‘Even tonight?’
‘Even tonight. Continuity is the most important thing in weather observation.’
‘Sooner you than me.’ He shivered. ‘If it’s only half as cold outside as it is in here.’
He turned his back, and Joss rose to his feet. He’d correctly interpreted my look, and I knew he was consumed with curiosity.
‘I’ll come with you, sir. Better have a last look at the dogs.’
We didn’t bother looking at either the dogs or the weather instruments. We went straight towards the tractor and huddled under the tarpaulin for what miserable shelter it could afford. True, the wind had eased, but it was colder than ever: the long winter night was beginning to close down on the ice-cap.
‘It stinks,’ Joss said flatly. ‘The whole set-up stinks.’
‘To high heaven,’ I agreed. ‘But it’s finding out where the smell comes from that the trouble lies.’
‘This fairy tale of yours about magnetic storms and compasses and radios,’ he went on. ‘What was the idea?’
‘I’d previously said I knew something they didn’t. I did. But when it came to the bit I knew I’d be better to keep it to myself. You know how this damnable cold slows up your mind – I should have realised it sooner.’
‘Realised what?’
‘That I should keep it to myself.’
‘Keep what, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Sorry, Joss. Not trying to build up suspense. The reason none of them knew anything about the crash until after it had happened is that they were all doped. As far as I could see, all of them, or nearly all, were under the influence of some sleeping drug or narcotic’
In the darkness I could almost feel him staring at me. After a long time he said softly, ‘You wouldn’t say this unless you were sure of it.’
‘I am sure of it. Their reactions, their dazed fumbling back to reality – and, above all, the pupils of their eyes. Unmistakable. Some kind of sleeping tablet mixtures, of the fast-acting kind. What is known to the trade, I believe, as Mickey Finns.’
‘But—’ Joss broke off. He was still trying to orientate his mind to this new line of thought. ‘But – they would be bound to know of it, to be aware that they had been doped, when they came to.’
‘In normal circumstances, yes. But they came to in what was, to say the least, most abnormal circumstances. I’m not saying that they didn’t experience any symptoms of weakness, dizziness and lassitude – they must have done – and what more natural than that they should ascribe any such unusual physical or mental symptoms to the effects of the crash. And what more natural, too, than that they should conceal these symptoms as best they could – and refrain from mentioning them? They would be ashamed to admit or discuss weaknesses – it’s a very human trait to show to your neighbours the very best face you can put on in times of emergency or danger.’
Joss didn’t reply at once. The implications of all this, as I’d found out for myself, took no little time for digestion, so I let him take his time and waited, listening to the lost and mournful wailing of the wind, the rustling hiss of millions of ice spicules scudding across the frozen snow of the ice-cap, and my own thoughts were in keeping with the bleak misery of the night.
‘It’s not possible,’ Joss muttered at length. I could hear his teeth chattering with the cold. ‘You can’t have some maniac rushing around an aircraft cabin with a hypo needle or dropping fizz-balls into their gin and tonics. You think they were all doped?’
‘Just about.’
‘But how could anyone—’
‘A moment, Joss,’ I interrupted. ‘What happened to the RCA?’
‘What?’ The sudden switch caught him momentarily off-balance. ‘What happened – you mean, how did it go for a burton? I’ve no idea at all, sir. All I know is that these hinges couldn’t have been knocked into the wall accidentally -not with radio and equipment weighing about 180 pounds sitting on top of them. Someone shoved them in. Deliberately.’
‘And the only person anywhere near it at the time was the stewardess, Margaret Ross. Everyone agreed on that.’
‘Yes, but why in the name of heaven should anyone want to do a crazy thing like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said wearily. ‘There’s a hundred things I don’t know. But I do know she did it … And who’s in the best position to spike the drinks of aircraft passengers?’
‘Good God!’ I could hear the sharp hissing intake of breath. ‘Of course. Drinks – or maybe the sweets they hand out at take-off.’
