The Weak-Eyed Bat

Chapter Six

Joan frost was under the water with her long yellow hair swaying a little with the waves like a mermaid’s, and the back of her head split open. Her legs were wrapped in an old sugar bag. The bag was tied with a rope around her waist and it was heavy with stones.

It took two of them to bring her up, and one of them went home. He was quite sick, because he’d always been crazy about big, strapping blondes anyway and some of her yellow hair had floated across his face.

The other one was the chief constable, a short, stocky, middle-aged man with red hair. He wore an old-fashioned jersey bathing suit and drops of water fell from his hair down the tip of his nose. He might have looked funny carrying Joan out of the water if it hadn’t been for the sugar bag and the hole in her head.

Nora had been sent to break the news to Professor Frost and Susan, so there were only three of them left: Prye still sitting on the big rock, Jakes the Clayton constable, and the district coroner, Dr. Prescott.

“We never had a murder here before,” Jakes was repeating in an awed voice. “I guess she was dead before she was put in there, Prescott.”

Prescott, a solemn little man, nodded. “Very dead. Some of her head is missing.” He was kneeling beside Joan, and his knee was resting in a little lake of water fed by rivulets from Joan’s hair.

“The rope looks like an ordinary clothesline and it’s tied in several simple, tight knots. The bag is jute, and the discolorations are probably blood. Her knees are bent, so it seems likely that she was tied up before rigor mortis set in.”

Prye cleared his throat and both pairs of eyes turned to him instantly.

“Are you still here?” Jakes said. “I thought I told you—”

“I was merely going to ask,” Prye said blandly, “if the bag around her legs might have been used as the weapon. With the stones inside, I mean.”

“Why should you think of that?” Jakes demanded.

“It just occurred to me that it would give the murderer a nice swing. Besides, Miss Shane, acting on my suggestion, searched the woods for some kind of weapon and none turned up.”

“Are you trying to tell me you knew she had been murdered?” Jakes’s voice squeaked with wrath.

“I suspected someone had after this.” He unwound the yellow scarf from his head. “Some person decided that I should have a gentle push over the brink at approximately eight forty-five last night. Now my theory is—”

“Why didn’t you report this, Dr. Prye?” Jakes asked with official severity.

“As a matter of fact, I passed out, and by the time I came to, my ears were bandaged and you know how it is trying to talk over a telephone with your ears bandaged.”

“I do not,” Jakes said coldly. “Start from the beginning. What are you doing up here? Why were you hit over the head?”

Prye told his story, with certain reservations. He left out his interview with Miss Bonner and his discovery of the diary in Joan’s suitcase.

“There were no signs in Miss Frost’s room that she had been murdered there? Or knocked unconscious and taken out through the window?” Jakes said, when Prye had finished.

Prye shook his head. “She left of her own accord, probably to go to a prearranged meeting place.”

“Why?” Jakes asked. “With whom?”

Prye shrugged. “Anyone. Any reason. A murderer would be a fool to kill her in her own room with her father and the maid close by. Besides, I have a theory. Want to hear it?”

“Theories aren’t much good.”

“Mine always are,” Prye said modestly. “I think I stumbled accidentally on the meeting between Joan and her murderer. Suppose Joan hadn’t arrived yet, and the murderer was preparing his weapon, putting stones into the bag. Naturally I’d be in the way when the time came, so the weapon was given a kind of preliminary tryout on me. Perhaps it wasn’t quite ready, wasn’t heavy enough, and that’s why I wasn’t killed.”

“Sounds all right,” Jakes admitted without enthusiasm.

Prescott looked up, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. “The bag will be examined for bloodstains as a matter of routine, and if there are any bits of skin or hair clinging to it we will know whether it was the instrument used. But we’ll have to send everything to the lab in Toronto and that may take a week at least.”

Prye frowned and said, “That’s too long.”

“No one can run away,” Jakes said.

“No?” Prye related Smith’s disappearance with considerable relish, but Jakes was unimpressed.

“He won’t get far. We have our methods of finding people. He won’t be able to get into the States and if he stays in Canada the Mounties will have him shortly.”

“I thought the Mounties were busy elsewhere in wartime,” Prye said casually.

“Did you?”

Jakes’s voice discouraged further questions but Prye was not easily discouraged. “I suppose they’ll stop him at the border?”

“I wish that ambulance would come,” Jakes said.

“I wonder why criminals always make a dash for the border. It doesn’t even seem to matter what border. Smith, though, will go by Detroit.”

“Will he?” Jakes said.

“Unless he’s very subtle. Then he’ll just stay in Windsor and grow a mustache.”

“He has a mustache. You talk too much, Dr. Prye.”

