Fire Will Freeze

4

Joyce, propelled into the hall by her father, stopped at the bottom of the stairs and said she had no intention of going to bed yet. It was only nine o’clock, she had just had a sleep and she felt like staying up to talk to Mr. Goodwin.

“Absolutely no,” said Mr. Hunter.

“Oh, don’t be such a heavy,” Joyce said. “I’ve never really talked to a poet and I’m nineteen and I don’t think you should begrudge your own daughter her chances.”

“Chances to do what?” said Mr. Hunter with a sinister look.

“Oh, Poppa! Your generation is so one-track. I mean, there are things besides sex.” She reached up and kissed his cheek. “Have a good sleep, silly.”

Mr. Hunter escorted her back to the sitting room. Goodwin was pacing up and down the room.

“Hello,” Joyce said brightly. “Mind if I come in?”

“I am composing,” said Mr. Goodwin.

“Oh, that’s all right. You won’t disturb me. Good night, Poppa.”

“Good night,” Mr. Hunter said coldly. “And see here, Goodwin, none of your funny work.”

It was a strong manly exit, and Mr. Hunter, feeling very set up, joined the others on the second floor.

The rooms had already been allotted. There were eight bedrooms on this floor, Floraine explained, and of course the third floor had been shut off for years. The eight bedrooms opened on the hall in pairs, a single mathematical arrangement which fitted in with the way the house had looked from the outside.

There was one bathroom, Floraine added. It was at the end of the hall beside the staircase that led to the third floor. There might be enough water for three people to take baths and if the water should be a rather peculiar color no one was to worry. The pipes were rusted, that was all. On the other hand if anyone turned on the hot water and no water emerged it meant that the pipes were frozen as well as rusted...

“Pleasant dreams!” Floraine said with a sweet smile, and flitted off down the back stairs, holding the lamp above her head.

Isobel Seton stood in the doorway of the room she was to share with Gracie and stared thoughtfully at Floraine’s disappearing back.

“There’s a woman,” she said, “that I could find it very easy to dislike.”

Gracie agreed. “Come on in and let’s get that door locked.”

Isobel came inside and closed the door. “There’s a lock but no key.”

“We can use the furniture.” Gracie stood in the middle of the room and surveyed it. In its heyday it might have been sumptuous, but the heavy rose damask drapes were greyed with dust and age, and the huge mahogany bed was cracked along the headboard. Here, too, there were indications that various pieces of furniture had been removed from the room — marks beside the grate where a heavy chair had once been, rectangular spaces on the wallpaper less faded than the rest. The rug, too, had been taken away and cold air skimmed across the bare floor.

“Hellish little nook,” Gracie said cheerfully.

Isobel sat down on the edge of the bed with her coat draped over her shoulders and shivered. “Don’t look now but did somebody forget to put panes in those windows?”

Gracie pushed aside the damask drapes. “There are panes. And look — a radiator! But it’s cold.”

“Probably frozen,” Isobel said grimly. “Aren’t we going to be cozy under our two blankets! I’m beginning to think we should have stayed in that bus, wolves or no wolves.”

“Funny,” Gracie said pensively. “At the time this seemed the only thing to do. I mean, it was so logical.”

“Exactly.”

“It sort of looks as though we were taken in. Somebody did some dirty work.”

“But why?”

“Oh, nuts,” Gracie said in a different tone. “We’re just tired. I don’t want to stick my oar in. If there’s a mystery I want to keep it a mystery. The only thing to do in a place like this is to get inside a room with somebody you can trust, put the furniture in front of the door and be prepared to yell like hell.”

She came over to the bed and began unfolding the sheets and the two moth-eaten blankets.

“Let’s figure it out,” Isobel said. “We must have stayed in the bus about half an hour after the driver left. We walked approximately half an hour. Miss Rudd delayed us at the door about fifteen minutes. That’s an hour and a quarter. The driver obviously knew where he was going, he couldn’t have taken a chance on finding a house in this part of the country. So, if he knew the route and wasn’t stopped by rifle shots, he probably covered the ground in fifteen minutes. Subtract that from our hour and a quarter and you have one hour. One hour to disappear.”

“I don’t believe he disappeared,” Gracie said. “He’s here, all right. Maybe he and Floraine will arrange something...”

“If he’s here,” Isobel said calmly, “let’s find him.”

“You are nuts,” Gracie said. “If he doesn’t want to be found I’m not the girl to go looking for him.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?”

