An Air That Kills

Five

The following morning, a few minutes after eight o’clock, Turee was awakened by the heavy pounding of the lion’s-head knocker on the front door and the simultaneous ringing of the old cowbell that served as a mess call. Making little noises of distress, he reached for his shoes and put them on. This was all the dressing he had to do because he had, like the others, slept in his clothes. It was part of the tradition of these weekends at the lodge, originated many years before by Harry Bream. (“Makes me feel sporty,” Harry had said. “Roughing it and all that.”)

Feeling somewhat less than sporty, Turee stepped out into the hall, where he met Winslow, wild-eyed and trembling, his back pressed against the wall.

“My God,” Winslow croaked. “I’m dying. Dying.”

“There’s some bromo in the bathroom.”

“My God. That bell. Tell it to stop. My ears...”

“Pull yourself together.”

“I’m dying,” Winslow said again and slid down the wall like a puppet whose strings had broken.

Turee stepped fastidiously around him and went on down the staircase. The encounter had done nothing to dispel the feeling he’d had the previous evening, that he didn’t belong in this place, with these people. Though they were old friends, they seemed, under stress, to have become strangers, and their ways of living — or, in Winslow’s case, dying — were alien to him. As he walked down the stairs the air from the room below rose up and struck his nostrils, and it seemed to him subtly poisonous, smelling of stale drinks and stale dreams.

He drew back the heavy wooden bolt on the front door and opened it, half expecting to see Ron.

During the early morning hours the wind had died down and the temperature had dropped. The ground was covered with hoarfrost glittering so whitely in the sun that, by contrast, Esther Galloway’s skin looked very dark, as if she had quite suddenly and unseasonably acquired a tan.

She appeared to have dressed in a hurry and not for a trip. She was hatless, the shoes she wore were summer shoes without toes, and the Black Watch plaid coat she had clutched around her was one Turee remembered from a long way back. Esther always made such a point of elegance that it was a shock to see her looking quite ordinary, if not actually dowdy.

“Why, Esther.”

“Hello, Ralph,” she said crisply. “Surprise, surprise, eh?”

“Come in.”

“I intend to.”

He held the door open for her and she came inside, peeling off her gloves and agitating her head as if to shake the frost out of her hair.

“My ears ache. I drove with the windows open to help keep me awake. Silly, I guess.” She laid her gloves on the mantel between two empty glasses left over from the night before. Then she picked up one of the glasses and sniffed with distaste. “Gin. When will Billy Winslow ever learn?”

“That’s a difficult question.”

“Did you have a nice party?”

“Not very.”

“Ron — he’s not here, of course?”

“No.”

“No word at all?”

“None.”

“Damn his eyes.”

Some time during the early morning the fire had gone out, and the room was so cold that Esther’s breath came out in little clouds of mist like smoke from a dragon’s mouth.

Turee thought it suited her mood admirably.

“Damn his beady little eyes,” she said. “All right, start making excuses for him, as usual, why don’t you?”

Turee didn’t answer because he was afraid of saying the wrong thing and there seemed no possible right thing.

“The way you fellows stick together, it’s a scream really.”

“Sit down, Esther, and I’ll go and put on some coffee.”

“Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bo—”

“MacGregor’s coming over in a minute to set the fires and make some breakfast.” She turned and looked carefully around the room, one nostril curled very slightly. “The place needs an airing. It smells.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” He had, though.

“I didn’t expect him to be here, of course. I don’t even know why I came except that I couldn’t go back to sleep after you called last night, and I hate waiting, waiting and doing nothing. So I drove up here. I don’t know why,” she repeated. “It just seemed a good idea at the time. Now that I’m here I realize there’s nothing I can do, is there? Except possibly help nurse a few hangovers. How’s yours?”

“I don’t have one,” he said coldly.

“It couldn’t have been a very good party, then.”

“I said it wasn’t.”

“You could have another one today. Perhaps I’ll even be invited to join in for once?”

“It’s your house.”

“All right, I’ll invite myself. We’ll all sit around and be jolly until His Nibs decides to reappear.”

“You think it’s that simple?”

She turned and addressed him very slowly and distinctly, as if she were talking to someone quite deaf or stupid. “Ron has complete identification papers in his wallet and his car registration fastened to the steering wheel. If there had been any accident I would have been notified. Isn’t that correct?”

“I suppose it is.”

“There’s no supposing about it, surely. When an accident happens, it’s reported immediately. That’s the law.”

It hadn’t seemed to occur to her, and Turee didn’t mention it, that laws could be broken.

Sounds of rattling and crashing from the kitchen indicated that MacGregor was at work making breakfast. This was not part of his regular duties, and Turee knew from past experience that MacGregor would make himself as objectionable as possible; the coffee would be like bitter mud, the bacon burned and the eggs unrecognizable except for bits of broken eggshell that would crunch between the teeth like ground glass.

