Fire Will Freeze

3

Floraine turned on a wall switch and the enormous crystal chandelier in the center of the hall sprang into light. It was yellowed with age and the crystals threw grotesque dangling shadows on the gilt ceiling.

“They clink,” Miss Rudd said, pointing. “They clink very prettily.”

“Hush, Frances.” Floraine moved quickly towards a heavy oak door and it opened with a shriek of hinges. “You understand we rarely use these rooms and are not prepared for company. But there is a grate in here. I shall build a fire.”

Miss Seton found her voice. “But what about the driver — and the shots?”

Charles Crawford put a warning hand on her arm. “Why not get warm first?” he said dryly, and pushed her, not gently, through the open door.

In front of the fireplace was a pile of split wood which Floraine began thrusting into the grate. Mr. Hunter offered to help her but Floraine, with a fine show of teeth, said she was quite used to work of this kind.

“Take off your wraps,” she added over her shoulder, “and sit down. Will you turn on the light, Frances?”

Miss Rudd darted to the switch and a second crystal chandelier blazed in the center of the room. There were no lamps although the room was so huge that the chandelier’s light did not reach the corners. On the floor were two Persian rugs faded and worn thin in spots. The furniture was chiefly brown mohair, two well-worn chesterfields with chairs to match. The chairs looked rickety and listed to one side.

What a queer room, Miss Seton thought, and wondered whether it was simply because it was so old and out-of-date and had no lamps. Then she discovered with a shock that there was no furniture at all in the corners, it had all been brought into the center of the room and grouped around the fireplace.

As if most of it had been taken away, she thought. She looked at the walls and saw two gilt-framed oil paintings, in need of cleaning, one of Montcalm, the other of Frontenac. Where other paintings had once been there were pale rectangles on the walls.

They probably had a whole set of historical paintings, Miss Seton decided. The rest have been taken away. Sold? Or destroyed by Frances Rudd?

“Nosy parker,” said Mr. Crawford’s voice close to her ear. “Take time off to give me your coat.”

Blushing, Miss Seton hurriedly removed her coat. Mr. Crawford took it and examined the fur. He said, grinning, “Hmmm. Sable? Where have you been all my life?”

“I don’t know,” Miss Seton said crossly. “But I know where I’m going to be the rest of your life. Missing.”

“Suits me,” Crawford said with a shrug. “No harm in asking.”

“This wing is not used,” Floraine explained again for the benefit of the others. “There are only the two of us, you see.”

“Two?” Mrs. Vista sank down on one of the mohair chesterfields and raised a fine spray of dust. “Two? I thought that Miss... Miss Budd—”

“Rudd,” Floraine said.

“Miss Rudd said there were...”

From the hall came a cackle of laughter and a long drawn out sniffle.

“Miss Rudd is imaginative,” Floraine said delicately.

Mrs. Vista looked out into the hall and then back at Floraine. “Imaginative,” she repeated thoughtfully. “You mean she’s — batty?”

“Oh, a little,” Floraine said. “A very little.”

She went back into the hall. Her voice came through the door, firm but pleasant:

“You promised me you wouldn’t cry today, Frances.”

“Oh, I can’t help it,” Miss Rudd moaned. “It’s so sad. Everything is so sad.”

“You’d better not cry anymore. These people are nice, Frances, quite nice. You must go in and be pleasant to them. They are your guests, and you mustn’t pinch any of them.”

“Just the fat one.”

“Not any of them,” Floraine said sharply. “Be pleasant and ask their names while I make some coffee. Do you understand, Frances?”

Miss Rudd moaned again but Floraine’s brisk footsteps became fainter. They sounded as if Floraine was impatient. With Miss Rudd, Miss Seton thought, or with us?

Company would naturally be a nuisance in such a household. It would be difficult enough to manage Miss Rudd, without additional complications. But there were the two rifle shots. Indicating, Miss Seton thought dryly, a new high in impatience.

“Why do I assume Floraine did the shooting?” she murmured.

“I don’t know.” Joyce Hunter was beside her, gazing at her with her clear cold eyes. “Why do you?”

“Floraine was wearing white,” Miss Seton said in a whisper. “I saw something white move at one of the second-floor windows right after the shots.”

“Yes.” Joyce bit her lower lip and stared pensively at the ceiling. It was her thinking pose. She said at last, “I think you’re right. You’d have to be on the second floor to make those shots.”

“And the driver — if he isn’t here, where is he?”

