“But he was the one who tried to start the bus again,” Maudie said.
“And failed,” Isobel said dryly.
“Don’t get into an argument over me, ladies,” Crawford said, grinning. “I’m not worth it.”
Chad Ross leaned forward in his chair. “Just why are you carrying a gun, Crawford?”
“I’m an international spy,” Crawford said. “And I have a license.”
“Yeah?” Chad said. “Let’s see it.”
“Come and get it,” Crawford said in a hard voice, “if you want a clip, Redhead.”
“I’ve been clipped before. It doesn’t take.”
“Please!” Isobel shouted again.
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Hunter said. “A little more attention, please. These are grave matters.”
“Oh, be quiet, Poppa,” Joyce said petulantly. “I wanted to see if he really would clip him.”
“That girl,” said Mrs. Vista, “is a troublemaker if I ever saw one. I consider clipping very vulgar myself. If there’s any to be done, kindly advise me and I shall leave the room. You too, Anthony.”
The crisis passed and Isobel was able to continue. She seemed, however, to have lost the thread of her discourse and started in on personalities.
“The difficulty is,” she said heatedly, “that you’re all too bone-selfish to care what happens to anyone else. You don’t care that two people have disappeared from this house. You don’t care what happens to Miss Rudd. You’d all walk out and leave her here with no one to look after her!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t!” said Mrs. Vista, shocked. “I’d leave Miss Morning here, too.”
“Please keep quiet. Personally, I don’t want to sit around and wait to be rescued. Mr. Hunter has found a pair of snowshoes and I think one of us should go out and get help. It’s a matter of a few miles . . .”
“A few miles in what direction?” Crawford said. “And don’t look at me. If you think I’m going to do penance for my life of sin by rescuing a bunch of crackpots . . .”
“Who’s a crackpot?” Chad said with menace.
“Oh, it’s you again, is it? You still want that clip? Or do you want to go snowshoeing?”
Isobel shouted, “As for direction, that’s easy enough. Go in the direction the bus was pointed towards.”
“Even if he was on the wrong road,” Crawford said, “that sounds fine. You have a very peculiar mind, Isobel. Your left brain lobe doesn’t know what your right brain lobe is thinking up. Let’s have no more of this tripe. Action, I don’t mind. I’ll tear up floorboards and crawl down drainpipes looking for Floraine, but no snowshoes.”
“Well, why don’t you suggest something?” Isobel cried.
“As much as I’d like to get away from the all-too-familiar pans which surround me, I can make only one concrete suggestion. Breakfast.”
“We haven’t settled anything yet!” Isobel said, but Crawford’s suggestion was too near to the hearts of the others and Isobel found herself without supporters.
There was a general exodus to the kitchen. Mr. Hunter stayed behind to comfort Isobel.
“I think everything you said was perfectly right,” he said, giving her shoulder a timid pat.
“Well, everything I said wasn’t perfectly right,” Isobel said crossly.
“All the more reason why you should be flattered,” Mr. Hunter said with an enigmatic look, and followed the rest of them out the door. Isobel arrived in the kitchen in time to hear the news that the stove was an electric one and wouldn’t work.
There was, however, a small battered-looking wood range which Herbert volunteered to light. The question of what to cook and who was to cook it turned out to be a delicate one. All of the ladies present claimed to be at a complete loss in a kitchen, with Joyce going them one better and insisting she had never even seen a kitchen before.
Mr. Hunter was considerably agitated and said, “Tut, tut. Surely we must have one womanly woman in the group.”
He looked at Isobel, who returned the look well laced with vinegar.
“Anyone can make toast or something,” he said anxiously.
“I can’t,” Isobel said firmly.
“I don’t even know what toast is,” said Joyce, who always won.
Mrs. Vista said that even in her country home in Sussex where life was at its most rigorous, she had never made toast. The scullery maid made it, passed it to the cook for approval or veto, then gave it to the second footman to convey to the table.