‘No.’ I shook my head definitely in the darkness. ‘Barley sugar is too weak a covering-up agent to disguise the taste of a drug. Coffee, more likely’
‘It must have been her,’ Joss said slowly. ‘It must have been. But – but she acted as dazed and abnormal as any of the others. More so, if anything.’
‘Maybe she’d reason to,’ I said grimly. ‘Come on, let’s get back or we’ll freeze to death. Tell Jackstraw when you get him by himself.’
Inside the cabin, I propped the hatch open a couple of inches – with fourteen people inside, extra ventilation was essential. Then I glanced at the thermograph: it showed 48° below zero – eighty degrees of frost.
I lay down on the floor, pulled my parka hood tight to keep my ears from freezing, and was asleep in a minute.
FOUR
Monday 6 a.m.–6 p.m.
For the first time in four months I had forgotten to set the alarm-clock before I went to sleep, and it was late when I awoke, cold and stiff and sore all over from the uneven hardness of the wooden floor. It was still dark as midnight – two or three weeks had passed since the rim of the sun had shown above the horizon for the last time that year, and all the light we had each day was two or three hours dim twilight round noon – but a glance at the luminous face of my watch showed me that it was nine-thirty.
I pulled the torch out from my parka, located the oil-lamp and lit it. The light was dim, scarcely reaching the far corners of the cabin, but sufficient to show the mummy-like figures lying huddled on the bunks and sprawled grotesquely across the floor, their frozen breath clouding before their faces and above their heads, then condensing on the cabin walls. The walls themselves were sheeted with ice which had extended far out across the roof, in places reaching the skylights, a condition largely brought about by the cold heavy air that had flooded down the opened hatchway during the night: the outside temperature registered on the drum at 54° below zero.
Not everyone was asleep: most of them, I suspected, had slept but little, the numbing cold had seen to that: but they were as warm in their bunks as they would be anywhere else and nobody showed any inclination to move. Things would be better when the cabin heated up a little.
I had trouble starting the stove – even though it was gravity fed from a tank above and to one side of it, the fuel oil had thickened up in the cold – but when it did catch it went with a roar. I turned both burners up to maximum, put on the water bucket that had lain on the floor all night and was now nearly a solid mass of ice, pulled on snow-mask and goggles and clambered up the hatchway to have a look at the weather.
The wind had died away almost completely -I’d known that from the slow and dispirited clacking of the anemometer cups – and the ice-drift, which at times could reach up several hundred feet into the sky, was no more than gentle puffs of dust stirring lazily and spectrally, through the feeble beam of my torch, across the glittering surface of the ice-cap. The wind, such as it was, still held out to the east. The cold, too, was still intense, but more bearable than it had been on the previous night. In terms of the effect of cold on human beings in the Arctic, absolute temperature is far from being the deciding factor: wind is just as important – every extra mile per hour is equivalent to a one degree drop in temperature -and humidity far more so. Where the relative humidity is high, even a few degrees below zero can become intolerable. But today the wind was light and the air dry. Perhaps it was a good omen … After that morning, I never believed in
omens again.
When I got below, Jackstraw was on his feet, presiding over the coffee-pot. He smiled at me, and his face was as fresh and rested as if he’d had nine hours on a feather bed behind him. But then Jackstraw never showed fatigue or distress under any circumstances: his tolerance to sleeplessness and the most exhausting toil was phenomenal.
He was the only one on his feet, but far from the only one awake: of those in the bunks, only Senator Brewster was still asleep. The others were facing into the centre of the room, a few propped up on their elbows: all of them were shivering, and shivering violently, their faces blue and white and pinched with the cold. Some were looking at Jackstraw, wrinkling their noses in anticipation of the coffee, the pungent smell of which already filled the cabin; others were staring in fascination at the sight of the ice on the roof melting as the temperature rose, melting, dripping down to the floor in a dozen different places and there beginning to form tiny stalagmites of ice, building up perceptibly before their eyes: the temperature on the cabin floor must have been almost forty degrees lower than that at the roof.