Gracie had lost interest in bed-making and had picked up Isobel’s hat and was trying it on in front of the bureau mirror.

“This is sort of cute on me,” she said with open admiration. “But then I can wear anything.”

“That’s nice,” Isobel said absently. “I think he was big, wasn’t he?”

“Who?”

“The bus driver. Big, and with a grey overcoat and a visored grey cap and pimples at the back of his neck. It’s his face I’m worried about.”

“Let him worry about his own face,” Gracie said cheerfully. “I’m going to bed. Move off there, will you?”

Isobel stood up and stared at her witheringly. “Do you mean to say you haven’t the nerve to search the house?”

“You guessed it,” Gracie said. “And neither have you.”

“Nonsense. Of course I have. I just thought it would be better if two of us...”

“Not me. Get one of the men to go with you.”

“Men! I never saw such a bunch of ineffectual hag-ridden pipsqueaks...”

“You haven’t been around enough,” Gracie said. “Now, take me. Maybe I haven’t been so many places as you but I sure have covered the ground thoroughly. And what I learned is this: never expect anything from any of them but pretend you do. That’s my system.”

“I have no doubt it’s an excellent one,” Isobel said coldly. “Meanwhile you’d better get into bed. I’m taking the lamp.”

“And leave me here in the dark!” Gracie squealed. “You leave that lamp here!”

“You little coward,” Isobel said, and walked firmly towards the door with the lamp in her hands.

She stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind her. There was no light coming from beneath the next door, which was Floraine’s. Isobel moved slowly past it.

Miss Rudd’s room came next. Though Miss Rudd had been sent to bed an hour ago her lamp was still lit. Then three things happened almost simultaneously. The doorknob of Miss Rudd’s room began to move, something brushed against Isobel’s ankles, and in a split-second Isobel turned down the wick of her lamp.

She began to creep backwards towards her own door. The darkness had a strange quality of being alive. It was not absence of light but something more real, a kind of black clammy air which seeped in through the walls and the doors, a dark fog rising from the cellar.

No one came out of Miss Rudd’s room. Isobel stood with the unlit lamp in her hand and something moving in the darkness at her feet. She fumbled in the pocket of her dress and found a match and struck it against the wall. The light flared.

Standing at her feet, motionless, was a large amiable white rat. He looked intelligently at Isobel, far more intelligently than she looked at him. Apparently satisfied with her, he gave a good-natured twitch of his whiskers and scampered off down the hall.

Isobel let the match fall and opened the door of her room.

“What is it?” Gracie’s voice came urgently from the bed. “Now what?”

“A rat,” Isobel said, swallowing hard.

“A rat? Well, what did you expect?”

“Not,” Isobel said shakily, “an ordinary rat. He was quite — quite blasé.”

“Well, light that lamp and crawl into bed and stay there, if you’re going to be scared skinny by a poor little rat.”

The lamp was lit again. Gracie sat up in bed with a blanket over her shoulders. “I remembered something for you. There was a name-card above the mirror in the bus. It had M. Hearst printed on it.”

“Hush,” Isobel said. She had her head bent towards the door. In the hall someone was calling in a husky penetrating whisper:

“Suzanne! Suzanne, where are you? Oh, dear, oh, dear!”

“I rather hoped,” Isobel said in a cracked voice, “I rather hoped Miss Rudd would be sleeping.”

The plaintive whispers went on. “Oh, Suzanne! Oh, you naughty girl! Come, you vixen!”

Then Floraine’s voice, steady but a little impatient: “Frances, give me those scissors.”

“I haven’t got any scissors, my dear friend. You told me not to take the scissors and I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t, Floraine!”

“You have them hidden under your shawl.”

There was a brief scuffle and a cry of surprise from Miss Rudd.

“Why, there they are! Under my shawl! Someone must have put them there, Floraine. That thin one with the sharp nose.”

“Oh, be quiet, Frances,” Floraine said wearily. “Come back into your room and I’ll tell you a story.”

And the house became quiet again except for the creaking of the walls as the wind pressed against them.

Subdued and silent, Isobel set the lamp on the bureau and turned the wick low. Then she lay down on the bed, covering her eyes with one arm. She stayed awake for some time listening to the strange medley of sounds, the howling of the wind, Gracie’s quiet even breathing, the sudden banging of the steam radiator, the sharp quick tap of sleet against the windows, for the snow was fine again with the rising of the wind.

It’s so noisy, she thought. We couldn’t even hear danger if it should approach. Someone could come along that balcony outside the windows and step right in...

