Dear Miss Demeanor

by Joan Hess

  Mrs. Platchett examined a tidy formation of deviled eggs. “I see no sign that Pitts has been foraging today. It is safe to eat.”

  “Alcoholic beverages are not permitted on campus,” Weiss snarled, pointing at the offending bottle.

  Sherwood gave him a disdainful smile. “Are we reduced to following petty rules, Mr. Weiss? I presumed we were all above such things, but if you wish to insist…

  “Do whatever you want, Timmons. Perhaps we can have a discussion about your manuscript one of these days, if you’re not too busy doing research at the college library.”

  “Ars longa, vita brevis,” Sherwood snapped. It was menacing, in an obscure way. He did not offer a translation, and for once Evelyn did not prompt him to do so.

  Weiss disappeared into the kitchenette. The soda machine rattled briefly, followed by a popping sound as a bottle was decapitated. He then called, “Has Miss Parchester been in the building, Bernice? I told her quite firmly that she was not to come back until the auditors have completed their investigation.”

  “I’ll telephone to remind her,” Miss Dort said. She picked up her clipboard and scribbled a note.

  The Furies looked as though they were on the edge of a rebuttal. Mrs. Platchett eyed the doorway with a frown, and on both sides of her her cohorts flared their nostrils and tightened their lips. Tessa Zuckerman (I thought) actually opened her mouth for a fleeting moment, then closed it with an unhappy sigh. Her complexion seemed excessively gray, as though she were inflated with fog.

  Weiss came to the doorway with the jar of compote in his hand. He took a fork to pull out a dripping piece of yellow fruit, and with a greedy look, plopped it in his mouth. “I suppose I’ll overlook her presence in the building this one time, since she did leave a little something for me. I may regret Miss Parchester’s absence in the future; her compote is remarkable. Is there any way we might persuade her to share the recipe, Bernice?”

  “I shall inquire when I speak to her.” Miss Dort picked up the clipboard and scribbled yet another note.

  “Exactly how much money is missing from the journalism account?” Sherwood asked, giving me a conspiratorial wink. “Enough for riotous living in some singles’ condominium for silver-haired swingers?”

  “The amount is hardly the issue, Timmons. The funds belong to the students, and the embezzlement is all the more serious because it threatens their trust,” Weiss said through a mouthful of yellow goop. “In any case, I am aware of the gossip this situation has generated, and I want the entire faculty to put a stop to it. It is an administrative concern.”

  “I am confident Emily will be found innocent of any wrongdoing,” Mrs. Platchett said. “Then the school can return to its normal routine, and the journalism students can once again have valuable experience in preparation for their careers. Emily quite inspires them, as you well know.”

  I sensed an aspersion on the substitute’s ability to inspire said students. “We’re working industriously on the yearbook,” I said, taking a deviled egg with a devil-may-care look. “We hope to complete the sophomore layout next week.” Whatever that was.

  “But we have no newspaper over which to chuckle,” Sherwood said. “I was finding the Miss Demeanor column quite compelling, if not exactly Pulitzer material. Just as it was becoming most interesting, it was cut off in its prime. Of course, humanum en errare, but in the Xanadu Motel? One wonders if something might be astir within our little community…”

  “The insinuation of a tawdry scandal is inappropriate for a school newspaper,” Miss Dort sniffed. “Mr. Weiss and I both agree that impressionable adolescents should not be exposed to that sort of thing. As faculty advisor, Miss Parchester had an obligation to forbid the publication of such filth. She refused to comply with the numerous memos I sent regarding the situation, citing some nonsense about freedom of the press. This is a school, not a democracy; the students have whatever rights we choose to allow them.”

  Weiss gave her an approving smile as he shoveled in the last of the peach compote. The smile died suddenly. He clutched his abdomen and doubled up as the contents of his stomach disgorged on the carpet. His scalp turned red, his face white. “Bernice,” he managed to croak. “My God! Help me!”

  “Herbert? What’s-what’s the matter?” she answered, shoving back her chair to run across the room and clasp his arm. She looked wildly at us over his back. “Do something to help him! Get a doctor!”

