Margaret Millar - Fire Will Freeze

Except for Chad and Joyce Hunter, who were still outside, the group was gathered in the sitting room. Herbert and Mr. Hunter had built a fire in the grate on the theory that the sight of a nice hearth fire would enliven their spirits.

Unfortunately the only sight of the fire the others had was obtained by peering around Mrs. Vista’s broad and unbeautiful backside. For Mrs. Vista was not one to consider the comfort of others, and having lived in England all her married life she was well acquainted with the strategy of hearth fires, which is to get there first.

She rubbed her hands together and said there was nothing like a hearth fire, and when Maudie acidly inquired, “Where is it? What fire?” Mrs. Vista merely thought how ungracious she was. Coarse and ungracious.

She was rather annoyed to find herself being jostled from the rear and still more annoyed when she discovered that the jostler was Isobel Seton. For no matter how charming Miss Seton’s exterior, Miss Seton was a troublemaker and Mrs. Vista felt unable to cope with any extra trouble at the moment.

“I want to talk to you,” Isobel said.

Mrs. Vista closed her eyes firmly and tried to pretend that Isobel was not there.

But Isobel was there and she proved it by clasping Mrs. Vista’s arm, not at all gently.

“Did you hear me?” Isobel said.

“I suppose I did,” Mrs. Vista said sadly.

“You had the room beside Crawford’s, didn’t you?”

Mrs. Vista said, yes, it was impossible to forget that because Mr. Crawford had snored off and on all night and she hadn’t had a wink of sleep.

Isobel said, “You were in your room when you heard Floraine scream?”

“Yes, I don’t care to think about...”

“And Paula was in the bathroom?”

“Yes.”

Paula had overheard and come over to join them. “Why?” she said frowning. “Why all this?”

“Did you hear Crawford snoring?”

“Yes, of course. You couldn’t miss it,” Paula said. “That’s why I decided to wake him...”

Her voice died suddenly and she blinked her eyes.

“And if he was sleeping,” Isobel said, “he wasn’t pushing Floraine off a balcony.”

“I won’t listen,” Mrs. Vista said. “I will not listen to anything more. I simply refuse.”

Paula and Isobel looked at each other. Then Paula blinked again and said, “Very likely I was mistaken about hearing Mr. Crawford snore. I can’t be sure.”

“Of course you can’t,” Mrs. Vista cried. “Nor can I. My nerves... I’m a very suggestible type. Aren’t I, Anthony?”

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

Mrs. Vista turned back to Isobel and said bitterly, “You cannot leave well enough alone. You are a troublemaker, there is no other word for you!”

Isobel cried, “And you — you are a...!”

But what Mrs. Vista was to Isobel was not revealed, for a sudden shout rang through the house and Joyce came bursting into the door.

“A snowplow!” she shouted. “There’s a snowplow coming!”

Mr. Hunter, who was acquainted with his daughter’s little experiments in psychology, said, “Now, Joyce. You’re sure? You’re positive?”

“I,” Joyce said, “am always sure.”

She dashed out of the door again, and the rest followed her, with Mrs. Vista wobbling along in the rear.

Only Paula and Isobel remained, looking at each other quietly.

“You know you heard him,” Isobel said at last.

“I didn’t want to excite everyone,” Paula said. “Mrs. Vista is rather silly sometimes, but in this case I think she was right. Leave it alone until we’re out of this house.”

Isobel shrugged and said, “All right. Shall we go and look at the snowplow?”

“No.” Paula turned her face away. “I’m not sure I want to see it. I’m not sure...”

Isobel went out and met Gracie plunging down the stairs trying to talk and blow on her nail polish to dry it at the same time. They went out onto the veranda and watched the snowplow come slowly along the road and almost up to the veranda steps.

The whirl of snow stopped and two men got out of the truck. One of them was in uniform. He waved his hand and then began plodding his way through the snow towards the house. They seemed to move with inexorable slowness, like two fates.

“Ahoy!” Mrs. Vista shouted, and the man in uniform raised his arm and smiled. “Ahoy! You the Lodge people?”

Joyce stood apart from the rest of them, her dark eyes taking in their faces one by one, almost absently.

She knows, Isobel thought, watching her. She knows it wasn’t Crawford. She’s waiting for one of us to crack...

But no one did crack, not even Maudie, who, faced with the choice of fainting from excitement or powdering her nose, powdered her nose. Mrs. Vista tucked in a few stray wisps of hair. Mr. Hunter stroked his mustache thoughtfully. Gracie admired her nails. Mr. Goodwin had retreated into the vast chasm of his own mind.

And Isobel stood with her eyes fixed on the snow and for a minute she thought she saw Crawford poised against the sun, a strange glittering man who fled from hell to hell and had no peace anywhere.

She was barely conscious of the arrival of the two men on the veranda, the explanations, the questions, all shouted at once in every pitch.

“He went that way!” Mrs. Vista shrieked. “Hurry up and catch him!”

“There are two of them!” Maudie said shrilly.

Under this battery of noise Sergeant Mackay did not even blink. When things had quieted down he coughed and said in a dignified voice:

“Mackay, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This is Mr. Hearst, who drives the Lodge bus.”

There was a short silence. Then Gracie said brightly, “Gee, we’re glad to see you! I’m just crazy about policemen!”

“... an ill-timed remark,” wrote Mrs. Vista to her sister, in the knotty pine writing room of the Lodge. “It set the mood, as it were, for the subsequent events, and Sergeant Mackay became friendly, not to say intimate . (I do not quite trust a friendly Scot, do you?) Practically in front of everyone I was forced to explain all about Cecil and Anthony and why I came here in the first place. One thinks one has nothing to hide and then it turns out that one has! Too humiliating!

“While we were all answering this policeman’s questions, the young man called Hearst drove away in the truck and came back with our lost bus.

“And so here we are! We arrived about six o’clock and after the rigors to which I have been subjected I was delighted to find that the Chateau is quite a civilized place, and the apparent ruggedness remains, as ruggedness should, only apparent. Sergeant Mackay made no objections to our coming here, so I presume the mystery, for him at least, is adequately explained. At any rate we have no policemen around guarding us, as frequently happens in fiction. But perhaps even policemen have some sense and Mackay is only too glad to be rid of such traitors and agitators as Floraine and Jeanneret and that man Rudd.

“It was sheer ill-luck that we were so involved in the events. I am still just a little foggy on the explanation, but it seems that this man Jeanneret was a very dangerous agitator who was interned somewhere near Montreal in a reform school converted into an internment camp. At any rate Rudd helped him to escape in a laundry truck, and they managed to get as far as Briaree, which is where the Montreal train line ends and where the snow bus met us.

“The laundry truck broke down and there was a blizzard coming on, and Jeanneret conceived the idea of stealing the bus which, beside the snowplow, was the only vehicle which could get through the roads. Jeanneret could not go back in the direction of Montreal where they were on the watch for him, and besides, Sergeant Mackay believes that he was on his way to the important new mining area north of here. Something to do with the war, but that, of course, is a secret! How one goes about agitating in a mining area, I don’t know. One can only say that it takes all kinds to make a world!