Wang turned to leave, and as he passed Prye one yellow eyelid descended on one bright black eye.
Inspector White did not approve of swearing but Prye’s, “Damn that man!” was a kind of vicarious catharsis. He whirled up the steps with the delicacy of a hurricane and caught Miss Emily Bonner in the act of transferring herself from a frilly pink negligee to an equally frilly green negligee.
Emily was not discomfited. She fixed him with a cold eye and said to Prye: “I don’t like the company you keep, Prye. Remove it while I finish dressing.”
“I have some questions for you to answer, Miss Bonner,” Inspector White said ominously. “And Dr. Prye will take notes.”
Emily murmured, “Indeed?” and went on tying a green ribbon. Prye took refuge in a corner of the room and pulled out a notebook and pen.
“We’ll start with Monday morning,” the inspector said. “You telephoned your bank and made arrangements for the delivery of a large sum of money.”
“I did.”
“Blackmail money?”
“No. My life holds no secrets. The money was an insurance policy on Ralph’s happiness. Joan telephoned me on Monday morning and said that she would leave Muskoka if I gave her five thousand dollars. I made the arrangements immediately.” She smiled faintly. “I’ve always been good at spotting a bargain.”
“What was to be the method of transferring this money?”
“That was another stipulation of Joan’s: I was to bring it to her in person. I believe she meant it to be an added humiliation.”
“She specified the meeting place?”
“Yes. ‘Susan’s Sit-Out’ as she called it. I expect the allusion was to sitting out a dance. Anyway, I agreed. I told Miss Alfonse she could have the evening off to go to a movie, and I left the house about a quarter after eight. No one saw me leave. I’ve told Prye the rest of it. Must I repeat?”
“Yes,” the inspector said abruptly. “Why are you confined to a wheelchair if you can walk by yourself?”
Emily showed no trace of embarrassment. “Prye could probably explain it to you better than I can. But I expect it’s because I have no husband and no children and because I’m ugly and fat. But mostly I think it was because I was tired, much too tired to be anything but an onlooker.”
Prye looked up from his book. “ ‘And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt, Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.’ ”
“Yes. I felt like that,” Emily said. “I simply went back to my four walls, like the old bat that I am.” Her huge body shook with laughter.
The inspector waited for her to stop. “All right. You left the house and then what happened?”
“I didn’t want Ralph to see me, of course, for a number of reasons. When I got outside I saw the spotlight, and since the switch is in the kitchen I threw a stone at the thing and broke it. I am not used to walking or to keeping rendezvous in dark woods, so I’m afraid I lost my courage. I returned to the house.”
“You still saw no one?”
“No one. I went back to bed and Miss Alfonse found me there a few minutes later.”
“How many minutes?”
“Possibly five or ten.”
“Then what did you do?”
Emily smiled at him. “I trembled, Inspector White, I shook and trembled. Naturally I had to raise a row about the spotlight because I didn’t want anyone to know I had broken it myself. I was afraid of what Joan would do when I didn’t meet her to hand over the money, so I telephoned the police, ostensibly to find out who broke the spotlight, actually, of course, to protect Ralph and myself”
“Protect you?” White repeated. “You were afraid of the girl?”
“I think it’s wise to be afraid of someone who is capable of anything,” Emily said calmly. “Joan’s ego was inflated like a barrage balloon.”
Prye stopped writing. “Delusions of grandeur. A symptom common to many mental diseases but not necessarily indicative of one. A mild type of this delusion is exhibited by people who are compensating for a physical defect or social and financial inferiority.”
White put up his hand. “That’s enough. I merely want to know whether you considered Joan Frost capable of violence and of inspiring Miss Bonner with fear.”
“Yes, and yes,” Prye said.
White thanked him dryly and returned to Miss Bonner. “We come to Tuesday. Go on.”
“On Tuesday morning I saw Constable Jakes taking Joan out of the water. I have a pair of field glasses. Since I have more than once observed Prye staring suspiciously at my contours you may know about the glasses. They keep me amused. I saw the bag tied around Joan’s waist and knew she had been murdered, so I kept quiet about the money. Prye, however, is a congenital snoop. How did you guess about the five thousand dollars, Prye?”
Prye grinned. “Your contours again, Emily. You have improbable bulges which lend themselves to odd interpretations. Besides, Joan wouldn’t have departed without money and you seemed the most likely source.”
“You are quite impossible, Prye,” Emily said.
The inspector intervened. “What did you do on Tuesday night after dinner?”
“Nothing in particular. I read for a while, watched the storm when it came up, and the rest of the time I just sat. I realize that people who just sit are highly suspicious characters but that’s what I did. At ten o’clock Alfonse burst into the room with a case of hysterics. I treated her as I saw fit and packed her off to bed. Have you found her, by the way?”
“Yes. This morning.”
“Well?”
“She was drowned,” White said slowly. “Apparently it was an accidental death.”
“Apparently? Don’t you know?”
“It was an accident in that she drowned accidentally. But the circumstances of her going for a swim at that time of night—”
“For a swim?” Emily echoed. “That’s absurd. She was afraid of the water at night. She had always lived in the city. She certainly wouldn’t go swimming at night for pleasure.”
“Perhaps not for pleasure,” White replied. “But how about for five thousand dollars?”
Emily stared thoughtfully out of the window.
“My five thousand dollars, I suppose?”
“Yours,” Inspector White said grimly.
“In that case, I don’t think I’ll say anything more at present.”
“Miss Bonner, I am placing you under guard as a material witness for the time being.”
Emily was very meek. “Quite. May I talk to my nephew first?”
“You may not. Any conversations you have in future will be in the presence of the matron who is arriving shortly. Your nephew will be under similar restrictions.”
“You lout,” Emily said distinctly.
There was an uncomfortable silence for a time broken by Prye’s voice: “Emily, if you were prepared to pay over five thousand dollars to Joan why did you call me in on Monday afternoon to elaborate plans for putting her in jail?”
“The money. It didn’t seem a great deal until I saw it.” She shrugged her fat shoulders expressively. “I thought there might be some other way to get rid of her.”
“Murder,” the inspector said, “is the only permanent way.”
“I daresay you’re right, Inspector,” she replied. “But you’re very tiresome.” She put her head back and apparently went to sleep.
Ralph was equally apathetic about his technical arrest. He answered White’s questions in a monotone, and his story was substantially the same as the one he had told Prye. There was one difference: he made no mention of Miss Alfonse accompanying him on his walk.
“What did you do Tuesday night?” the inspector inquired. He spoke more mildly than he had to Emily, for Ralph was looking rather dazed.
“Nothing much,” Ralph said listlessly. “Just sat around.”