The Weak-Eyed Bat

Chapter Seven

Duty’s handmaiden, Susan Frost, had spent some busy hours. She found and pressed an old black dress; she prevailed upon Hattie to tone her loud, sharp cries down to soft moans; she soothed her father until he sought peace in his room. Then she made lunch.

“My duty,” Susan said, “is with the living.”

She whipped up an omelet in a very spirited manner, unconsciously keeping time to Hattie’s moans, and whisked it into the dining room.

“The wages of sin,” Susan said, “is death.”

Professor Frost said nothing at all, and Susan’s tongue froze in her mouth. She stabbed her omelet with a fork and the breath wheezed out of it. Watching her, Professor Frost smiled to himself, as self-contained and indestructible as an atom. An asocial atom, he reflected, not to be coaxed or harried into joining a fraternity of atoms, not to be touched by the quick or the dead.

He liked this quality in himself, partly because it saved him trouble and partly because it annoyed Susan. It must be, he decided, very difficult for Susan to pour her virtue into a sieve.

Atomos, uncuttable. I am uncuttable, he thought. I am Adam Uncuttable. I think if I choose a new name it will be Adam Uncuttable.

“Will you excuse me, my dear?” he said.

“I wish you’d stay down, Father. There are so many arrangements to be made. I can’t manage—”

He patted her shoulder. “Of course you can, Susan.”

He went upstairs to his study and stared out of the window for some time. He saw Prye and Jakes coming along the lane. Jakes had his head tilted up as if he were listening to Prye. Frost was shaking with silent laughter when he went down to let them in.

Constable Jakes was obviously embarrassed. “I've come to ask you some questions, Professor Frost,” he said uneasily. “I’m sorry I have to bother you but—”

Frost smiled. “Perfectly all right. Dr. Prye is to be present in what capacity?”

“Disinterested onlooker,” Prye said. “Do you object?”

“Of course not. I think you will add charm to the interview and charm is probably what it will need. Come in here, will you?”

They went past him into the sitting room and Frost closed the door.

“Sit down,” he said, and sat down himself near the window.

Prye let out a gasp. The outlines of a small square book were visible in Frost’s coat pocket. Prye’s hand flew to his own pocket. It was empty.

“Have you a pain, Dr. Prye?” Frost asked politely.

“Yes, in my neck,” Prye said coldly. “I’ll have to take better care of myself and my possessions. One meets the damnedest people, doesn’t one?”

“One does,” Frost agreed.

Jakes, puzzled by the conversation, waved them to silence and turned to face Frost.

“You know that your daughter has been murdered, Professor Frost. I’m in charge of the case until the Provincial Police take over, and while I don’t know much about murders, I suppose the best thing is to ask you who’d be most likely to murder her.”

“My daughter was provocative, Constable Jakes. She made many enemies, but if I’m going to name them I consider it only fair that my own name be at the top of the list.”

There was an awkward pause. Jakes said lamely: “I didn’t know you—”

“You will, Jakes, you will. My maid is an incorrigible gossip and my daughter Susan an incorrigible fool and between the two of them you will glean enough evidence to hang me. So I have decided to supply details myself, hoping that my candor will predispose you in my favor. Am I being lucid?”

Jakes coughed. “Not very.”

“It isn’t the heat, it’s the lucidity,” Prye murmured.

“Really, Prye,” Frost said. “You’re doing a great deal of talking for a disinterested onlooker, aren’t you?”

“Just holding my end up,” Prye said.

Jakes frowned and said loudly: “See here, you two. You shouldn’t be carrying on a private conversation. I’m supposed to be asking questions and getting answers.”

“Go ahead,” Frost said.

“What is this motive you had for doing away with your daughter?”

“A motive of convenience — and that’s what the majority of motives for murder resolve into, whether they are based on love or money. I find myself breathing more easily now that I am sure Joan’s absence is permanent. There are, of course, others who will be relieved.”

“Miss Bonner?”

Frost nodded.

“What about the Littles?” Jakes pursued. “Did you know Mrs. Little is seriously ill?”

“She always is. She’s a hypochondriac.”

“Not this time,” Prye said. “It’s a heart attack and a bad one. What interests me is, what caused it? Does she know or suspect that her husband murdered Joan? Did she hear or see something?”

