An Air That Kills by Margaret Millar

misunderstanding.
    â€œYou’re prejudiced.” Hepburn finished his drink and laid his empty glass decisively on the stone mantel. “Well, any­way, thank God I’m not married. On which cheerful note I shall depart.”
    â€œGo ahead. I’ll turn out the lights.”
    â€œPerhaps you’d better leave a couple of them on in case Ron . . .”
    â€œOh. All right.”
    â€œGoodnight, Ralph.”
    â€œGoodnight.”
    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.
    â€œGo to bed and get some sleep,” he said roughly, irritated by his own thoughts. “God, what a night this has been.”
    â€œIt’s not finished.”
    â€œWell, finish it.”
    â€œO.K., but don’t go into one of your famous grouches. That’s not going to help. We’re all in this together.”

FIVE
    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.
    â€œMy God,” Winslow croaked. “I’m dying. Dying.”
    â€œThere’s some bromo in the bathroom.”
    â€œMy God. That bell. Tell it to stop. My ears . . .”
    â€œPull yourself together.”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œWhy, Esther.”
    â€œHello, Ralph,” she said crisply. “Surprise, surprise, eh?”
    â€œCome in.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œMy ears ache. I drove with the windows open to help keep me awake. Silly, I guess.” She