Fire Will Freeze

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 diamond 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.

Chad turned away. “For God’s sake.”

“Rigid,” Crawford said hoarsely. “Won’t bend. It’ll take three of us.”

“Why can’t we drag her?”

“Because I say so,” Crawford said.

“Because you say so doesn’t make it necessary.”

Crawford turned and hit him on the chin. It wasn’t a hard blow but Chad staggered and fell back.

“I owed you that,” Crawford said.

Chad got up and brushed off the snow from his coat. His face was pale.

“Now I owe you something,” he said. “You want it now?”

“Some day I’m going to slap your ears off.”

Herbert came up then and found them standing looking at each other. He didn’t see Floraine at all until he stumbled over her foot. He let out a shriek and tripped and fell on his face in the snow. He came up spluttering and wiping his eyes.

Crawford said, “Get up and grab one of her legs. We’re going to carry her in.”

Crawford’s tone was menacing. Herbert touched the leg.

Chad said, “Killer Crawford,” in a half-jeering way but he, too, moved towards Floraine. He picked up her other leg. Crawford held her under the armpits and they went forward drunkenly through the drifts. Both Chad and Crawford swore audibly, but Herbert was silent. He had his eyes closed and he wasn’t really carrying the frozen leg at all, he held it and let it lead him along.

When they reached the front door they had to prop her up so she’d go through. Lying in the hall which was still dim she seemed to glow like phosphorus and she looked more terrible, more unreal, than she had outside in the snow.

Crawford took out his handkerchief and tried to brush off her face, but he saw that the snow wouldn’t come off yet, so he removed his coat and covered the body. One leg and the hands weren’t covered and Chad took off his coat, too, and hung it over the leg that still stuck up in the air. But everything they did only made it more grotesque and the upstretched leg looked like a clothes prop.

Herbert made a funny noise in the back of his throat and walked away quickly.

“We can’t leave her here like that,” Chad said.

“Have to, until she thaws,” Crawford said. “The other doors are narrower and she barely got through the front door.”

“I wouldn’t want the women to see her.”

“Let them look the other way. Or keep them in the dining room. Who in hell cares?”

“I like your mood,” Chad said. “It just suits you.”

Crawford didn’t answer or even turn around. He was looking down at Floraine with a sad, tired expression in his eyes.

Chad shrugged and went into the dining room. When Crawford heard the door shut he bent down and took the coats off Floraine.

She was wearing a dark blue coat over her white uniform. None of her clothes were torn, and there were no bloodstains visible. He looked at her neck and her fingernails and the pupils of her eyes, but there was nothing to show how Floraine had died.

She may actually have frozen to death, Crawford thought, or suffocated in the snow.

What was she doing on the balcony dressed in her coat? Whose window was above where the body had been found?

Behind him he heard the dining-room door open again. He turned quickly and shouted, “Stay in there!”

But Isobel was already in the hall, and she had already seen Floraine. Her eyes were glassy and she had one hand to her throat.

“Can’t you — cover her — up?” she whispered.

“I did cover her up,” Crawford said dryly. “She looks like hell anyway. Now how would you like to go back in that room and stay there?”

She seemed ready to cry. “I thought I... I could do something.”

“She’s dead as a doornail, sister, and you can’t do a thing. Listen.” He drew his foot back and gave one of Floraine’s legs a little kick. It sounded as though he had kicked a piece of stone.

Isobel stepped back, staring at him. “Must you be so — brutal?”

Crawford laughed and said, “Brutal, for Christ’s sake. Listen, sister, I’m nervous.” He began to walk towards her very slowly. “When I’m nervous I do anything. I’ve got to have action when I’m nervous. You go back into that dining room and tell the gentlemen to step out into the hall two at a time and I’ll knock their heads together.”

He was within two feet of her now and there was a crazy light in his eyes.

“I won’t hurt you,” he added softly. “I like the shape of your mouth and the way your eyebrows grow and your chin...” He put his hand under her chin and raised her face. His hand was not gentle, and his mouth when he put it over hers was hard and cold.

She stood motionless, hardly breathing, hypnotized by this strange man who kissed her as if he hated her. Finally he drew away and she saw that he was smiling a little, though his jaw was clenched.

“That’s not what I mean by action,” he said. “But failing anything better...” He shrugged his shoulders and turned and walked away, back to Floraine.

Isobel put her hand slowly to her mouth and rubbed it. Her legs were trembling and she felt cold all over as if his cold mouth had chilled her.

“Don’t stand there,” he said sharply.

His tone whipped the blood into her face. “Don’t order me around.”

“No?”

“And don’t touch me again.”

“You’re safe. I’d rather kiss an ice cube.”

There was a silence. Then Isobel said quietly, “Was Floraine murdered?”

Her quietness affected him. “She was,” he said more civilly.

“How?”

“I don’t know. No marks on her. She was pushed off the balcony and may have smothered in the snow.”

“Then if we’d looked for her right away...”

“Shut up,” he said savagely. He drew in his breath painfully. “You’re blaming me?”

“No, no, I’m not. All of us...”

“No, I’m to blame. I was sure she was hiding somewhere. I never thought of looking outside. She might have still been alive while we were shoveling that coal looking for her body. And all the time she was out there fresh-frozen like a Birds Eye chicken.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Isobel said faintly.

“Where’s Miss Rudd now?”

“Gracie Morning is looking for her upstairs.”

“Miss Morning is a brave woman,” Crawford said. “Or is she stupid? Or—” he smiled dryly — “does she know more than the rest of us about Floraine’s death? Does she know, for instance, that Miss Rudd didn’t murder Floraine?”

“You’re wrong about Gracie. She just doesn’t seem to realize — she’s irresponsible.”

“I wonder how irresponsible,” Crawford said.

“You’re wrong,” Isobel repeated dully. “You’ve forgotten the cat. Miss Rudd killed the cat. And what happened to M. Hearst, the bus driver?”

“Would Floraine go for a walk on the balcony with Miss Rudd? Look again and you’ll see she has a coat on.”

Isobel looked again and as she looked one of Floraine’s hands moved. She turned and ran. She heard Crawford laughing behind her and his sharp brittle voice saying, “She’s thawing, sister. She’s just thawing.”