“You’d better help me move the invalid.”
The driver eased Dinah out of the back seat and propped her up on the running hoard.
“Want me to sober her up a hit?” he asked Prye. “Just so’s she can walk in the house?”
“Just so’s,” Prye said. “It’s another buck for you.”
The driver supported Dinah by draping her over his left arm and with his right he gave her a smart whack on the rear. She let out a yell and straightened up, hanging on to the door of the car.
“I’m shot,” she said. “I’m shot.”
Prye dispensed another dollar. “Pretty,” he said. “There are certain advantages in not being a gentleman.”
“You bet,” the driver agreed, and climbed back into his car.
Dinah made the front steps nicely. Prye rang the bell, and Jackson appeared. When he saw Dinah he began to grin.
“You lovely boy,” Dinah said. “Could you spare a drink? I’ve been shot.”
“I don’t know how you old Harvard men react to such a situation,” Prye said. “But I hope you’re the executive type who’ll take over.”
“I’ve taken over before, sir,” Jackson said. He offered his arm to Dinah and she took it with a delighted smile. “Shall I escort you upstairs, Mrs. Revel?”
“Isn’t he gallant?” she asked Prye. “He doesn’t maul me the way you did, Paul.”
Jackson led her upstairs. Dinah’s voice floated down: “Honestly, Jackson, you’d never guess what Paul did to me! You’d never guess!”
“I’m a good guesser,” Jackson said, flinging an evil grin down at Prye.
“He hit me on the unmentionable,” Dinah said with dignity.
A couple of doors slammed upstairs and soon Jackson reappeared in the hall.
“I left Mrs. Revel with Miss Shane,” he told Prye.
“Fine,” Prye said coldly. “Fine. Was she telling Nora — was she talking about—?”
“Oh, yes sir,” Jackson said. “She was quite aggrieved at your little — ah, lapse. The rest of the family are in the drawing room, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, thanks,” Prye said bitterly. “You’ve done more than I considered humanly possible.”
He turned and went toward the drawing room. The opening of the door let out a babble of voices.
Mrs. Shane was occupying the center of the floor. One hand was raised and her mouth was open, as if Prye’s entrance had interrupted her in the middle of an emphatic sentence. She rustled toward him immediately.
“Come in, Paul. We are having a council of war.”
“About the poisoning?”
Mrs. Shane was reproachful. “Of course not. That’s the inspector’s job. This is about the wedding presents.”
Prye gave Dennis Williams a cool nod, Aspasia a smile, and strolled over to the fireplace.
“Personally,” he said, “I have no use for fifteen coffee tables so I suggest returning fourteen of them. Use the same principle throughout.”
Aspasia was watching him with her small, malignant eyes narrowed. She was sitting in a comer of the room in a chair much too big for her. Her feet didn’t quite reach the floor though she held them stiff and straight as if they did. She was nearly sixty, very dainty and neat to the top of her soft white hair. She reminded Prye of Jane until he met her eyes. They were not Jane’s vacuously pretty eyes; they were old and bitter and cold eyes.
“Dr. Prye chooses to jest,” she said. Her voice was soft and sibilant like a lady librarian’s.
Mrs. Shane said, “Dennis thinks, and I agree, that you should retain the presents and have the wedding as soon as possible, say on Monday. Jane must be perfectly well again. The hospital phoned to say she’s coming home tonight.”
Aspasia said in her genteel whisper, “The hospitals are overcrowded. They are turning people out before they should. She may die.”
“You are being clairvoyant again, Aspasia,” Mrs. Shane said coldly.
“I am sensitive to atmosphere. It is foolish to plan weddings in an atmosphere of death.”
“She isn’t dead, Aspasia.”
“No?” Her voice trailed upward into a question mark.
Prye went over to Dennis and said in an undertone,
“Dinah’s back. Soused.”
Dennis smiled. “I thought she would be. Any word of Duncan?”
“No.”
“He’ll be soused too. It’s epidemic. The police are looking for him.”
Prye said, “What for?”
“Something about a pitcher of water,” Dennis said thoughtfully. “Jackson told me.”
Prye turned to go out again. He glanced at Aspasia and stopped. She was staring at the window over his shoulder.
“That bird,” she said in a choked whisper.
Prye looked around and saw that a small black bird was perching on the window ledge. “Looks like a starling,” he said.
“They’re pests,” Mrs. Shane said. “Thousands of them in this district.”
“What is it doing on the window?” Aspasia was still staring at it. The bird tapped its beak against the pane with a quick, insolent movement.
Dennis mumbled, “What in hell do birds do on windows?”
“It is a raven,” Aspasia said.
“Nonsense,” her sister replied brusquely.
“It is a raven, I say!” Aspasia’s voice was shriller, and a flush was spreading over her face, curiously uneven, like pink paint spilling out of a can. “And Duncan is here now.”
“Maybe it’s a bat and Duncan is a vampire,” Dennis said.
The bird twisted its neck impudently, tapped the pane again with its beak, and hopped away.
“Strange little creature,” Mrs. Shane said, smiling.
“Strange,” Aspasia repeated dully. “Yes, it is strange. I must tell Duncan; warn him.”
“What on earth—?”
Aspasia waved her sister to silence and turned to Prye. “Nora tells me you are literate, Dr. Prye. Perhaps you know what happened to another Duncan—”
Prye wanted to laugh. She looked like a vindictive little elf. “This isn’t one of my literate days,” he said.
“The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.”
The smile froze on Dennis’ face. He strode over to her and grasped Aspasia’s shoulder.
“So you know,” he whispered. “So you know.”
Aspasia slipped out of his grasp and crumpled on the floor. Dennis stared down at her for a moment, then walked toward the door with the strange, lumbering gait of a spider.
Prye was too surprised to stop him. Mrs. Shane was bending over Aspasia, patting her wrists and telling her in an exasperated voice not to be a fool, that the damn bird was only a starling. She straightened up in a minute and met Prye’s eyes.
“This is the first time anyone has taken Aspasia’s predictions seriously,” she said dryly. “I don’t wonder it was a shock. Fetch the smelling salts, will you?”
4
Aspasia passed from a coma into hysterics without going through an intermediate stage which would permit questioning. Aspasia’s hysterics, like everything else about her, were subdued and ladylike so that no one in the house was aware of the scene in the drawing room except those who were there.
Dennis Williams had shut himself up in his room on the third floor and refused to admit Prye or Mrs. Shane. They went downstairs again, Prye frowning, Mrs. Shane still calm but annoyed with Dennis.
“Of course Aspasia’s prediction — if it was a prediction — was sheer accident,” she said briskly. “It has no bearing on the poisoning.”
Prye said nothing.
Her voice became a little sharper. “Paul, you surely don’t believe in this telepathy nonsense?”