The Weak-Eyed Bat

Chapter Seventeen

They were all watching each other now with eyes that were puzzled, frightened.

“I should have found you out sooner,” Prye said. “You were careless about fingerprints.”

“Fingerprints!”

The word came from the back of Emily’s throat. She was sitting bolt upright in her chair. “There were no fingerprints on anything.”

“That’s right,” Prye said, looking at her gravely. “But when a person innocently drinks a cup of coffee, for example, his or her fingerprints are left on the cup. And when a person picks up a ring and flings it out of the window, there should be fingerprints on the ring.” He turned his head and faced Mary Little. “That’s right, too, isn’t it, Mary?”

Her eyes were hidden by her thick white lids. She said, “I guess so.”

“You said you had been in bed before you picked up the ring, Mary?”

“Yes.”

“Do you usually wear gloves in bed?”

She made no reply. She was staring down at her hands as if they did not belong to her, as if they were strangers who had trapped her.

Prye was thinking, I can’t tell yet. She hasn’t done anything to prove it, she may be as sane as I am...

Then he saw her put her head on one side, half smiling. She seemed to be listening, her whole body in an attitude of attention, her lips moving in soundless reply.

“Did you ever have a streptococcus infection, Mary?” he asked gently.

The smile faded from her face; her head jerked up.

“Yes. A year ago.”

“Do you remember what your doctor prescribed for you then? Was it sulfanilamide?”

She leaned forward toward him.

“I ought to have finished you,” she said in an impersonal voice. “You are an evil man.”

The others were watching her, paralyzed.

“I am not responsible to the laws of this world,” she said. “I am only an instrument. I have nothing to fear.”

“You remembered your reaction to sulfanilamide from last year?”

“Oh yes,” she said, nodding her head. “It was very unpleasant. I got all blue and cold. The doctor called it a complete collapse, so I had to stop taking it. But there was some of it left. All this time I’ve saved it.”

Prye’s face was grave. “Why did you save it, Mary?”

She did not hear him and he repeated the question.

“I knew I had to kill him some time, as soon as they told me to kill him. I saved it for an alibi. But I had to use it when I killed her. He remembered about the sulfanilamide from last year, so I had to kill him right away, too. I killed two birds with one stone.” She paused, looking around at them all with eyes that were growing excited. “I killed two birds with one stone.”

“Sulfanilamide can easily be detected in the blood stream,” Prye said. “Weren’t you afraid of that?”

“Of course not. I already had heart trouble and there was no reason for Dr. Innes to suspect anything else. I knew you weren’t much of a doctor. The only reason I let you live was to give me an alibi by swearing I had a heart attack. How did you find out about the sulfanilamide?”

“I didn’t,” Prye said. “But when I discovered you lied to me about throwing the ring out of the window I began to wonder if your heart attack had not been artificially stimulated or induced in some way. I’ve had very little experience with sulfanilamide and the possibility of its use didn’t occur to me until this afternoon.”

“I was very clever,” Mary said.

She looked around for approval, and the others, seeing Prye nod, nodded, too. One head after another bobbed up and down, puppet heads jerked by invisible strings. Nora thought, it’s crazy, we’re crazy, she’s saner than any of us. She put her hand to her mouth to hold back the hysterical giggle that kept bubbling up in her throat.

Mary was talking again in her quiet, even voice, speaking distinctly, as if she were teaching a lesson to some backward boys and girls.

“If Jennie hadn’t been so silly as to give me a chance to escape— Poor Jennie. As soon as you tested her hearing she knew I had killed them. Jennie is quite deaf. She didn’t hear me come downstairs on Monday night and go out the back door. I told her that I wanted to sleep, that she was to stay downstairs. Afterward she told you that she could hear quite well. She worried about that, because my alibi depended partly on her hearing. Poor Jennie. You must not be hard on her for giving me my chance.”

“Nothing will happen to Jennie,” Prye assured her.

“I was the chosen instrument and I alone.”

She’s proud of it, Nora thought. Anyone who is still proud can’t be very unhappy. I mustn’t be sorry for her. She’s still proud. And they’ll take good care of her...

“I was sitting in the dining room on Monday morning when I heard Miss Bonner’s ring,” Mary said. “I listened. I knew she was going to meet Joan at nine o’clock in the woods and I knew Joan was going away that night. Then at lunch Tom was acting strangely. He wouldn’t eat. He said he had a stomach ache. Tom was very stupid. I knew right away what he was going to do. I knew she was the thirteenth. And the thirteenth had to die.”

“You killed Joan because she was the thirteenth?” Prye asked quietly.

“Of course! Why don’t you listen to me? You’re stupid. You’re stupid like Tom.”

The words were tumbling out of her mouth. She put her hand to her head and closed her eyes for a minute.

Here is madness, Professor Frost was thinking. Here is real madness, not the lyrical, beautiful madness of Medea slaying her children. There’s no ecstasy in the madness of this plain, dowdy woman, no Euripides to write her speeches, no catharsis for us who are listening, no catharsis, no hope...

“It was very cunning of you to drug Tom on Monday night,” Prye said.

“Yes, it was very cunning. I put some veronal in his coffee at dinnertime. I know a great deal about drugs. I’ve always been sick. I get prescriptions from doctors and I save them.”

“Where do you keep these drugs?” Prye said, keeping his voice casual.

She looked up, her pale eyes suddenly shrewd.

