The Weak-Eyed Bat

“After I left this afternoon did she go out?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Did anyone come to see her?”

“Assuredly not. I have watched the doors with the eyes of a lynx.”

Prye went back upstairs, rapped lightly on Emily’s door, and walked in.

“What,” Emily demanded, “is going on here tonight? First Miss Shane forces herself on me with the thinnest story I have ever heard—” Her voice faded as Prye continued to stare at her.

“What have you been doing all evening?” he asked gravely.

Her eyes narrowed, almost disappeared under fat lids. “What for? What’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” Prye said.

“I’ve been sleeping.”

“It’s amazing how much sleep the people in this vicinity require. Susan sleeps on the beach. Tom sleeps in the sitting room. You sleep—”

“I was doped,” she said acidly. “I never go to sleep after dinner.”

“After one of your dinners I’m surprised you don’t sleep forever. Who doped you? And why? And with what? And when?”

Nora seized her opportunity to slip quietly through the door.

“That’s your business,” Emily said. “Aren’t you a doctor?”

Prye knelt down and looked carefully at her eyes.

“Your pupils seem normal to me, Emily. That, and the fact that you are a notorious liar, almost disqualifies your statement. Where’s Miss Alfonse tonight?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her all day.”

“Is that unusual?”

“I give her one day a week off and she asked for today.”

“Who brings up your dinner when Alfonse is off duty?”

“The cook.”

“And you think the cook doped you?”

Emily banged her fist on the arm of her wheelchair. “No, I don’t! But someone did.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“Coffee taste all right tonight?”

“Very peculiar,” she said firmly. “It tasted very peculiar, now that I remember it.”

“I understand you’ll be ninety soon, Emily. People of ninety usually haven’t a keen sense of taste.”

“I— Nonsense!”

“They imagine things, too, sometimes, and invent things.”

“I’m sixty-five,” she said in a resigned voice.

“That’s better. Much more convincing. And you’ll want to be as convincing as possible when Inspector White gets here.”

“Why?”

“Because Miss Alfonse has disappeared and there’s a pool of blood in her room.”

The breath was pushed out of her and she folded like an accordion.

“Think it over, Emily,” Prye said. “Here is how it will look to Inspector White. Miss Alfonse met Tom Little last night and witnessed his murder. Tonight she disappears from a room on the second floor of your house with you and Ralph a few yards away.”

Emily had recovered. She took a wisp of handkerchief from one of her innumerable hiding places and dabbed at her eyes. She stopped crying in a minute to ask: “What’s the second floor got to do with it?”

“Miss Alfonse’s door was locked. Apart from the difficulty of the murderer getting past Wang downstairs there was the difficulty of getting into Alfonse’s room to kill her. It’s odd that Miss Alfonse, who was very much on her guard against just this, should have let anyone into her bedroom, unless she couldn’t have stopped him. This is your house. I presume you have a set of keys to the various doors, and if Miss Alfonse was, by any chance, doped, it wouldn’t have been difficult for you or Ralph to get into her room. And it might be rather cute of you to have suggested that you were doped before anyone discovered that she was.”

“And the body?” Emily asked calmly.

“Flung from the window perhaps.”

She began to laugh, first softly, and then with uncontrollable mirth.

“I didn’t know I was that funny,” Prye said coldly.

Emily wiped her eyes. “Y-you are. Y-you’re a s-scream! You 1-1-look so s-serious!” she gasped.

“Well, damn it, I am serious.”

“I know. That’s what’s so f-funny.”

Prye grasped the handle of her wheelchair and wheeled her toward the bathroom. “The bathtub seems called for.”

“Stop!” she yelled.

Prye stopped. Emily’s face had lost its color.

“Not that bathtub,” she said in a sickly voice.

Ten minutes later Inspector White and two policemen were examining the room formerly occupied by Miss Alfonse. Prye stood by the window, peering at the ledge and then out into the darkness below.

Inspector White straightened up to his full height and let out an involuntary cry of rage.

“It’s appalling!” he shouted in Prye’s direction. “It’s absolutely incredible that someone could get into this room, murder a woman, dispose of the body, and walk away scot-free. It will cost me my job. It will terrorize the countryside. We will lose our tourist trade and be derided by the newspapers. Will you stop fingering that ledge and listen to me?”

“Sure,” Prye said. “But I don’t give a damn about the newspapers or the tourist trade. All I want to know is, where is Miss Alfonse? If she was flung from this window and then dragged down to the lake you’d expect to find some blood splattered around. But there isn’t any, except that neat little pool on the floor. You’ve been on the scene of a murder before. Did you ever see one arranged like this?”

“You’ve missed something,” the inspector said in a hard voice. “Come here.”