Miss Alfonse got up and went over to the window. Without turning her head she said: “You mean he’s dead?”
“We think so,” Prye said.
“What did I do with the body?”
Prye went over to the window and stood beside her and they both looked out at the lake. It was dimpling in the sun like a fat baby.
“Nasty place to end up, isn’t it?” Prye said. “Joan knows about that. I guess Tom knows, too. Funny about Tom. You’d expect him to have more sense than to go traipsing about in the woods with someone he scarcely knew. People take foolish risks sometimes. When someone has committed one murder the second is easier. The third? The third is the simplest of all. The murderer is in good training.”
Miss Alfonse turned on him savagely. “What in hell are you talking about?”
Prye did not raise his voice. “You. You’re the third.”
For a minute the silence was so thick that Prye’s skin began to crawl with invisible insects. Then he heard Emily shouting “Wang!” and he began to smile.
“How much are you getting?” he asked.
“For what?”
“Keeping your mouth shut.”
“I don’t know anything. I didn’t keep that date with Tom Little. I’m scared of thunderstorms. I wouldn’t go out in one unless I had to.”
“You had to,” Prye said.
She shook her head.
“You’re being very naive, Miss Alfonse, to trust a murderer.”
“I won’t,” she said in a firm voice. “I know what I’m doing. What’s more, I know what you’re doing. You’re bluffing, and you’re a mile wide of the mark.”
“If you say so,” Prye agreed politely.
“I’m not worried about not having an alibi. A lot of other people haven’t. And I’m not worried about getting a bash on my head for the simple reason that I don’t intend to turn my back to anyone. Not even to you, Dr. Prye.”
She had backed to the door, and now she opened it and waited for him to go out. He heard the lock slipping into place behind him.
It was nearly four o’clock when he arrived at his cottage. Nora and Inspector White were waiting for him in the sitting room, and he greeted them gloomily and flung himself into a chair.
“What’s the matter?” Nora asked.
“The heat,” Prye said. “And murders. And storms and liars. If this were an epidemic of typhoid, we’d inoculate. But it looks like an epidemic of murder.”
Inspector White coughed gently. “In my own way I have inoculated.”
“Have you men posted at each end of the lane and throughout the woods? Have you a string of spotlights put up? Have you told everyone to stay inside and lock their doors? It may sound drastic but I for one would rather be drastic than dead.”
“I have sent for more men,” Inspector White said. “But there are only a limited number available and the commissioner—”
“To hell with the commissioner,” Prye said. “If there aren’t enough men, why doesn’t he hire some deputies?”
“Could I help?” Nora said in a small voice. “I can fire a gun.”
“The trick is to hit something,” Prye said. He turned to Inspector White. “You have a fine reputation, Inspector. You understand criminals and how they work. You know all about fingerprints and poroscopy and moulages and ballistics and the other tools of crime detection. But I don’t think these murders are in your field at all. I think they’re in mine. I think we are dealing with a mind that believes it is divinely inspired to dispense justice, with a person who considers himself an instrument of God.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m guessing, I’m having hunches, my subconscious is getting up steam. Call it what you like. But I assure you that I would rather deal with the lowest gangster on the continent than with one of these instruments of God. Nothing can stop them, you see. They’re not afraid of the laws in this world or in the next. They are simply and irrevocably and terrifyingly right.
“There are dozens of these people in the violent wards of institutions. They perform strange and wonderful rituals at the dictates of this inner voice that they call God. You’ve never been in a violent ward. They don’t encourage visitors because it isn’t safe. You wouldn’t like to go through one. I saw a nurse putting up a Christmas tree one day last December and the next day the tree was gone except for the main trunk. There wasn’t a piece of tinsel or an ornament or a shred of evergreen left. We operated on the man who ate it but he died anyway. At home I have a collection of fifty-seven articles taken from a woman’s stomach, including a spectacles frame and eleven nails. She died, too.
“Even in sane people, or those who pass for sane, we sometimes find this terrible compulsion, this overwhelming obedience to a voice within themselves. Sometimes the commands are trivial — ‘Always lick a stamp from left to right.’ Sometimes they’re important — ‘Kill Joan Frost.’ In one case it’s superstition or a compulsion neurosis. In the other, it’s murder, murder at the bidding of God and for the good of all, murder for the sake of justice. A man obsessed by the idea of justice for his race is murdering half of Europe. And close beside us a man or woman has taken justice into his own hands and doles it out with a bag of stones and an ax.”
He sat down suddenly and smiled.
“Impassioned oratory is not my strong suit.”
Nora was staring at him, half-hypnotized.
“Is it true?” she whispered.
“Is what true?”
“About the Christmas tree?”
“Certainly it’s true.”
She got up quickly and left the room. Inspector White’s voice was rather uncertain. “I hope you’re wrong. I’ve never had anything to do with a maniac.”
“Not exactly a maniac,” Prye smiled. “Our murderer is living, outwardly at least, a normal life. He has an obsession which he is still sane enough to keep to himself. He may be obeying the laws of God, you see, but he is well aware of the laws of man. An obsession is, after all, merely an idea which has gotten out of control, just as a phobia is a fear that has gotten out of control. We all have phobias to some extent. My own is acrophobia. I’m terrified of heights. I also have a phobia of having a phobia which I suppose would be called phobia-phobia if anyone were silly enough to name it. Don’t mind me, Inspector, I always talk too much when I’m tired, which brings us to that controversial question: What is tiredness? Shall we go into it?”
“Not now,” the inspector said. “Besides, what good would it do to know what tiredness is? When I’m tired I rest, and then I am no longer tired.”
“Simply and beautifully said. What this country needs is more simple and beautiful sayings said by more simple and beautiful people.”
Inspector White rose briskly. “You’d better rest, Prye. I’m expecting some men at four-thirty. By the way, you were right about the canoe. It belonged to Joan Frost. But the dinghy with the outboard motor is also missing, so dream about that, will you?”
He went out, and in ten minutes Prye was asleep stretched out on the leather couch. Nora found him there later, and feeling tenderly maternal she covered him with a blanket although the thermometer was near the 90° mark.
At half-past eight on Wednesday evening Jennie Harris was in the sitting room of the Littles’ cottage working on the afghan that was to become famous in a certain area of Muskoka. She crocheted absently, one eye on the clock and one ear cocked for any sounds upstairs. But when a sound finally came it was not from upstairs but from the front door. Later Jennie described the knock as “soft and mysterious.” She heard no footsteps, and her hearing, she said, was very good considering that she was over sixty.
She put down her afghan and went to the door. She was not frightened. If, as Hattie Brown had told her, there were fifty policemen guarding the community, what was there to be afraid of? Nothing, absolutely nothing. But her feet faltered, and she called out, “Who’s there?” before she unbolted the door.