“Where is who?” Mr. Goodwin asked absently. He was sitting at the end of the chesterfield opposite Mrs. Vista, and gazing meditatively at his hat. “Phenomenal. Phenomenal phate. Peculiar Parca. What were you saying, Miss Seton?”

Miss Seton looked at him in annoyance. “I wasn’t really talking to you but I’ll repeat. Where is the bus driver?”

“Who knows?” said Mr. Goodwin. “We are all ephemeral. Here today. Gone tomorrow. Ephemeral effigies.”

“That’s excellent, Anthony,” Mrs. Vista said encouragingly. “I shall have to remember it.”

“Ephemeral effigies or not,” Miss Seton said acidly. “Even ephemeral effigies have to disappear to some place...”

“Not necessarily,” said Mrs. Vista loyally.

“... and I want to know where. If we don’t find him we’ll have to stay in this house until someone finds the bus and traces us here. That might take days. If you’ll kindly descend to our plane for a moment, Mr. Goodwin, you’ll understand that.”

“Oh, no!” Maudie cried. “Oh, no! I couldn’t stay here. I’m so frightened. That woman. Look at her!”

All eyes turned to the door. Miss Rudd was moving soundlessly into the room with a kind of slithering motion. She skimmed over to the chesterfield, plucked Mr. Goodwin’s hat from his hands and put it on over her white lace cap. Then she skimmed back to the door and closed it. The whole thing was done in ten seconds.

“Odd,” Mr. Goodwin said thoughtfully.

Mrs. Vista found her bellow and used it. “Really! Anthony, your lovely hat! You shouldn’t have let her take it!”

“I think it was a silly hat,” Joyce said. She had given up all hope of being debauched by Mr. Goodwin and was feeling cross. Talk, talk, talk!” She flung herself into a chair. “Why don’t we do something about something? Poppa!”

Mr. Hunter who was bending over the fire straightened up obediently. “Yes, my dear?”

“You’ll have to command that nurse to produce our driver.”

“C-command?”

“Certainly, command. We’ll have the coffee first and then you can tell her very firmly. It will be dark soon, and I for one don’t feel like staying overnight in this house.”

“Besides,” said Herbert from the windows, “it’s snowing again.”

It was also getting dark. The snow had changed and the soft feathery flakes that clung to the window looked grey, like huge particles of dust.

Paula Lashley looked out and shivered. She had not taken off her ski suit but merely flung the hood back from her head. She sat hunched in a chair, with Chad Ross standing beside her like a nasty-tempered but faithful watchdog.

“I want to go home,” Paula whispered. “Please, Chad. I can’t go through with it.”

Chad was silent for a time. Then he said in a hard voice, “It’s what I expected. You haven’t the guts of a worm, Paula.”

“No — I know.” She bowed her head.

“Just how are you going to get home, now?”

“The driver must be here,” Paula said. “The nurse was lying. We could search the house.”

“Very eager, aren’t you?” Chad said. “Do you think we can just walk into a stranger’s house and search it, like the police?”

They were talking in low whispers, but even though Charles Crawford was on the other side of the room he heard the word police. He sauntered over to Paula and Chad, keeping his hands in his pockets.

“What’s this about police?” he asked casually.

“None of your business,” Chad said.

“No? All right.” He smiled amiably at Chad. “Anyone ever tell you you could make a fortune frightening babies? Look into it, eh?” He turned and walked away towards Miss Gracie Morning.

Gracie was sitting comfortably and happily in front of the fire, drying out her long beautiful legs and combing out each of her auburn curls separately and with infinite care. She paid no attention to the bickering going on around her. She accepted her fate gracefully, partly because she was naturally even-tempered and partly because she was not hungry like the others, having consumed three-quarters of a pound of Laura Secord chocolates.

Crawford sat down beside her and frowned into the fire. Gracie thought he looked cute.

She said, “I’m just crazy about stern men.”

Crawford tried to think of a suitable reply to this and eventually hit upon, “I’m crazy about auburn hair,” — which was true enough.

“So am I,” Gracie said confidentially. “That’s why I have it.”

“Ah? So.”

“Mr. Goodwin is a very peculiar man, don’t you think so?”

Here again the truth seemed best. “He is,” Crawford said, “rather.”

Gracie rolled her eyes. “Very! But I guess we’re all funny in some ways, though some of us are worse than others. Like the old lady.”

“Miss Rudd? She’s not so old. Fifty, perhaps.”

“That’s old.”

“You think so?” Crawford said sadly. “I’m nearly forty.”

