Dear Miss Demeanor

by Joan Hess

  “Just a few minutes.” I started for the inner sanctum, then stopped and went back to peer down the hall. “Did you really see someone down there? I don’t especially want to be caught riffling Weiss’s desk if there’s a policeman in the building.”

  “Perhaps it’s your policeman, dear sleuth. At least he wouldn’t pull a gun on us and shoot us on the spot.”

  “Don’t count on it,” I murmured, deciding my lookout was too caught up in his assignment to be credible. I went into Weiss’s office and sat down behind the desk. The drawers on either side were filled with forms, copies of memos, thick state regulation manuals, and other officious stuff. The middle drawer was crammed full of stubby pencils and confiscated goodies. A plywood paddle, worn shiny from use. Thumbtacks and ancient, lint-covered mints. A packet of letters held together with a rubber band-and addressed to that paragon of propriety, Miss Demeanor.

  I jammed the packet in my pocket. And without a flicker of remorse, since they were already hot property, stolen from the journalism mailbox. By the principal, presumably. Who’d been murdered. Over a handful of letters?

  My sentry coughed nervously. Ordering myself back to business, I dug through the drawer, but found nothing else of any significance. I went out and told Sherwood I wanted to take a quick look at Bernice Dort’s desk.

  He turned around, his face as garish as a Toulouse-Lautrec portrait in the spray of my flashlight. “One wonders if you’re the least concerned about the journalism ledgers and poor Miss Parchester,” he said softly. “Prima facie, one might think you’re searching for something else, something to do with the faculty’s private business. Now why would one arrive at that conclusion, my dear sleuth?”

  I put my hand in my pocket. “I’m just checking things out, Sherwood. This is the first time I’ve been able to-to look around the office.”

  “For what?” He came toward me, his eyes inky shadows and his voice disturbingly calm. “Were you looking for something that might incriminate one of us? A letter, perchance, about me? Did you overhear a conversation in the lounge while you were innocently snooping in Pitts’s sty?”

  I edged around the counter, mentally cursing myself for the wonderful scheme that had landed me here-with him. I have an aversion to being menaced, particularly in a minty miasma. “I don’t know anything about that, Sherwood. I went in Pitts’s room out of curiosity, to see if there was any evidence that the rumors were true. I didn’t eavesdrop at the vile little hole.” Not much, anyway.

  “Suggestio falsi, Ms. Malloy. I think you heard me discuss the distressful situation with Evelyn. That’s why you looked so guilty when I caught you outside the room, and that’s why you’re suddenly so nervous, so worried that you shouldn’t have come here with me, alone.”

  Bingo with a capital B. “Don’t be absurd,” I whispered, trying for an irritated edge to my voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to know. If I thought you’d murdered Weiss or Pitts, I wouldn’t have called you tonight.”

  “I would hardly murder Weiss over that idiotic accusation, even if I were perturbed that vax audita perft litern scripta monet- the voice perishes but the written word remains.” He laughed, but it lacked a certain essence of mirth. “What’s that you’re clutching in your pocket?”

  A diversion seemed timely, so I took out the packet and showed it to him. “I found this in Weiss’s drawer, which explains why the journalism mailbox was empty. Why do you think he’d take the letters and stash them in his desk?”

  “You’ll have to figure that out on your own,” he said, this time chuckling with some degree of sincerity. “Evelyn and I have wondered how long it would take the others-and particularly someone with your reputation-to deduce what’s been happening.”

  “So you also know about the blackmail scheme?” I said. Enough retreating. I slammed down the packet and came around the counter, fists clenched, eyes narrowed. “Why won’t Evelyn tell me the bare outline-if she’s so damn sure it has nothing to do with the murders? For that matter, why won’t you?”

  “Because it’s irrelevant, and Evelyn’s determined not to encourage any gossip. She’s gripped with some dreadful malaise called integrity; I tried to convince her otherwise, but she refused to tell me any of the juicy details, such as the identities of Aphrodite and her boyfriend. But she persisted, to my regret. Now, I do think we ought to depart before we get caught, don’t you? I’d so hate to spend the night in the pokey.”

  I was about to persevere with the questions when a door closed in the distance. Remembering my experiences a couple of days ago, with the music that led me to murder, I will admit I shivered-like a wet dog in a blizzard. “Did you hear that?”

  My gallant sentry looked rather pale. “Someone in the building, obviously. A policeman?”

  “Policemen don’t prowl around in the dark. Earlier I wondered if Miss Parchester might have taken refuge in the building, maybe hiding in empty classrooms or closets until the building empties in the afternoon. I think we ought to take a look.”

  Ever so gallant, he gestured for me to precede him.

