The Weak-Eyed Bat полностью

“It depends on the blackmailee, I suppose. I don’t think I’d be very dangerous. I have a horror of violence. Perhaps that is why I am such an ineffectual person.”

“Are you proffering me a psychological alibi? If so, I must refuse it. Many people have a horror of violence until they’re faced with the necessity for it.”

“I see,” Frost said, amused. “In the event that my diary contains enough evidence to hang me I should leap at your throat, eh?”

“My head is more vulnerable at present,” Prye said with a grin. “To get back to Joan, what were her relations with Tom Little?”

“Intimate.”

“Does Mrs. Little know of the affair?”

“She’d be a fool if she didn’t. But I’m prepared to believe she is a fool.”

“Did you ever speak to Little about Joan?”

Professor Frost shuddered delicately. “God forbid.”

“How did Susan and Joan get along?”

“By extraordinary sadist-masochist teamwork. Joan gives it and Susan takes it. On the surface, that is. Sometimes I suspect Susan of having an infinitesimal spark of fire, although I’ve never seen it.” He rose from his chair. “You have asked me a great many questions, Dr. Prye. I believe I have acquitted myself nobly under the circumstances.”

Prye smiled. “The circumstances being that it’s none of my business?”

“Exactly. Good morning.”

During the walk home Professor Frost said “O popoi” a number of times. Prye, not being a classicist, simply said “Nuts!” But the spirit was the same.

Shortly afterward Nora appeared dragging her trophies behind her: a moth-eaten bathing suit, a pair of sun glasses with one lens, and five buttons. Her slacks were dotted with burs and dirt. Her opening words were to the effect that she didn’t care whether every man, woman, and child in Muskoka had disappeared, she was going swimming.

“There are a lot of bloodstains,” she added casually.

“Where?” Prye shouted.

“Where you were hit.”

He sat on a rock and watched her dive. When she was out of wind and tricks she swam to the shore and came toward him, her body shining in the sun like a new penny.

“Souvenir of Muskoka,” she said, holding out her hand. “Our own special brand of flotsam and jetsam.”

Prye stared. “Where did you get that?”

She stared, too, her eyes widening. “I don’t know. I just grabbed it under the water.”

It was a thin strand of yellow she held in her hand, and as she spoke a drop of water trickled off the end of it and the end writhed into a small yellow curl.

Lake Rosseau slapped his shores with a chuckle, like a fat evil old man slapping his thighs...

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.