“Just nerves,” Prye said, and relapsed into silence.

It was true. The discovery of Joan Frost had shaken him considerably. But for a whim or an error on the part of the murderer his legs might be wrapped in an old sugar bag. You couldn’t depend on another whim or error, and the nights in Muskoka were very dark.

“Oh hell,” he said. “They’re not that dark. I don’t think I’ll go home after all.”

“I don’t think you will either,” said Constable Jakes.

The ambulance came, and Joan Frost was placed on a stretcher and covered with a sheet. The stretcher was narrow, and Dr. Prescott sat beside her so she would not roll off. Constable Jakes stayed behind. He had put on a dark blue suit, and his hair had dried and was as bright and unruly as a bonfire.

“What about fingerprints?” Prye asked. “And photographs?”

“I see no necessity for photographs,” Jakes said stiffly, “and no hope of fingerprints.”

“Are you going to question everyone now?” Prye pursued.

“No. I haven’t had my dinner.”

“You mean you’re going to have your dinner first?”

“I am. My sister is cook at Miss Bonner’s home.”

“You understand I’m not hurrying you. I’m just interested in the way Canadian policemen work.”

“You’ll have a very good chance to find out,” Jakes said dryly.

Prye sighed. “Why don’t you have lunch with me? We could talk things over while we eat and save time.”

“You Americans,” Jakes said, and went sadly up the lane.

Miss Emily Bonner saw him coming through her field glasses. She knew why he was coming because she had seen what had been taken out of the water. For a full minute she watched him, and then she heaved herself out of her chair and went to her dressing table. From the folds of a green lace negligee she took a bundle of fifty one-hundred-dollar bills, held together with a rubber band, and pushed it down her bosom. The field glasses were ejected and took up temporary lodging in her right sleeve. No one would ever think of searching a poor old crippled lady.

Constable Jakes was shown up to her room shortly after she had finished her lunch. They had known each other for fifteen years. Miss Bonner frequently assured those interested that Jakes was an old fool. Jakes contented himself with describing Miss Bonner as the biggest liar in Muskoka. Their greetings were not cordial.

Emily said: “Well. What do you want?”

Constable Jakes sat down and ran a cold eye over the room. “Too many fripperies in here, Emily.”

“Did you come here to discuss my house furnishings?”

“No,” Jakes said slowly. “I wanted to ask you if you murdered Joan Frost last night.”

Emily’s head fell back and her left arm dangled over her chair.

“Now, Emily,” Jakes said mildly, “none of this play acting. Don’t pretend to me that you’ve fainted.”

Emily’s head snapped back. “I’m not pretending anything of the sort!” she cried. “Can’t you see you’ve given me a terrible shock? Haven’t you anything better to do than frighten helpless women and children?”

“I never frightened a child in my life,” Jakes shouted, stung.

“I’ll bet you’ve frightened dozens of them. Go away.”

“I just came. You didn’t answer my question.”

“You ask me, me, if I killed a poor young girl in the first bloom of her youth. How was she killed?”

“Hit on the head. I heard she was engaged to Ralph. Is that so?”

“Puppy love. She was only a child, a willful, erring child.”

“That isn’t what you used to call her,” Jakes said firmly. “When did you last see Joan Frost, Emily?”

“I don’t remember,” she replied sadly. “When you get as old as I am, Jakes, you’ll find it isn’t so easy to remember.”

“Maybe so. What were you doing when this spotlight of yours was broken?”

“Lying down. I’d just had a terrible—” She closed her lips tightly.

“I know about that business with Ralph,” Jakes said.

Emily snorted. “That sister of yours! I’ll have to fire her.”

“Go ahead. You were scared Ralph was going to run away with Joan, eh?”

“It was nothing of the sort. Instead of trying to find the murderer you are harrying a poor old woman who’s tied hand and foot to a wheelchair.”

“This Dr. Prye. What about him?”

“Well?”

“Did you know he’d been attacked?”

“No — yes! How should I know? Is he hurt?”

“Not much. Why is he so interested in Joan Frost?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Emily said in a bored voice.

“It had nothing to do with the conversation you had with him yesterday morning?”

“Go away. I feel faint. Get my nurse.”

“Now, Emily,” Jakes said, sighing, “I’m not saying you murdered the girl, but someone did, and you had a motive.”

“If I murdered everyone I disliked, there’d be havoc around here. Havoc.” She glared at him fiercely. “And you’d be in it.”

Constable Jakes got slowly to his feet. “It’s funny you didn’t ask more questions about the murder. Did you know about it before?”