“I’m twenty-three.”

“A good age.”

“But I’m much older than my years,” Gracie confided.

“Yes, I can see that,” Crawford said.

Gracie was not entirely satisfied with this reply, so she returned to her curl combing to think it over.

Joyce Hunter had taken off her ski jacket and was now walking around the room examining the furnishings with a businesslike air.

“Quaint but grim,” was her verdict when she returned again to Isobel Seton. “Floraine’s been gone a long time. You don’t suppose she’s skipped out, do you?”

Her father let out a long exasperated sigh. “Why on earth should she skip out?”

Joyce thumped her feet impatiently against the floor. “Poppa, you mustn’t always be asking why this and why that. I don’t know why. I just feel things. I felt something about the bus driver and he disappeared. Now I feel something about Floraine, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she disappeared.”

“I guess we’ll have to burn you as a witch,” Miss Seton remarked, “before you put the hex on the rest of us.”

“You shouldn’t joke about sinister things,” Joyce said.

“No, I suppose not,” Miss Seton said gloomily and strolled over to the fireplace to join Gracie and Crawford.

Gracie welcomed her brightly. “I was just telling Mr. Crawford how crazy I am about stern men.”

“Are you?” said Miss Seton.

“I think Mr. Crawford is terribly stern, don’t you?”

Miss Seton examined the point. “Droopy,” she said, “not stern. He is no longer youthful.”

“I am as youthful as possible,” Crawford said coldly. “Considering the circumstances, I think I’m downright boyish.”

“Oh, the circumstances aren’t so bad,” Gracie offered cheerfully. “Even supposing the old lady is crazy, well, I had an aunt who was a little crazy and she didn’t do any harm. Kind of sad, she was.”

The oak door creaked open and Floraine came back into the room with a large tray of tarnished silver containing a coffee percolator, cups and saucers, and a plate of sandwiches. The sandwiches gave off a strong fishy odor.

Floraine set the tray down on a mahogany refectory table placed against one wall, and drew up a chair beside it. She sat down and began to pour out the coffee, with a calm, self-possessed air which Miss Seton found rather disturbing.

She’s not curious enough, Miss Seton thought. She hasn’t asked any questions and she looks as though she doesn’t intend to answer any, whether she can or not.

“Sugar?” Floraine asked her, as if she were aware of Miss Seton’s thoughts.

“Please,” Miss Seton said meekly. “Two lumps.”

“One lump,” Floraine said with a slight lift of her brows. “We’re rationed and not equipped for guests.”

Feeling very guilty indeed, Miss Seton settled for one lump, reached for her coffee and retired as far from Floraine as she could get. When she had settled herself in the chair beside Paula Lashley, she found she had forgotten to take a sandwich. In spite of their repellent odor, the sandwiches were food and Miss Seton had seen no food since leaving the train. She got up again and was making her way back to the table when the light in the chandelier flickered and went out.

A babble of voices rose instantly in the darkness. “Who did that?” “Turn it on again!” “Miss Seton turned the light off.”

“Oh, I did not!” Miss Seton protested feebly.

“It’s quite all right.” Floraine’s voice was cool. “This has happened before. We have our own diesel generator and it frequently fails us. I’ll ask Frances to fetch the oil lamps.”

She went across the room and out into the hall and called, “Frances! Where are you, Frances? Go and bring down the oil lamps.”

There was no answer but a shuffling of feet from some place in the hall. Floraine, apparently satisfied, came back into the room and took her place at the table. There was no light in the room except the fire and Floraine’s face was turned away from it, but Miss Seton fancied that Floraine was smiling.

After a time Miss Rudd’s voice began to whine from the doorway. “I can’t find the lamps, Floraine. Someone has stolen them. I don’t like the dark with Harry here.”

Floraine rose again and went to the door. “You’ve hidden them again, Frances,” she said patiently. “Where did you hide them?”

“Oh, I didn’t! I didn’t!”

“We’ll have to remain in the dark all night unless you tell me.”

Miss Rudd hid her face in the black shawl and wept. “Oh, I didn’t hide them! I just put them away so these thieving friends of Harry’s couldn’t get them.”

“Where?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you, Floraine. These thieves will hear me.”

“Whisper it.”

Floraine bent over and Miss Rudd said in a loud sibilant whisper, “In the cellar. Aren’t I clever?”

“Very clever.” Floraine walked away down the hall. Miss Rudd remained in the doorway rubbing her face with her shawl.

