A Dismal Thing To Do Read Online Free PDF Page A

pleased.
    “That’s what happened, you can bet your boots on it.”
    This was the first thing Madoc had said since they left the Harvey Road. The constable was naturally nonplussed by the remark. Being also outranked and somewhat unmanned, he agreed.
    Abruptly, Madoc slewed the car around in a hair-raising swoosh. The constable started to say, “What—” then he shut up. He could smell the smoke, too, and see the glow in the sky to the northeast. This might be the wrong fire, but any fire was better than none.
    Even as he was straightening out of his deliberate skid, Madoc pointed at the sawhorse and the detour sign tossed into the snowbank at the corner of the side road that led to the glow.
    “Firemen must have done that,” he grunted. As he wound his way up the long lane that had turnings enough but nothing around them, though, he neither saw nor heard any sign that engines had arrived. Maybe the fire hadn’t even been reported. How could he radio in an alarm when he still hadn’t the foggiest idea where they were? Muriel had really outdone herself this time.
    “Open the window,” he told the constable. “Keep your ears peeled.”
    But it was Madoc himself who heard his name called, and caught the silvery glint of a plastic emergency blanket being waved wildly from the middle of a snowfield between two separate fires.

Chapter 4
    H E EITHER RAN OR flew over the icy crust. Madoc couldn’t have said which, and it didn’t matter. Janet was in his arms, smelling like a finnan haddie and shivering like a toad eating lightning, but all there in one piece, self-possessed enough to warn him, “Watch out how you hug me. I expect I’ve got slivers of glass in my coat.”
    “What from?”
    “The kitchen window. It stuck when I tried to open it, and I didn’t have time to fuss.”
    Madoc started to laugh. He laughed a good deal longer and harder than the situation called for, and it finally occurred to him that he was having a fit of hysterics. That sobered him down enough to ask, “Were you really shouting my name just now?”
    “Of course. I knew it was you.”
    “How?”
    “I just did. You didn’t think to bring along a cup of hot tea, by any chance?”
    “I hope so.”
    The constable was coming toward them, carrying the snowshoes Madoc had again forgotten about. “Have we got a thermos?” Madoc yelled.
    “Ayuh.”
    What the hell was the man’s name? Michael? Gabriel? Raphael? Something that went with Archangel, anyway, or ought to be. Janet was telling the constable so as he handed her a red plastic mug full of scalding coffee. It would be loaded with sugar and she preferred hers plain, but no matter. When they got back to the car, the archangel even produced a box of sweet meal biscuits.
    “Always keep a little something in the car,” he remarked. “You never know.”
    “You don’t, do you?” Janet agreed politely as she accepted a biscuit. “Madoc, how did you think to look for me out here?”
    “Muriel’s directions. Actually, how it started was that your car was found ditched and empty except for your keys and pocketbook down on the Harvey Road.”
    “Oh Madoc, I’m so sorry. It was my own stupid fault. If I hadn’t left the keys in—” Janet stopped eating her biscuit. “If I hadn’t left the keys, I’d be—”
    “You’d what, darling? Here, what’s the matter? Put your head down between your knees.”
    “No, I’m all right.”
    They had her in the back seat with her feet up, a woolly gray blanket wrapped around her and the emergency blanket on top of that. Madoc was supporting her head and shoulders against his chest, nicking his finger on a shard of glass that was, sure enough, caught in the soft wool of her coat, and not giving a damn. The constable was back in the driver’s seat, fiddling with the two-way radio, letting them know back at headquarters that the lost had been found, that there was a fire out here but he didn’t know where here was and it didn’t much