“The fire’s going,” Herbert announced at last. He was so pleased with himself he gave Maudie an amiable whack on the rear. “Come on, old girl. Get going and cut some bread.”
Maudie put her hand to her forehead and began to sway gently. Crawford pulled out a chair and pushed her into it.
“You faint just once more,” he said callously, “and nobody will take the trouble to pick you up.”
“Oh, you brute!” Maudie said.
“Faugh,” said Crawford. “If one of you female cripples will hand me a knife, I’ll cut the bread. And I’ll make the toast, too.”
“My hero,” Isobel breathed. She placed a jar of marmalade gently in his hands. “You can shoot the top off this. Won’t that be fun?”
“Gee, yes,” Crawford said.
Meanwhile Mrs. Vista had discovered that the next room was a dining room. She sat herself down at the head of the table and instructed Isobel, Joyce and Paula in the fine art of setting a table. From the kitchen came the odor of charred bread and the sound of Crawford’s soft but expert cursing.
Eventually Mr. Hunter appeared in the doorway with a plateful of buttered toast and behind him came Herbert bearing an enormous soup tureen full of canned macaroni and cheese.
Chad was sent upstairs to get Gracie. Gracie refused to come down without Miss Rudd because Miss Rudd was hungry again. They came into the dining room arm in arm. Miss Rudd seated herself with dignity beside Mrs. Vista, Gracie sat beside her, Chad slunk into the chair next to Paula, and breakfast began.
Almost immediately Miss Rudd started to enliven what wouldn’t have been a dull meal anyway. She accomplished this by the simple but effective method of counting the pieces of toast each one ate. Her eyes followed the plate avidly around the table.
“Four. Two. Two. Five! Goodness, that thin one has had five.”
Maudie swallowed and protested almost simultaneously. “I have not! I’ve had four. I have to eat something, don’t I?”
“Pay no attention, Maudie angel,” Herbert said.
“Five,” said Miss Rudd. “What a glutton!”
Whenever the plate was passed to her she took a piece, smelled it, and tucked it carefully inside her shawl.
Isobel made several attempts to start polite conversation, but Miss Rudd’s personality dominated the room. Hearing Mr. Hunter tell Isobel that Joyce was nineteen, Miss Rudd chuckled gleefully.
“Nineteen,” she said. “That thin one’s had nineteen. Oh, the glutton!”
“Does she have to sit at the table with us?” Maudie asked desperately.
“Well, it’s her table,” Gracie said. “It’s also her food.”
“It’s also her food,” said Miss Rudd.
She was getting bored, however, and soon she darted to the door, clutching the toast underneath her shawl, and disappeared down the hall.
“She’s just gone to hide it,” Gracie said easily. “I never saw anybody like it for hiding things.”
A meager light began to seep through the high narrow windows. The snow had stopped and the wind had died down again and Crawford prophesied a bright cold day ahead.
Herbert, who had been a boy scout in his youth, suggested building a signal fire in the snow. Crawford said it was impossible. Chad said that on the contrary, it was not impossible, it was possible. The conversation was about to get around to clipp
ing again when a shrill laugh floated into the room.
Miss Rudd was evidently very amused, for the laughter kept on and on until even Gracie began to get uneasy.
“I’d better go and see what she’s doing,” Gracie said, and left the table.
She found Miss Rudd in the library. She was standing on a chair beside the window and looking out into the snow. Her whole body was shaking with mirth and pieces of toast fell out and scattered on the floor.
“Now, Frances,” Gracie said. “Come off that chair and behave yourself. You’re making too much noise.”
Miss Rudd pointed out the window and laughed again.
“Get down then, and let me look,” Gracie said.
Miss Rudd obligingly gave up the chair. Gracie climbed up and looked out the window. At first she could see nothing but vast drifts of snow and several bleak trees. She looked around again and then she saw something sticking out of the snow close beside the house. It was a foot.
