The Weak-Eyed Bat

“I’m tired. I’m sick, too. It’s been a strain on me. My head hurts. My kidneys are poisoned. That’s what sulfanilamide does, it poisons the kidneys. Mine are all dried up. I must go and find Jennie. I must tell her not to make me any tea tonight because my kidneys are all dried up. I must find Jennie.”

She got to her feet and took a step toward the door.

“Jennie!” she called. “Jennie!”

She stumbled and fell on one knee, clutching at her heart. Prye caught her up and carried her back to the chesterfield. He loosened the neck of her dress and put two fingers lightly on her wrist.

“Jennie,” she whispered, gasping. “Don’t forget — no tea.”

“I’ll tell her,” Prye said unsteadily. “I won’t forget.”

Her face twisted in a spasm of anguish; her body convulsed with pain.

Prye said: “Get my bag and call Innes. It’s angina.”

The little fox in its death throes. The hounds watching, silent. Prye’s two fingers straining for a pulse beat, like two tiny hunters trying to save the little fox when it was too late.

Prye got up quickly and walked to the door.

Chapter Eighteen

Two weeks later a number of changes had taken place in the community. The Little cottage had been let at half price to a young couple who were not superstitious. Nora had painted another sunrise which hung, resplendent, in Prye’s sitting room. Jennie had gone to live with her sister. Susan had bought a new red dress, and Professor Frost was giving his first dinner party in ten years.

Professor Frost struggled with his bow tie and his thoughts.

One spent thirty dollars buying one’s daughter a new dress, then another thirty, he reflected sadly, giving her an opportunity to wear it, and another thirty making oneself conform to the standard set by the new dress. Still, there was a certain gleam in young Bonner’s eye that it might be profitable to foster.

The gleam was very apparent at dinner. Even Susan noticed, and attributed it to the flicker of the candles, or an oncoming fever. She kept her eyes lowered demurely.

“There’s something I can’t understand,” Emily said, thumping the cane which was substituting for her wheelchair for the night. “How could you, a psychiatrist, have missed diagnosing Mary’s condition?”

“Not a fair question,” Nora said. “The defense has had two weeks to prepare his answer.”

Prye smiled. “The defense is ready and offers you the following: I saw Mrs. Little only four times. The first was on Monday after lunch from a distance. The second was on Tuesday morning when she was supposedly having a heart attack and was therefore not in her normal condition. She spoke no more than three sentences. On Wednesday afternoon when I saw her she was hysterical and I administered a sedative. On Wednesday night I had my longest conversation with her, but any peculiarities of speech or action I attributed to the disappearance of her husband and the after-effects of morphine.

“In short, I had no opportunity to examine Mrs. Little under proper conditions, and since I did not question her alibi for the two murders, I was not looking for evidences of insanity. Even now I cannot name definitely her particular mental disease although I’m fairly certain that it was a type of schizophrenia which is nearly always incurable and progressive.”

“But if she actually heard voices and believed in them,” Mr. Smith put in, “why didn’t she tell someone?”

“That would be the usual thing,” Prye said, “but I have had many patients suffering from auditory hallucinations who could and did conceal them. An observant nurse might come upon them in an attitude of listening, or moving their mouths in reply to the voices. Lastly, I offer in my own defense the old truism that the dividing line between sanity and insanity is difficult to fix. Insanity may even be a matter of convention: a Wall Street broker who spends half his time peering at ticker tape would be just another maniac to the Australian aborigines.”

“Darling,” Nora said sweetly, “are you lecturing again?”

“You wanted to know, and when people want to know, I tell them,” Prye said modestly.

“We could make it a sort of quiz night,” Mr. Smith suggested. “One question from each of us. The ladies first, of course. Miss Frost, have you anything to ask?”

Susan blushed a little. “Well, yes. About that — you know — my hand.”

“It was, as Nora said, mostly hocus pocus,” Prye replied. “I wanted to make Jennie feel more at ease when I came to test her hearing. But it served another purpose. Susan’s hand and arm smelled distinctly of oil of lavender, which is one of the constituents of mosquito oil. Now Hattie told me that the only mosquito oil in the house belonged to Joan and was locked in Joan’s room. Susan, on the other hand, had told me that she went to sleep on the beach on Monday night. But Susan was miraculously free of mosquito bites. I gathered then that Susan had seen Joan on Monday and had borrowed the mosquito oil, and therefore could be telling the truth about her movements on Monday night.”