Fire Will Freeze

8

Maudie Thropple awoke with the strong conviction that somebody was chasing somebody else through the hall. There was the scuffling of feet and several small squeals, followed by a thud and the sound of feet going violently down the steps. Under normal circumstances Maudie might have had hysterics at these odd noises, but she had lived through a great deal today. Her cup was full, and anything more that happened to her was bound to be an anticlimax.

So she merely raised herself from the pillow and nudged Herbert in the back with her elbow.

She said in the frail voice required of a woman who has fainted twice in one evening: “Herbie. Herbie dear, wake up.”

Herbie dear tried his best not to wake up, but Maudie had a sharp insistent elbow which she used with unerring accuracy. Herbert groaned aloud.

Maudie felt that the groan was an insult to her status as an invalid. She abandoned the frail voice for something more compelling.

“You might at least wake up when I tell you to, after what I’ve been through, Herbert. There’s someone fighting in the hall.”

“You’ve been dreaming,” Herbert said hopefully. When a cold silence greeted this remark he sat up on the bed and listened. The hall was quiet. He said, “You’re just excited. Lie down again, angel. Take it easy.”

Maudie could think of no reply scathing enough. She looked across at the man with whom she had chosen to spend the rest of her years. Chosen. No compulsion about it.

Herbert did not measure up. Perhaps in a cosy restaurant, wearing a dinner coat and nicely shaved and combed with a little talcum to tone down the highlights in his bald spot — perhaps...

But seen in the light of an oil lamp, swaddled in moth-eaten blankets, Herbert failed to meet the test. His hair seemed to sprout above his ears, not like hair at all but like a strange fungus growth. His eyes were half-closed and there was none of that steely glint in them that proclaimed: Here is a man.

I have made, Maudie thought, Another Mistake. She shuddered.

“Cold, angel?” said Herbert.

“Get up,” Maudie said. “Go and look in the hall. And don’t call me silly names.”

Herbert knew this mood well. He hastily disentangled himself from the blankets and went to the door. The hall was very dark and he might have missed Miss Rudd entirely if she had not opened the conversation by saying, “I pinched Harry.”

“You did, eh?” Herbert said nervously. “Well, well.”

Behind him Maudie’s voice said anxiously, “Who is it?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Herbert said. “Nothing much.”

Miss Rudd was sitting on the floor in the hall. She had had a big night and was looking tired but happy.

“I pinched Harry,” she said, “and he pushed me and ran away down the steps. What a coward!”

“Shut that door,” Maudie hissed. “Shut it! It’s her again!”

Herbert said, “Well, good night,” and shut the door.

“She’s loose,” Maudie said. “Someone let her loose.”

“She seems to be all right, though,” said Herbert, who could spot a silver lining miles away. “She’s not into anything. Might as well let her alone.”

“You’ll have to do something!”

“What can I do? She wouldn’t listen to me anyway.”

“We can’t just stay here.”

The problem was solved by the rather breathless arrival of Paula Lashley.

She said, “Mr. Crawford thinks we should all get up and go downstairs and stay together. It’s six o’clock anyway, and most of the others are down there.”

“They left us alone up here,” cried Maudie with a tragic gesture.

“Nonsense,” Paula said coolly. “Chad and Mr. Hunter are right across the hall.”

She went out again, passing Miss Rudd who gazed at her brightly but said nothing.

She rapped on Chad’s door. She could hear someone getting off the bed and soon Chad came and opened the door. He had just wakened up and his eyes were soft and the scowl hadn’t appeared on his face yet.

She said softly, “Hello.”

He smiled at her gently, and for a minute everything was all right. Then Miss Rudd stirred, and Paula lowered her eyes.

“The others are downstairs. Mr. Crawford thinks we should go down, too.”

“Paula...”

“Don’t say anything. I don’t want to talk about anything.”

“You never do!” He gripped her shoulders tightly. “You’re an awful coward.”

“Take your hands off me.”

He released her shoulders.