9
It was a foot sticking rigidly out of the snow as if it had been flung there during the night and landed with the sole of the shoe uppermost. There was a layer of snow on the sole. Around the foot the snow was depressed but smooth.
Gracie hung onto the window to steady herself. Miss Rudd had stopped laughing and was regarding her with solicitude.
“What’s the matter?” Miss Rudd said.
Gracie clung to the window and whispered, “I don’t feel so well. There’s a—a foot—out there.”
“Well, my goodness,” said Miss Rudd cheerfully, “it’s only Floraine.”
“I want to get down from here. Move away.” She climbed down from the chair very slowly, with Miss Rudd giving a helping hand.
“What a funny color you are,” Miss Rudd said.
Gracie said nothing, but walked as fast as she could to the door. Miss Rudd skimmed along behind her.
When they reached the dining room, Gracie paused in the doorway but Miss Rudd gave her a smart push in the small of the back. Gracie let out a scream and stumbled towards the table. An expectant hush fell over the room.
“What’s happened?” Isobel said at last, in a cracked voice.
Gracie sank into a chair. In the dim light her face looked pale and shiny.
“I found—she found—a foot.”
“A foot? You don’t mean a foot?”
Miss Rudd hung her head modestly and said, “I found it.”
Mrs. Vista half-rose from her chair and sank back again with a vast sigh. “Oh, please! Let’s have no more of these jokes. Very bad for the nerves. Imagine anyone finding a foot. You mean you found a shoe, don’t you, my dear?”
“A shoe with a foot in it,” Gracie said shrilly. “It’s out in the snow by the window.”
“It’s Floraine,” Miss Rudd said pleasantly. “What’s left of her.”
Crawford flung back his chair and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Where is she? Come and show me.”
Miss Rudd looked up at him. Her eyes were narrow and bright and her breath hissed in and out through her teeth. “Leave me alone, Harry, or I’ll slit you. I’ll slit you, Harry. I’ll slit you . . .”
Crawford was white around the mouth. His hand dropped to his side and he stepped back. Miss Rudd stared at him unblinkingly for a moment, then gathering her shawl tightly around her shoulders she shambled off out of the door. In the silence that followed they could still hear the hiss of her breath until a door closed somewhere along the hall.
Crawford brushed his hand across his forehead. His mouth moved but he couldn’t say anything.
“The library,” Gracie croaked. “You can see it from the library window.”
“It’s—her foot?” Isobel said.
“Yes.”
Crawford turned and went out. Isobel saw that he was shaking all over. She moved her legs to test them but they seemed very weak suddenly, and too feeble to carry her.
Mrs. Vista had been working up a theory to comfort herself. She said firmly, “I’m sure it’s all a mistake. You’re probably snow-crazy. I think there’s such a thing as snow-crazy, and you see mirages, don’t you, Anthony? Or am I thinking of the desert?”
No one cared what Mrs. Vista was thinking, for Crawford had come back into the room. His face seemed to have stiffened into an expressionless mask.
“It’s Floraine,” he said. “We’ll have to go and get her.”
“Is she—all there?” Isobel whispered.
Crawford looked at her, his eyes ugly. “How should I know? We’ll have to shovel our way out. Come on, Ross. Thropple, you’ll help?”
Herbert rose, but Maudie clung to him, crying, “Don’t leave me! Don’t go away!”
“Tie her up,” Crawford said. “There’ll be shovels down in the cellar.”
Chad Ross was already out of the door. Crawford followed him, not even looking around to see whether Herbert was coming or not.
Herbert, red with anger, thrust Maudie back into her chair. “Sit down. Behave yourself.”
“I won’t!”
“Stay there or I’ll smack you,” Herbert said through his teeth.
Maudie, her eyes wide, shrank into her chair and began to cry.
The rest waited silently, watching the door into the hall. Soon Chad Ross went past with a shovel. They heard him open the front door. There was a sudden “swish.”