  “I don’t need a doctor,” Weiss said abruptly, his voice weak but more normal than it had been seconds ago. He yanked his arm free and stood up, a handkerchief already in hand to wipe his chin. “I’m fine now. I don’t know what came over me, but I certainly will not permit it to happen again. Have Pius get in here immediately, and call the carpet cleaning service to make- reservations.”

  “Reservations?” Miss Don said. She picked up her clipboard and began to write in precise little scratches, although without her usual briskness. “Carpet service-reservations. Why don’t you lie down on the sofa for a few minutes, Mr. Weiss? You look rather pale.”

  He nodded and stretched out on the mauve-and-green. Miss Port left the lounge, presumably to fetch the despicable Pitts, and returned within a minute or two. The rest of us toyed with our lunches, our earlier enthusiasm dampened by the increasingly pervasive stench. Even the Furies seemed to find it difficult to pick up the cadence of sound nutritional practices.

  “Damn doctors shouldn’t be allowed to teach,” Weiss said suddenly, his finger poking holes in the air. “Think they’re too damn good for the rest of us.”

  “I’ll make a note of it,” Miss Dort said, her voice non-committal despite the bizarre words coming from the principal. She stared defiantly at us, daring us to offer an editorial. No one moved.

  “Bunch of copycats,” Weiss said. He jerked up and glared at us through wide, glazed eyes. Suddenly they bulged like balloons as he clasped his throat. Burbling wildly, he clawed the air. His hands froze, and he slowly rolled off the sofa to sprawl on the rug.

  Miss Dort scrambled to her feet and shrieked something about an ambulance as she ran out of the lounge. Paula grabbed Jerry, while Sherwood and Evelyn went over to touch the unmoving shoulder with timid fingers. Mrs. Platchett clasped her bosom.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she announced whitely.

  The Fury on her left sighed, but the third stole the show. “Oh, dear,” she whooshed as she toppled out of her chair. The ensuing thud was fainter and more ladylike than the previous one, but it sounded painful and seemed to bring us out of our collective shock and into action, albeit chaotic and ineffectual.

  Ambulance attendants dashed in a few minutes later. The fainted Fury was on a sofa, attended by her sisters. Mr. Weiss was still facedown on the stained carpet; there hadn’t been much reason to worry about his comfort. The rest of us were standing about, wringing our hands both literally and figuratively, while muttering inanities about heart attacks and/or strokes. How sudden they were, etc.

  Miss Don came in behind the attendants, and behind her was the rabbity little man I’d seen in the main office.

  “Oh, this is terrible!” he sputtered. “I just cannot believe- believe that-that this son of tragedy-absolute tragedy- could-”

  “Shut up, Chips,” Miss Dort said absently, intent on the body on the floor. “What was it-a heart attack?”

  One of the attendants stood up and studied us with a masked expression. “No, it wasn’t a heart attack. You’d better call the police.”

  “Why?” Miss Don countered. Her fingers tightened around the clipboard, which was pressed against her chest like a shield.

  “The guy was poisoned, lady.”

  Miss Don blanched, took a step backward, and slowly collapsed in the doorway. The clipboard clattered down beside her.

  The room was beginning to resemble the forest scene after Mount St. Helen’s eruption. I glared at the ambulance attendants. “I will call the police. In the meantime, why don’t you occupy yourselves with the lady on the
floor or the one on the sofa? You do have some paramedical training, don’t you?”

  Grumbling, they split up to deal with the supine figures. I went upstairs to the office, shoved past the pimply Cerberus, and snatched up the telephone. The number was familiar; seconds later Peter Rosen came on the line.

  “So glad you called,” he said with an audible smile. “There’s a wonderfully terrible movie at the drive-in theater, something about a giant asparagus attacking a major metropolitan area. We may end up parked beside your students, but I thought it-”

  I interrupted and told him what had happened. He then interrupted and told me that he and his squad would be there shortly. I tried to interrupt with a question or two, but it didn’t work. I was speaking to a dial tone.

  A keen-eared secretary came out of her room to goggle at me. I told her to announce on the intercom that all students should go to fourth-period classrooms and remain there until further notice, and told her which teachers would have to wait in the lounge for the CID. She nodded, I shrugged, and we both marched off to our respective duties.

