“We can’t leave her here like that,” Chad said.
“Have to, until she thaws,” Crawford said. “The other doors are narrower and she barely got through the front door.”
“I wouldn’t want the women to see her.”
“Let them look the other way. Or keep them in the dining room. Who in hell cares?”
“I like your mood,” Chad said. “It just suits you.”
Crawford didn’t answer or even turn around. He was looking down at Floraine with a sad, tired expression in his eyes.
Chad shrugged and went into the dining room. When Crawford heard the door shut he bent down and took the coats off Floraine.
She was wearing a dark blue coat over her white uniform. None of her clothes were torn, and there were no bloodstains visible. He looked at her neck and her fingernails and the pupils of her eyes, but there was nothing to show how Floraine had died.
She may actually have frozen to death, Crawford thought, or suffocated in the snow.
What was she doing on the balcony dressed in her coat? Whose window was above where the body had been found?
Behind him he heard the dining-room door open again. He turned quickly and shouted, “Stay in there!”
But Isobel was already in the hall, and she had already seen Floraine. Her eyes were glassy and she had one hand to her throat.
“Can’t you — cover her — up?” she whispered.
“I did cover her up,” Crawford said dryly. “She looks like hell anyway. Now how would you like to go back in that room and stay there?”
She seemed ready to cry. “I thought I... I could do something.”
“She’s dead as a doornail, sister, and you can’t do a thing. Listen.” He drew his foot back and gave one of Floraine’s legs a little kick. It sounded as though he had kicked a piece of stone.
Isobel stepped back, staring at him. “Must you be so — brutal?”
Crawford laughed and said, “Brutal, for Christ’s sake. Listen, sister, I’m nervous.” He began to walk towards her very slowly. “When I’m nervous I do anything. I’ve got to have action when I’m nervous. You go back into that dining room and tell the gentlemen to step out into the hall two at a time and I’ll knock their heads together.”
He was within two feet of her now and there was a crazy light in his eyes.
“I won’t hurt you,” he added softly. “I like the shape of your mouth and the way your eyebrows grow and your chin...” He put his hand under her chin and raised her face. His hand was not gentle, and his mouth when he put it over hers was hard and cold.
She stood motionless, hardly breathing, hypnotized by this strange man who kissed her as if he hated her. Finally he drew away and she saw that he was smiling a little, though his jaw was clenched.
“That’s not what I mean by action,” he said. “But failing anything better...” He shrugged his shoulders and turned and walked away, back to Floraine.
Isobel put her hand slowly to her mouth and rubbed it. Her legs were trembling and she felt cold all over as if his cold mouth had chilled her.
“Don’t stand there,” he said sharply.
His tone whipped the blood into her face. “Don’t order me around.”
“No?”
“And don’t touch me again.”
“You’re safe. I’d rather kiss an ice cube.”
There was a silence. Then Isobel said quietly, “Was Floraine murdered?”
Her quietness affected him. “She was,” he said more civilly.
“How?”
“I don’t know. No marks on her. She was pushed off the balcony and may have smothered in the snow.”
“Then if we’d looked for her right away...”
“Shut up,” he said savagely. He drew in his breath painfully. “You’re blaming me?”
“No, no, I’m not. All of us...”
“No, I’m to blame. I was sure she was hiding somewhere. I never thought of looking outside. She might have still been alive while we were shoveling that coal looking for her body. And all the time she was out there fresh-frozen like a Birds Eye chicken.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Isobel said faintly.
“Where’s Miss Rudd now?”
“Gracie Morning is looking for her upstairs.”
“Miss Morning is a brave woman,” Crawford said. “Or is she stupid? Or—” he smiled dryly — “does she know more than the rest of us about Floraine’s death? Does she know, for instance, that Miss Rudd didn’t murder Floraine?”
“You’re wrong about Gracie. She just doesn’t seem to realize — she’s irresponsible.”
“I wonder how irresponsible,” Crawford said.
“You’re wrong,” Isobel repeated dully. “You’ve forgotten the cat. Miss Rudd killed the cat. And what happened to M. Hearst, the bus driver?”
“Would Floraine go for a walk on the balcony with Miss Rudd? Look again and you’ll see she has a coat on.”
Isobel looked again and as she looked one of Floraine’s hands moved. She turned and ran. She heard Crawford laughing behind her and his sharp brittle voice saying, “She’s thawing, sister. She’s just thawing.”
10
Maurice Hearst opened his eyes. A sliver of sun shot through a crack in the drawn blind and hit his eyeballs. He felt a sharp searing pain go right through his head.
He closed his eyes, wincing, and thought, funny, I don’t remember that crack in the blind. It wasn’t there before.
He turned his head and burrowed it into the pillow to shut out the light and the sounds that came from the next room, and from the street. But the sounds kept coming right through the pillow, and he could still imagine the sliver of light and it was almost as bad as seeing it, because it worried him. He couldn’t remember the crack in the blind, but he didn’t want to get up and look at it, he didn’t want to move at all. His head was too hot and heavy a thing to go carrying around. And it must be early, his alarm hadn’t gone off yet.
But as soon as he thought of his alarm this began to worry him, too. Maybe he’d forgotten to wind it, or the clock had stopped. It wasn’t a very good clock anyway, it had a loud rattling alarm and the tick was wheezy and uneven and you could hear it when you were walking down the hall even before you opened the door.
He moved his head and listened and heard no ticking, nothing but the boom-thump of his own blood pounding in his ears. He forced himself to open his eyes again. Then he lay on his back and looked at the ceiling and tried to concentrate.
The blind and the clock — and now the ceiling. It wasn’t the right color.
“God,” he said aloud, and put up his hand to brush away the sudden sweat from his forehead. He saw his wrist, thick and tanned, with coarse fair hairs on it. But it was a swell wrist, he could remember it, it was his.
His eye traveled up and he saw that he was wearing his coat. He had gone to sleep with his clothes on. He had never done that before, never been drunk.
He moved again and the armholes of the coat felt tight and uncomfortable and the sleeves were too short.
Breathing hard and fighting off nausea, he sat up in the bed. These weren’t his clothes, this wasn’t his bed or his room, there was no clock...
No, that couldn’t be right.
I’m sick, he thought, I’m very, very sick and I’m imagining things and in a minute everything will be all right. When this pain goes away, when I can see better, it will be my room again.
He waited, his eyes closed, trying to force himself to breathe deeply and evenly. But he didn’t get enough oxygen that way, and he had to open his mouth and gasp and drag the air into his lungs.
Last night. Remember last night. Think about last night. Get that straight first.
But it wouldn’t come. Last night seemed ordinary. All his nights were pretty much the same. He played poker with Gaston, the headwaiter, and a couple of kitchen boys, or he went to bed early and read a book, or he took on some of the guests for billiards in the basement. Nobody could beat him at billiards. He had a steady eye and good nerves...