‘Good morning, Dr Mason.’ Marie LeGarde tried to smile at me, but it was a pathetic effort, and she looked ten years older than she had on the previous night: she was one of the few with a sleeping-bag, but even so she must have passed a miserable six hours, and there is nothing so exhausting to the human body as uncontrollable night-long shivering, a vicious circle in which the more one shivers the more tired one becomes, and the more tired the less resistance to cold and hence the more shivering. For the first time, I knew that Marie LeGarde was an old woman.
‘Good morning,’ I smiled. ‘How did you enjoy your first night in your new home?’
‘First night!’ Even in the sleeping-bag her movements of clasping her arms together and huddling her head down between her shoulders were unmistakable. ‘I hope to heaven that it’s the last night. You run a very chilly establishment here, Dr Mason.’
‘I’m sorry. Next time we’ll keep watches and have the stove on all night.’ I pointed to the water splashing down to the floor. ‘The place is heating up already. You’ll feel better when you have some hot coffee inside you.’
‘I’ll never feel better again,’ she declared vigorously, but the twinkle was back in her eye. She turned to the young German girl in the next bunk. ‘And how do you feel this morning, my dear?’
‘Better, thank you, Miss LeGarde.’ She seemed absurdly grateful that anyone should even bother to ask. ‘I don’t feel a thing now.’
‘Means nothing,’ Miss LeGarde assured her cheerfully. ‘Neither do I. It’s just that we’re both frozen stiff … And how did you survive the night, Mrs Dansby-Gregg?’
‘As you say, I survived.’ Mrs Dansby-Gregg smiled thinly. ‘As Dr Mason observed last night, this is not the Ritz … That coffee smells delicious. Bring me a cup over, Fleming, will you?’
I picked up one of the cups Jackstraw had poured out and took it across to the young German girl who was struggling to unzip her sleeping-bag with her one good arm. Her embarrassment and discomfort were obvious, but I knew I’d no option, the time to stop this nonsense was before ever it had a chance to start.
‘You stay where you are, young lady, and drink this.’ She took the cup reluctantly, and I turned away. ‘You’ve surely forgotten, Mrs Dansby-Gregg, that Helene has a broken collar-bone?’
The expression on her face made it quite obvious that she hadn’t forgotten, but she was no fool. The gossip columnists would murder her for this, if they got hold of it. In her circle, an outward if meaningless conformity to the accepted mores and virtues of the day was a sine qua non: the knife between the ribs was permitted, but only to the accompaniment of the well-bred smile.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’d quite forgotten, of course.’ Her eyes were cold and hard, and I knew I had an enemy. That didn’t worry me, but I found the very triviality of the whole thing irritating beyond measure when there were so many other and vastly more important things to talk about. But less than thirty seconds later we had forgotten all about it, even, I am sure, Mrs Dansby-Gregg herself.
I was just handing Marie LeGarde a cup when someone screamed. It wasn’t really loud, I suppose, but in that confined space it had a peculiarly piercing and startling quality. Marie LeGarde’s arm jerked violently and the scalding contents of the coffee-cup were emptied over my bare hand.
I hardly noticed the pain. It was Margaret Ross, the young stewardess, who had screamed, and she was now kneeling, half in and half out of her sleeping-bag, one rigidly spread-fingered hand stretched out at arm’s length before her, the other clasped over her mouth as she stared down at the figure lying near her on the floor. I pushed her to one side and sank on to my own knees.
In that bitter cold it was impossible to be any way sure, but I felt reasonably certain that the young pilot had been dead for several hours. I knelt there for a long time, just looking down at him, and when I finally rose to my feet I did so like an old man, a defeated old man, and I felt as cold, almost, as the dead man lying there. Everyone was wide awake now, everyone staring at me, the eyes of nearly all of them reflecting the superstitious horror which the presence of sudden and unexpected death brings to those who are unaccustomed to it. It was Johnny Zagero who broke the silence.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he, Dr Mason?’ His low voice sounded a little husky. ‘That head injury—’ His voice trailed off.