  An hour later, we returned to the office. We’d been down every corridor, opened every door, peered into every nook (and there were a lot of them), and basically searched the entire building for the intruder. If Miss Parchester was determined to elude us, she was doing a fine job of it.

  “Are you ready to leave?” Sherwood demanded, gallantry by now replaced with peevishness. “I have three sets of papers to grade, and we’ve wasted half the night. Tempus fugit when you’re having fun.”

  I considered a lecture on the tedium of detection, but settled for a sigh. ‘Yes, let me get the Miss Demeanor letters and we’ll go. I left them on the counter in the office.”

  The counter was bereft of packets. I checked my pockets and the floor. Sherwood swore he hadn’t taken it, and even emptied his pockets to prove his innocence. After a further search and a great deal of grumbling, we left the building and went to our respective cars. Vino veritas was not mentioned.

  I was still irritated when I arrived home, both irritated at myself for carelessness and at the unknown thief for tactlessness, among other things. I decided it would not be wise to ask Caron to stake out the high school the rest of the night. I confirmed that she was asleep, then picked up the last issue of the Falcon Crier to ferret out the identity of the nasty author if it took all night. Tempus might not fugit.

  Dear Miss Demeanor,

  Why does everybody make such a big deal about dates, anyway? Two girls can have a better time, and not have to put up with a lot of yucky kissing and grappling from some Nauseating geek.

  Dear Reader,

  Hang tight-someone will ask you out one of these days, and you’ll discover the purpose of kissing and grappling, even with geeks.

  After a deep breath and a moment of introspection as to my failure to provide adequate maternal guidance, I continued reading.

  Dear Miss Demeanor,

  How contagious is mono?

  Dear Reader,

  Contagious enough.

  Dear Miss Demeanor,

  If you were supposed to provide moral leadership to a bunch of people, and you had a choice between being divorced for adultery and bending a teensy little rule, which would you choose?

  Dear Reader,

  Miss Demeanor doesn’t bend teensy little rules, because she has journalistic integrity. She doesn’t stay awake at night worrying about being divorced for adultery, because (a) she’s not married, and therefore (b) she can’t commit adultery, even if she wants to. If driven to choose between such unpalatable options, she would probably climb in a closet and stay there. May I suggest the same for you?

  I put down the newspaper and closed my eyes. It didn’t take too long for the obvious to open my eyes, and eventually shove me to the telephone. I called Evelyn, apologized for the lateness of the hour, and asked if Herbert Weiss had been entertaining Bernice Dort in the Xanadu Motel every Thursday.

/>   It took longer for her to respond, but at last she said, “I knew you’d figure it out, Claire. I had suspected as much since the first letter appeared in the Miss Demeanor column, but I saw no reason to speculate about it in the teachers lounge. They’re both adults; they are entitled to behave however they desire-after school hours.”

  “But you’re convinced of it now,” I said. “You’re not speculating any more. How can you be sure?”

  “On the morning Weiss died, I was in the ladies room when they happened to come into the lounge. They discussed it rather loudly, I’m afraid. I would have preferred not to be there, but it was too late to show myself and pretend I didn’t hear them. In any case, their affair couldn’t have anything to do with his murder, so I chose not to mention it to the police or any of the faculty. Bernice wouldn’t poison her lover, and there’s no point in causing more grief to his family by exposing rather ordinary peccadilloes.”

  “Well, someone else knew. If you weren’t writing those blackmail letters-and I shall trust you weren’t-then someone else was.” I gnawed my lip until a fragment of conversation came back to me. “Cheryl Anne, Daddy’s little princess, was the author. I happened to overhear her tell Thud that her scheme hadn’t worked, that she would have to think of a new one.

  “Weiss and Bernice didn’t seem to know who wrote the letters, although I thought it was fairly obvious. I would guess that Cheryl Anne was hounding him at home to reinstate Thud, and using the column to keep him in a distraught frame of mind at school. The untimely cancellation of the newspaper put a stop to that. You don’t think Cheryl Anne…

  “No,” I said slowly, “I don’t. I considered the possibility earlier, but the motive is feeble and the opportunity almost nil. After all, it’s just a silly high school dance.”

  “You’re one of the chaperones, aren’t you?” Evelyn said. “Wait until you see how seriously they take these things before you dismiss it as a motive. Wallflowers have been known to transfer to other schools, and the intricacies of parking-lot misconduct dominate the conversations for weeks. But I think you’re right about Cheryl Anne, Claire; surely she wouldn’t poison her father dyer Thud’s eligibility problems.”

  “Would Thud?”