“If you had an ounce of grey matter—”

“Maybe Ralph told you? Ralph was out last night about the right time. He quarreled with the girl yesterday, too.”

“Ralph never quarreled with anyone in his life. You’re being victimized, Jakes, by a pack of unscrupulous liars. Good day to you.”

Constable Jakes went out of the room looking depressed. He had often read of methods of making witnesses tell the truth — rubber hoses and telephone directories. But it would be silly to cut up a perfectly good garden hose on the off-chance, and the Clayton telephone directory could be used lethally on nothing larger than bees.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs Miss Harriet Alfonse was crossing the hall, and she quickened her pace noticeably.

“Hey,” Jakes said. She turned around and flashed him a brilliant smile.

“Miss Alfonse, I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

“Certainly,” she said graciously. “I’m not too busy at the moment.”

Since Miss Dorothy Jakes was the cook for the household, Constable Jakes was vicariously acquainted with Miss Alfonse. The acquaintance was colored somewhat by the feud between Miss Jakes and Miss Alfonse which had arisen out of the latter’s preference for breakfast in bed. But no matter what her eating habits, Constable Jakes decided, Miss Alfonse was a handsome woman for her age.

They went into the library. Alfonse beckoned Constable Jakes to sit down while she shut the door of the library carefully.

“What did you want to see me about?” she said with an arch smile. “Have I been breaking the law?”

“Maybe. What do you know about Miss Bonner’s spotlight being smashed last night?”

First she looked intense, then puzzled, then blank. Constable Jakes was certain this was leading up to something but all she was said was: “I don’t know anything about it.”

“You were down at the lake at that time, weren’t you?”

“What time?” Miss Alfonse asked cagily.

“About a quarter to nine.”

“Yes, I was down at the lake. I was getting some air.”

“How were you getting your air?” Jakes asked earnestly. “Were you sitting, walking, canoeing?”

“Sitting.”

“You were alone?”

Miss Alfonse looked prim. “Well, I wouldn’t say that.”

“Who was with you?”

“I’d rather not say just now. I have my reputation to consider.”

Jakes sighed. “In these parts we don’t hold it against a girl if she goes down to the lake for some courting. Who was this man?”

“I have my family to consider, too,” she said. “I come from a very old family.”

“All right. Did you know this Joan Frost well?”

“What do you mean, did I know her? Has something happened to her?”

“She was murdered last night. We found her body in the lake.”

Alfonse sagged. Jakes thought for a minute that it was only the starch in her uniform that was holding her up. But no. Members of very old families may droop but they never lose consciousness.

“How ghastly,” she whispered.

She was standing up straight again but something had gone wrong with her face. It kept changing, floating almost, from one expression to another, as if it couldn’t make up its mind. Jakes felt as if he had walked in on a naked woman who was searching desperately for her clothes. He looked out of the window.

“You knew her, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, I did. Everyone did.”

“Did she come to this house often?”

“Not often since I’ve been here.”

“Where did you live before you came to Miss Bonner’s?”

To Jakes’s ears her laugh sounded quite gay. “Oh, I’ve lived here, there, and everywhere. Wherever my profession calls me. I answered Miss Bonner’s advertisement in a Toronto paper a little over two months ago. I’ve become quite fond of Muskoka. The air is so fresh, so bracing, so invig—”

“Yes,” said Jakes. “To get back to last night, what time did you leave this house?”

“Around seven-thirty, I suppose.”

“You had an appointment?”

“Well, not exactly. No, I wouldn’t say I had an appointment.”

Jakes snorted impatiently. “If I find out you had a motive for murdering the girl, you’ll have to give the man’s name to protect yourself.”

“I had no motive,” Miss Alfonse said easily. “And a great many others had.”

She paused significantly and Jakes said: “All right. Who?”

“Miss Bonner.”

“But Miss Bonner is a cripple.”

Miss Alfonse smiled. “Quite.”

“You mean she isn’t a cripple?”

“I’m only a nurse. I can’t diagnose. You’ll have to ask a doctor.”

“Can she walk at all?”

“When I help her to bed she leans on me very heavily.” She looked at him sharply and lowered her eyes. “May I go now?”

“All right, but I want to see you again. Perhaps you’ll be more frank with me next time.”

A sniff, a swish, and a rustle, and Miss Alfonse was gone. The interview had not been pleasant but it had relieved her mind a good deal: the policeman was a fool.

In the library Jakes sank into a chair and took out his notebook. He sat biting the end of his pencil because he didn’t quite know what to write in his book. Finally he wrote, “All men are liars,” and decorated the inscription with curlicues. It was Constable Jakes’s most profound contribution to the case.

“Ah, there it is!” The voice came from outside the library window, and simultaneously a yellow turban rose from behind a bush.