Frost’s voice was without expression. “The fact that Tom Little was my daughter’s lover suggests a number of motives. I don’t know whether it’s customary for an honorable man to kill daughter or lover or both, but it’s barely possible that I am an honorable man and killed Joan to prevent any more sizable blots on the family escutcheon. Or Tom Little might have tired of Joan. Or Mrs. Little might not approve of adultery. Or Ralph Bonner— No, I cannot seriously suspect Ralph. He is a dull young man.”

“You don’t need an I.Q. of one hundred forty to commit a murder,” Prye said.

“By dull I meant lacking in initiative,” Frost said. “After all, you must admit it required some initiative to think of using the bag of stones both to kill her and to weight her body.” Jakes drew in his breath sharply.

“I see,” Professor Frost said steadily, “that I am as good as hanged. I presume you regard that as a slip of the tongue, Constable Jakes, an inadvertent admission of guilt? It was not. I don’t make slips. When Miss Shane described, at my request, the discovery of Joan’s body, and told me that no weapon of any kind had been found near the scene of the murder, I assumed that the weapon and the weight were one. It was a logical assumption though based on slight evidence.”

“Too logical,” Jakes said grimly.

“We have missed the important point,” Prye said tactfully. “If the motive was to get rid of Joan, why didn’t the murderer let her leave of her own accord? The taxicab came at ten o’clock to take her away, yet sometime before nine she was murdered. Why was one hour so important?”

“Joan’s departures have never been final,” Frost said. “There was no reason for anyone to believe that this one would be.”

“Maybe,” Jakes said, “the murderer didn’t know she was going away. Why was she leaving yesterday?”

Prye shifted his legs and looked blank.

“Seems a funny coincidence,” Jakes went on, “that she picked on the time of Dr. Prye’s arrival. Was she avoiding you, Prye? Was she scared of you?”

“Not exactly,” Prye said.

“Don’t you think you’d better explain that?”

“I do. I will.”

Frost smiled sardonically. “Prye would prefer to explain in my absence. He is a man of exquisitely delicate feelings and the mere thought of incriminating someone else is abhorrent to him.”

“The very word,” Prye said.

“I’m not getting anywhere at all,” Jakes said irritably. “Dr. Prye, will you please go home? No one could possibly conduct an interview with you in the room.”

Prye grinned. “I was just leaving. Good-bye.”

He went out the front door singing, and a minute later he was tapping quietly at the back door. Hattie was washing the dishes and Susan was drying them and they both let out a cry of surprise when he walked in.

“Why, Dr. Prye!” Susan said.

“Hello, Susan.”

“Whatever have you done to your head?”

“I bound it so it won’t get any bigger. It’s sort of a Chinese custom.”

“I never heard of it before,” Susan said earnestly.

Prye blushed. “I just came over to tell you how sorry I am about Joan.”

Susan gulped, laid down her dish towel, and prepared for a good long cry.

Recognizing the symptoms, Prye said hastily: “You’re bearing up wonderfully, as I expected you would.” He turned to Hattie, who was still sniveling intermittently. “Hattie, you should take a lesson from Susan.”

Susan did not beam but she looked less mournful. “We must be brave, Hattie, as Dr. Prye says.”

This suggestion did not appeal to Hattie. As long as she was not brave Susan did a considerable part of the housework. Hattie was not lazy but she was an opportunist. She redoubled her cries.

Susan threw her a long narrow look and said to Prye: “Perhaps we had better go into the sitting room.”

“Why not come for a stroll instead? It will do you good.”

Susan flushed and said she would like to come, but first she would have to see if her father was all right.

“He’s all right,” Prye said dryly. “Confine your sympathies to Jakes.”

“Who is Jakes?”

“Constable Jakes is interviewing your father.”

“What on earth for?”

Prye took a deep breath. “When a murder is committed a policeman is assigned to find out who did it.”

“But surely they don’t suspect us, her own family!”

“Murders are frequently family affairs.”

He held the door open for her and they went down the small path that led into the grove of birches.

“Do you remember, Susan, when you had a kind of chair built between two trees somewhere near here?”

“Of course. It’s still here. I used to sit there when I wanted to be alone with God, but I... well, I don’t go there any longer.”

“Why not?”

“Because Joan used it. She met Tom Little there. I know because I fol—” Her teeth bit the word in two.

“You followed her?”

“I did,” Susan said with defiance. “I wanted to see, I had to see, if she was committing sacrilege.”

“Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“Probably not,” she said coldly. “By sacrilege, I meant if she were using a consecrated place for secular purposes.”