“MacGregor’s in a sour mood,” Turee said lightly. “We’ll probably all be poisoned.”

“At this particular moment I wouldn’t care.”

“Esther, for Pete’s sake...”

“Oh, I know — you think I’m a drag and a droop. You think I always go around with a long face, spoiling for a fight.”

“I don’t...”

“You’re Ron’s friend, naturally you’re on his side. I have to admit, I guess, that Ron makes a pretty good friend. But he’s a lousy husband.”

“Spare me the details.”

“I wasn’t going into details,” she said flatly. “I was just about to make a generalization.”

“Go ahead.”

“Oh, I know you loathe generalizations, Ralph. You prefer intimate statistics like how many tons of mackerel were shipped last month from Newfoundland.”

Turee’s smile was wan. “Let’s have the generalization.”

“All right. Some men just shouldn’t get married, they have nothing to give to a woman, not even the time of day. Oh, they can bring her an expensive diamond watch so she can tell the time of day for herself, but that’s not sharing anything.”

She sat down on the leather hassock in front of the unlit fire as if the sudden release of emotions had exhausted her, like a blood-letting. “I wanted very much to come up here with Ron this week end. Not that I’m particularly keen on fishing or even outdoor life, but I thought it would be fun to do the cooking and eat in front of the fireplace and take walks in the woods with Ron and the two boys. I asked him if I could come along and he didn’t even take me seriously, the whole idea was so incredible to him.”

She paused to take a long breath. “Why, the boys hardly know this place. They’ve only been here three times. Ron keeps making excuses — the boys might fall over the cliff, they might get bitten by a snake, they might drown, etcetera. But the real excuse he never mentions — the boys might interfere with him, they might want something from him that can’t be bought with money, they might demand two or three ounces of Ron’s very own self. They might even take a bite of his precious hide, not knowing, as I do, that it’s quite unpalatable and indigestible.”

“Esther...”

“That’s all. I’ve finished.”

“I don’t mean to shut you up.”

“You do, of course. But it’s nice of you, anyway, to say you don’t. I blab, don’t I? But not to everybody. I wouldn’t dream of saying any of these things to Billy Winslow or Joe Hepburn or even to Harry. They’re a pretty stupid lot.”

Turee was inclined to agree but he didn’t care to encourage her in a new subject. He said, “You need some hot food and coffee, Esther. I’ll go and see how MacGregor is getting along.”

MacGregor was getting along exactly as Turee had anticipated. The bacon was already burned, the eggs were having convulsions in the skillet, and the odor of coffee was sharp as acid. MacGregor, wearing a chef’s apron over his grease-stained overalls, was trying to sedate the eggs with liberal doses of salt and pepper.

“I’ll take over,” Turee said.

“What say, sir?”

“I’ll carry on from here. You go and set the fire in the main room.”

“Things got a mite burned,” MacGregor said with satisfaction, as he removed the apron and handed it to Turee. “It’s the will of the Lord.”

“It’s a funny thing that whenever the Lord picks something to be burned He chooses you as His instrument.”

“Aye, sir, it’s peculiar.” He headed for the main room, whistling cheerfully through the gap between his two remaining front teeth. He had scored a victory, not just a personal victory, but one on behalf of all employees over all employers, and while Turee was not exactly an employer, still he was lined up on the same side. That was good enough. Let the bastard eat burned bacon. It was the will of the Lord.

After breakfast they sat in front of the pine-wood fire MacGregor had built and drank the bitter coffee out of heavy stone-ware mugs. Food and warmth had improved the situation. The pinched look around Esther’s mouth and nostrils disappeared, and the uneasy little animals that Turee had felt moving around in his stomach were temporarily placated.

There was no sound at all from the upper rooms. Either Billy Winslow had gone back to sleep, or else his own prediction had been accurate and he had died. In either case, Turee didn’t much care at the moment. The heat and color and movement of the flames held him in a kind of pleasant stupor. He listened to Esther talking the way one listens to background music, recognizing the songs but without paying any real attention. Esther’s songs were about her two boys, Marv and Greg, and their latest pranks, and such was Turee’s state of mind that he was able to listen without even wanting to cap her stories with stories about his own children.

“... are you paying attention, Ralph?”

“Eh? Oh, certainly, certainly.”

“Well, don’t you think I’m right?”

“Absolutely.” This was safe enough. Every woman wanted to be told she was absolutely right, especially if she had some doubt of it.

“Well, she got quite unpleasant about it. She said I shouldn’t spank either of them, no matter what they did. She said I shouldn’t even threaten to spank them, that it would destroy their confidence in me, and that I was simply indulging my own anger. Now I ask you, how can you bring up two normal, lively boys without a spanking now and then?”

