“Certainly.”
There was a sudden shocked silence in the room, but Frost continued to smile.
“Father!” Susan said angrily.
He looked down at her, genuinely amused. “My dear, I was literally tom between Horace and Socrates: speak no ill of the dead, and the truth shall make us free. One discards Horace on general principles.”
“You are a cad, sir!” Ralph said hotly.
“I am, indeed,” Frost murmured. “Interesting point there. If I am a self-confessed cad, am I to be despised as the cad I am or to be honored as an honest man? Impossible to be both, you see. But in these marvelously complex times I fancy I should be honored as an honest man. One has only to admit a fault, not rectify it.”
Every eye in the room was on him, his theatrically handsome face, the gestures of his fine long hands, the play of the light on his white hair...
There was a little click, and he was no longer there but lost in the darkness that swallowed the room.
A figure leaped past Prye through the doorway. Chairs scraped. Voices began to shout. Someone yelled: “Turn on the light!”
The lights clicked on.
Prye was standing with his arms spread across the doorway. A gun appeared in Inspector White’s hand.
“Don’t shoot,” Prye said in an urgent voice. “Don’t shoot at her, you fool!”
Nora started to shriek, “Jennie! It was Jennie!” and without any fuss the police matron walked over and slapped her smartly across the face.
Inspector White came toward Prye, pointing his revolver, menace glowing on his face. “You let her get away,” he hissed. “You — let — her — get — away!”
“Use your head,” Prye said, grinning not very successfully into the barrel of the revolver. “The person you want is still in this room.”
The revolver wavered and sagged in White’s hand.
Chapter Seventeen
They were all watching each other now with eyes that were puzzled, frightened.
“I should have found you out sooner,” Prye said. “You were careless about fingerprints.”
“Fingerprints!”
The word came from the back of Emily’s throat. She was sitting bolt upright in her chair. “There were no fingerprints on anything.”
“That’s right,” Prye said, looking at her gravely. “But when a person innocently drinks a cup of coffee, for example, his or her fingerprints are left on the cup. And when a person picks up a ring and flings it out of the window, there should be fingerprints on the ring.” He turned his head and faced Mary Little. “That’s right, too, isn’t it, Mary?”
Her eyes were hidden by her thick white lids. She said, “I guess so.”
“You said you had been in bed before you picked up the ring, Mary?”
“Yes.”
“Do you usually wear gloves in bed?”
She made no reply. She was staring down at her hands as if they did not belong to her, as if they were strangers who had trapped her.
Prye was thinking, I can’t tell yet. She hasn’t done anything to prove it, she may be as sane as I am...
Then he saw her put her head on one side, half smiling. She seemed to be listening, her whole body in an attitude of attention, her lips moving in soundless reply.
“Did you ever have a streptococcus infection, Mary?” he asked gently.
The smile faded from her face; her head jerked up.
“Yes. A year ago.”
“Do you remember what your doctor prescribed for you then? Was it sulfanilamide?”
She leaned forward toward him.
“I ought to have finished you,” she said in an impersonal voice. “You are an evil man.”
The others were watching her, paralyzed.
“I am not responsible to the laws of this world,” she said. “I am only an instrument. I have nothing to fear.”
“You remembered your reaction to sulfanilamide from last year?”
“Oh yes,” she said, nodding her head. “It was very unpleasant. I got all blue and cold. The doctor called it a complete collapse, so I had to stop taking it. But there was some of it left. All this time I’ve saved it.”
Prye’s face was grave. “Why did you save it, Mary?”
She did not hear him and he repeated the question.
“I knew I had to kill him some time, as soon as they told me to kill him. I saved it for an alibi. But I had to use it when I killed her. He remembered about the sulfanilamide from last year, so I had to kill him right away, too. I killed two birds with one stone.” She paused, looking around at them all with eyes that were growing excited. “I killed two birds with one stone.”
“Sulfanilamide can easily be detected in the blood stream,” Prye said. “Weren’t you afraid of that?”
“Of course not. I already had heart trouble and there was no reason for Dr. Innes to suspect anything else. I knew you weren’t much of a doctor. The only reason I let you live was to give me an alibi by swearing I had a heart attack. How did you find out about the sulfanilamide?”
“I didn’t,” Prye said. “But when I discovered you lied to me about throwing the ring out of the window I began to wonder if your heart attack had not been artificially stimulated or induced in some way. I’ve had very little experience with sulfanilamide and the possibility of its use didn’t occur to me until this afternoon.”
“I was very clever,” Mary said.
She looked around for approval, and the others, seeing Prye nod, nodded, too. One head after another bobbed up and down, puppet heads jerked by invisible strings. Nora thought, it’s crazy, we’re crazy, she’s saner than any of us. She put her hand to her mouth to hold back the hysterical giggle that kept bubbling up in her throat.
Mary was talking again in her quiet, even voice, speaking distinctly, as if she were teaching a lesson to some backward boys and girls.
“If Jennie hadn’t been so silly as to give me a chance to escape— Poor Jennie. As soon as you tested her hearing she knew I had killed them. Jennie is quite deaf. She didn’t hear me come downstairs on Monday night and go out the back door. I told her that I wanted to sleep, that she was to stay downstairs. Afterward she told you that she could hear quite well. She worried about that, because my alibi depended partly on her hearing. Poor Jennie. You must not be hard on her for giving me my chance.”
“Nothing will happen to Jennie,” Prye assured her.
“I was the chosen instrument and I alone.”
She’s proud of it, Nora thought. Anyone who is still proud can’t be very unhappy. I mustn’t be sorry for her. She’s still proud. And they’ll take good care of her...
“I was sitting in the dining room on Monday morning when I heard Miss Bonner’s ring,” Mary said. “I listened. I knew she was going to meet Joan at nine o’clock in the woods and I knew Joan was going away that night. Then at lunch Tom was acting strangely. He wouldn’t eat. He said he had a stomach ache. Tom was very stupid. I knew right away what he was going to do. I knew she was the thirteenth. And the thirteenth had to die.”
“You killed Joan because she was the thirteenth?” Prye asked quietly.
“Of course! Why don’t you listen to me? You’re stupid. You’re stupid like Tom.”
The words were tumbling out of her mouth. She put her hand to her head and closed her eyes for a minute.
Here is madness, Professor Frost was thinking. Here is real madness, not the lyrical, beautiful madness of Medea slaying her children. There’s no ecstasy in the madness of this plain, dowdy woman, no Euripides to write her speeches, no catharsis for us who are listening, no catharsis, no hope...
“It was very cunning of you to drug Tom on Monday night,” Prye said.
“Yes, it was very cunning. I put some veronal in his coffee at dinnertime. I know a great deal about drugs. I’ve always been sick. I get prescriptions from doctors and I save them.”