  Miss Don and the Fury were still unconscious, but everyone else looked fairly chipper. Evelyn and Sherwood huddled in one corner, watching the attendants wave vials under noses. Jerry and Paula cuddled in a second corner to whisper. The two conscious Furies hovered about, pale but determined, although I wasn’t at all sure what they were determined to do.

  Mr. Weiss hadn’t produced any motion that I could see. I muttered something about the police being on the way, then perched on an arm of a mustard-and-red sofa. When the door opened, I assumed that Peter and his minions had broken all speed records to rescue me. How wrong I was.

  Pitts slithered in, a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other. His reptilian eyes were bright. “Well, I’ll be a bullfrog’s bottom. I heard that Weiss had dropped dead in the lounge, but I didn’t think it was true. I’ll be a bullfrog’s bottom on a hot summer night!”

  From her corner, Evelyn snapped, “Get out of here, Pitts! Go mop a hallway or something.”

  He scratched his head with the mop handle. “What’d he kick off from? And what’s wrong with them two?”

  Peter came in before Pitts could suffer the same fate of the soda bottle-decapitation. He glanced at me, then began to order everyone about with cold authority. Miss Dort was revived in time to accompany the group to a vacant classroom next to the lounge; the Fury refused to cooperate and was rolled away on a gurney. She looked extremely ill.

  Then we sat. A bell rang, but no footsteps tromped down the hall. I told Miss Don what I had arranged with the secretary, and was rewarded with a pinched frown. It had seemed quite efficient to me. I hadn’t even had a clipboard.

  Sherwood wiggled his eyebrows at me, no doubt intending to look conspiratorial. “So our summuni bonum was poisoned. Have you identified the murderer, Claire, or are you waiting for a more propitious moment for a denouement?”

  Before I could respond, Paula Hart stumbled to her feet and dashed out of the room. A uniformed officer returned her without comment, and she sank down in a desk to smile bravely. Jerry went over to pat her shoulder.

  Sherwood murmured, “I’m surprised you have tears for such things, my dear. After all, Weiss was about to dismiss and disgrace your beloved, which would have complicated the daily allotment of stolen kisses in the lounge. Now, you and your particeps criminis are free to indulge yourselves.”

  Jerry growled. “Look, Timmons, Paula and I had nothing to do with this. Weiss and I might have had hard feelings, but I sure as hell didn’t poison him.”

  We all exchanged uneasy looks.

  Sherwood clapped his hands with the glee of an infant beholding a popsicle. “The brandied peach compote! How utterly fascinating! Miss Parchester has more strength of character than I had credited her with.”

  Now Evelyn, Miss Dort, Paula, Jerry, and the two Furies all growled, sounding like a pack of wild dogs converging on a wounded animal. Sherwood smiled at them, but his goatee trembled and his eyes flickered in my direction.

  Pitts, who had managed to include himself in the group, chorded. “I saw that yellow slime on the floor. Is that what killed the old man? Miss Parchester was here earlier; I saw her sneak into the lounge, and she had a funny look on her puss.”

  She probably did look rather peculiar, but I saw no point in discussing her condition with the lizard. “Mr. Pitts,” I said, “you were not a witness to the unpleasantness in the lounge, so there really is no reason for you to be here. I’ll speak to Lieutenant Rosen about allowing you to leave.” For Mongolia, on a train.

  “I saw plenty of interesting stuff. I know who went in the lounge-and why. Mr. Fancy Lieutenant Rosen will be pretty damn eager to talk to me.”

  Mr. Fancy himself came into the classroom, “We have not finished with the lounge. I’ll need a room from which to conduct my investigation.”

  Miss Don fluttered her clipboard. “I’ll see to it at once, Lieutenant. However, what shall I do about the students and other faculty? The bus schedule will require modification, and-”

  “Don’t do anything,” Peter said hastily. “Is there someone who can take charge upstairs for the remainder of the school day?”

  “Mr. Chippendale is the dean, but I doubt he could manage,” Miss Don said, shaking her head. “And who will notify Mrs. Weiss and poor little Cheryl Anne?”

  Peter beckoned to the officer in the doorway, and told him to locate Mr. Chippendale. Paula Han mentioned that Cheryl Anne was in the typing room at the end of the hall and left to tell her the news before the gossip spread. Once bureaucratic details were under control, Peter gazed around the room at his collection of witnesses.

