beyond Wiarton, at about ten o’clock. A third, Ralph Turee, came alone a few minutes later.
They were admitted by the caretaker, and each of them launched immediately into his special task. Turee took the luggage upstairs, Hepburn started a fire in the huge stone fireplace, Winslow pried the lock off the liquor cabinet, and, as Esther had predicted, the fellows began the process of getting themselves boozed up.
These were Galloway’s special friends, of approximately the s
ame age, and with a mutual aim, having as good a time as possible when they were away from the pressures of business and family: Bill Winslow, an executive in his father’s milling company; Joe Hepburn, manager of a firm which manufactured plastic toys and novelties; and Ralph Turee, who taught economics at the University of Toronto. Except for Turee, they were men of average intelligence and above average income. Turee never let them forget this. Chronically broke, he made fun of their money and borrowed it; possessing a superior education, he jeered at their ignorance and used it to his own advantage. But the group was, on the whole, a congenial one, especially after small differences had been dissolved in alcohol.
It was Turee who first remarked on the passage of time and the absence of Harry Bream and Galloway. “Peculiar thing Galloway hasn’t come yet. He makes such a point of being punctual.”
“I hate punctuality,” Winslow stated. “It is the hobgoblin of small minds. Right, fellows?”
Hepburn said it was chastity that was the hobgoblin of small minds and Turee corrected them both, as usual, and said it was consistency, and eventually they got back to Galloway.
“Galloway called me last night,” Turee said, “and told me he was going to pick Harry up in Weston and drive on up here and arrive about nine-thirty.”
“There,” Winslow said. “There you have it.”
“Have what?”
“The crux of the situation. Harry. Harry’s always late for everything.”
It was a logical as well as an agreeable theory, and they were all having another drink to toast Harry, the crux of the situation, when, about eleven-thirty, Harry unintentionally ruined the whole thing by walking in the front door. He was wearing a mackintosh, a deer-hunter’s cap with the flaps up, and carrying his fishing gear.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said cheerfully. “Something went wrong with the fuel pump the other side of Owen Sound.”
They all stared at him in such a peculiar and disgruntled way that even Harry, who was not given to subtleties, sensed something was wrong.
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