The Weak-Eyed Bat

Chapter Fourteen

Prye closed Miss Alfonse’s door behind him and went quietly downstairs.

“Wang, phone Professor Frost’s cottage and ask Inspector White to come here immediately.”

“Do you anticipate another murder?” Wang asked serenely.

“Anticipate is not the word,” Prye said. “Where did Miss Alfonse have her dinner tonight?”

“In her room.”

“After I left this afternoon did she go out?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Did anyone come to see her?”

“Assuredly not. I have watched the doors with the eyes of a lynx.”

Prye went back upstairs, rapped lightly on Emily’s door, and walked in.

“What,” Emily demanded, “is going on here tonight? First Miss Shane forces herself on me with the thinnest story I have ever heard—” Her voice faded as Prye continued to stare at her.

“What have you been doing all evening?” he asked gravely.

Her eyes narrowed, almost disappeared under fat lids. “What for? What’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” Prye said.

“I’ve been sleeping.”

“It’s amazing how much sleep the people in this vicinity require. Susan sleeps on the beach. Tom sleeps in the sitting room. You sleep—”

“I was doped,” she said acidly. “I never go to sleep after dinner.”

“After one of your dinners I’m surprised you don’t sleep forever. Who doped you? And why? And with what? And when?”

Nora seized her opportunity to slip quietly through the door.

“That’s your business,” Emily said. “Aren’t you a doctor?”

Prye knelt down and looked carefully at her eyes.

“Your pupils seem normal to me, Emily. That, and the fact that you are a notorious liar, almost disqualifies your statement. Where’s Miss Alfonse tonight?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her all day.”

“Is that unusual?”

“I give her one day a week off and she asked for today.”

“Who brings up your dinner when Alfonse is off duty?”

“The cook.”

“And you think the cook doped you?”

Emily banged her fist on the arm of her wheelchair. “No, I don’t! But someone did.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“Coffee taste all right tonight?”

“Very peculiar,” she said firmly. “It tasted very peculiar, now that I remember it.”

“I understand you’ll be ninety soon, Emily. People of ninety usually haven’t a keen sense of taste.”

“I— Nonsense!”

“They imagine things, too, sometimes, and invent things.”

“I’m sixty-five,” she said in a resigned voice.

“That’s better. Much more convincing. And you’ll want to be as convincing as possible when Inspector White gets here.”

“Why?”

“Because Miss Alfonse has disappeared and there’s a pool of blood in her room.”

The breath was pushed out of her and she folded like an accordion.

“Think it over, Emily,” Prye said. “Here is how it will look to Inspector White. Miss Alfonse met Tom Little last night and witnessed his murder. Tonight she disappears from a room on the second floor of your house with you and Ralph a few yards away.”

Emily had recovered. She took a wisp of handkerchief from one of her innumerable hiding places and dabbed at her eyes. She stopped crying in a minute to ask: “What’s the second floor got to do with it?”

“Miss Alfonse’s door was locked. Apart from the difficulty of the murderer getting past Wang downstairs there was the difficulty of getting into Alfonse’s room to kill her. It’s odd that Miss Alfonse, who was very much on her guard against just this, should have let anyone into her bedroom, unless she couldn’t have stopped him. This is your house. I presume you have a set of keys to the various doors, and if Miss Alfonse was, by any chance, doped, it wouldn’t have been difficult for you or Ralph to get into her room. And it might be rather cute of you to have suggested that you were doped before anyone discovered that she was.”

“And the body?” Emily asked calmly.

“Flung from the window perhaps.”

She began to laugh, first softly, and then with uncontrollable mirth.

“I didn’t know I was that funny,” Prye said coldly.

Emily wiped her eyes. “Y-you are. Y-you’re a s-scream! You 1-1-look so s-serious!” she gasped.

“Well, damn it, I am serious.”

“I know. That’s what’s so f-funny.”

Prye grasped the handle of her wheelchair and wheeled her toward the bathroom. “The bathtub seems called for.”

“Stop!” she yelled.

Prye stopped. Emily’s face had lost its color.

“Not that bathtub,” she said in a sickly voice.

Ten minutes later Inspector White and two policemen were examining the room formerly occupied by Miss Alfonse. Prye stood by the window, peering at the ledge and then out into the darkness below.

Inspector White straightened up to his full height and let out an involuntary cry of rage.

“It’s appalling!” he shouted in Prye’s direction. “It’s absolutely incredible that someone could get into this room, murder a woman, dispose of the body, and walk away scot-free. It will cost me my job. It will terrorize the countryside. We will lose our tourist trade and be derided by the newspapers. Will you stop fingering that ledge and listen to me?”

“Sure,” Prye said. “But I don’t give a damn about the newspapers or the tourist trade. All I want to know is, where is Miss Alfonse? If she was flung from this window and then dragged down to the lake you’d expect to find some blood splattered around. But there isn’t any, except that neat little pool on the floor. You’ve been on the scene of a murder before. Did you ever see one arranged like this?”