“Well, that’s one way of putting it,” Prye said dryly. “How long has your mother been dead, Susan?”

“There is no death, Dr. Prye.”

“All right. When did she change her status?”

“When I was five.”

“Dream of her often?”

“Very often. Why?”

He ignored the question. “Ever dream of your father?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did you ever buy a red dress?”

“A red dress! What on earth does it matter? I never have, of course.”

“Why of course?”

“Because it wouldn’t be suitable. I don’t believe in calling attention to myself.”

“How much do you weigh, Susan?”

“You’re making fun of me! It isn’t very kind of you to make fun of me with my sister not yet cold in—” She turned her head away abruptly. “But I forgive you.”

Prye grinned. “Don’t forgive me yet. I have one more question. Last night after dinner you went out of the house. Where did you go?”

“I wanted solitude so I went down to the lake about seven-thirty. I must have gone to sleep on the beach because it was ten by the time I got back.”

“What were you wearing?”

She frowned, but her voice was patient. “I cannot understand your interest in my clothing, but I was wearing a grey dress.”

“With short sleeves?”

“Yes.”

“Will you roll up your sleeves for me, please?”

She hesitated, looking down at her black dress with a puzzled expression. “What’s wrong with my dress? You’re not— You couldn’t be looking for bloodstains!”

Prye sighed heavily. “No. Don’t be afraid, Susan. I’m harmless.”

She flushed and slowly rolled up her sleeves and revealed her thin white arms. Prye glanced at them briefly.

“You’re a very lucky girl, Susan.”

She stared at him a moment, paling, and then she started to run back down the path and into the front door of her cottage.

“Good God,” Prye said, “she’s going to tell Papa what a cad I am.”

He started for his own cottage, stopped suddenly, and then went back to the Frosts’. Hattie was alone in the kitchen.

“Have you any mosquito oil in the house, Hattie?” he asked.

“Miss Joan had some in her room,” Hattie said after a pause.

“What about Susan?”

“She hasn’t any. She never puts anything like that on her face or hands. She doesn’t believe in it. Not even powder,” Hattie marveled.

“So the only mosquito oil is in Joan’s room?”

“I’m positive.”

“Thank you, Hattie,” Prye said, and went out. Almost absent-mindedly he loitered near the screen door. In less than a minute he heard Susan come back into the kitchen.

“What did he want?” she asked Hattie.

“Something about mosquito oil. I guess he wanted to borrow some.”

“You fool!” Susan hissed. “You little fool! What did you tell him?”

Hatties voice shook. “I just told him Joan had some. I said you didn’t believe in stuff like that.”

There was a silence and then Susan’s voice again:

“You’re not to say anything, anything at all. You are to keep your mouth shut. Do you understand?”

It was unfortunate that Nora chose that moment to come walking up the path to the Frost cottage. At the sight of Prye crouching beside the back door and gesticulating wildly she called in a loud, clear voice:

“What are you hiding there for?”

Nora and Susan reached the veranda at the same time and stared coldly at Prye as he got to his feet and brushed off his trousers.

“Nice work, girls,” he said. “Perfect timing.” He turned to Susan. “I suppose it will do no good to apologize?”

“No good at all,” Susan said tightly.

“Well, in that case I’ll be going. Come along, Miss Shane, and I’ll throw you in the lake just for the practice.”

Susan strode back into the house, slamming the door behind her, and Prye and Nora walked down the steps.

“Sorry,” Nora said affably, “but how was I to know you were eavesdropping?”

Prye smiled bitterly. “I suppose you think I sit down on strange verandas to bite my fingernails.”

“Hear anything interesting?”

“No.”

“Liar. You’re bursting with information.”

“Three bits of information,” Prye said. “One, Constable Jakes is over his head. Two, so am I. Three, Susan Frost is a humbug.”

“I knew all that,” Nora said smugly.

Prye ignored this. “Now I don’t care whether Susan is a humbug or not because aren’t we all? But when she tells me that she went to sleep on the beach last night in a short-sleeved dress I demur.”

“All right. Why do you demur?”

Prye beamed. “Because she has no mosquito bites and the only mosquito oil in the house was in Joan’s room, which is always kept locked. Not a profound piece of detection, but cute, don’t you think?”

“Aren’t there people who are immune to mosquitoes?”

“No. There are mosquitoes which are choosy about their meals, but not in Muskoka. There are probably about sixty varieties of mosquitoes in Canada, and speaking from personal experience I think they’re all represented in this area.”

