Fire Will Freeze

by Margaret Millar

  “Take a look at the size of the door,” Crawford said roughly. “You couldn’t get a body in there unless you cut it up into steaks.”

  Mr. Hunter looked green and said, “Really. I must ask you . . .” His voice faded.

  “Try cutting up somebody and you get blood,” Crawford said. “And there’s no blood.”

  “Please,” Mr. Hunter bleated.

  “There’s only one other place,” Isobel said. “Under the coal.”

  Crawford eyed her grimly. “Yeah? And that means?”

  “I’m afraid it means,” Isobel said in a small voice, “that you shovel.”

  Crawford flung his arms around. “Oh, hell. This is too much. This is what I get for treating you civilly . . .”

  Mr. Hunter unexpectedly took his side. “I do think it’s a bit drastic. Must be six or seven tons of coal here. Devilish job. And what—what if we find something?”

  Isobel’s mouth tightened. “This is exactly what I expected from both of you. You are a pair of incompetent, ineffectual, muddling little sissies.”

  “Oh, come, come,” said Mr. Hunter feebly.

  “I should bat you around,” Crawford said, “but I’m too damn tired. Good night, all.”

  He moved to the door.

  “You mean to say,” Isobel spluttered, “you mean to say you’re actually going to bed? You’d leave me to shovel six or seven tons of coal, you cad?”

  “Let them as wants to shovel, shovel,” Crawford said. “I’m C.I.O. and can’t work after midnight.”

  “All right, I will!” Isobel shouted.

  Crawford’s voice floated back from the other room. “Scab.”

  They heard him go up the steps, whistling. Speechless with rage, Isobel swung around and faced Mr. Hunter. Mr. Hunter, recognizing the symptoms, started to back away from her with a sickly smile on his face.

  “This,” Isobel said at last, using the illogical reasoning powers of her sex, “is all your fault.”

  “Oh now, Come. I didn’t do a . . .”

  “Hand me that shovel.”

  “No, I couldn’t, really . . .”

  “Hand me that shovel!”

  Mr. Hunter wisely handed her the shovel and backed away again.

  “And now, if you don’t mind,” Isobel said, “you may go upstairs. I have no intention of shoveling coal in front of a witness.”

  “I couldn’t leave you here,” Mr. Hunter protested. “If there’s any kind of danger I’d like to share it with you. And I can shovel a bit, too, I suppose.”

  It was not a tactful speech. Isobel shouted, “Go away!” and hurled herself at the coal pile.

  Mr. Hunter went away and crept guiltily back upstairs.

  Ten minutes later Isobel removed her coat and fifteen minutes after that she took off the jacket of her suit. Her nose and throat smarted from the coal dust, and when she put her hand up to wipe the sweat from her forehead it left two long black streaks. But she kept on shoveling, driven by her anger, and eventually she had the satisfaction of seeing that the small pile was growing even if the large pile didn’t appear to be decreasing.

  She rested on the shovel a moment. When she straightened up pains shot through her back and her hands were starting to blister, and, what was worse, she was beginning to flag mentally. The whole thing was preposterous, even if two people had disappeared. There might be a secret door or something—something . . .

  She straightened up once more. A little avalanche of coal slid from the big pile and touched her feet. When the cellar was quiet again a voice spoke directly behind her:

  “How are you doing?”

  She gasped and dropped the shovel and turned around to meet Crawford’s eyes.

  “Tsk, tsk,” Crawford said. “Still mad.”

  “Not mad,” Isobel said coldly. “Disgusted.”

  “Here. Give me the shovel. You’ve had your workout.”

  “No, thank you. I’ll do it myself. You’re far too delicate for this kind of work.”

  “Don’t be proud,” Crawford said. “Your face is dirty.”

  “Well, it’s good, honest dirt!” Isobel shouted.

  “Dirt,” said Crawford, “is dirt,” and he gave her a handkerchief and took the shovel out of her hands.

  He started shoveling very blithely. Isobel sat on the workbench and watched gloatingly for the first signs of tiredness.

  Now and then she called out encouragement: “Oooh! That was a big one! My, aren’t you strong?”

