The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow Read online

  No hope. No hope. The words thumped in her with the thumping of her heart. Above her, the ceiling seemed slowly to be descending. The walls were stalking, creeping towards her. The sparkling yachting cups that once had brought comfort were nightmares now, death offerings sealed with the corpse in the tomb. This was a tomb. She was buried alive.

  She was going to die.

  Panic surged through her like the huge, sweeping waves of a storm at sea. Waves! In her extremity, Mrs. Snow clung to the image of waves. This wasn’t fear; it was water, cold, clear sea water pounding over her. She was in a sailboat; she was trapped in a northeasterly gale. But you could fight a storm in a boat. With strength, with daring, you could fight….

  With immense effort, Mrs. Snow met panic head on and slowly, grimly, in a hand-to-hand battle, subdued it. First the scream faded from her throat; then the tension slackened; then, panting, damp with sweat, exhausted, she stood there quietly—herself again.

  But it was a new self, purged of false hope, whose strength was in its resignation.

  If I’m going to die, she told herself, I’m going to die. There’s nothing so terrible about a sixty-year-old woman dying.

  Now that she had accepted the probability of death, she found she could start, on a different level, to hope again. Something could always happen. Lorna, for some quite separate reason, might come back earlier. And then there was dear old Hilary Prynne. Hilary, as Gordon’s best friend, ritualistically arrived every Saturday to take Adelaide Snow to lunch at the Plaza. She had remembered Hilary earlier in the day, but she had been so sure of Joe that she hadn’t thought much about him. Certainly he would come tomorrow. He would ring the bell. Since the lunch date was such a ritual with them, he would surely suspect something was wrong.

  Yes, something could still happen to save her. But the important thing was to conserve her strength. She must try to sleep.

  Mrs. Snow glanced up at the ceiling bulb. How long did a bulb last? She had no idea. It would be hard to lie there in the stifling little room in total darkness, but it would be far worse if the bulb were to burn out. She reached up and twisted the bulb. Darkness fell on her like a wet tarpaulin.

  She dropped down to her knees and then stretched out on the cement floor. She tried to imagine she was in the cabin of Gordon’s cruiser. That was the only boxlike area in which she had never felt constricted.

  She was in the cabin; the boat was rocking gently; and—yes—Gordon was in the bunk next to her.

  But the illusion didn’t quite work. The thirst was bad again. She could bear it. It wasn’t any worse, really, than a toothache. Insidiously, however, hope started to undermine her again. It whispered to her that Bruce couldn’t possibly have known about Joe and the sanding machine. Joe hadn’t come that evening because of some perfectly normal domestic reason. A party, perhaps. But whatever happened, Mrs. Polansky was going to see to it that her floors were scraped that weekend.

  Yes, Joe would be there in the morning, early. She reached her hand through the darkness, groping for the cup she had dropped. She must have it near her. She must be ready to tap again on the duct for Joe.

  A little after three, Joe Polansky stood by the subway stairs, watching Danny weave downward.

  “’Bye, Danny. See you tomorrow, Danny. ’Bye, old pal.”

  Joe was happier than he’d ever been in his life. He and Danny must have hit pretty near every bar in the neighborhood before they were through. And Danny had invited him over to Jersey tomorrow for an all-day party to celebrate the grandson. He’d found a friend. A real pal. Somewhere to go where he would always be welcome. Everything was wonderful, rosy, and friendly.

  Suddenly, as he stood there, swaying slightly, Joe Polansky thought of Mrs. Snow. Minna and the sanding machine had dissolved from his mind hours ago, but off and on all evening he’d thought of Mrs. Snow. There she was, all alone in that big house. It wasn’t right. What if burglars came? And why wouldn’t they come with all those valuable things lying around? Immense warmth for Mrs. Snow spread through him. She never pushed him around. There was no do-this, do-that about her. Go off, Joe, and have a wonderful spree.

  His affection and his anxiety for Mrs. Snow merged. It seemed perfectly clear what he had to do. She needed a man in the house to protect her. That was him—Joe. He was the man in Mrs. Snow’s house. The thought of his little cellar room was inviting, too. No Minna raging and stomping. Minna made him tired.