“Well, Anthony,” Mrs. Vista said sternly. “Hadn’t you better ask her for your hat?”

“Oh, quite.” Mr. Goodwin said bitterly. “Oh, yes, yes, yes.”

He advanced on Miss Rudd, making amiable grimaces. “I say. That hat. Hat.” He patted his head coaxingly. “Hat. Chapeau.”

Miss Rudd merely stared at him as if he were crazy.

“You’re going at it all wrong!” Joyce cried. “You’re simply supposed to treat her as if she were quite normal. I took a course in psychology, abnormal, subnormal and normal.”

“Use them all,” Charles Crawford said dryly.

“This is how you do it.” Joyce walked over to Miss Rudd, smiling brightly. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Joyce Hunter. This is Mr. Goodwin.”

Miss Rudd bowed politely. “How do you do, Mr. Goodwin, you vicious son of a bitch.”

Mr. Goodwin gulped. “How... how do you do.”

“Mr. Goodwin wants his hat,” Joyce continued, undaunted. “We expect to be leaving soon, but Mr. Goodwin cannot go without his hat.”

“He will freeze,” said Miss Rudd.

Joyce nodded encouragingly. “Of course he will. Perhaps if you give him back his hat Mr. Goodwin will give you his tie which is much prettier.”

“No, thank you kindly,” Miss Rudd replied in a reasonable tone.

A faint light appeared in the hall and Floraine came in carrying two oil lamps and set them on the mantel. She said over her shoulder, “Please don’t annoy Miss Rudd. She doesn’t like strangers to come too close to her.”

“My hat,” Mr. Goodwin bleated.

“I’ll get it for you.” She went out and came back in a minute carrying a few strips of green felt. “I’m afraid it won’t be much use to you anymore. Miss Rudd loves to cut things. She will apologize, won’t you, Frances? Say you’re sorry, Frances.”

“I’m sorry,” Miss Rudd said brightly.

So the first round was Miss Rudd’s, Isobel Seton reflected as she sipped the last of her coffee.

The room was becoming very hot and steamy and smelled of wet clothes and salmon sandwiches and Gracie Morning’s primeval perfume. Miss Seton’s eyelids felt heavy, so she leaned her head against the back of the chair, too inert to force the issue of the disappearing bus driver and the rifle shots. The more she considered them, the more preposterous and unreal they seemed, especially now that Miss Rudd had been sent up to her room and Floraine was talking pleasantly to Charles Crawford in front of the fire. She wasn’t in the least sinister, but a normal attractive young woman.

Miss Seton dozed for a while and dreamed of an encounter with Miss Rudd, who, armed with garden shears, hacked expertly at Miss Seton’s sable coat.

When she awoke, the scene was much the same as it had been, except that the blinds were drawn over the windows and Floraine’s voice was sharper as she talked.

“We are not inhospitable,” she was saying. “We are simply unable to accommodate you. The Chateau is only a few miles further along the road...”

“A few miles,” Crawford repeated. “We couldn’t get half a mile under the circumstances.”

“You understand, Miss Rudd and I are alone here. We have no extra bedding or food, nor fuel to heat the extra rooms. We have no telephone. We are completely isolated.”

“Why?”

“Why?” She stared at him. Miss Seton, watching her, had the impression that Floraine was deliberately exaggerating the expressions of her face and voice in order that the other people in the room should not miss them.

She’s talking to all of us, Miss Seton thought.

“Why?” Floraine said again. “You realize Miss Rudd’s condition. Her family do not want her in a sanitarium. Miss Rudd herself prefers to stay here. It is her home.”

“Must be a dull life for you,” Crawford said.

Floraine let out a slight laugh. “Oh, no. I don’t care for excitement and I am paid well. And besides, my fiancé has gone to war.”

“We’re willing to pay you for a night’s lodging.”

“No, I couldn’t...”

“We’ll pay very well. You realize that we have to stay here anyway. You can’t kick us out. Let’s arrange it without too much unpleasantness.”

Floraine’s eyes glistened. “How much?”

“Ritz rates. Five dollars a head, and a bonus if you cough up the bus driver and no questions asked.”

“Questions?”

“He may have had his reasons for skipping. We guarantee to let that pass if he deposits us at the Lodge tomorrow morning. We’ll back up his story about a breakdown.”

“But how absurd!” Floraine cried. “You’re bargaining with me about a man I’ve never seen or heard of in my life! A bus driver! Surely if such a man came here Miss Rudd would tell you, even if I wanted to keep it a secret. People like Miss Rudd tell everything.”