  After a time he stood up and said, “Isobel. You still think this is a good idea?”

  “I do.”

  “All right. I just wanted to know.”

  Half an hour later he said, “Isobel, you’re a woman of iron determination. How about let’s compromise? We’ll go to bed now and finish up in the morning.”

  “Put some coal on the fire while you’re at it,” Isobel said calmly. “It’s getting chilly in here. Or don’t you think so?”

  Crawford, already down to his shirt, said no, he didn’t think so.

  It was two o’clock when he laid down the shovel. The two piles were even now. The rest, Crawford said, could be prodded with a poker.

  Sometime later they went upstairs together. Neither of them said anything. Isobel was pale and close to tears. Over Crawford’s one arm hung a coat of heavy tan wool with a strip of cloth sewn to the underside of the collar. On the cloth was printed in India ink: “Maurice Hearst. Chateau Neige, Quebec.”

  There was no sign of Floraine.

  7

  They paused in front of the sitting-room door. Crawford kept brushing at the coat absently, and raising little clouds of dust.

  “What are you going to do?” Isobel said.

  “Wash.”

  “About the coat.”

  He looked across at her. “What can I do? Put it in a closet, I guess, and forget it.”

  “You can’t forget it,” Isobel said hoarsely. “You’ve got some, responsibility.”

  “Not a scrap. Me for me is my motto.”

  “And you won’t take charge of anything?”

  “There’s nothing to take charge of, so far.”

  “Isn’t there?” Isobel said. “A bunch of strangers marooned in a house with a crazy woman and the nurse gone?”

  “We’ll be out of here as soon as it’s light,” Crawford said.

  “Leaving Miss Rudd alone?”

  “What do you expect me to do, give her a piggy-back ride?”

  “You know we can’t leave her alone here. It would be inhuman.”

  “All right, so I’m inhuman—and tired—and dirty . . . Good night.”

  He strode impatiently down the hall and opened the door of the closet where Mr. Hunter had found the snowshoes. He threw the coat inside and closed the door again and made for the stairs. When he was halfway to the top Isobel called softly, “Charles!”

  He took two more steps and turned around, frowning.

  Isobel said, “You’re not very used to your name. How long have you had it?”

  “About twelve hours,” Crawford said easily.

  “You look older than that,” Isobel said.

  “I am, but don’t tell anybody. Good night.”

  Isobel went slowly into the sitting room. Mr. Goodwin had gone to sleep again, so she sat in front of the fire and thought, there’s only one other place Floraine could be.

  She could be in Miss Rudd’s room. Probably the rifle that she used is in there, too, since we didn’t find it.

  Miss Rudd and a rifle and Floraine, dead or alive, behind one locked door . . .

  But there had been no shot, only the one faint scream. Isobel thought of the balcony along the second floor and wondered if there could be some way of looking into Miss Rudd’s room without unlocking the door. But the balcony w
as probably unsafe, and she couldn’t go out anyway in this blizzard.

  She frowned into the fire and thought, in spite of the cat and the chair flung at Crawford I’m not really afraid of Miss Rudd.

  She examined this thought and promptly dismissed it as a lie. I’m afraid of her, she decided, but I can’t accept her actions as purely evil. She doesn’t realize what she’s doing. She can be managed, as Floraine managed her. If I could get sort of unemotionally tough . . .

  She put more wood on the fire, poked it once or twice, and went to the door. When she passed Crawford’s door she heard him snoring already, sleeping the sleep of the just, the pure and the clear of conscience. Highly incensed, she passed on into her own room.

  Gracie was sitting up on the bed, looking cheerful.

  “Look!” she said brightly.

  So Isobel looked and saw Miss Rudd squatting on the floor beside the bed. Miss Rudd, too, looked cheerful. She was chewing the rest of Gracie’s chocolates.

  “The poor old thing said she was hungry,” Gracie said. “Reminds me of the aunt I told you about, always hungry she was.” She turned to Miss Rudd. “Now take it easy. One at a time like I told you.”

  Isobel said in a faraway voice: “Gracie. How did she . . . ? I mean, how . . . ?”