“Just missed it!” Prye said, smacking his hands together. “Why, hello, Constable Jakes! This is a surprise.”

“Not to me it isn’t,” Jakes said, frowning. “How long have you been behind that bush?”

Prye came closer to the window. “Behind what bush? Oh, that bush. Not very long. I was just trying to capture a rare specimen of butterfly, an aesophagus major. It eluded me.”

“There is no butterfly called the aesophagus major,” Jake said in a flash of inspiration.

Prye looked shocked. “There you go being positive — the one thing policemen and doctors can’t afford to be. I heard of a doctor once who prescribed medicine for a man with some atropine in it. The man took the required amount, but the next day he came back to the doctor and told him the medicine had made him very ill. ‘Oh, pooh,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m positive there’s not enough atropine in that to hurt you. I’ll take twice as much as that just to show you.’ Well, the doctor did and the doctor died. He had bought the drug at a different supply house, you see, and it was much stronger than what he had been using.”

“Well?” Jakes said.

Prye sighed. “All right, there is no butterfly called the aesophagus major. I want to talk to you about Miss Alfonse, but not through a window. Shall I come in or will you come out?”

“I’ll come out,” Jakes said. “I have to see Professor Frost now, I suppose.”

He came out of the house and joined Prye and they began to walk slowly down the lane.

“Alfonse’s gag about not revealing the name of the man who was with her is tottering with palsy,” Prye said. “I hope you didn’t put your faith in it.”

“Naturally I didn’t,” Jakes said uncomfortably. “But I can’t understand why everyone has to lie when everyone can’t be guilty.”

“Everyone isn’t guilty of the murder,” Prye said, grinning, “but we're all guilty of something, if of nothing more than driving through a red light in Hoboken ten years ago. Fear of the law and policemen is universal. Probably it’s a throwback to childhood when we were told that the policeman would get us if we didn’t wash behind our ears. The new generation of mothers is wiser. They say, ‘Don’t ask anyone but a policeman, Junior!’ thus lining Junior up on the side of law and order.”

“Are you kidding?” Jakes demanded.

“No. I’m just explaining that fear is the most potent reason for lying. Sometimes, however, the fear of policemen has a very real basis. In Alfonse’s case it has.”

He paused, and Jakes said: “Well, what did she do? Kill off a patient?”

“Precisely,” Prye said.

“Murder!” Jakes shouted. “I’m going right back there and—”

“No, that would be foolish. It wasn’t the ordinary kind of murder at all. It was crazy, so crazy that two psychiatrists decided that she was crazy. I testified that she was sane, but I was outnumbered and she was sent to an institution. That was eight years ago.”

“What about the murder?”

“Well, she was employed as nursemaid in the house of a wealthy widower in Chicago. His wife had died in childbirth. When the baby was a few months old Miss Alfonse — she called herself Marion Allen then — went out one day for some amusement. She and the baby took a ride on a roller coaster. Miss Allen enjoyed the ride but the baby was taken off dead.”

“Good God! She didn’t do it on purpose?”

“At the time everyone thought not. But the various little incidents from her past began to crop up. Among them were three marriages with no intervening divorces. A charge of criminal negligence was laid. Then a housemaid came forward and testified that Miss Allen had hinted several times that if it weren’t for the baby she could have the widower down on his knees. Even though the State’s case was a slim one, the charge was changed to second-degree murder. The upshot was that Miss Allen was found to be insane and sent to a mental institution.”

“The other psychiatrists were wrong and you were right?” Jakes asked.

“Of course,” Prye said modestly.

“I’ve been hearing funny things about this Joan Frost. Was she crazy?”

“She wasn’t normal,” Prye said cautiously. “She seemed to believe that she was of Olympian stature and that someone was persecuting her.”

“Who was?”

“Her father.”

“That’s silly. What object would a fine old gentleman like Professor—”

“Not so loud. Sound carries up here and windows are open. Now I want you to look slowly behind you, Jakes, up at the second window on the left on the second floor of Miss Bonner’s house. What do you see?”

“Nothing much,” Jakes said. “Just the glare of the sun on the window. No, it can’t be that! That window’s open. It’s Emily’s room.”

“I can’t imagine Emily playing with mirrors,” Prye said, “but I like the idea of field glasses, don’t you?”

“Do you really think she’s got a pair of field glasses up there?”

“Certainly. I saw them. She keeps them tucked in her bosom.” Prye blushed. “I don’t want you to think I make a practice of that sort of thing. I couldn’t help noticing that she was a funny shape. I mean—”

“Don’t apologize,” Jakes said. “We all have our weaknesses.”