“Still, you haven’t proved anything,” Nora objected. “A lot of people lie. Even if she wasn’t sleeping on the beach, she may not have been slugging her sister.”

“Where was she if she wasn’t on the beach?” Prye asked rhetorically. “Well, there are only a limited number of places she could have been. Hattie says she was not at home. None of the residents saw her so she wasn’t visiting. That leaves her skulking around in the woods. Now why was she skulking around in the woods?”

“Best place if you’ve got to skulk.”

“I think she was trailing someone.”

“Who?”

Prye looked down at her with dignity. “I don’t know. I’m simply deducing and I haven’t reached that point yet, but she was probably trailing Joan. Suppose she suspected that Joan was planning an elopement. Naturally she would be interested in knowing who was going with her. So she put on a grey dress to disguise herself as a birch tree and went out to mingle with other birch trees.”

“Who was that birch tree I saw you with last night?” Nora said. “That was no birch tree, that was brown-eyed Susan Frost.”

“The question which now arises is chronological,” Prye said sternly. “Which incident happened first, the spotlight, me, or Joan? I think it’s probable that Joan was lolled first and that I was hit because I interrupted the removal of her body, and that the spotlight was broken to give the alarm, that is, to call attention to me. All of which leads me to believe that the murderer is a man or woman with scruples. Or else I am going to be used. Suppose that my presence is necessary to the murderer in some way...”

“Theory. For all you know, the spotlight might not have been broken by the murderer at all. Probably some nasty little elf did it to throw you off the track. You start off with Susan’s mosquito bites and end up with a murderer who gives you a crack on the skull and then gets soft-hearted and gives the alarm. You’re not logical.”

Prye was staggered. “Me! Not logical! To think I was on the point of becoming serious about you, given a little luring!”

“You can lure yourself around the block,” Nora said. “I’m going over to see Tom.”

“Why?”

“Because I think he killed Joan. On the same night, his current amour is murdered and his wife has a heart attack. Mary is rather plain, she controls the money, and she is in poor health. If I were Tom—”

“You’d have a perfect alibi ready.”

Nora nodded. “I would. Want to come along?”

Tom Little had his perfect alibi. It was all the more convincing as it came not from Tom, but from Jennie Harris.

Mrs. Little had retired immediately after dinner as usual, and at seven-fifteen Jennie had finished the dishes and sat down in the dining room to work on her afghan. Tom was in the sitting room all evening, sleeping. She could see his legs, and he snored at intervals.

“You wouldn’t be tempted to lie for Mr. Little, would you, Jennie?” Prye asked.

“Lie? For him? I should say not!”

“Are you an expert at crocheting afghans?”

“I’m pretty good,” Jennie admitted.

“Then your attention wouldn’t be fully taken up by your work? Could you, for instance, have become completely engrossed in it for half an hour?”

“No sir. I don’t even have to look when I crochet. That’s how I’m so sure about Mr. Little being there all the time. I could see him and hear him. What more do you want?”

“And you were in the dining room for at least two hours?”

Jennie nodded.

Nora stayed in the kitchen, unsatisfied with Jennie’s answers, and Prye went out to the veranda. Dr. Innes was still upstairs with Mary Little and Prye could hear the drone of voices from the front bedroom, Dr. Innes’ and Tom Little’s. Tom seemed to be angry and he did not accompany Innes downstairs.

“Hello, Prye,” Innes said cheerfully. “Got a pretty sick woman on my hands.”

Prye smiled. “How sick is pretty sick?”

“Pulse weak, unsteady, running at one hundred thirty with a skip beat in every ten. Blood pressure one hundred systolic, sixty diastolic, compared with her normal of one hundred thirty systolic and eighty diastolic. Face and hands cyanosed. Periodic attacks of severe pain on the left side.”

“What are you doing about it?”

Innes shrugged. “What can I do? Rest, quiet, amyl nitrate. Heart patients are the very devil anyway. The nearest electrocardiograph machine is forty miles away and they refuse to move it up here. In any case, I can’t read electrocardiograms. We have to send them to Toronto, and that takes time.”

“What’s the cause of the attack?”

Innes peered at him over his spectacles. “Well, what causes heart attacks? Strain, shock, exertion, worry, overeating, drinking — almost anything if your heart’s not good to begin with.”

“Didn’t you ask her?”

“I did,” Innes said with a dry smile. “She said it was the will of God.”