  “Oh. That. Well, there she was, the poor dear, pounding and pounding on that door, just like that aunt of mine again. So I let her out. We get along fine, don’t we, Frances?”

  Frances nodded pleasantly.

  “Was—was Floraine in there with her?” Isobel said.

  “No,” Gracie said. “Just the rifle. She was playing with it, so I took it away from her and threw it out the window. Was that the right thing to do?”

  “Oh, yes,” Isobel said, gulping. “Oh, yes, yes.”

  “Come on. Sit down. Just like a party practically, isn’t it?”

  “Just,” Isobel said, and sat down because she was too weak to stand. Gracie lit a cigarette and let Miss Rudd blow out the match.

  There was a silence, friendly on the part of Miss Rudd and Gracie, stupefied on the part of Isobel. She decided that Gracie, in her way, was strongly akin to Miss Rudd, hence the bond between them.

  “I told her Floraine was gone,” Gracie said. “She just laughed. I don’t think Floraine was good to her.”

  Miss Rudd shook her head violently and made a few unprintable remarks on Floraine’s character.

  “See?” Gracie said. “She’s quite sensible.”

  “Just like your aunt,” Isobel said. “The three of you ought to get together sometime.”

  “What do you think we should do now?” Gracie said. “It’s nearly three. It should be light in five hours. I suppose we could all just sit here and talk.”

  “I’m afraid I’d be conscious of some strain,” Isobel said.

  Miss Rudd had finished the chocolates. She wiped her mouth on her shawl and came over to the bed. She touched Gracie’s hair with her finger.

  “Like it?” Gracie said, without a tremor. “It used to be brown, but brown doesn’t suit me, I’m too vivid. Go on, sit down again, Frances.”

  Miss Rudd smiled, almost shyly. “I have something for you,” she whispered in Gracie’s ear. She rolled her eyes.

  “That’s swell,” Gracie said. “What is it?”

  “Something,” said Miss Rudd.

  “Is it a secret?”

  Miss Rudd nodded vigorously. “I took it from Floraine. I took it from her desk.”

  “Where is it?”

  For answer Miss Rudd darted to the door and out into the hall.

  Isobel said, “Come back. Frances! Please come back.”

  “Let her alone,” Gracie said easily. “She’ll come back. She can even see in the dark

  like my . . .”

  “Please,” Isobel said.

  “I hope it’s a bottle of rye.”

  But it was not a bottle of rye. It was a bunch of old newspapers, some of them badly torn.

  “Gee, thanks,” Gracie said, taking the newspapers. “Just what I wanted. Something to read. Here, Isobel, have one. You want to read too, Frances?”

  Miss Rudd did. She sat down again on the floor holding one of the papers stiffly in front of her.

  Gracie looked curiously at the rest of the papers. “Wonder why Floraine would save these.”

  “She’s the type who’d save anything. Give me that one.” Isobel reached for it.

  That one turned out to be the Montreal Star. It was dated September 3, 1942.

  “Quite a little reader, our Floraine,” Isobel said, “Montreal Star. Ottawa Citizen. Quebec Courier . . . Gracie, what’s the date on yours?”

  “September 4, 1942.”

  “Look through the others.”

  There were twelve papers altogether. Each one bore the date September 3rd or September 4th. Five of them were in French and looked like small-town newspapers and came from places Isobel had never heard of.

  “That’s funny,” she said. “Move the lamp closer and we’ll look through them all. Something must have happened on September the third that interested Floraine very much. She’s not the type who saves paper for the war effort.”

  “How about “R.A.F. Raid Over Germany” or “Wife Clubbed to Death by Hired Man”? And here’s the picture of kind of a cute man. I’m crazy about little dark mustaches, only he probably hasn’t got his now, he’s in jail.”

  Isobel leaned over and looked at Gracie’s cute man. Miss Rudd put down her paper and came over, too. Her mouth moved as if she were reading silently to herself. But Isobel knew she was not reading, her eyes didn’t move but remained fixed on the picture.

