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.