“God forbid,” Professor Frost said fervently, “that I should go down in history as an acquaintance of Tom Little’s. But I see your point of view. I can only say that I know nothing about his disappearance. I was, as usual, working alone in my study.”
“You own this cottage?”
“Yes.”
“Come here every summer?”
“Yes.”
“Have you a car?”
“A kind of car.”
“But like the others up here you usually travel around in boats?”
“I don’t travel around at all,” Frost said, amused. “I don’t like boats. My daughter Susan attends to the necessary shopping.”
“But you have a boat?”
“Two of them. A canoe and a dinghy with an outboard motor. They belong to my daughters.”
“May I see your boathouse?”
“Of course. Susan will take you.”
“I prefer to go alone.”
Inspector White came back in ten minutes, looking hot and harassed.
“You may have had two boats,” he said slowly, “but you haven’t any now.”
At that moment Dr. Prye was straggling up the lane. He was extremely warm. The sun and wind had painted his face a brilliant red, and by way of minor irritation his shoes were filled with a pound of small pebbles and sand. He felt precisely in the right mood to deal with Miss Emily Bonner.
“Miss Bonner,” Wang told him, “has given orders and I find myself grieved to be unable to admit you.”
“We’ll fix that,” Prye said grimly. “Out of my way, purveyor of demons.”
Wang stood back, grinning. “In the event that you force your way in I shall be held blameless. For the sake of verisimilitude you may push me aside with violence.”
Prye pushed him aside and made for the stairs. He knocked lightly on Emily’s door and she called out: “Who’s there?”
Prye raised his voice to the approximate pitch of Wang’s. “The indescribable doctor is storming the portals with a million men and three machine guns.”
He opened the door and went in. “Are you presentable, Emily, or shall I close my eyes?”
“How did you get in?” she demanded. “Get out. Go away.”
“Later. Mind if I sit down?”
“I mind very much. Wang! Wang!”
At the ninth “Wang” the little Chinaman appeared at the door wreathed in smiles.
“Miss Bonner desires me?”
“Stop that incessant grinning and go down and phone the police. I want this man arrested for... for—”
“Attempted rape,” Prye suggested.
“I want him arrested for something! Hurry up. I’m going to faint.”
Wang departed, and Prye sat down and lit a cigarette. The silence was broken only by the sound of Emily’s heavy breathing.
“I’m a louse,” Prye said to open the conversation.
Emily glared at him without speaking.
“No one but a louse,” he continued, “would browbeat a poor old crippled lady on the point of fainting, although I may say that when ordinary people faint the blood leaves the head whereas your blood, Emily, seems to be all concentrated in your head. That is if the color of your face is any indication.”
Emily made no reply, and in a short time Wang came back.
“I am desolated that the police are not in,” he announced. “They have all gone swimming, owing to the unkindly weather.”
“Most unfortunate,” Prye said, “although one can see their point of view.”
“You’re lying,” Emily said flatly. “This man has bribed you.”
“My impeccable honesty has never been questioned. I am stabbed by the dagger of distrust, and I go to my room to bleed in silence.” He bowed himself out.
“You have corrupted my servants,” Emily said in a tear-laden voice, “broken into my house, and insulted my nephew and myself, merely because some homicidal maniac escaped from an institution and killed one of our little community.”
“A homicidal maniac with bushy hair and big hands all-the-better-to-strangle-you-with-my-dear, and a wild gleam in his eye? I’ve read of them but I’ve never seen one. The bushiest hair I know belongs to a musician, the biggest hands to a sculptor, and the wildest gleam to a fellow who got a tip on a sure thing in the third at Pimlico. The homicidal maniac of fiction has no prototype in fact.”
“How interesting,” Emily said coldly.
“More interesting, I think, is the fact that the insane and the sane kill for exactly the same motive: to make life easier for themselves, to rid themselves of money troubles, wives, mistresses, rivals, grudges, or fears, real and imagined. If an insane man appears to kill without motive it is because we do not know enough of his history to find the motive. His victim, for instance, might bear a strong resemblance to his uncle Theodore who once gave him a chocolate-coated onion on April Fools’ Day, and the crime becomes a motivated one. The difference, then, between the murders committed by the sane and the insane lies in their attitude to consequences. The sane man will go to infinite pains to avoid the consequences. The really insane man will not try to avoid them because he thinks he is doing the right thing. I have used as examples the two extremes, sanity and insanity. But there are middlemen.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The middlemen are the dangerous ones. They are able to keep their places in society, and to lead, on the surface, normal lives. They may be considered slightly ‘odd’ but if they are lucky enough to avoid great shocks or strain they may continue to pass as normal beings. An automobile accident, a serious illness, the death of a close relative — any of these may be the detonator. The obsession, the phobia, or whatever has been festering in the mind, passes out of control.”
He paused, staring at her rather ferociously, and she said with a laugh: “You should have been a missionary, Prye. You love to enlighten. Do you think I’m your middleman?”
Without answering he got up and went over to the window.
“Seeing a storm from this room must be rather terrifying, especially a storm in the grand manner like last night’s.”
Emily sniffed faintly. “Do you call that a storm? Wait until you see a real one.”
“Don’t you have trouble with the servants during a blow?”
“They get used to it as I did. All except that sniveling little wretch of an Alfonse. She was quite hysterical. I almost sent for you.”
“Really. What time was that?”
“Around ten, I suppose.”
“She got over it all right?”
Emily nodded grimly. “After I stuck her head in the bathtub she did.”
“What bathtub?”
“My bathtub. What does it matter what bathtub?”
“I was simply wondering whether she came in here to have her hysterics and why she didn’t come sooner. The storm began at least an hour before that.”
“Oh. That is curious, isn’t it? Well, I can’t help you. All I know is that she came in here shrieking at ten o’clock.”
“And what did you do?”
“There was only one thing I could do. I held her over my knee and wheeled into the bathroom and pushed her into the tub. Then I turned on the cold water.”
Prye threw back his head and let out a roar of delight.
“What’s so funny?” Emily said.
“The thought of two overweight women dashing around a bathroom in a wheelchair.”
“It doesn’t amuse me in the least,” she said coldly. “Now I suppose you intend to go and browbeat my nurse so that she’ll be completely useless for a week. That will mean another seventy-five dollars wasted.”
“Do you pay that woman seventy-five dollars a week?”
“Of course. I have to pay my servants well for the inconvenience of being snowbound three months of the year.”
“Where did you get Alfonse?”