Isobel ran out into the hall. The snow had piled against the door during the night and fallen in on the floor. Chad went to work on it thrusting it back out on the veranda.
When Crawford came up from the cellar he said angrily, “Couldn’t you be careful? Don’t you know how to open a door with snow piled against it?”
Chad leaned on his shovel. “So you do, do you?”
“Please don’t quarrel,” Isobel said huskily.
“Beat it, lady,” Crawford said. “I’ve seen enough of you for one night.”
There was no bantering note in his voice. He sounded threatening. Isobel went hurriedly back into the dining room.
Paula and Joyce were clearing off the table, moving very quickly as if they were glad of something to do. Isobel sat down beside Gracie.
“You shouldn’t have let her out,” she said. “You’ll have to lock her in again.”
“I know,” Gracie said in a subdued voice.
“Shall we—go and find her?”
“Find her?” Mrs. Vista said. “The thing is to lose her. You should have known she was dangerous, Miss Morning.”
Gracie looked at her stubbornly. “Why? She’s just like my aunt and my aunt never did a thing like this. Sure, she used to cut things and hide them, but she never did anything really harmful like—like . . .”
“Murder,” Mr. Goodwin said.
“We don’t know what happened,” Isobel said curtly. “There’s a possibility that it was only an accident. We’ll have to wait and find out.”
They waited. The room began to get lighter as the sun rose.
Outside, Crawford flung off his coat and tossed it up on the veranda. He worked faster than the others, with a kind of desperate energy as if he might come upon Floraine still alive. But when he came to the depression in the snow and saw the foot, he knew that Floraine hadn’t been alive for a long time.
He threw down his shovel and began to scoop away the snow with his hands. Once his hand touched the ankle and he drew back as if he’d touched something very hot instead of frozen flesh.
A shout rose in his throat and died again. He forced himself to take hold of the leg and pull it a little.
She was lying on her back under the snow. Her other leg was under her, her arms stretched out at her sides. Her body didn’t look human. It glittered in the sun and snow was stuck over her eyes so they didn’t stare, and her open mouth was clogged with snow. Where her flesh showed it gleamed blue-white like a diamon
d and it felt as cold and hard.
Crawford closed his eyes. He wanted to yell but he didn’t. He kept thinking, Crazy, what a crazy way to die, what a crazy way to look when you’re dead . . .
He opened his eyes again, but he didn’t look at Floraine. He looked up at the narrow balcony running along the second-floor windows. The railing was soft and beautiful, rounded with snow. It winked in the sun and gave no sign that a woman had been flung over its edge and lay underneath, frozen and brittle as an icicle. Some time in the night there had been marks on that railing, marks of a clinging hand or a falling foot, but the snow, inexorable and kind, had smoothed them and blanketed the dead and pillowed the stark trees.
Snow-crazy, Crawford thought. That’s what Mrs. Vista said. If you thought about it, it would get you, softness that will suffocate, cold purity that will freeze, beauty that will blind you . . .
He said in a strange voice, as if he were choking and didn’t care:
“Ross. I’ve found her. Come here.”
Chad came shuffling through the drifts. His face was shiny red and the sun caught his red hair. Against the snow he looked like a burning man.
He said, “God!” and stopped still and looked at Floraine.
“We’ll have to carry her in,” Crawford said, still in the choking voice. “Take her feet.”
Chad bent over. “She’s hard.”
“Frozen.”
“Jesus.”
“Take her feet,” Crawford said again.
“I can’t. I can’t get hold of them. They’re—they’re too stiff and far apart.”
“Bend them.”
“Jesus, Crawford!”
“We have to get her inside.”
“Couldn’t we drag her?”
Crawford’s eyes burned. “She’s going to be carried, if I have to do it myself.”
He put his hands under her armpits and tried to raise her. The foot that had been sticking up through the snow struck Chad in the groin and he cursed and let her fall. The jolt caused the snow to come out of one of her eyes and it stared up at the sky.
Fire Will Freeze Page 10