“You’ve missed something,” the inspector said in a hard voice. “Come here.”

He pulled open the bottom drawer of the dresser. On top of a pile of clothing lay a pair of scissors, a package of cotton, and a roll of adhesive tape. They were covered with blood.

“You see,” the inspector said, “the murderer stanched the wound with cotton and the plaster was used to bold the cotton on.”

“Why bother about that and leave the pool of blood on the floor?” Prye asked.

“The blood on the floor may have been overlooked.”

“Or planted.”

“Why planted?” the inspector roared. “Where would the blood come from to plant? And why?”

“I don’t know, but I like to think of possibilities. And certainly one possibility is that Miss Alfonse, for reasons of her own, would like us to believe she was murdered. She didn’t know that Little’s body had been found, and she may have gotten ideas. If one body remained undiscovered it wouldn’t look so suspicious if another one—”

“You mean this is a fake!”

“Possibly. You see, I think it’s strange that anyone could have murdered Miss Alfonse. She was sly and suspicious, and she knew who the murderer was.”

Inspector White’s face seemed to be expanding like a red balloon.

“I can see the adrenalin pouring into your system,” Prye said. “A bad thing. Be kind to your adrenals and they’ll be kind to you. Of course Miss Alfonse knew who murdered Little. She had information which was worth a great deal of money, and if she divulged it she would kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. Golden eggs were right down Miss Alfonse’s alley. So it’s possible that this charming tableau” — he waved his arm around the room — “was arranged by Miss Alfonse herself, perhaps with the aid of the murderer.”

“She can’t get away, even if you are right. Look how we got Mr. Smith.”

“Miss Alfonse is a professional,” Prye said, “and Mr. Smith is the veriest amateur. The difference glares. And speaking of Mr. Smith, would you mind if I borrowed your gun?”

“My gun? What for?” the inspector asked suspiciously.

“Because I want to scare the pants off Mr. Smith.”

“You can’t do that! It isn’t legal. See Section—”

“Unload it. It’s just for a prop anyway. There are too many mysteries around here and I might be able to clear up one of them.”

“The law—”

“If I do anything illegal,” Prye said, “you may put me in jail. After all, that’s what the law seems to be — curative rather than preventive. I’d rather be cured than prevented. Do I get the gun?”

Inspector White took the gun from the holster attached to his belt, removed the cartridges, and handed it over.

“Keep everything as legal as possible,” he said, sighing.

Mr. John Wayne Smith was lying in bed reading a detective story. Although the heroine was unwittingly about to marry a werewolf Mr. Smith was not, in fact, very interested. He was not in the proper frame of mind to read a detective story; he scorned and was skeptical. He was not even convinced that werewolves ever entertained thoughts of matrimony, let alone reached the point where they decked themselves out in morning clothes and slunk up the aisle.

Since Mr. Smith was reading about a wedding it was not surprising that his first thought when he heard the knock on his front door was: “She’s come for me!”

Mr. Smith was not a coward, however. He pulled on his bathrobe, whistled to Horace, and went downstairs.

Prye was already inside, and when Smith reached the middle of the stairs he was greeted informally.

“Mr. Smith, I’m a reasonable man,” Prye said. “I’ll give you five minutes.”

Mr. Smith saw the revolver and clutched the banister.

“Go get him, Horace!” he yelled.

It was a tactical error. Horace had already met, sniffed, and approved Dr. Prye, and he seldom took his master’s commands seriously anyway.

“Into the living room, Mr. Smith, with your hands up.”

Mr. Smith went.

“Would you like to sit down, Mr. Smith?”

Mr. Smith sat down.

“What are you doing in Muskoka, Mr. Smith?”

“J-just living.”

Prye patted Horace’s head with one hand and dangled the revolver in the other.

“I said five minutes, Mr. Smith.”

“I’m... I’m dodging the police,” Smith said in a strangled voice. “And other p-people.”

Prye nodded approvingly. “That’s better, Mr. Smith. Why?”

“They want me. At least they don’t want me but somebody else does.”

“It’s thin, Mr. Smith, it’s very thin,” Prye said musingly. “Next thing you’ll be telling me you’re a fugitive from the OGPU.”

Mr. Smith gathered up his dignity. “I am a fugitive from a determined woman.”

“What woman?”

“My wife. That is, my ex-wife. She divorced me.”

“And now she’s after you again, Mr. Smith?”

“Not exactly,” Smith said unhappily. “I... I neglected to— That is, I found the alimony exorbitant.”

“You’re an alimony jumper.”

“Well, yes.” Mr. Smith was stirred to eloquence by his injuries. “If the judge had been more reasonable— But three hundred dollars a month simply because I worked in my store on Sundays and caused her grievous mental anguish! I didn’t mind the money, but the way she gloated... Well, I simply ran away.”

“But she’s on your trail?”

Mr. Smith shuddered and pulled his bathrobe closer around him. “I have heard so.”

“What will she do if she finds you?”

