Margaret Millar - An Air That Kills

“... some place where they don’t have these long terrible winters,” Thelma was saying. “Oh, how I hate them! I’ve reached the point where I can’t even enjoy the spring any more because I know how short it will be and how soon fall is coming when everything is sad again, everything dying.”

“Let’s go into that some other time,” Turee said brusquely. “Now tell me, was Ron driving the Cadillac when he came to your house tonight?”

“I think so.”

“Did it have the top down or up?”

“Down, I think. Yes, definitely down. I remember waving out the window to him and wondering if he might catch cold with all that draft on the back of his neck. He complained of feeling ill anyway.”

“I can believe it.”

“No, I mean he complained about it before I told him anything about the baby. Really, Ralph, you’re in a nasty mood tonight.”

“I wonder why.”

“After all, it’s not your funeral.”

Harry walked slowly but directly toward the telephone booth and in spite of Turee’s restraining hand he forced open the door. “Let me talk to her.”

Turee said, “Thelma, here’s Harry. He wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to him. I have nothing to say.”

“But...”

“Tell him the truth or give him a story, I don’t care. I’m going to hang up now, Ralph. And if you call back I won’t answer.”

“Thelma, wait.”

The click of the receiver was unmistakably final. “She hung up,” Turee said.

“Why?”

“Didn’t feel like conversation, I guess. Don’t let it worry you, old boy. Women can get pretty flighty at...”

“I want to call her back.”

“She said if you did, she wouldn’t answer.”

“I know Thelma,” Harry said with a wan smile. “She can’t resist the ringing of a telephone.”

Once again the two men exchanged places and Harry put in a collect call to Mrs. Harry Bream in Weston.

The operator let the telephone ring a dozen times before she cut back to Harry. “I’m sorry, sir, there’s no answer at that number. Shall I try again in twenty minutes?”

“No. No, thanks.” Harry came out of the booth wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his fishing jacket. “Sonuvabitch, I don’t get it. What’s the matter? What did I do?”

“Nothing. Let’s go back to the lodge and have a drink.”

“What were you and Thelma talking about all that time?”

“Life,” Turee said. Which was true enough.

“Life, at three o’clock in the morning, long distance?”

“Thelma wanted to talk. You know women, sometimes they have to get things off their chest by talking to somebody objective, not a member of their family. Thelma was in an emotional state.”

“She can always count on me to understand.”

“I hope so,” Turee said softly. “I hope to God so.”

“It’s this uncertainty that gets me down. Why won’t she talk to me? Why did she keep saying Ron’s name over and over again?”

“She’s — fond of Ron and worried about him. We all are, aren’t we?”

“My God, yes. He’s my best friend. I saved him from drowning once when we were in school together, did I ever tell you that?”

“Yes,” Turee said, not because it was true but because he’d had enough irony for one day, he couldn’t swallow any more; his throat felt tight and raw and scraped. “Come on, Harry, you look as if you need a drink.”

“Maybe I should stay in town for the night, take a room here and get a couple of hours’ sleep and then try to reach Thelma again.”

“Leave the woman alone for a while. Give her a chance to collect herself.”

“You may be right. I hope she remembers to take the orange pills I left for her. They’re very good for relieving tension. I’m told they’re the ones that cured the Pope of hiccoughs when he had that bad spell.”

Turee felt, simultaneously, a certain sympathy for Thelma and a twinge of impatience with Harry. He would have liked to point out that Thelma’s ailment was quite remote from hiccoughs and that it would require more than orange pills, or blue, or pink, to cure her. “There’s nothing more we can do here,” he said, “unless we inform the police that Ron is missing.”

“He may not be missing anymore. By the time we drive back to the lodge, he’ll very likely be there. Don’t you agree?”

“It’s possible.” But not, Turee added to himself, very probable. If I were in Ron’s shoes, the last thing in the world I’d want to do would be to come up here and face Harry. Ron may have taken a room at a hotel for the night. Or gone down to his cottage near Kingsville. Or maybe he’s just driving around alone the way he does sometimes when he and Esther are on the verge of a quarrel. Ron can’t stand scenes, trouble of any kind makes him sick. The time Bill Winslow and I had the big argument about politics Ron simply disappeared, and Esther found him later, retching behind the boxwood hedge.

Harry looked at his watch and the very sight of it made him yawn and brought water to his eyes. “My God, it’s nearly four o’clock.”

“I’m well aware of it.”

“In another hour or two the fellows will be up and raring to go. We’d better start back, don’t you agree?”

“I agreed some time ago.”

“By Jove, you know something, Ralph? I feel better, I feel much, much better. I don’t know what you said or did exactly, but you’ve given me a little perspective on things.”

Turee forced a feeble smile. “Good.”

“Yes sir, you’ve given me a new slant. Why should we worry over two perfectly mature adults like Ron and Thelma? After all, neither of them would ever do anything foolish.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Let’s go back to the lodge and have a drink to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“I don’t know, I felt so bad before and now everything’s fine again and I feel like celebrating.”

He went ahead to open the door. He was smiling and his step was jaunty.

“By Jove, it’s a glorious night,” Harry said. “Smell that air, will you?”

Turee had little choice. He smelled the air. It carried the scent of wind and water, delusion and betrayal.

The ride back to the lodge began quietly enough. After a brief spurt of conversation Harry climbed over into the back seat, folded himself up and went to sleep.

Turee drove slowly, his mind oppressed by the problem of telling Harry the truth in a way that would cause him a minimum of shock. Pain was inevitable — there was no way of sparing him that — but it might be possible to break his fall and lessen the concussion.

Until tonight Turee had always considered Thelma as something of a birdbrain. He now began to realize how cleverly Thelma had maneuvered him into the role of custodian of the secret. It was like finding himself custodian of a fissionable mass of uranium; if he didn’t get rid of some of it, the whole thing might blow up in his face. The problem, then, was to unload it a little at a time, with due respect for its explosive powers.

“Tell him the truth or give him a story,” Thelma had said, but it was clear that she intended him to tell Harry the truth, not because she felt he could do it in a more kindly and tactful way, but because she wanted to save herself the trouble. Thelma could no longer be bothered with Harry, she had no compunctions about hurting him, no apologies to offer him, no explanation to give him, no intention of ever seeing him again. This final fact seemed somehow more incredible to Turee than any of the others. For three years the Breams had been regarded as a model couple. They did not argue or correct each other in public, take verbal potshots at parties or confide their mates’ failings to friends. Turee had always envied them a little, since he and his wife, Nancy, engaged in frequent and spirited arguments which usually culminated in a series of glib psychological terms: Your Uncle Charles has that same paranoid streak — you’re a cyclic depressive, that’s all — it’s no wonder the kids are going through a manic phase ... Instead of throwing ash trays at each other, the Turees, in the modern manner, threw Oedipus complexes, father fixations and compulsive neuroses.