“I already possess great information of a private nature.” He added tactfully: “I could not divulge except to persons of discretion with the mouth of a clam like Dr. Prye.”
He bowed Prye out of the door.
In the sitting room of Prye’s cottage a slim, middle-aged man with white hair was reciting Euripides to calm himself. The treatment was effective, for when Prye came in he was able to say in an impersonal voice:
“I’ve come for my diary, Dr. Prye.”
Prye, about to make a reply both innocent and crushing, was waved to silence.
“You may read it if you like,” Professor Frost went on, “if you haven’t already done so. But I should like it back. It contains a number of notes I shouldn’t care to lose. Another small matter: don’t allow Joan’s disappearance to mislead you. This is not the first time my daughter has quit my roof.”
“Without her luggage?”
“Yes.”
“Did she have any money with her?”
“Joan has sources of money other than myself.”
“You don’t want to call in the police?”
Frost shook his head. “No.”
“Suppose I call in the police to investigate the assault on me?”
“That’s your affair. Although I know no reason why Joan should attack you and break Miss Bonner’s spotlight I don’t find it impossible to believe she did. You are wondering at my lack of paternal feeling?”
“Oh no,” Prye said politely.
“There are two reasons, I suppose. I have a mind that is dispassionate by nature and by training. And Joan is not my daughter.” He sat back in his chair, completely at ease. “You know, I’ve always wanted to say that to someone. I suppose vanity prevented me. But it is difficult to retain one’s vanity in the presence of a man who has one’s diary in his pocket. I hope it won’t tempt you to blackmail, Prye.”
“No. Blackmail is too dangerous,” Prye said easily.
“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...
Chapter Six
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.
“As a matter of fact, I passed out, and by the time I came to, my ears were bandaged and you know how it is trying to talk over a telephone with your ears bandaged.”
“I do not,” Jakes said coldly. “Start from the beginning. What are you doing up here? Why were you hit over the head?”
Prye told his story, with certain reservations. He left out his interview with Miss Bonner and his discovery of the diary in Joan’s suitcase.
“There were no signs in Miss Frost’s room that she had been murdered there? Or knocked unconscious and taken out through the window?” Jakes said, when Prye had finished.