He was taken off me. I sat up, retching and coughing, and color came back into the world. I saw Pryor stagger and then make what must have been a second or third charge at Paul France, trying to get his hands on him. He hit Pryor three times as Pryor came at him, moved almost casually to the side and hit him twice more as Pryor went by. The last blow was decisive. Pryor’s legs worked for three more strides before he went down on his face. The four Pryor females came running down from the cottage, one of them emitting short sharp screams with each stride. John Fidd appeared with a shotgun.
I got to my feet. A lot of little white dots whirred around like so many bees and slowly faded away. France said, “Your girl said to find you and keep an eye on you, bub.”
“Thanks.”
He touched a red mark on his chin and said, speculatively, “Think nothing of it. Nothing at all.”
“Get back,” Fidd snarled. “Get back against that car, both of you.”
France walked directly toward him, took the shotgun, wrenched it away from him, murmuring softly, “Easy, Dad. Easy now.”
The girls had rolled their father over onto his back. Mrs. Pryor was demanding to know what had happened.
I said to France, “I’ve heard a citizen can arrest another citizen. Is that the truth?”
“It’s legal. What have you got on him?”
“He murdered Rolph Olan, Mary Olan and Dodd Raymond.”
Skeeter flew at me like a fat brown robin — a robin with claws. “That’s a damn lie!” she screamed. “You’re a big liar!”
Willy Pryor hadn’t opened his eyes or moved. He opened his mouth and said, “It isn’t a lie. It’s the truth.” He got up slowly and steadily, brushed his women aside and walked toward us. “Which car do you want me in?”
France opened the door of his grey sedan. “Right in here, please.”
I followed the grey car. The Pryor car, with the four females and John Fidd, followed me. It was a bright Sunday and seventeen miles to Warren, with the first part of it through lovely farmland. We went by with our load of heartbreak. The cows didn’t care. The bees didn’t care. The birds didn’t give a damn. It was May with summer coming up.
Kruslov let me sit in on it. He acted like a man who had been hit sharply over the head. He kept staring at Pryor and shaking his head, almost imperceptibly. It was Sunday and it took a little time to gather the official cast.
Willis Pryor sat stolidly, dominating the small room with a sort of sad force and dignity, waiting, motionless, grave. He seemed like the chairman of the board awaiting tardy members with iron patience.
The pasty-faced stenographer uncapped a huge prehistoric fountain pen of a peculiarly poisonous shade of orange. I sat where I could see dark bruises on the left side of Willis Pryor’s jaw.
“I guess we’re ready, Mr. Pryor,” Kruslov said apologetically.
“Shall I tell this all as it happened?”
“Please, sir.”
“My sister Nadine married Rolph Olan. Shortly after marriage he began to make her life a hell on earth. She confided in me, we were always close. I spoke to Rolph several times during the years. He ignored me. He seemed amused by me. His infidelities were becoming notorious. It was no life for my sister. On the day of his death I phoned him at his office. I said I had to speak to him. I insisted. I had prayed for guidance. I wanted to give him one last chance. He picked me up on the corner I mentioned. I said we could talk at his house. I hoped to bring Nadine into the conversation. Nadine was resting. We talked quietly in the study. He told me that Nadine was as tasteless to him as weak tea. He said he would not spend his life chained to the living dead. He said he had decided to divorce her. That was his answer. I excused myself saying I wanted to get a drink of water. I brought the knife back from the kitchen. He had gone into the front hall, to go up the stairs and wake her and tell her his decision. I struck him with the knife. He looked down at it and raised his hand and touched the handle and tried to say something and fell. I went out through the back of the house.
“It never occurred to me that Nadine would be suspected. I hoped the police would suspect some prowler, or some business enemy. After her mind started to go, I told her that I had done it. I told her why. I couldn’t reach her, she didn’t understand what I was saying. I had done that to her. Once I knew she was incurable there seemed little point in confessing. I had my own wife to think about, an infant daughter, another child on the way. I contemplated suicide. I was mentally sick and physically sick for a long time. Eventually I recovered. Had it not been for Rolph’s evil actions, Nadine would not have lost her mind. Once I had decided that, I was able to regain my physical and mental health.”
He was silent for a long time. Kruslov stirred in his chair but did not speak. Pryor’s face was still, and he was far away in old memories.
Pryor looked up with a little start. “Rolph’s death and Nadine’s collapse left me with the responsibility for the school child, Mary, and the infant, John. I had never had any trouble with John. He is brilliant, devious, and of a metaphysical turn of mind. But his mind is stronger than his body. He has never evidenced the weaknesses of the flesh. Mary was a different problem. I have thought about her a great deal. She was born old. She was born with a knowledge of evil. Often as I beat her, I could never subdue the evil in her. Once she became of age and began to receive her own income, I no longer had any hold over her. She hated me. She hated me because of the punishments I had inflicted for her own good. With the devilish wisdom of her black heart, she began to punish me in turn. She decided to debauch me and my daughters.
“She told me of her physical affairs. She flaunted her body at me. She laughed at me and tried to create in me a desire for her flesh. She spoke of my sister, her mother, and inferred that the relationship between us had been diseased, unnatural. I knelt on sharp stones for hours at a time, praying for guidance. I had begun to desire her and I could not cut that evil longing out of my heart.”
In the beginning he had spoken tersely, factually. Now his voice had deepened and there was almost a biblical cadence in his words.
“When she would go away I would begin to heal myself, but on her return I would turn again to paths of error. At last she taunted me with the affair she was having with a married man, Dodd Raymond, son of old friends. She taunted me with that as she had taunted me with vile details of her affair with young Yeagger. She wished to punish me for the fancied cruelties I had practiced on her when she was younger. She spoke of a rented place where she would meet Raymond. I saw that she would spend her life spreading her own kind of evil. I told her her father had been evil and he had died. She looked at me then with a special kind of recognition. Maybe my face had shown her too much. I knew that she had begun to suspect me. I knew then that she would have to die also. Once I had decided it, I felt cleansed.
“When my family went to the lake a week ago last Saturday, a week ago yesterday, I parked near the Locust Ridge Club and followed her in her car when she left. I thought she was with Raymond. I thought they would go to the rented place she spoke of. I followed them until they turned into a driveway in the old part of the city. To make certain, I turned around and went back and turned into the driveway. My headlights were on them and I saw them clearly in carnal embrace. I returned to my home to wait for her. I expected her to be very late. She came sooner than I expected. As with her father, I mercifully decided to give her a last chance. I told her I wished to talk to her.