No one answered because there was no one there.
She stood peering out into the darkness for a full minute listening, too frightened to go further and too curious to go back. Gradually her eyes became adjusted to the darkness and she saw at her feet a long white envelope. She stooped and picked it up, conscious of eyes upon her.
A tree rustled beside the veranda and she let out a cry and leaped back into the house. She locked and bolted the door and leaned against it, trembling.
“Holy Moses,” Jennie said reverently.
“Is there another man in your life?” Prye asked Nora.
She was down on her knees in front of the fireplace. In the grate she had collected a pile of paper, wood shavings, and dry timber in the hope that the application of a lighted match would produce a roaring fire. Vast clouds of smoke issuing from the grate hinted at fire but no fire was visible.
“Because if there is another man in your life,” Prye shouted above the crackle, “I wish you would sit down quietly and write him a letter.”
She struck another match and replied absently: “Don’t like writing letters. I like building big homey fires. Have you any marshmallows?”
Prye went over, grasped her hands, and pulled her to her feet.
“We have no marshmallows,” he said as gently as possible. “But we have two murders, and I want to think about them. Think, see?”
“You thought last night,” Nora said practically, “and nothing came of it.”
Prye held her two shoulders in his hands. “Look, if you’re a good girl I’ll marry you.”
“Gentlemen’s agreement, or will you put it in writing?”
“Writing.”
“Do I get kissed?”
She got kissed. Then she sat down and folded her hands primly.
“That was nice,” she said. “All right. Who did the murdering?”
“I don’t know,” Prye said. “I theorized this afternoon but I think I was partly right. Joan was killed because she was hated. It may have been a personal hatred on the part of those who came into daily contact with her like Susan and her father, or an impersonal hatred on the part of someone who hated her for what she was, who thought she wasn’t fit to live.”
“It wasn’t Susan,” Nora said scornfully.
“No? Professor Frost said something peculiar the other day. He told me Susan had a spark of fire some place within her but he’d never seen it. I have — when she was talking about Joan. Susan was out on Monday night. Susan is a nice girl but she is twenty-six and plain and dowdy, and has never been kissed and has never had a pretty dress or been to a dance. And she is in love with Ralph.”
“I knew that a month ago,” Nora said.
“In my profession we regard such paragons as Susan with a cold eye. They have no normal outlets for their feelings. Compared with Joan, Susan is so unattractive that she has come to believe that unattractiveness is a virtue in itself. It is deplorable the value that most women and many men place on physical charm so that the lack of it warps their lives or, more rarely, turns them into geniuses in the artistic fields. If Susan had the nicest legs in Ontario she wouldn’t be Susan, she might even be Joan.
“So we have two sisters, and one of them is beautiful and bad and the other is plain and good. The beautiful but bad is engaged to the man that the plain but good loves and so everybody does not live happily ever after. No — one of them dies. With Joan dead, Ralph is ripe to fall into the nearest arms. Well, there’s Susan’s motive and it’s a strong one. Her opportunity is better than anyone’s. She simply had to wait for Joan to go out, follow her, and kill her. She may have had the bag of stones already prepared, or she may have known that Joan was going to meet someone in the grove of birches, arrived ahead of time, and prepared it then.”
“It was a funny weapon to use for murder,” Nora said. “It shows such economy of thought and effort — to kill and to weight the body down with the same thing. It suggests a neat logical mind, a cold-blooded, detached kind of mind. Like Professor Frost’s. But it’s impossible to think of Professor Frost as a murderer. He’s so mild and harmless.”
“If I remember correctly, seventy percent of the murders in the United States are committed by people who have never been arrested before and who were probably considered mild and harmless. I rather like Frost in the role of murderer. He’s so sure of himself it would only amuse him to see us trying to fasten the crime on him. I don’t mind amusing people but I hate to do it by my blundering ineptitude.”
“He wouldn’t care enough to murder anyone,” Nora said.
“Not ordinarily. But what happened on Monday morning might have swayed him. Frost thinks well of himself and his ability to control situations and people. He wouldn’t have liked Joan stealing his diary and slapping him across the face. But I don’t have to find a motive for Frost. He admitted he had one.”
“He wouldn’t have done that if he were really the murderer,” Nora objected.
Prye smiled dryly. “If Frost is guilty he’ll give us all aid short of war. To admit his motive and his lack of an alibi would merely titillate his sense of humor. If he’s the murderer he won’t be caught.”
“Aren’t you being modest, darling?”
“Never,” Prye said glumly. “I simply recognize a first class opponent when I see one. He has the whip hand to begin with — his part is merely that of passive resistance. Mine is to collect positive proof. He’s cool. He has the ability to make me feel like an ass. He has a charming talent for picking pockets — yes, my pocket! He knows we have nothing definite against him.”
The telephone began to ring, two long and one short.
“Is that your ring?” Nora asked.
“Yes. I’ll get it. Probably Jennie saying Mrs. Little has jumped out of a window.”
He went out to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and said: “Dr. Prye speaking.”
“He’s dead!” Jennie whispered over the phone. “We got a letter. Says to tell Mrs. Little he’s dead. Says to tell her his body—”
“I’ll be right over. Be quiet and don’t make a fuss and don’t say anything to Mrs. Little.”
Chapter Thirteen
Prye turned out the light in the kitchen, opened the door, and went on to the veranda. He gave a long, low whistle and about two hundred yards away a bush began to move. He whistled again, keeping in the shadows, and finally the bush stood straight up and began to walk toward him. It materialized as a policeman wearing a grey-blue uniform.
“Anything wrong, Dr. Prye?” he asked.
“Have you seen anyone going into the Littles’ cottage?”
“Haven’t seen a thing,” the policeman said, sounding rather angry. “It’s too damn dark. But there was a light for a minute on the veranda. Somebody opened the door and looked out.”
“All right. I want to go over there. You may come along and then go and find Inspector White.”
Nora arrived in time to hear him, and she clutched his arm firmly. “Hey. You can’t leave me here.”
“You’ll be safer behind locked doors,” Prye said.
“The hell I will. Either you take me or I yell.”
Prye and the policeman exchanged glances of resignation. Then Prye sighed and put his hand under her arm, and the three of them went down the steps.
They walked close together along the path, their feet sweeping away the silence.
“I knew a girl once,” Nora said by way of conversation, “who used to have to walk through a place like this every night. She used to pretend she was crazy — you know, muttering to herself — so that if anyone crazy wanted to attack her the crazy person would think she was crazier and wouldn’t. Should we?”