  He climbed down the subway steps. He reached the turnstile. He felt in one pocket and then another. Fumblingly he started the procedure all over again. Then it dawned on him. Who could expect a miserable five bucks to last long on a spree? Wasn’t a penny left.

  That was that, then. Poor Mrs. Snow. She’d have to spend the night all alone. Well, couldn’t be helped. It was home—and Minna.

  As he climbed the steps again, he felt an unexpected excitement. It was better to go home, anyway. About time he told Minna a thing or two. High time.

  He had trouble getting his key into the apartment-door lock. He was still poking around with it when the door was flung open. Minna stood there in her nightdress, huge, bosomy, purple in the face.

  “Joe Polansky. Drunk! Of all things! Drunk! Where’s my sanding machine?”

  With great dignity, Joe pushed past her into the hallway.

  Minna swung around, grabbing at him. “You! You should be ashamed! And my money! Where’s my five dollars?”

  “Spent it.”

  “You spent my poor dead sister’s money on liquor? Joe Polansky—you listen to me—”

  Joe turned slowly and faced his wife. He was the gay buckaroo of the movies, with the slightly arched eyebrows and the jaunty little smile.

  “And you, Minna Polansky, just listen to me. If you want that sanding machine, okay, go get it yourself. Me, I’m gonna sleep. That’s what I’m gonna do. And tomorrow, when I’m good and ready, I’m getting up and I’m going to Jersey, to a party, to my friend’s house. Good ol’ Danny. Floors! Getting your floors scraped! Think you’re Mrs. Rockefeller?”

  The new blue sofa beckoned invitingly. There was more to say to Minna—a lot more. But Joe was losing track of it. He crossed to the couch and with a little sigh dropped down on it, tucking his legs up under him.

  “Joe, my sofa! Joe, your filthy shoes!”

  Minna was bending over him, clutching at his shoulders, tugging at him. With all his force Joe shoved her away so that she went skittering heavily backward across the room.

  “Cow,” he said blissfully. “Stupid old fat cow.”

  Mrs. Snow woke up in utter darkness, her heart pounding like a piston. Panic had been with her in her uneasy sleep, and instantly, before she could marshal her control, it had her by the throat. She jumped up. She was so weak that she almost fell, but she steadied herself. Shivering all over, she groped through the blackness until she found the electric bulb and twisted it on.

  The light came blindingly, but it managed to check her panic a little. She blinked her eyes and went through the agonizing procedure of consulting her watch. It was harder than yesterday, but at last she managed to make the little hands come into focus. Five forty-five. Morning already.

  Joe might be here any minute now. She would have to start tapping.

  She turned to pick up the cup from the floor, and once again she stumbled. Dizziness and nausea swept through her.

  Suddenly it dawned on her that it was the air. The air was thick and fetid, with a sickeningly sweet aftertaste. She had to gasp to take it into her lungs, and each time it made her want to gag. She had never dreamed the air would fail her so soon. Here was a new enemy, far more lethal than hunger or thirst.

  Standing there, supporting herself against the shelves of cups, she almost surrendered to panic.

  “Gordon!” She found herself gasping out her husband’s name. “Gordon! Gordon, help me!”

  Her own voice, hoarse, almost insane-sounding, was another enemy. Was she mad already? She knew Gordon wasn’t there.
She knew …

  She dropped down on all fours, picked up the fallen cup, and crawled with it to the duct. Panting at the foul air, she pressed her ear against the aluminum. Was that a sound? Her body stiffened. Was that…? It came again, and she recognized it. It was only the cats. The cats were down in the cellar—crying.

  She started to sob. She couldn’t control herself. The sobs heaved up through her. Automatically, while she sobbed, she rapped the cup against the duct. Air, she thought. Air. I want air.

  She imagined the air, less than an inch away from her, beyond the thin metal of the duct, great draughts of clean, cool air billowing up from the cellar. The duct! Aluminum! Suddenly she was herself again. The duct! Why hadn’t she thought of it before? If she could cut through …

  There was a metal paper knife that she always kept by the files. She got up. The sobs had dwindled now to a whimpering she hardly noticed. She crossed to the file, riffled through the scattered papers, and found the knife. She tested the blade. Yes, it was strong. She dropped down again by the duct. The hollow metal shaft was built in sections, rounded by the floor and then stretching up in a straight column to the ceiling. She chose a spot on the surface at random and stabbed the knife at it with all her strength.

