“Your aunt just sat around, too.”
“Oh. Well, she always does. Can’t walk, you know.”
“Did you know your aunt had a large amount of cash in her room?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you often go into her room?”
“Only when she sends for me.”
“I understand that you and your aunt had a quarrel on Tuesday morning in the presence of Miss Alfonse.”
“I guess we did if someone told you.”
“What was the quarrel about?”
Ralph looked hopelessly puzzled. “Couldn’t say, really. Couldn’t follow her. I mean, she gets ideas into her head.”
“What ideas?”
“Thinks women are after me, you know. Very embarrassing.”
“What women?” the inspector said impatiently.
“Oh. Well, that nurse. Thought the nurse was after my money — her money, that is — and raised a row. A very odd woman, my aunt. Can’t understand her.” He made a helpless gesture with his hands.
On the way downstairs Inspector White was looking almost as bewildered as Ralph himself.
“A peculiar boy,” he said to Prye. “He seems almost half-witted. Do you think he is?”
“Half-witted is not a psychological term,” Prye said severely. “Do you mean idiot, imbecile, moron, dull, or borderline? He isn’t any of those. He may lack a few points of the hundred but he’s not congenitally subnormal. I’m going to see the cook. Come along?”
“No, thanks,” White said. “Miss Bonner pays her servants too well.”
Miss Dorothy Jakes was pleased that she was finally going to get some attention.
“Miss Alfonse?” she repeated in reply to Prye’s question. “Yes, she did come down to the kitchen last night while I was getting Miss Bonner’s dinner. I thought it was funny at the time.”
“Why?”
“Well, because I knew her. A lot she cared what Miss Bonner had for dinner, her and her vitamins! She wouldn’t even take the tray up.”
“Who poured Miss Bonner’s coffee?”
“She did, I guess. It was on the tray when I took it up and I can’t remember pouring it myself.”
“Does Mr. Bonner ever come into the kitchen?”
“Oh no, sir! Whatever else they may say about Mr. Bonner, he is a gentleman.”
That places me, Prye thought. Aloud he said: “What else do they say about Mr. Bonner?”
Miss Jakes pointed eloquently to her head.
Chapter Sixteen
Late Thursday afternoon the residents had their first experience of the thoroughness of police routine. Inspector White with his eight subordinates and Constable Jakes with his two regular men ransacked each cottage in turn from attic to cellar.
Skeletons rattled in closets: Tom Little’s empty whisky bottles; a package of old love letters tied with blue ribbon and addressed to Emily Bonner; the receipt for Mr. Smith’s first and last alimony payment. But no bloody gloves or axes. Even Inspector White’s pencil collection had yielded no results. An ordinary microscope which was all the apparatus available proved merely that five of the pencils made markings similar to the ones on the note from the murderer.
In spite of the dearth of evidence Inspector White had regained his optimism: eventually the Chinaman would talk, and perhaps Miss Bonner herself would break down and confess under the strain of being closely guarded. In any case the investigation was nearly closed — Miss Bonner’s money had been found on Miss Alfonse’s body, and Miss Alfonse had probably witnessed the murder of Tom Little, and perhaps had assisted in it.
Prye did not share the inspector’s optimism. After dinner he sprawled in a chair in his sitting room while Nora sat hugging her knees in front of the fireplace, watching him.
“You look funny when you frown,” she said.
“You’re not laughing,” he said.
“No.”
There was a pause, the scrape of a match, a drawn out sigh as Prye inhaled.
“What are you thinking about?” Nora said finally.
“Lambs.”
“Counting them?”
“No. Wondering about them. Cute iddy-biddy lambs, all of them telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. While two people are being murdered, the lambs who had motives for murdering them were crocheting or walking or sleeping or writing books or reading. Not a damn one of them was murdering.”
“If anyone is lying, I’ll bet on Emily,” Nora said.
“I won’t. Emily is certainly a liar, but her lies are the Munchausen type, ambitious and without subtlety. She tells them with the air of a Cassandra, never expecting to be believed.”
“But the money—”
“Alfonse was found with Miss Bonner’s money on her but that doesn’t prove that Emily gave it to her. Remember Alfonse was a nurse and she poured Emily’s coffee on Wednesday night and Emily says she went to sleep after drinking that coffee. There are two possibilities if Emily is telling the truth: that Ralph arranged for Alfonse to dope Emily so that he could steal the money and give it to Alfonse in return for her silence; or that Alfonse discovered the money herself and arranged to steal it and run away. The five thousand was enough for a quick escape and later on when the murder investigation was closed Alfonse could return and demand a much larger sum from the real murderer. Inspector White is closing his ears to this explanation because it will leave him without his murderer. Policemen like to make arrests just as bakers like to make bread — it’s expected of them, it’s their job.”
Nora shivered and drew closer to the fire. “So it’s not settled yet?”
“No.”
“And it’s one of us?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know which one?”
He didn’t answer for a minute. He was watching the light flicker over the thick black braids wound around her head.
“I think I know which one.”
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t think — you can’t think — I did it?” she cried hysterically.
In cottage number four Professor Frost was gazing profoundly at his blancmange. Susan watched him with increasing wrath. He had said nothing throughout the meal. He had stared at each article of food as he stared at her, looking through it, seeing it as the pitiful thing it really was.
“Why don’t you talk to me?” she asked desperately. “Can’t you say anything?”
He started and raised his head. “Eh? Sorry. I was thinking.”
“You think all the time!” she cried.
He put his table napkin away without haste. “That’s quite true, my dear. What do you want to talk about? If you have a specific subject in mind I shall be delighted to help you cope with it.”
“Cope with it!”
She got up and struck her fist on the table. Her coffee spilled out on the tablecloth. “Shall we go into the other room, my dear?” her father said mildly. “There are too many — ah, spillables and breakables in here.”
She glared at him, speechless. Then she snatched her cup from the table and hurled it against the wall.
“There!” she said triumphantly. “There!”
“Excellent,” said Professor Frost, picking up his own cup. “Mind if I have a shot at it, too?”
The stolid, middle-aged police matron looked strangely out of place in Miss Bonner’s frilly bedroom. Miss Bonner certainly thought so.
“Can you play solitaire?” she asked coldly.
“I can,” the matron replied, “but I’m not supposed to.”
“Why not?”
“I have to watch you.”
Emily grunted. “You’ve been watching me for four hours. You must have an incredible capacity for boredom.”