“Gracie,” she whispered. But Gracie was sleeping and finally Isobel slept, too, for a time.

When she awoke she heard a new sound in the room, a buzzing like a swarm of bees, a steady purring like many giant cats ready to maul their kill.

She kept her eyes closed tightly. It couldn’t be bees, of course. And there was only one cat, Etienne, and he couldn’t be — he couldn’t possibly be...

But he was. Isobel moved her hand a little and there he was stretched out beside her on the bed, his eyes glowing. So close to her, he looked huge and savage as a tiger.

“Scram,” she said. Etienne blinked and began to wave his tail.

Gracie stirred and said, “Leave me alone.”

“Wake up, Gracie. Wake up. We have company.”

Gracie yawned and sat up. When she saw the cat she lay down again quickly and said, “My God. Is this a zoo?”

“Gracie, tell him to go away.”

“Tell him yourself.”

“Push him, then,” Isobel said.

“Push him yourself,” Gracie said. “How did he get in? Did you bring him in with you?”

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

Etienne appeared to be following the conversation with some interest.

“Well, how did he get in?” Gracie said. “And why?”

“A refugee from Miss Rudd,” Isobel said. “A very reasonable animal.”

“Not reasonable enough to turn doorknobs,” Gracie pointed out. “Somebody must have let him in.”

“Go away, Etienne,” Isobel said. “Allez-vous-en! Scram!”

The cat leaped silently to the floor and stalked away. Isobel hurriedly opened the door and let him out into the hall. She came back to the bed, looking worried.

“Miss Rudd,” she said slowly, “had a pair of scissors and she just loves to cut things. First, Mr. Goodwin’s hat.”

“Maybe she’s working up by degrees,” Gracie said. “Hat, rat, cat, and then us.”

There was a silence. Then Isobel said, “I don’t think I’m going to sleep.”

“Well, I am. Go down and talk to Goodie.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“I’m too tired to mind anything,” Gracie said sleepily. “Give my love to Goodie.”

Mr. Goodwin, however, was in no position to accept it. He had fallen asleep in front of the fire. His mouth was open and he was making unlovely sounds.

Isobel stared at him bitterly, but the perfidious Mr. Goodwin did not stir. She sat down in a chair holding the lamp like a wrathful virgin arrived too late.

Perhaps Mr. Goodwin would wake up. Even if he didn’t, it was warmer down here and there was no balcony outside the windows, and you could watch the door.

She watched the door until her eyes grew heavy. Mr. Goodwin did not wake up and nothing came through the door. She set the lamp on the floor and leaned back and closed her eyes, only to open them again quickly at the sound of footsteps.

Joyce Hunter was standing in the doorway. She had a small flashlight in her hand which she clicked off as soon as she saw Isobel.

“Well,” she said in a whisper. “What are you doing down here, Miss Seton?”

“Sitting,” Isobel said, rather unnecessarily. “I couldn’t sleep. So I came down hoping Mr. Goodwin would be awake. But he isn’t.”

“Not so loud,” Joyce said, frowning. She closed the door. She continued to speak in low, sinister whispers. “There’s something funny about this house.”

“You don’t mean to tell me,” Isobel said dryly. “And to think I was just on the verge of buying it for a cozy little country home.”

Joyce ignored this. “They have scads of food, for one thing, and all they gave us was those salmon sandwiches. And Floraine said they hadn’t much fuel, but the coal bin is stocked to the brim...”

“You were down in the cellar?”

“Naturally,” Joyce said. “I couldn’t sit around and watch Mr. Goodwin sleep.”

Isobel stared at her suspiciously. “Do you always carry around flashlights?”

“No, I stole this one from Mr. Crawford’s overcoat pocket,” Joyce said modestly. “I thought it would be a good idea to find the bus driver.”

“And I suppose you did?” Isobel said with heavy irony.

Joyce looked at her thoughtfully. “Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on down to the cellar and see for yourself.” She put her hand on the doorknob, then removed it and said curtly, “I suppose I can trust you, can I?”

“As much as I can trust you,” Isobel said, annoyed.

Joyce turned on the flashlight and opened the door.

The hall seemed interminably long. On either side the doors were shut, and, as she passed each one, Isobel thought, he may be in there. Or there. Or this one. He may be watching us.

Joyce turned the flashlight briefly on the last door and put her hand on the knob.

“This is the kitchen,” she whispered. “You go down to the cellar from here.”

