“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.