“She’ll gloat,” Mr. Smith said simply.

Prye tossed the revolver in the air and caught it again.

“I’d rather be gloated at than arrested for murder,” he said. “Why didn’t you clear this up before instead of trying to escape on Monday night?”

“The press. If I got my name or my picture in the papers she’d be here like a shot. She always reads all the papers.”

“Did you know someone else has disappeared?” Prye asked.

“Yes. Inspector White said Mr. Little had gone.”

“Besides Mr. Little.”

“No— I— Who was it?”

“Miss Alfonse is missing,” Prye said, watching him closely.

Smith’s only reaction seemed one of relief.

“Nobody I know,” he said.

“She was Miss Bonner’s nurse.”

“I’ve seen her once or twice,” Smith said. “I didn’t know her.”

“What were you doing at nine o’clock last night, Mr. Smith?”

“I’ve told Inspector White all that. I was reading.”

“Reading what?”

Mr. Smith blushed. “A detective story. I’ve been reading a lot of them to find out about disguises and things. I thought perhaps I could disguise myself. But it seems you have to be a very good actor to disguise yourself.”

Prye glanced at him coldly. “You did all right on Tuesday pretending you were drunk.”

“Oh that. Well, you see, alcohol has a very peculiar effect on me. It goes right to my head and wears off almost instantly. So I really was drunk. More or less.”

“Less,” Prye said.

“I’m sorry I did that. I guess it makes me look very suspicious.”

“I guess.”

“But you don’t actually suspect me, do you?”

“To me you are white like snow,” Prye said.

They had both forgotten the revolver and Horace seized his chance. He pranced around the room holding it between his teeth.

It took quite a long time to persuade Horace to relinquish it and still longer to placate Inspector White when he saw the marks of Horace’s teeth. It was one o’clock by the time Prye got into bed.

He pulled the night table up to his bed and lit a cigarette.

Mr. Smith was temporarily erased from the list of suspects. Although his pier had probably been the scene of Tom Little’s murder, Smith had no connection with the other members of the community. If his story about hiding from his ex-wife was true — and it could easily be checked — Mr. Smith would have been too engrossed in his own affairs to bother about those of complete strangers.

Miss Alfonse’s name, too, was written off. Technically she could have been the murderer and arranged for her escape in such a way as to suggest that she herself was murdered. But this possibility seemed remote. Even though Alfonse might have considered getting rid of Joan so that she could marry Ralph herself, she had no motive for killing Tom Little. Besides, all her actions were explicable when one assumed that she was guilty only of having knowledge of the real murderer.

It was Little’s murder, in fact, that was difficult to fit in. It was practically impossible that Tom was killed because he knew the identity of the murderer — he was not shrewd enough to have guessed, and he could not have been an eyewitness to Joan’s murder. Jennie Harris was no friend of Tom’s, and if she said that he sat sleeping in a chair all Monday evening, there he must have sat. Nor was his death a question of money: his life had not been insured and his wallet and the large gold signet ring on his hand had remained untouched.

But Tom Little had been killed, and no one kills without a reason.

Prye’s mind kept returning to the theme of justice.

“I do not kill without reason,” the murderer had written. Had he meant a moral reason?

Prye stubbed his cigarette impatiently.

“The whole thing may be a blind,” he said aloud. “There may be some good earthly reasons behind these murders. The murderer may be leading us astray, perhaps for the sake of amusement. We are not amused.”

The sardonic smile of Professor Frost rose before his eyes. Yes, he thought, it would move Frost to hilarity to watch me chasing my tail and running up blind alleys, and climbing stepladders to search for someone who was already at the bottom of the lake.

But unless Frost’s exterior was a complete fraud what Nora had said of him was true: he wouldn’t care enough to murder anyone. He was an intellectual turtle. He would not attack even in self-defense, but would tuck his head back under his shell and read a book.

Who would kill for moral reasons?

“Practically any psychotic,” Prye said to himself. “Those with a severe psychosis might kill in response to their auditory or visual hallucinations. But even so apparently harmless a creature as an idealist will kill to preserve his ideals. He might toss a bomb into a capitalist’s lap and save the working classes. Or if his ideal has already been shattered he might kill for revenge. And that spells Ralph Bonner to me.”

Yes, Ralph was a queer boy. Living under the thumb of a querulous, wealthy old woman had retarded his emotional and mental development, so that at twenty-three he was as unsophisticated and helpless as a boy of sixteen. And what do unsophisticated boys of sixteen do when they are confronted with the fact that this is not the best of all possible worlds? Do they run for a handkerchief or a bag of stones?

It was two o’clock, so Prye called Ralph an uncharitable name and turned over and went to sleep.

In the room next to his, Inspector White was emitting a series of gargantuan snores, and across the hall Nora was dreaming of bloody axes and floating bodies. Professor Frost was still searching for humor in Thucydides. The policeman on duty was yawning and waiting for sunrise.

Of them all Miss Alfonse was the only one at peace, and that was something.