The Case of the Weird Sisters

'Sure. Like celery, only worse,' said Fred, 'She stopped chewing, did she? lin.'

'Oh, go on. It could have been just a coincidence,' said Alice.

'It could,' said Duff. 'But she did stop chewing on her Melba toast. If she can hear, then she arranged to be able to hear, when I appeared to be telling secrets. She's curious, you know. If she had gone on eating, I should have thought her truly deaf, or utterly indifferent Alice is right of course. It's no proof. Either way,' he added wearily.

'So we're still guessing,' Alice said.

Duff cleared his throat. 'Did you notice a funny paper stuffed into her window, into the crack?'

'Yes.'

'Why do you stuff a newspaper into a crack?'

'To stop a draft,' said Alice promptly.

'In which case, you stuff it carefully along the length of the crack, do you not?'

'I guess you do.'

'But she didn't.'

'No, she didn't.'

'Then, do you think of another reason?'

'To stop a rattle,' said Fred. 'By gum!'

'That,' said Duff, 'is what occurred to me. A deaf woman?'

'Well, it makes you wonder,' said Fred slowly, 'doesn't it?'

'That's dreadful,' said Alice, 'to think of her hearing as well as anybody, and grinning to herself, and making all that fuss.'

'I don't suppose there's much to make a fuss about, ordinarily,' Duff reminded her. 'The excitements of the last two days are rare. Ordinarily, being deaf would be more convenient than not being deaf. Isn't that so?'

'Do you think she can hear?'

'I find cause to wonder,' Duff said, 'that's all. Well, suppose we go over the attempts again. Let me see. The first one, the lamp falling. We had decided that it was not Maud, possibly Gertrude, possibly Isabel.'

'We were wrong,' said Fred.

'I did wonder how good Gertrude's perception is, in three dimensions,' Duff said thoughtfully. 'Especially since the bathroom off the lower hall was put there since her blindness. Could she know that a man emerging from that door would come, in just so many steps, exactly under the crossing edge of the upstairs hall? Judgment of distance, at least three-dimensional distance, depends so much on sight. Doesn't it strike you as difficult for a blind woman?'

'She could hear,' said Alice. 'Maybe the sound changed. His footsteps would seem louder when he got out from under, into the open hall.'

'Perhaps,' said Duff. 'Still, it would seem that such a change would warn her too late. She would have to touch the lamp just before he emerged.'

'That's when it fell,' said Fred, 'just before.'

'Perhaps I am being too subtle,' Duff admitted. 'After all, we don't know how accurate the timing was, because you jumped first. Well, well say it's possible for Gertrude to have tried that. Even though her room is not upstairs and it meant, for her, planning to get up there. Being there, surely, before anyone could know that Innes would go into that bathroom at all.'

'I see what you mean,' Fred said, 'but it couldn't have been planned by anybody. It was grabbing the chance. And she might have gone upstairs just for instance.'

'Attempt number one, not Maud, possibly Gertrude, possibly Isabel.'

'That's wrong. It could have been Maud. If she can hear.'

'But not if Gertrude is blind.'

'Why not?'

'Maud,' said Duff, 'was probably—and surely, if Gertrude is blind—downstairs at the time, in the parlor, behind the curtains, reading the newspapers.'

'How do you know?'

'You couldn't see her face, could you?'

'No. That's what I told you.'

'Why not?'

'Because she was holding the newspaper up.'

'Was it a tabloid?'

'No.'

'Then wilh how many hands was she holding it up?'