Margaret Millar - An Air That Kills

“Goodnight, Ralph.”

“Goodnight.”

Hepburn hesitated, stroking his chin. He was already beginning to need a shave, his eyes were red from too little sleeping and too much drinking, and his flannel shirt was dirty and lacking a button.

Why, he looks like a bum, Turee thought. Maybe he is. Maybe they all are, and this is no place for me. I should be home with my family, not up here pretending to be like the rest of them.

“Go to bed and get some sleep,” he said roughly, irritated by his own thoughts. “God, what a night this has been.”

“It’s not finished.”

“Well, finish it.”

“O.K., but don’t go into one of your famous grouches. That’s not going to help. We’re all in this together.”

The following morning, a few minutes after eight o’clock, Turee was awakened by the heavy pounding of the lion’s-head knocker on the front door and the simultaneous ringing of the old cowbell that served as a mess call. Making little noises of distress, he reached for his shoes and put them on. This was all the dressing he had to do because he had, like the others, slept in his clothes. It was part of the tradition of these weekends at the lodge, originated many years before by Harry Bream. (“Makes me feel sporty,” Harry had said. “Roughing it and all that.”)

Feeling somewhat less than sporty, Turee stepped out into the hall, where he met Winslow, wild-eyed and trembling, his back pressed against the wall.

“My God,” Winslow croaked. “I’m dying. Dying.”

“There’s some bromo in the bathroom.”

“My God. That bell. Tell it to stop. My ears...”

“Pull yourself together.”

“I’m dying,” Winslow said again and slid down the wall like a puppet whose strings had broken.

Turee stepped fastidiously around him and went on down the staircase. The encounter had done nothing to dispel the feeling he’d had the previous evening, that he didn’t belong in this place, with these people. Though they were old friends, they seemed, under stress, to have become strangers, and their ways of living — or, in Winslow’s case, dying — were alien to him. As he walked down the stairs the air from the room below rose up and struck his nostrils, and it seemed to him subtly poisonous, smelling of stale drinks and stale dreams.

He drew back the heavy wooden bolt on the front door and opened it, half expecting to see Ron.

During the early morning hours the wind had died down and the temperature had dropped. The ground was covered with hoarfrost glittering so whitely in the sun that, by contrast, Esther Galloway’s skin looked very dark, as if she had quite suddenly and unseasonably acquired a tan.

She appeared to have dressed in a hurry and not for a trip. She was hatless, the shoes she wore were summer shoes without toes, and the Black Watch plaid coat she had clutched around her was one Turee remembered from a long way back. Esther always made such a point of elegance that it was a shock to see her looking quite ordinary, if not actually dowdy.

“Why, Esther.”

“Hello, Ralph,” she said crisply. “Surprise, surprise, eh?”

“Come in.”

“I intend to.”

He held the door open for her and she came inside, peeling off her gloves and agitating her head as if to shake the frost out of her hair.

“My ears ache. I drove with the windows open to help keep me awake. Silly, I guess.” She laid her gloves on the mantel between two empty glasses left over from the night before. Then she picked up one of the glasses and sniffed with distaste. “Gin. When will Billy Winslow ever learn?”

“That’s a difficult question.”

“Did you have a nice party?”

“Not very.”

“Ron — he’s not here, of course?”

“No.”

“No word at all?”

“None.”

“Damn his eyes.”

Some time during the early morning the fire had gone out, and the room was so cold that Esther’s breath came out in little clouds of mist like smoke from a dragon’s mouth.

Turee thought it suited her mood admirably.

“Damn his beady little eyes,” she said. “All right, start making excuses for him, as usual, why don’t you?”

Turee didn’t answer because he was afraid of saying the wrong thing and there seemed no possible right thing.

“The way you fellows stick together, it’s a scream really.”

“Sit down, Esther, and I’ll go and put on some coffee.”

“Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bo—”

“MacGregor’s coming over in a minute to set the fires and make some breakfast.” She turned and looked carefully around the room, one nostril curled very slightly. “The place needs an airing. It smells.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” He had, though.

“I didn’t expect him to be here, of course. I don’t even know why I came except that I couldn’t go back to sleep after you called last night, and I hate waiting, waiting and doing nothing. So I drove up here. I don’t know why,” she repeated. “It just seemed a good idea at the time. Now that I’m here I realize there’s nothing I can do, is there? Except possibly help nurse a few hangovers. How’s yours?”

“I don’t have one,” he said coldly.

“It couldn’t have been a very good party, then.”

“I said it wasn’t.”

“You could have another one today. Perhaps I’ll even be invited to join in for once?”

“It’s your house.”

“All right, I’ll invite myself. We’ll all sit around and be jolly until His Nibs decides to reappear.”

“You think it’s that simple?”

She turned and addressed him very slowly and distinctly, as if she were talking to someone quite deaf or stupid. “Ron has complete identification papers in his wallet and his car registration fastened to the steering wheel. If there had been any accident I would have been notified. Isn’t that correct?”

“I suppose it is.”

“There’s no supposing about it, surely. When an accident happens, it’s reported immediately. That’s the law.”

It hadn’t seemed to occur to her, and Turee didn’t mention it, that laws could be broken.

Sounds of rattling and crashing from the kitchen indicated that MacGregor was at work making breakfast. This was not part of his regular duties, and Turee knew from past experience that MacGregor would make himself as objectionable as possible; the coffee would be like bitter mud, the bacon burned and the eggs unrecognizable except for bits of broken eggshell that would crunch between the teeth like ground glass.

“MacGregor’s in a sour mood,” Turee said lightly. “We’ll probably all be poisoned.”

“At this particular moment I wouldn’t care.”

“Esther, for Pete’s sake...”

“Oh, I know — you think I’m a drag and a droop. You think I always go around with a long face, spoiling for a fight.”

“I don’t...”

“You’re Ron’s friend, naturally you’re on his side. I have to admit, I guess, that Ron makes a pretty good friend. But he’s a lousy husband.”

“Spare me the details.”

“I wasn’t going into details,” she said flatly. “I was just about to make a generalization.”

“Go ahead.”

“Oh, I know you loathe generalizations, Ralph. You prefer intimate statistics like how many tons of mackerel were shipped last month from Newfoundland.”

Turee’s smile was wan. “Let’s have the generalization.”

“All right. Some men just shouldn’t get married, they have nothing to give to a woman, not even the time of day. Oh, they can bring her an expensive diamond watch so she can tell the time of day for herself, but that’s not sharing anything.”

She sat down on the leather hassock in front of the unlit fire as if the sudden release of emotions had exhausted her, like a blood-letting. “I wanted very much to come up here with Ron this week end. Not that I’m particularly keen on fishing or even outdoor life, but I thought it would be fun to do the cooking and eat in front of the fireplace and take walks in the woods with Ron and the two boys. I asked him if I could come along and he didn’t even take me seriously, the whole idea was so incredible to him.”