“They’ve been stolen,” she said. “They’re all gone. Somebody stole them. All my lovely boxes have been stolen.”

She began to rock back and forth as if she were in great pain. Then she stopped suddenly and said:

“I heard Tom tell you I didn’t believe in doctors. That’s how I knew that he knew. He didn’t want you to get a doctor for me. He was afraid you’d find out that I’d taken sulfanilamide. Tom was very stupid.”

“Was he trying to protect you?”

“Oh yes! You see, he hadn’t any money. I have. I have a lot of money. But if I died he wouldn’t get any of it. I fixed it like that. He wouldn’t get any of it. He had to protect me.”

Mr. Smith shifted his legs. I wonder if dogs ever do this, he thought, ever get all mixed up like this and go crazy. I wonder if Horace would ever go crazy...

“I suppose you gave Jennie some of your drugs on Tuesday after dinner?” Prye said.

“That was easy,” she confided. “I asked her to have a cup of tea with me and I gave her two nembutal capsules. I knew they took about twenty minutes to work, just time enough for her to go down and put Tom’s dinner on the table and wash my dishes. As soon as she came back upstairs to work on her afghan she went to sleep in the chair beside my bed. Nembutal works quickly but the effects wear off soon. I knew I could get her to wake up when I called her.”

“How did you know Tom was going to meet Miss Alfonse at nine o’clock?”

“The phone call,” she said. “I could always tell when Tom was lying, and when he said it was the doctor on the phone I made him tell me the truth. I cried. He couldn’t bear to see me cry, and then he told me it was Miss Alfonse who had called. He didn’t know what she wanted. I told him he’d better meet her and find out.

“He left the house about ten minutes to nine and I put on my raincoat and a pair of shoes and as I passed your boathouse I thought of the ax I’d seen hanging on the wall. I knew you wouldn’t miss it, if you hadn’t been here for two years, so I put it under my coat. He didn’t hear me coming. It was thundering. It was easy to kill him. When I hit him there was a bolt from heaven so that I could see his face. You should have seen it. He was afraid. He was afraid of all the things he’d done—”

Her eyes moved around the room again. She was nodding her head. “You see, it pays to do nothing you’ll be ashamed of.”

The heads bobbed again, one after the other.

“I thought it would be a fine idea to put him in Joan’s canoe. I dragged him along the path to the Frosts’ boathouse. It was very hard. And then she came along. She was scared, too, the nurse. She started to run away when she saw me but I called her back. She was scared, too, but she came. I said I would give her money, a lot of money, if she wouldn’t tell, if she’d help me. So we dragged Tom over and put him in Joan’s canoe and untied the rope. I threw the ax into the lake. I untied the rope of the other boat, too, because it was Susan’s. I hate Susan.”

Susan shrank behind her father, white-lipped, thinking: she hates me but I haven’t done anything to her. I helped her. I was kind to her. I took her the wild-strawberry jam and I picked the strawberries with my own hands, but she hates me. It’s because she’s crazy...

Mary was talking again, her pale eyes flickering over their faces.

“On Wednesday night I was really clever. I sent Jennie downstairs and then I wrote her a letter. I even spelled her name wrong purposely. But nobody noticed.” She frowned at the inspector. “You didn’t even notice.”

“Of course I noticed!” White replied instantly. “It threw me off entirely.”

“You see? Well, then I burned the rest of the paper and envelopes and scattered the ashes out of the window. I went down the back stairs and around to the front door and rapped. I left the letter on the doorstep and then I watched at the dining-room window until I saw Jennie go to answer the front door. Then I went in the back door, up the stairs, and got into bed. Pretty soon you came along with Nora and I heard you talking about pencils. So I hid my pencil on top of the doorjamb in my room. When you came in you thought you were very clever knowing that I’d been out of bed. But you didn’t know I’d done all that, did you? Did you?”

“No,” Prye said, wishing it were over, thinking: it’s not amusing any longer. It’s fun to ride after the hounds but it’s not fun to gang up on the little fox...

“I only made one mistake and that was lying about the ring, and I wouldn’t have made that if I hadn’t been given some morphine. I knew they mustn’t discover my fingerprints anywhere so I always wore gloves. I didn’t find the ring in Tom’s room. I took it off Joan’s finger when she was dead because she wasn’t engaged any longer, an engagement ring was no use to her. I put the ring in Tom’s room. I engaged her to Tom.”

She put her hand to her head again.

“I’m tired. I’m sick, too. It’s been a strain on me. My head hurts. My kidneys are poisoned. That’s what sulfanilamide does, it poisons the kidneys. Mine are all dried up. I must go and find Jennie. I must tell her not to make me any tea tonight because my kidneys are all dried up. I must find Jennie.”

She got to her feet and took a step toward the door.

“Jennie!” she called. “Jennie!”

She stumbled and fell on one knee, clutching at her heart. Prye caught her up and carried her back to the chesterfield. He loosened the neck of her dress and put two fingers lightly on her wrist.

“Jennie,” she whispered, gasping. “Don’t forget — no tea.”

“I’ll tell her,” Prye said unsteadily. “I won’t forget.”

Her face twisted in a spasm of anguish; her body convulsed with pain.

Prye said: “Get my bag and call Innes. It’s angina.”

The little fox in its death throes. The hounds watching, silent. Prye’s two fingers straining for a pulse beat, like two tiny hunters trying to save the little fox when it was too late.

Prye got up quickly and walked to the door.