“You can’t solve everything by force,” Paula said levelly. “You’d better wake Mr. Hunter. I’m going down.”

“I could solve it by force if I wanted to, but I’m beginning to think you’re not worth the trouble. You want to go back, all right go back. Only don’t write me any sniveling little notes asking me...”

“You won’t get any notes.” She turned and walked stiffly down the stairs.

Chad went back into his room and found Mr. Hunter sitting up with every appearance of having enjoyed the snatch of conversation.

“Women,” he said sadly, “are difficult to understand, my boy. Even a man of my years occasionally finds himself at a loss.”

This was a plain case of understatement, but Mr. Hunter was unaware of it and Chad didn’t care to point it out. He growled something in return and started to smooth down his hair.

“If there’s anything I can help you with,” Mr. Hunter said, “anything requiring experience in these matters such as I...”

“Thanks, no.”

“Just ask my advice if anything turns up,” Mr. Hunter said wistfully. “I can’t say that I’m much help to my own family. Joyce seems to be a very competent girl.”

“We’re supposed to be going downstairs,” Chad said. “What for, I don’t know. I was doing all right up here.”

Mr. Hunter looked mournful. “Probably Miss Seton is at the bottom of it. She’s one of these women who gets ideas and then expects other people to carry them out. The very worst type, take my word for it.”

“I will,” Chad said abruptly. “Coming?”

“I suppose I’ll have to.”

In the sitting room Mr. Hunter’s fears were realized. Isobel had taken a stance in front of the fireplace and she was looking both angry and determined. She said in the brisk voice of a woman accustomed to giving commands to horses, dogs and men:

“Are we all here?”

“Miss Morning isn’t,” said Mrs. Vista.

“She’s upstairs with Miss Rudd,” Isobel said. “Mr. Crawford and I decided...”

“You decided,” Crawford said.

“... that we had better meet to decide what we’re going to do about Floraine and how we’re going to get out of here this morning as soon as it’s light.”

“I don’t think we should worry about getting out of here,” Herbert said. “The people at the Lodge will have sent out a party looking for the bus and when they find the bus they’ll trace us here.”

“You have more confidence in people who run lodges than I have,” said Isobel coldly, “and much more confidence in the bus driver. How do we know that he was even taking us to the Lodge? How do we know he was on the right road? It seemed to me that the road was nothing more than a lane. Has anyone been to this place before?”

“I have,” Paula said. “I was here last year, but I can’t remember the road that well.”

“I think,” Isobel continued, “that he turned off the right road, that it was all part of a plan to get us here in this house.”

“To get us here?” Herbert echoed. “But that’s fantastic! I mean, why should anyone want us here? Why, we don’t even know each other.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” Mrs. Vista said loudly. “Here we are and we have to stand each other anyway, so I don’t think we should inquire too closely. My life is an open book, of course, but I don’t care to have it a best seller.”

“I can see I’m going to get very little cooperation,” Isobel said.

“You’re going to get none, sister,” said Crawford.

Isobel raised her eyebrows. “Mr. Crawford is an interesting case to start with. In the first place his name is not Crawford. In the second, he’s carrying a gun. In the third, he deliberately destroyed a piece of evidence that the bus driver actually came to this house.”

“You forgot the bottle of brandy,” Crawford said cheerfully. “I stole it from the kitchen.”

Isobel flushed. “You admit the other things?”

“I admit everything.”

“How Oxford-Groupish,” said Mrs. Vista. “These things get very embarrassing sometimes. I remember in London once...”

“That’s a fact about the brandy, is it?” Herbert said with interest. “I don’t suppose you’d care to pass it around?”

“Not sanitary,” said Crawford.

“Please!” Isobel shouted. “If you’re all going to launch into private conversations how are we going to decide anything? I gave Mr. Crawford as an example. He may have his reasons for this extraordinary behavior, and as far as I know it’s no crime to change your name. But the point is he could easily be the one who arranged this set-up, for all we know about him.”

“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 clipping 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.