“I wouldn’t know. I have four girls.”

“That’s a different matter. Girls are more — well, you can reason with them.”

Turee was extremely surprised to learn this. “You can, eh?”

“Besides, she’s got her nerve telling me how to bring up my children when she doesn’t even have any of her own.” Esther paused long enough to take a sip of coffee. “It’s funny about that.”

“About what?”

“She’s so crazy about children,” Esther said, “why doesn’t she have some of her own?”

“Who?”

“The who we’ve been talking about.”

“I must have missed the name.”

“Thelma. She’s so crazy about children, it’s funny she doesn’t have any of her own.”

Turee rose and went over to the fire and kicked one of the logs with his foot. The pleasant stupor had vanished; the background music had turned into a loud cacophonous modern symphony, and he was compelled to listen to it carefully, to make sense out of it, distinguish the parts and players — Harry moaning on the trombone, Esther nagging at the drums, Thelma crowing through the clarinet, Ron off-stage with a silver whistle waiting for his cue. And the conductor out to lunch.

“After all, she’s still young and healthy,” Esther said. “Harry makes a decent salary, and he’s just as fond of children as she is, I think. Don’t you agree?”

“I haven’t given it much thought.”

“Neither have I, really. But it’s not the kind of thing that needs much. I mean, the way he horses around with our two boys, you can tell he loves children. I think a baby would do them both a world of good.”

A baby, yes, Turee thought. But not this baby. He remembered what Harry had said while they were driving back to the lodge from Wiarton: “I haven’t told Thelma yet, I want it to be a surprise, but I’ve visited two adoption agencies this week, making inquiries.”

“Well, don’t you agree, Ralph? That’s what they need, a baby?”

“Yes. For heaven’s sake, yes.”

Esther looked at him in surprise. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? Did I say something wrong?”

“No. I just consider it a subject that’s none of my business.”

“And none of mine either, is that what you’re implying?”

Her face had hardened. “Very well, let’s drop it. I don’t like Thelma much anyway, if you want the truth.”

“I’ve gathered that.”

“Am I so obvious?”

“Obvious enough.”

“Well, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Like Thelma.”

“I don’t like anybody this morning,” Turee said with an attempt at lightness. “Not even myself.”

Esther smiled without humor. “We’re in the same boat, then... Listen, do you hear a car?”

“No.”

“I’m sure I heard a car.” She hurried to the front door, pulling her plaid coat around her in anticipation of the cold air. “Maybe it’s Ron. I’m sure it’s Ron.”

In spite of all the things she’d said about him she sounded excited and eager at the prospect of seeing him. Turee followed her outside. He could hear the car now quite plainly, and a moment later it came into sight, winding up the driveway between the spruce trees, leaving parallel black tracks in the frost.

It was a black and white car bearing the insignia of the Ontario Provincial Police on the front door. Esther turned, without a word, and went back into the lodge.

Turee waited while two uniformed policemen climbed ponderously out of the car and began walking toward him. Well, this is it. Ron’s been hurt. Or killed. They’ve come to tell us. This is it.

The two policemen moved slowly, looking around at the property with the careful scrutiny of a pair of assessors. The older man was heavy-set and red-faced with a scar along the crease of his right cheek that gave him a false one-sided smile.

He spoke first. “Hello there. Is this where Mr. Ronald Galloway lives?”

“Yes,” Turee said. The single word came out with difficulty. His contact with policemen had been limited to minor traffic tickets and he felt tongue-tied and uneasy, as if they had come to accuse him of a crime he had committed unawares.

“You’re not Mr. Galloway, by any chance?”

“No. A guest.”

“Mr. Galloway is here, then?”

“No. We — the other guests and myself — have been waiting for him since last night. I thought — that is, when I first saw you, I presumed you had some news of him.”

“A missing report, if that’s news. I’m Lieutenant Cavell and this is my colleague, Sergeant Newbridge. May I ask your name, sir?”

“Ralph Turee. I’m an associate professor at the University of Toronto.” The words and the tone sounded snobbish and pretentious, as if he were deliberately attempting to lay a cloak of respectability over himself, like a child covering himself with a blanket and thinking he was well hidden. Yet the image irritated him. It seemed unfair to himself. He had committed no crime, he had nothing to hide, no reason to feel guilt.

Lieutenant Cavell’s eyes narrowed, and the scar along his cheek deepened into a smile, as if he was quietly amused by such boyish antics as hiding under blankets. “Is that a fact, sir. Now suppose we go inside and talk a little about Mr. Galloway. Newbridge, you can look around out here.”

“Yes sir,” Newbridge said, but he appeared puzzled, as if he hadn’t any idea what to look for or what to do if he found it.

Turee and Cavell went into the lodge. Esther had taken her place in front of the fire and was sitting with her legs crossed and her hands in her lap, looking poised and casual. Too casual. Turee suspected that she’d been hiding behind the door listening to the conversation.