‘Cerebral hæmorrhage,’ I said quietly, ‘as far as I can tell.’
I lied to him. There was no shadow of doubt in my mind as to the cause of death. Murder. The young boy had been ruthlessly, cold-bloodedly murdered: lying there unconscious, gravely injured and with his hands strapped helplessly to his sides, he had been smothered as easily, as surely, as one might smother a very little child.
We buried him out on the ice-cap, not fifty yards from the place where he had died. Bringing his stiffened body out of the hatch was a grisly job, but we managed it and laid him on the snow while we sawed out a shallow grave for him in the light of one of our torches. It was impossible to dig it out: that frozen ringing surface turned shovel blades as would a bar of iron: even at eighteen inches, the impacted névé of snow and ice defied the serrated spearpoints of our special snow saws. But it was deep enough and within a few hours the eternal ice-drift would have smoothed its blanket across the grave, and we would never be able to find it again. The Reverend Joseph Smallwood murmured some sort of burial service over the grave but his teeth chattered so violently in the cold and his voice was so low and indistinct and hurried that I could hardly catch a word of it. I thought wryly that heavenly forgiveness for this indecent haste was unlikely to be withheld: by all odds it must have been by far the coldest funeral service that Mr Smallwood had ever conducted.
Back in the cabin, breakfast was a sketchy and silent affair. Even in the steadily rising warmth, the melancholy gloom was an almost palpable blanket under the dripping ceiling. Hardly anybody said anything, hardly anybody ate anything. Margaret Ross ate nothing, and when she finally set down her coffee-cup, the contents had scarcely been touched.
You’re overdoing it, my dear, I thought viciously, you’re carrying the grief-stricken act just a little too far: a little longer, and even the others will start wondering – and they have no suspicions at all, you damned inhuman little murderess.
For I had no suspicions either – only certainty. There was no doubt in my mind at all but that she had smothered the young pilot. She was only slightly built – but then it would have required only slight strength. Lashed to the cot as he had been, he wouldn’t even have been able to drum his heels as he had died. I could feel my flesh crawl at the very thought.
She had killed him, just as she had broken the radio and doped the passengers. He had been killed, obviously, to keep him from talking – about what, I couldn’t even begin to guess, any more than I could guess the reason for the destruction of the radio, except that she clearly did not want the news of
the crash broadcast to the outer world. But why in the world destroy the radio in the first place, surely she must have known how essential it was for survival? But then, after all, how was she even to have guessed that: she might well have thought that we had big fast tractors that could have whipped them down to the coast in a matter of a couple of days. For that matter, she might have thought she was a great deal nearer the coast than we really were – it was impossible, surely, that she had genuinely imagined that we were in Iceland. Or was it?
My thoughts were spinning now in an unbreakable circle. I knew I was getting nowhere, couldn’t possibly get anywhere without some fresh information. As it was, I was only confusing myself the more with the passing of every moment. I gave it up then, promising myself that from now on I would watch her every possible minute of the day. I looked at her again, covertly, and she was staring vacantly at one of the glowing embers of the stove. Planning her next move, no doubt, planning it as cleverly as the last: asking me last night about the pilot’s chances of survival, doubtless to decide whether he would have to be killed or could safely be left to die, had been clever enough, but insisting on sleeping next to the man she had meant to kill had been nothing short of brilliant. On that account alone no one would ever suspect her, even if the fact that it had been murder became known. And it wouldn’t: I intended keeping that to myself. Or did she suspect I suspected? Heaven only knew. All I knew was that she must be playing for tremendous stakes. Or that she was mad.
It was just after eleven o’clock. Joss and Jackstraw were in a corner by themselves, stripping down the smashed transmitter, while the rest were grouped in a large semi-circle round the stove. They looked wan and sickly and were sitting very still indeed. They looked unwell because the first greyness of the noon twilight was stealing through our rimed skylights and it did unflattering things to any complexion: and they sat so still because I had just explained to them in detail exactly what their situation was, and they didn’t like it one little bit. Neither did I.
Night Without End Page 7