Isobel followed her into the room pausing a moment to look behind her. Then she closed the door silently and followed Joyce down the steps to the cellar. A queer pungent odor came up at her, the smell of whitewash and rancid food, and damp cement.

“Nothing in this room,” Joyce said, “but a bag of rotting potatoes and a couple of trunks. The trunks” — she added pointedly — “are both empty.”

She was fumbling with the latch of a heavy door reinforced with bars of iron. There was a padlock on the door but it hadn’t been locked.

They stepped into the next room. It was smaller and the air was warmer and quite dry. To the left was the furnace and beside it the coal bin well-stocked with coal.

“Here,” Joyce said, “take the light and hold it over here.”

Isobel kept the light fixed on the coal bin. Joyce picked up a poker and began to prod the coal. Finally she bent over and picked something from the floor. Then she held out her hand to Isobel and in the palm of it lay the metal monogram covered with soot.

“M. H.,” Isobel said slowly, remembering the nameplate in the bus, M. Hearst.

“Hold it,” Joyce said. “I found it and hid it again.”

Isobel took the monogram in her hand and stared at it. Joyce began prodding in the coal again. When she straightened up she had something else, a black button and a narrow band of leather.

“His hat band,” she said in a grim voice. “And a button from his coat. The monogram was on his hat band.”

Isobel turned away with a shudder and fixed her eyes on the furnace.

“Where’s the rest of him?” she said in a hushed voice.

In the faint light Joyce’s face looked pale and very childish. She’s scared, Isobel thought fleetingly. All her words and actions are just putting up a front.

“I don’t know.” Joyce bit her lip and seemed suddenly ready to cry. “They — couldn’t have put him in the furnace?”

Because Isobel herself had been thinking of the same possibility, she spoke rather sharply. “No, of course not! Don’t be silly. We have no reason to think he was — he was murdered.”

Joyce looked silently down at the hat band she was holding.

“I mean, it’s so silly,” Isobel added desperately. “He wouldn’t have gotten out of the bus and come here just to be murdered. It’s insane.”

“So,” Joyce said, “is Miss Rudd.”

They looked at each other, then Isobel dropped her eyes and turned away. “I’m going to look around a little bit. There’s a workbench over there, you can sit on it and wait for me. I might find something... something reassuring.”

Or damning, she added to herself.

But, except for the hat band and the monogram and the button, the cellar seemed an average one. There were pieces of broken furniture along one wall, a work table with a few simple tools, a disemboweled couch and a shelf containing paints and brushes. From the shelf she picked up a can and turned the light on it.

“What’s that?” Joyce asked.

“Ski wax,” Isobel said. “A fresh can of it.”

“That’s funny. You wouldn’t expect Miss Rudd to ski and Floraine couldn’t very well leave her alone.”

“Besides,” Isobel said, “there are no skis. Come over and hold the light, will you?”

Joyce held the flashlight while Isobel examined the shelf and took the lid off the can of ski-wax.

“It’s been used once or twice,” Isobel said. “And look at the shelf. It’s dusty but there isn’t a spot of dust on the can. It must have been put here very recently.”

Holding the can she turned decisively towards the door.

“Come on. I’m going upstairs and demand an explanation from Floraine.”

“We can’t demand anything,” Joyce said. “It’s her house, we haven’t a right...”

“She shot at us with a rifle. That’s right enough for me! Are you coming?”

It was Isobel who led the way and Joyce who trailed behind. When they reached the first floor Joyce said that whatever demanding had to be done would be done by Miss Isobel Seton alone and unaided.

“I’ve had enough for tonight,” she said with a wan smile. “Get Gracie to go with you. You may take the flashlight and I’ll stay down here with Mr. Goodwin.”

So Isobel, armed with a flashlight, a button, a hat band and a monogram, went upstairs to enlist Gracie’s aid.

She opened the door of the room and stopped short.

Gracie moved restlessly under the covers and muttered that she felt cold.

Isobel said nothing.

“The blankets seem so damp,” Gracie complained. “Probably the roof leaks.”

“No,” Isobel said in a faint voice. “It’s the cat.”

“The cat?” Gracie opened her eyes.

“The cat.” Isobel gulped. “Dead.”

“Oh, you must be dreaming.” Gracie paused. “You are dreaming, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be fatuous,” Isobel said. “Look for yourself.”

So Gracie raised herself on one elbow and saw Etienne lying with his soft throat slit and his blood soaking into the blankets.