  The knife snapped in two. The top half of the broken blade fell with a little tinkle on the cement at her side.

  She squatted, staring at it, her lips trembling. Despair seemed to give her vision an uncanny keenness. She saw the broken blade; she saw every little pit and flaw in the cement surface below it. And, for the first time, she found herself really looking at the duct as an object. There was a break between the concave lower section and the straight section above it. Around the break, connecting the two, had been wound a narrow strip of aluminum. The end of the belt of metal had been bent back against itself.

  Mrs. Snow slipped the broken knife under the end of the metal strip and pried it up. She found she could quite easily pull the whole strip off. And not only that. The top section of the duct was loose now. Feverishly she tugged at it and bent it sideways. It freed itself scrapingly from the lower section. And there, gaping in front of her like a great black mouth, was the exposed interior of the duct.

  For a second, her success stunned her. Then, avidly, she leaned over the hole, drinking in great draughts of air. It was wonderful; it was ecstasy; it was champagne.

  Mrs. Snow felt her whole body purged, cleansed as by a wind from the sea.

  “Joe!” she called down the duct.

  She could hear her voice tumbling, echoing, down the shaft.

  “Joe! Joe!”

  She started to giggle and then to laugh—hysterically, drunkenly. She clung to the broken duct, laughing and sobbing.

  And each time she laughed, she felt the fresh, cold, life-restoring air.

  Lorna Mendham lit her first cigarette of the day while she listened absently to Sylvia’s chatter across the white iron terrace breakfast table. Larry was already down at the jetty, fiddling with the boat. Bruce wasn’t down yet. It always took him so long to dress.

  For the first time since her marriage, Lorna’s happiness was clouded. Sylvia was her oldest friend. She and Larry had just come back from two years at the embassy in Rome. They hadn’t been at the wedding; they had hardly met Bruce before this weekend.

  And now they didn’t like him.

  They hadn’t said anything, of course. They were far too well-mannered for that. But Lorna had suspected it last night, and now she was sure of it. They were being much too formal, much too eager to make charm.

  Damn them! thought Lorna. They were just like Aunt Addy. They thought they were so emancipated, but they were all of them stuck in their dreary little social-register rut. What difference did it make that Bruce hadn’t been to the right schools or that, possibly because that made him self-conscious with people like the Emmetts, he did try to show off a bit? Of course, it had been silly of him to go on quite so long last night about all his glamorous friends on the Riviera. But couldn’t Sylvia and Larry see through that? Didn’t they have enough instinct to sense that he wasn’t just good-looking, that he was considerate and kind and—and true? Oh, no, just because he wasn’t “one of us,” they were suspicious.

  Sylvia was rambling on about the antiques she had brought back from Italy. Suddenly Lorna was ashamed of her own depression and irritation. It was foolish to take it all so hard. The Emmetts would come around to Bruce in the end. Of course they would. Everyone did. She forced herself to take an intelligent interest in what Sylvia was saying.

  “Darling, it’s disastrous about that divine Venetian desk. It was perfect when we bought it in Milan. Now the front of one whole drawer is split. Those terrible shippers! And it’s quite impossible to get a good cabinetmaker any more. We’ve tried and tried.”

  “Aunt Addy has a wonderful man.”

  “How marvellous.” Sylvia leaned across the table. “What’s his name?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember.”

  “Then be an angel. Call Mrs. Snow this minute. I’ll plead with him on bended knee to come down next week.”

  “All right.”

  Lorna found she was glad to have a legitimate opportunity for telephoning Aunt Addy. She agreed with Bruce, of course, that Aunt Addy should be disciplined. But even so, she still felt a little guilty about yesterday. Even though Aunt Addy was difficult, it wasn’t really fair to treat her like a naughty child.