She acknowledged the introduction to Cavell politely enough, but she didn’t rise or offer her hand or even appear anxious to hear what he had to say.

It turned out to be very little. “I have only the barest facts. Less than an hour ago I received a radio message from the Toronto division that Mr. Galloway had been reported missing by his wife. I have the time and place he was last seen, the make, model of his car, and that’s about it. I am not in charge of the case or anything like that. I was merely asked to check up at this end, see if he had arrived or anything had been heard from him.”

“Nothing,” Esther said brusquely, “Not a word.”

“Well now it seems to me that if he’s still on the road it will be an easy matter to spot him. Late model Cadillac convertibles aren’t common in this neck of the woods, and if he had the top down in this weather, as I’ve been informed, he should stick out like a fire engine. If, on the other hand, he got tired and pulled into some motel for the night, we shouldn’t have too much trouble there either. Motels aren’t common in this area.”

“Suppose he isn’t in the area.”

“Why should we suppose that, Mrs. Galloway? He intended to come up here, didn’t he?”

“Intentions can change.”

“Is he the unpredictable kind who might take a notion to go off on a trip somewhere?”

Esther shook her head. “No. At least, not in the past.”

“Is he a heavy drinker?”

“He gets drunks sometimes, but it’s a quiet thing with Ron. He simply goes to sleep.”

“I hesitate to ask this, Mrs. Galloway, but it’s my duty. Have you any reason to believe he was interested in another woman?”

Esther glanced briefly at Turee before she answered. “Absolutely none.”

Her tone was so positive that it seemed to fluster Cavell. As if to cover his confusion with some activity, he removed from an inner pocket of his jacket a small brown notebook. “According to my information, Mr. Galloway was last seen by a Mrs. Bream who lives in Weston. Is she a friend of yours, Mrs. Galloway?”

“Her husband and mine have been friends since Upper Canada College. Ron went to Weston to pick up Harry, that’s Mr. Bream, and bring him along to the lodge. Only Harry had an emergency call to make first, so he came on alone. He’s upstairs now, still asleep. I can wake him up, if you like.”

Turee made a grimace of protest, but if Esther noticed it she paid no attention.

“I don’t think Harry can tell you any more than you already know,” Turee said. “I suggest we let him sleep. He had a rough night.”

Cavell raised his eyebrows. “Rough in what sense, Mr. Turee?”

I’ve got to learn to curb my tongue, Turee thought, and not to volunteer any information. Eventually they’ll find out everything, about Thelma and the baby and Ron, but it’s not my business to bring it out. He said cautiously, “We were up nearly all night attempting to track Ron down.”

“We?”

“Harry Bream and I, and the other two guests, Bill Winslow and Joe Hepburn.”

“And just what form did these attempts take?”

“Harry and I drove back to Wiarton and called Esther — Mrs. Galloway — on the chance that Ron hadn’t left the house for some reason or other. She told us he had left so then we called Harry’s wife. She said that Ron had turned up on schedule, stayed long enough for a drink and then set out again.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, Thelma — Mrs. Bream — said Ron had complained of feeling ill. There’s a possibility there, don’t you think?”

“Such as?”

“Well, Ron takes his symptoms pretty seriously. He may have stopped off to see a doctor, he may even be in a hospital somewhere.”

“He’s as healthy as a horse,” Esther said.

“Yes, but he doesn’t think so.”

“Besides, he’s scared to death of hospitals. He had to be practically dragged to come and see me when the boys were born.”

Cavell stared at her thoughtfully. “It seems to me you’re not very willing to accept any theory, Mrs. Galloway.”

“Willing, yes. Able, no. I know my husband quite thoroughly and none of the possibilities suggested so far has seemed plausible.”

“Have you any theory of your own, Mrs. Galloway?”

“I might have.”

“If you had,” Cavell said dryly, “what would it be?”

“I think Ron may be trying to avoid me, for some reason.”

It was so close to what Turee himself was thinking that he made a little sound of surprise, like a man who’s just had his mind read.

Cavell said, “Why should your husband be trying to avoid you, Mrs. Galloway?”

“I don’t — know.” She flashed another sharp look at Turee as if she half suspected that he could supply the answer if he chose to.

Turee thought, she’s too damned bright for her own good. And too honest to hide it. No wonder she and Ron have some bad times.

“You might,” Esther added, to Cavell, “talk to Harry Bream.”

“Why?”

“He and my husband are what you might call buddies.” She put a sneer in the word. “If Ron has any secrets, Harry is his most likely confidant.”

Turee made one more attempt to spare Harry the ordeal. “No more likely than I, surely, Esther?”

“Much more and you know it.”

“All right then. I’ll go and wake him up.”