“She may not have seen him,” Crawford said. “He may be here in this house without your having seen him either. It’s a big place.”

“Ridiculous!”

“All right,” Crawford said easily. “Forget him. The most vital question is bed. Fifty-five dollars.”

“And breakfast?”

“Fifty cents apiece,” Crawford said grimly.

“Sixty dollars and fifty cents,” Floraine said. “Very well.” She held out her hand.

“That woman will go far,” Miss Seton murmured, reaching for her purse and extracting some bills. “By the time her young man comes back she’ll have a dowry that looks like the Chase National Bank.”

They all paid willingly enough, except Gracie Morning, who said there wasn’t a bed in the world worth five bucks and that anybody who paid in advance for anything was a sucker. In the interests of peace Miss Seton hastily fished out another bill, and Floraine, accompanied by Herbert as a volunteer, went to fetch more lamps.

Waiting for them to return, Miss Seton curled up in her chair and studied Mr. Goodwin with half-closed eyes. Contrary to the magazine report, Mr. Goodwin had shown no signs of relapsing into a drunken stupor.

It was an unfortunate moment to examine Mr. Goodwin, for he was giving birth to a sonnet and his face was moving rhythmically and unbeautifully in labor. He looked quite incapable of debauchery.

“Englishmen are not great lovers,” Miss Seton murmured with the false air of a connoisseur.

Mr. Hunter who had been watching her for some time let out a gasp of surprise. “No. No, I daresay they’re not.”

He looked around to see if Joyce was still asleep, and finding that she was he stroked his mustache knowingly and remarked that it had something to do with glands.

“What has?” Miss Seton asked.

“The... the... what you said.”

“Oh. Too many or too few?”

“Too few or too many what?”

“Glands.”

“Oh.”

“Well?”

Mr. Hunter flushed. “I don’t believe it has anything to do with number.”

“Intensity, perhaps?”

“I don’t know,” he said irritably. “I think you’re just doing this.”

“Doing what?” Miss Seton asked in surprise.

“There. You did it again.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m sure I didn’t start this conversation.”

“I’m equally sure I didn’t.”

“You spoke.”

“To myself only,” Miss Seton said sternly. “You horned in.”

“Merely out of politeness.”

“Politeness? Ha!” said Miss Seton.

With a final snort Mr. Hunter rose to his feet and approached Mr. Goodwin.

“I understand,” he said, “that we’ll have to double up in the rooms because there isn’t enough bedding. I’d be glad to share a room with you.”

“Share?” Mr. Goodwin’s features became ominously still. “Did you say share a room?”

“Anthony dear,” said Mrs. Vista with an edge in her voice, “it will be just for one night. I’m sure you’ll find Mr. Hunter a delightful person...”

“He will not,” said Mr. Hunter decisively. “I presume he wants to have a room to himself while the rest of us herd like cattle.”

“I wonder,” Mrs. Vista meditated aloud, “whom I shall choose. Let me see. Someone thin, and preferably quiet. That girl in the corner over there. What’s your name, my dear?”

Paula smiled slightly and said, “Paula Lashley.”

“That man isn’t your husband, is he?”

“No,” Paula said, while Chad growled something unintelligible.

“Well... that’s settled,” Mrs. Vista said. “What about the rest of you?”

It was decided that Isobel Seton and Gracie were to share one room, and the Thropples another. Since Joyce was still sleeping on the chesterfield and no one particularly wanted her as a bedfellow, she was allotted a bedroom to herself.

“A small one,” Mrs. Vista decided, always fair, “and perhaps the scrummiest.”

Goodwin announced that he would stay downstairs on the chesterfield and keep the fire lit for warmth, since he practically never slept anyway. Crawford yawned and said he’d take anyone who had a good loud snore and didn’t mind competition.

“I never snore,” Mr. Hunter said hastily.

“Then you take the young man over there who growls,” Mrs. Vista said, “and Mr. Crawford can have a room to himself, if there is one.”

“Thanks,” Crawford said. “And if there isn’t one?”

“Oh, don’t be a pessimist,” Mrs. Vista said easily.

She raised herself from the chesterfield, and creaked and waddled to the door. In the hall Floraine and Herbert Thropple had appeared with several lamps. Mrs. Vista explained the sleeping arrangements to Floraine and Floraine agreed that they seemed the best possible.

She led the way upstairs. The others filed out into the hall and followed her, while the house groaned under the whip of the rising wind.