“I advertised in a Toronto paper,” Emily said.
“Did you check her references?”
“No, I didn’t. I looked at them though. There were at least twenty of them, and all spoke very highly of her. One of them, I remember, was a Lord Somebody-or-other who had a coat of arms on his note paper. Or was it a picture of his castle?”
“If I know Alfonse,” Prye said dryly, “it was both.”
“Dr. Prye” — Wang’s voice came from the hall — “Dr. Prye is most urgently requested.”
Prye went out, closing the door behind him tightly despite Emily’s protests.
“The telephone message originates in Miss Jennie Harris,” Wang said softly. “I am to inform you that Mrs. Little is half-dressed. She said you would understand.”
Prye sighed. “I do. Where is Miss Alfonse’s room?”
Wang pointed to a door at the end of the long hall, and Prye said: “Would you like to sit outside that door until I get back?”
Wang beamed and nodded his head vigorously.
“Let nobody in or out. I want Miss Alfonse to be in the best of health at least until I have a chance to talk to her.”
Chapter Twelve
Mary Little was already downstairs by the time Prye arrived. Her dress was ripped where she had torn it out of Jennie’s hands, her hair was flying over her shoulders, and she wore no shoes or stockings. Jennie was clutching one of her hands, periodically emitting a low moan.
Prye stood in the doorway watching them, not speaking. Under his gaze the tableau became fixed, self-conscious, and with a little shudder Mary stopped struggling and met his eyes. She looked embarrassed and half-ashamed, but she said defiantly:
“You can’t stop me, you can’t!”
Prye smiled. “Stop you making a fool of yourself? Well, I can try. Jennie, perhaps we’d better help Mrs. Little back to her room.”
“I’m not going back to my room,” Mary said. “I’m going out to find my husband. If you interfere with me, I’ll... I’ll—” She clung to the banister, breathing hard. Prye picked her up easily and carried her upstairs. He put her on the bed and she started to cry and beat her hands feebly on the pillow.
“Stop that,” Prye said. He called down to Jennie and told her to bring up his instrument bag. She brought it up, laid it on a chair, and backed out of the room. Prye went on talking in a steady, monotonous voice as he prepared a hypodermic needle with one eighth grain of morphine.
“I told you this morning that the police were doing their best to find your husband. I spend half my time soothing hysterical women like you. Sometimes they’re merely pretending, and in that case a smart slap on the face is the best cure.”
“Oh!” Mary gasped.
“Others have momentarily lost their powers of reasoning and I give them a hypodermic. That’s you. I have here a one eighth grain of morphine sulphate. It may put you to sleep and it may not, but it will ease your mind for a while.”
“I don’t want to sleep,” she protested weakly. “I’m scared. I—”
He rubbed her arm with an alcohol swab, still talking in a voice that had become a drone. She did not even wince as the needle entered her arm.
“You’re a good hypnotic subject. You’re practically asleep already. That’s because you’re suggestible. If I suggested that you were a cow you’d probably moo. It’s nearly three o’clock and the only thing to do at three o’clock in the middle of summer is to go to sleep. I wish to hell I were asleep. Mary?”
He touched her shoulder and she did not move. Her breathing was more even. He felt her pulse and found it fast and weak. Then he went out and closed the door.
“Is she all right?” Jennie asked fearfully when he came downstairs.
“My patients are always all right,” Prye said with dignity, “but if she has a relapse at seven o’clock let me know.”
Jennie was gazing at him, awed. “How did you do it?”
Prye smiled modestly. “Sheer force of personality though the opium poppy did its bit, too.” He went out whistling, and while Jennie was sitting down to have a nice long cry he was pounding on Miss Alfonse’s door.
Miss Alfonse was certainly in her room. There were rustlings and creakings from inside. But she made no move to open the door. From his pocket Prye took a small triangular piece of metal, a recent gift from a friend of his whose intermittent address was San Quentin, and within a minute the door was unlocked.
Prye rapped once again. “Miss Alfonse, shall I come in or would you prefer to come out?”
“You can come in,” she answered in a flat voice.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, wearing her uniform. Her face was pale and completely without expression.
“Wise guy, eh?” she said.
“I have my talents,” Prye said. “One of them is saving young ladies from certain death. If you’re a lady you qualify. Even if you’re not a lady, somebody probably loves you and I don’t want you to be murdered. At a quarter after six last night you phoned Tom Little. What for?”
“I wanted to play honeymoon bridge and I needed a partner.”
“That’s your attitude, is it?”
“Until I can think of a better one, and I’m not thinking myself into a brain strain for your benefit.”
“I wouldn’t even ask you to,” Prye said. “Miss Jones, though, didn’t mention honeymoon bridge to me, but there was something about a pier. Miss Jones is the switchboard operator at Clayton. She’s got a dozen roses and I’ve got a record of your conversation with Little.”
Miss Alfonse’s face did not change but her fingers plucked at the chenille flowers on her bedspread.
“Mr. Little and I had business together,” she said at last.
“It must have been peculiar business because Tom Little hasn’t been seen since. Here’s another interesting point: at nine o’clock you had your appointment with Little, and an hour later you were throwing a fit in Miss Bonner’s room.”
“The hell I was.”
“That’s her story.”
“She’s an old goat,” Miss Alfonse said tightly.
“Now here’s my idea. On Tuesday you told Constable Jakes that you had an alibi for the time of Joan’s murder. Yesterday you and I had a little chat. At first you were pretty skittish but by the time you left you were feeling good again. I think I know why.”
“All right. Why?”
“Because you didn’t have an alibi but you had suddenly thought of a fine way to get one. It had to be a man because you had already told Jakes you were out with a man that night. It had to be someone who would be glad to provide an alibi for himself, and it couldn’t be Ralph because you have other ideas about Ralph. Tom Little filled the bill nicely. He was one of the chief suspects, he had an elastic code of ethics, and he would be sap enough to fall in with any scheme presented by a lady in the right way. It’s lucky for you that he disappeared, because Little already had an alibi and it wouldn’t have looked well if he had two of them. When you’re counting alibis and not apples, one plus one equals none.”
Miss Alfonse sat rigid, a film of ice forming over her eyes.
“Now just suppose that you met Tom Little as you had planned and told him your intellectual blitz. He would naturally wonder why you were so anxious to have an alibi and it might have occurred to him that your anxiety had its source in a guilty conscience. So Tom says, ‘Nuts to you, Miss Alfonse. I know now who murdered Joan. Wait right there until I go and get a policeman.’ But you don’t like that idea at all. You have given yourself away, you are desperate. You reach down and pick up a rock and several people are given the opportunity to quote ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum.’ As simple as that.”