  “Go on, Frances,” Gracie said. “Stop pushing. Do you want this one? Go on, take it then.” Gracie thrust the paper at her and picked up another one, yawning. “I still wish I had a bottle of rye. I never did like reading.”

  “Here’s your cute man again,” Isobel said. “Demoted to page five this time. He looks familiar, doesn’t he?”

  “Like Cary Grant,” Gracie said dreamily. “What’s his name?”

  “Pierre Jeanneret.”

  “I think that’s sweet. I wonder why he’s in jail.”

  “He talked too much,” Isobel said. She quoted from the news item: “ ‘Jeanneret, long known as a political agitator, was apprehended at Montreal while leading a student riot against conscription. He was interned for the duration under the Defense of Canada Regulations. As he was led from the court.’ ”

  “More chocolates,” said Miss Rudd, who was easily bored.

  “Haven’t any,” Gracie said.

  “I’m hungry. I’m a poor, hungry, old lady, and I want some more chocolates.”

  “Hush. We’ll be having breakfast in a few hours.”

  “Harry stole all my food,” Miss Rudd whined. “He comes in the night and Floraine locks me up.”

  “Now don’t get excited,” Gracie said pleasantly. “Floraine’s not going to lock you up tonight.”

  Miss Rudd giggled suddenly. Isobel didn’t like the sound of it.

  “You don’t know what happened to Floraine?” she said, keeping her voice calm.

  “She’s gone,” said Miss Rudd, “and she won’t be back.” She came over to the bed and began to stroke Isobel’s coat. “Pretty. Very soft and pretty, like Etienne.”

  Isobel sat rigid.

  “You give me this coat,” Miss Rudd whispered. “You give it to me, eh?”

  “No, no, I can’t. I’d be cold without it.”

  “I’m cold. Harry’s friends took all my coal. I heard them. I’ll be very cold without this coat.”

  Gracie said, “Look, Frances. I have a pretty necklace for you. You want it?”

  Miss Rudd’s hands darted out for the necklace. Then, whispering to herself, she slipped out into the hall again.
She was gone a long time.

  Isobel said nervously, “I wonder what she’s doing.”

  “Hiding it,” Gracie said. “My aunt used to hide everything like that.”

  “I’m getting a little tired of your aunt.”

  “Well, we did, too,” Gracie said, “but she finally died.”

  “I think we should go out and look for Frances. You shouldn’t have let her out of her room. She may be all right when she’s with you, but the rest of us haven’t had your experience.”

  “Oh, she’ll come back. Anyway, I can’t go skipping around with fur mittens on my feet. Just leave her alone.”

  “We left her alone before,” Isobel said, “and something happened to Etienne. I can’t understand you. You’re scared to death to search the house and yet you let Miss Rudd out of her room. You have no sense of proportion.”

  “Maybe not,” Grace said.

  “Unless you did it deliberately.”

  “What?”

  “Let Miss Rudd out.”

  “Sure, I did it deliberately. It’s not the kind of thing you do in your sleep. I felt sorry for her. She was hungry and . . .”

  “I don’t believe it,” Isobel said.

  Gracie turned her head. Her eyes were narrowed and she was smiling. “You don’t believe what? And who cares?”

  “You let her out to start trouble.”

  “Now who’s starting trouble?” Gracie shrugged her shoulders. “God knows I don’t want any.”

  Isobel stared at her a minute, then dropped her eyes.

  Perhaps she really is that dumb, she thought, perhaps she didn’t realize what she was doing and actually felt sorry for Miss Rudd.

  No, I don’t believe it. She couldn’t have forgotten the dead cat, she was terrified at the blood on her stockings.

  Gracie’s voice broke abruptly into her thoughts:

  “Since we’re going to be suspicious of each other, would you mind telling me what a dame like you is doing up here?”

  “I want to learn to ski,” Isobel said.

  “So you had to come all the way up here?”

  Isobel blushed and said, “I read an advertisement. They teach by a special method and the ad said you could learn in a week and they have an ex-Austrian ski-meister . . .”

  “His name is Schultz,” Gracie said, “and he comes from a village in Ontario and the nearest he’s been to Austria is the World’s Fair.”