“No one would meet there. It’s swarming with mosquitoes.”
“Yes, but isn’t it a nice spot for a murder? Dark, cozy, warm. And the mosquitoes keep away other people.”
“Excluding you,” Nora said. “So the idea is that you walked in on a murder, and in order to teach you not to walk in on murders the murderer tapped you on the head?”
“That’s it,” Prye said. “Good, don’t you think?”
“So where is the body?”
“I’m not that far yet. After all, you can do a lot of things with a body. Bury it. Throw it into the lake. Even put it up a bushy tree. I knew a fellow once who fixed up a pulley, hanged his wife, and left her in a tree.”
“I’ll bet you know lots of lovely, lovely people. Did you go to school with Jack the Ripper and send him valentines?”
Prye got up from the table, grinning. “I’ll be gone for some time. I want to see if anyone is missing. If you’d like to make yourself useful you could organize a search.”
“What do I look for?”
“Everything. Bodies, bloodstains, weapons, signs of recent digging. I lost a collar button here two years ago. You might keep an eye out for that, too.”
“Very funny,” Nora said.
Miss Hattie Brown was never at her brightest in the mornings anyway, and when she opened the back door and beheld an incredibly tall Hindu wearing a yellow turban she let out a shriek and started to close the door. Prye, his hand on the outside knob, smiled winningly at her.
“Why, Hattie. Don’t you remember me? Dr. Prye. I treated your tonsillitis a couple of years ago.”
Remembrance came in a rush. It was difficult to forget a ten percent silver-nitrate solution applied to a tender area.
“I remember you,” she said tartly. “For a minute I couldn’t understand your rigging.” Her expression made it clear that she still didn’t understand it.
Prye touched the yellow scarf. “This? Merely to protect my head. I find the sun up here too strong for the first day or so. Is Professor Frost up?”
“He’s up, but he’s not down,” Hattie said. “He said good morning to me through the door.”
“How’s Miss Susan?”
Hattie sniffed faintly. “She always goes out half an hour before breakfast for one of them quiet times of hers.”
“Where?”
“In the woods. She’s got a place built there between trees where she sits and thinks.”
“And where’s Joan?”
The air whistled through Hattie’s adenoids. “I don’t know about Miss Joan. I left her tray outside her room as usual, but it’s still there.”
“Did you knock?”
“Sure I knocked, but she didn’t answer. Sometimes she does that just on purpose, but still, after that business about the taxi last night, I don’t like it.”
The story of the taxi driver changed hands.
“I think I’ll see Professor Frost,” Prye said when she had finished.
Hattie showed Prye into the sitting room and went upstairs. In five minutes Professor Frost appeared in the doorway, smiling, his right hand extended.
He was wearing a dark red smoking jacket. His hair was somewhat whiter than Prye remembered it, but otherwise he was the same. His face was deeply tanned and set in a smile that always seemed sardonic though occasionally it wasn’t. His features were almost theatrically handsome except for his left cheek which was swollen and blue. One eyebrow was slightly higher than the other and it gave his face an expression of amused contempt. Prye felt, as he had always felt in Frost’s presence, like a freshman with a theme overdue.
“Hello, Prye.” They shook hands, smiling at each other rather uneasily.
Frost waved him to a chair. “Sit down. It’s good to see you again. You’re looking well, although yellow is not your color.”
Prye sat down. “You haven’t changed,” he said pointedly. “I've always admired your technique of making people uncomfortable.”
Frost spread his hands in a deprecatory gesture. “So few appreciate it, and I like appreciation, so I’m really glad you’ve come. Did you want to see me about anything in particular?”
“I thought you wanted to see me” Prye said.
“Did you?”
“Well, did you?”
“No.” Frost smiled dryly. “Perhaps I’m hypersensitive but the conversation appears rather odd to me. Shall we begin again? First, I take it that this isn’t a social call.”
“That’s right. Miss Bonner’s spotlight was broken last night and I’m trying to find out who did it.”
“That hardly seems worthy of your talents, Prye. Sorry I can’t help you. Immediately after dinner I retired to my study to work.”
“And stayed there?”
“And stayed there.”
“I wonder if Susan heard anything,” Prye said casually.
Professor Frost smiled. “I wonder.”
“You’re fencing.”
“Of course I’m fencing,” Frost said mildly. “I’m waiting for you to be frank with me. You see, there’s about an inch of white cloth protruding from your headdress. It looks like a bandage, though I may be wrong.”
Prye felt himself blushing.
“Apparently,” Frost went on, “you have a head injury. Now if you had sustained it in an ordinary manner, you wouldn’t circumlocute before breakfast. So I infer that someone struck you and you want to know if I did it. I did not. Now perhaps you will allow me to adjust your — ah, turban?”
Prye, his face vividly pink, suffered in silence as Professor Frost deftly tucked the bandages beneath the yellow scarf.
“Ah, that’s better,” Frost said. “One cannot be expected to see the back of one’s own head. Are your injuries serious?”
“No, they’re not,” Prye said crossly. “I’d like to see Joan, if I may.”
“You have my permission, certainly, but I don’t guarantee her availability. It is some twenty hours since I’ve seen her. She intended to leave here last night. Hattie no doubt told you about the cabdriver’s calling?” Prye nodded, and Frost went on. “It leads me to believe that Joan is following her not infrequent custom of locking herself in her room to sulk. Spasmodic hibernation is one of her favorite devices.”
“May I look to make sure?”
“If you must. Joan’s room is on this floor. You might try peering into the windows. Hattie will provide you with a stepladder.” He raised one eyebrow, and Prye’s ears under the bandages began to get warm. “In the interests of knowledge I would gladly offer you my shoulders to stand on, Prye. But I am not a young man, and I am particularly fond of this smoking jacket.”
Prye went out, muttering under his breath. The ladder was located and propped against the side of the house, and Prye, hoping vainly that the earth would swallow him, mounted under the interested gaze of Hattie. He could see nothing of Joan, so he tried the window, found it unlocked, and maneuvered himself into the room.
A gust of heavy perfume hit him and he winced and left the window open.
It was, he thought, just an ordinary female room, with a lot of bottles and jars and a frilly bedspread. Then he saw a suitcase standing on the floor near the bed. It was packed but not closed.
He knelt beside the suitcase and inspected its contents: a few scant pieces of underwear, a negligee, three dresses. All of the dresses looked new and quite expensive.
“Wonder why she was traveling light,” he said aloud. His eye went to the clothes closet, packed tightly with dresses and coats. “If she intended to stay away, why leave behind most of her clothes? Answer: she intended to buy new clothes. Where was she getting the money? Professor Frost? Unlikely. Susan? She hasn’t any. Ralph Bonner? Perhaps. Tom Little? Definitely no. Tom gets his money from his wife and she could hardly be expected to finance his elopement. Miss Bonner seems the best answer.”