  “Cyanide, I think,” he said conversationally, as though running through the menu for a dinner party. “although we’ll have to run tests to be sure. I would guess it was introduced in that yellowish substance on the floor. Would anyone care to tell me where it came from?”

  We all stared at the floor. The linoleum hadn’t seen a mop in at least a decade.

  Pitts waggled his mop. “I can tell you exactly where the goop came from, sir. Miss Emily Parchester brought a jar of brandied peach compote this morning, ‘cause she knows how much Weiss liked it. I think you got yourself a murderer, sir.”

  Peter looked at me. “Is that true, Mrs. Malloy?”

  Presumably I was the very same Mrs. Malloy with whom he shared bottles of wine and moments of ecstasy on an occasional basis. He seemed to have forgotten. I stared at him and said, “She did leave a jar of compote in the kitchenette, but she did not lace it with cyanide, Lieutenant.”

  “That will have to be determined,” he said. He paused as a gurney squeaked past the closed door on its journey to the morgue. “I’ll need to take statements from each of you. Will Miss Parchester’s address and telephone number be available in the main office?”

  Mrs. Platchett rose like a missile head. “Emily Parchester did not leave a jar of poisoned compote in the lounge, Lieutenant. Her father was judge Amos Parchester of the state Supreme Court, and her mother came from a very old Farberville family.”

  “The Borgias were an old family, too,” Sherwood commented. “That hardly kept the children from-”

  “Who are you?” Peter said. His teeth glinted, wolf-style. His molasses-colored eyes were flecked with yellow flints.

  I might have melted, but Sherwood merely bobbed his head. “Sherwood Timnons, at your service. I was speaking in jest; nenune contradicente when I say that we all have faith in Miss Parchester’s unflagging innocence.”

  Evelyn once again overlooked his verbal transgression. “Emily is hardly the sort to do such a thing, Lieutenant. She’s a harmless old lady who taught journalism for forty years, until unfortunate circumstances forced her to retire.”

  “The journalism teacher,” Peter said. He turned back to me. “She was here earlier today, with the compote. Weiss was fond of the stuff.”

  “The jar was left in the kitchenette for over half an h
our,” I retorted. “Anyone could have put cyanide in it.”

  “But why?” he countered.

  I tried not to glance at Jerry, who had been thundering threats the previous afternoon, or at Sherwood, who might have been muttering them in Latin. “I have no idea, Lieutenant Rosen.”

  Paula Hart had been there, too. “Jerry didn’t mean what he said,” she offered tremulously. She clutched his hand and held it to her cheek as she stared defiantly at Peter.

  “What didn’t he mean?”

  “He was only kidding when he said someone ought to take care of Mr. Weiss,” she said. The girl was a veritable wealth of helpful information. “Jerry didn’t poison the compote.”

  The coach’s face matched his gray sweats. “That’s right, Lieutenant, I was just blowing off steam.”

  Peter was unmoved by the sincerity glowing on the young faces. “Let’s discuss it in private,” he suggested with a smile. His teeth-or should I say fangs-glistened in the subsequent silence.

  From the Falcon Crier, October 29

  Dear Miss Demeanor,

  Do you think it’s undignified for juniors to throw eggs and toilet paper at houses on Halloween and basically act like children? I think it’s immature, gross and utterly disgusting.

  Dear Reader,

  Miss Demeanor senses an underlying trepidation in your letter. She wonders if you’re worded that no one will throw an egg at you or decorate your lawn with white steamers. Have no fear:

  Miss Demeanor has your address.

  Dear Miss Demeanor,

  I’m a sophomore with a terrible problem. You see, this boy wants me to go steady, but we both have braces. I read somewhere that the braces can get locked. I would absolutely die if that happened.

  Dear Reader,

  Miss Demeanor wonders where in the annals of history going steady got locked with kissing. Sophomores have no business kissing, anyway. Take advantage of your lowly status to perfect hand-shaking and meaningful looks. Then, Miss Demeanor suggests that you search for a boy whose father is an orthodontist, for financial as well as utilitarian concerns.