Margaret Millar - Fire Will Freeze

“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Gracie said, and after a time Paula was forced to agree. Isobel sagged at every joint and though she looked slender she was tall and weighed more than her appearance suggested. They let her fall back on the bed.

“One of her eyelids moved,” Gracie said. “Maybe if we flung her around a little more she’d wake up.”

“Bring more wet towels,” Paula said. She began to move Isobel’s arms up and down, and after ten minutes of this and more cold towels Isobel’s eyelids began to flicker noticeably.

“That’s the girl!” Gracie shouted encouragingly. “That’s right! Wake up!”

Isobel winced and put her hand slowly to her head. “My God,” she whispered. “Who — is — doing — that — shouting?”

Then she opened her eyes and saw Gracie and remembered everything with a rush.

“Where is he?” she said. “You didn’t — you didn’t let him go?”

“Well, we sort of had to,” Gracie explained. “He just sort of left.”

Isobel tried to struggle out of the bed, but there was a curious heaviness in her legs and arms and she had to lie back again, exhausted.

“He wasn’t Dubois,” she whispered urgently. “He wasn’t a skier. He was Jeanneret. The picture in the paper — he was Jeanneret.”

“Well, my goodness,” Gracie said. “What of it? You don’t think my name is Morning, do you? Matter of fact it’s Murphy.”

“Keep quiet,” Paula told her crisply. She looked down at Isobel. “You’d better not try to talk. It won’t do any good. They’re both gone, Dubois and Rudd.”

“Rudd?” Isobel said. “Rudd?”

“Crawford.”

Isobel closed her eyes again.

I am tired, tired, she thought. I mustn’t think now. I will not think about him. I will not think how even talking to him was exciting — no, don’t think. Don’t think.

She moved her head and a slow ache spread through her whole body.

He lived in another world, she thought. He carried it around with him, inside him, and if you looked in at it you were afraid and fascinated and excited all at once.

“Where is he?” she said at last. “Where is he now?”

“They went off together,” Paula said, “he and Dubois.” She thought with a shock: why, she loved him, perhaps the way I love Chad. And he is a murderer...

She said to Gracie, “I think we’ll leave her alone for a while. Could I bring you something, Isobel?”

“No,” Isobel said. “No, nothing.”

“I’ll stay here,” Gracie said.

And she did stay. She sat quietly in a chair for some time, not looking at Isobel.

“Hell,” she said finally, “you’ll meet some other guy some time. Don’t let it throw you. You just let me know and I’ll introduce you to a whole squadron of them. And with your clothes and looks and figure and everything...” Her voice faded.

Isobel opened her eyes and smiled slightly. “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks, Gracie.”

“You weren’t honestly stuck on him anyway. It was just a flash in the pan.”

“A flash in the pan. A very neat description.”

“Write it off as experience,” Gracie said. “God knows you need some.”

“Shall we change the subject?” Isobel said with an impatient gesture of her head.

“We could, but I sort of like this one,” Gracie said cheerfully, “especially now that I know you’re not going off half-cocked. I’m just crazy about romance.” She gazed thoughtfully out of the window. “It’s a funny thing, but I never get much of it. There’s just two kinds of guys in my life, the kind that want to sleep with me and the kind that don’t. So I got to look out for myself.”

Isobel stirred again. “And you do?”

“And I do. You want some more cheering up?”

“No, I guess I’m all cheered up,” Isobel said soberly. She drew in her breath and found she could say his name almost as if it didn’t matter to her. “Crawford — Crawford was Miss Rudd’s brother?”

Gracie nodded silently.

“And he killed her, I suppose. He killed her when I asked him to go down and tend to the fire, and then he came up to the kitchen and I talked to him. He was looking for some brandy...”

“No damn wonder,” Gracie said dryly.

“... and he didn’t turn a hair, he was so natural and cheerful.”

“I guess he was glad to get rid of her,” Gracie said. “It’s kind of hard to have crazy relatives, you know, like my aunt. And Miss Rudd kept giving him away. She kept calling him Harry but nobody caught on except me and then it was too late. I guess he actually was stealing from her, paintings, and furniture and things.”

“Yes,” Isobel said stiffly. “Yes.”

“And Floraine helped him. Seems funny though, that he kept up this house when he could have sent Frances away to an institution.”

“He kept her here because he was ashamed of her,” Isobel said, “and because, I think, this house had been used before by people like Jeanneret, perhaps for political meetings or perhaps for certain people to hide out in. I think Floraine ran the house. I think she was — his mistress.”

Gracie lowered her eyes and said uneasily, “Yeah, I think she was.”

“And he killed her because he — well, he might have just been angry with her. He didn’t need a better reason than that.”

But there was something that didn’t quite fit in and for a minute she couldn’t remember what it was.

Then she thought, of course, it’s the way he acted when he found Floraine, and brought her into the house. He was shocked, that’s the word. After he killed Frances he acted almost normal, he seemed happy in the excited way Frances herself was happy when she brought the newspapers to Gracie as a present.

She remembered him looking down at Floraine when she was lying in the hall. He had looked savage and frightened and his voice had been rough: “My nerves are bad and when my nerves are bad I want action, any kind of action...”

He had come over and kissed her then, and his mouth had been hard and cold.

He was afraid, Isobel thought, that’s what fear does to me, it makes me cold all over. What was he afraid of?

She remembered then when she had stood outside Miss Rudd’s door and listened to see if she was asleep. It had not been Miss Rudd in that dark room. It had been Floraine, talking to Crawford: “Don’t lose your nerve. She can’t do a thing to spoil it...”

They were talking about me, Isobel thought. And if I had rapped on Crawford’s door then as I intended to, I would have found out he was in there with Floraine. But Joyce came along and interrupted. And Joyce had said, “Don’t rely on Mr. Crawford.”

Isobel thought, when he came over and kissed me in the hall he was afraid of me. That’s why he did it. He had always to come and meet danger more than halfway. That’s why he paid so much attention to me — he thought I had killed Floraine.

Gracie said, “There you go thinking about him again. I can tell.”

“Yes, I was.”

“Just asking for trouble.”

“I believe I am,” Isobel said slowly. “I think I’m going to ask for trouble.”

She got off the bed and straightened her skirt. Her head felt too light and her legs too heavy, but she found she could walk.

“Where are you going?” Gracie said.

“Just downstairs.”

“Do you want me to come?”

“If you’d like to.”

“I don’t think I will,” Gracie said. “I’m getting damn well sick of that crowd.”

“You could do your hair again,” Isobel said dryly, “and I have some nail polish in my purse you could have.”

Gracie brightened. “That’d be swell.”

The purse and nail polish were found and Gracie settled happily down in her room. Isobel went downstairs.