  As she got up and moved across the terrace, Bruce appeared through the French windows. He was looking very handsome in white sharkskin slacks with a red scarf knotted exquisitely above an open silk shirt. As always, Lorna felt that exciting catch in her throat when she saw him. But at the same time, quite unexpectedly, an image came of Larry Emmett down at the boat in dirty old blue jeans and a T-shirt. For a second she saw Bruce through Sylvia’s eyes. She was horrified with herself and ran to him.

  He caught her in his arms and kissed her. “Good morning again, darling. Where are you off to?”

  “I’m going to call Aunt Addy. Sylvia wants the address of her cabinet fixer.”

  Bruce’s arms tightened around her so suddenly that she almost cried out. Then, very quietly, he said, “But do you know Mrs. Lindsay’s number?”

  “Mrs. Lindsay?”

  His grip had relaxed now. One of his hands was caressing her neck. “Isn’t that her name—the old friend of Aunt Addy’s who lived in Copenhagen or somewhere?”

  “But what has Mrs. Lindsay got to do with it?”

  He pushed her away, grinning down at her. “Miss Addlepate.”

  “Bruce, what are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I’m sure I did. Mrs. Lindsay called up yesterday right in the middle of the emerald scare. She’s back and rented a house in Connecticut. Aunt Addy was invited for the weekend. She was taking the afternoon train.”

  Lorna looked at him, puzzled. She hadn’t known Mrs. Lindsay was planning to come back to the States. And she was sure Bruce hadn’t said anything about it yesterday. He must have forgotten in all the fuss of the burglar story.

  “Where is she in Connecticut, Bruce?”

  “Gosh, Aunt Addy did tell me. Is it Litchfield? Redding?”

  “Never mind, Lorna.” Sylvia’s voice sounded behind her. “The man couldn’t do anything till Tuesday, anyway.”

  “All right,” said Lorna.

  But it was strange. Surely Mrs. Lindsay would have written Aunt Addy to say she was coming back, and surely Aunt Addy would have mentioned it. And then for one moment Bruce had seemed so odd. Was it possible that he was making the whole story up because he still didn’t want her to spoil Aunt Addy and was reluctant to say so in front of Sylvia?

  Lorna was shocked at so disloyal a thought, and her irritation against the Emmetts returned. It was all Sylvia’s fault. If it hadn’t been for Sylvia she would never have dreamed up such a preposterous idea. Of course Aunt Addy was with Mrs. Lindsay.

  “You’d better hurry with y
our breakfast, Bruce,” Sylvia was saying. “Larry’s been down at the boat for hours.”

  Still crouched by the broken furnace duct, Mrs. Snow had finally lost her mood of elation and hope. She had called Joe’s name down the shaft at regular intervals, even called the cats’ names and heard their mournful answering wails reverberating up from the cellar. She had written notes, too. Joe, Bruce has locked me in the vault. She knew there was a vent in the cellar. The notes might just come to rest by the open grille, and Joe might just notice the unexpected paper there. She had felt gay, almost frivolous.

  But gradually it had all started to change again. Air wasn’t enough. As hour followed hour and Joe didn’t come, the shelves of cups seemed once again to be creeping menacingly towards her. Thirst became terrible, thickening her tongue, parching her lips, bringing nausea. Her voice calling “Joe” was a feeble, painful croak. She gave up calling and started to tap with the cup instead. She needed all the strength that was left to fight against despair.

  For, although she went on tapping, she had given up Joe. False hope, she knew, was her most dangerous enemy. Now she was thinking only of Hilary Prynne. Certainly Hilary would come. And he would come at exactly twelve-thirty. He was never a minute early or late for their ritual lunch engagement. At twelve-thirty she would hear the front doorbell ring.

  Only a few minutes ago she had dragged herself to the center of the vault under the ceiling light and, finally, had been able to read the watch.

  Twelve-fifteen.

  Now it must be almost twelve-thirty. Her knees were aching from her constricted position by the duct, but she hardly noticed it any more. She clung grimly to the duct’s broken mouth, waiting—waiting for her last chance.

  Suddenly it came—the sound of the front-door buzzer, echoing up from the cellar below. She lurched over the black mouth of the duct and, recklessly expending her tiny reserve of vitality, started to scream:

  “Help! Help! Hilary—help!”