  “He’ll end up in prison eventually, but it will be because of a barroom brawl, not a premeditated and well-planned crime. His mental limitations preclude that sort of thing. He’d be more apt to go after someone with a pool cue or monkey-wrench, and in a mindless rage.

  “That doesn’t get us anywhere, then,” I sighed. “It’s tidier, but it doesn’t get us any closer to discovering the identity of the poisoner. Cheryl Anne may have tried to blackmail her father, but she didn’t poison the compote.”

  “Do the police still think Emily is the culprit? Have they been able to find her for interrogation, arrest, and execution?” Evelyn sounded as depressed as I felt.

  I told her about the escape from Happy Meadows, the close encounter in the hospital, and the scene in the emergency room. Once she stopped laughing, she told me I ought to confess before Peter found out, interrogated, arrested, and executed a certain red-haired bookseller. She had a good point.

  The next day my morning classes inched by without incident. The denizens of the lounge were almost mute during lunch, although Mrs. Platchett did report that Tessa Zuckerman was doing poorly. We all produced money for flowers and signed a gay little get-well card from “the gang at the office.” She then gave me a questioning look, I shook my head, and we settled down to the soft whoosh of Tupperware.

  Cheryl Anne did not appear during the Falconnaire period, presumably still in mourning over the demise of her paternal blackmail victim. Thud, presumably still ineligible, stayed hunched and unapproachable, although I wasn’t sure with what I would have approached him. Or why.

  Once I was free, I met Caron and Inez in the parking lot and drove them to Rhonda Maguire’s garage, Caron having informed me she would At Least watch the work in progress. I went on to the police station, arranged a contrite expression, and asked to be admitted into the presence of Lieutenant Peter Rosen.

  He closed his office door and put his hands on my shoulders to give me an unobstructed view of his eyes. The corners of his mouth twitched, but he gained control before he actually smiled. “To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”

  It occurred to me that I really did like the man. It also occurred to me that I hadn’t behaved well, and was apt to jeopardize the relationship if I continued on my blithe path. Getting a tad misty, I eased from under his hands and sat down on a battered chair. “I have come to confess all. You may then lock me up and swallow the key, but bear in mind that you will have to pick Caron up at five-thirty and fix dinner for her. She’s incapacitated by a bad ankle, and I’m afraid her bark is as bad as anyone’s bite.”

  He flashed his teeth at me as he sat down on the far side of his desk. “Before I order rabies shots, you’ll have to tell me the extent of your crimes.

  “The usual stuff,” I said, squirming as if I were a teenaged truant facing Weiss’s wrath and paddle. “Not mentioning little details to you, for instance. Prowling around the corridors in the dark to solve the murders and prove how clever I am. Evading the truth, although not as a rule.”

  “Are you going to elaborate?”

  I elaborated for a solid thirty minutes. I told him how I’d been coerced into substituting, and why-which seemed to do odd things to the corners of his mouth. I recapped the conversations with Miss Parchester, the argument between Jerry and Paula after the teachers’ meeting, the inexplicable comments I’d heard through Pitts’s hole, the visits to the Furies, the hospital scene, the midnight prowl with Sherwood, and the enlightening discussion with Evelyn that led to the identity of the Miss Demeanor author. Then, making a face, I went so far as to admit how the letters had been stolen from under my nose. Not that they were still important, I mentioned in conclusion, unable to fathom the thoughts behind his expressionless face and somewhat uneasy because of it.

  “You have been busy,” he said. “Some of it I knew, and some I merely suspected, based on your track record. None of it surprises me, however, although for some naive reason hope springs-”

  “Some of it you knew?”

  He shrugged. “This morning hospital security reported an incident of minor importance. It did not require a brilliant flash of female intuition to guess the identity of two teenaged 007’s in the room across the hall from Tessa Zuckerman, a witness in an investigation of particular interest to an unspecified party. The floor nurse related the details of the panicky visitor and the crazed attack that ended on the floor. One of the girls was rumored to be verbally precocious to the point the security men considered a tourniquet just below the chin. It was a good guess on your part, by the way.”

  “Thank you. What else did you already know before I came in here to grovel, apologize, and ultimately make a fool of myself?” I asked, resigned to the aforementioned trio.

  “We asked the Xanadu manager for a description of his Thursday regulars, and he told us. No brilliance needed there, either. I discussed the affair with Miss Don; I’m satisfied it was not a factor in Weiss’s murder.”

  “Maybe she was jealous,” I suggested. “Weiss was panting after Paula Hart, and we all know hell hath no fury. Miss Dort’s efficient enough to crack a hundred peach pits in a precise row, grind the insides, put them in the compote, and shove a fork into her paramours hand-all before the fourth period bell. There are likely to be notations on her clipboard.”

  “She said Weiss panted after women all the time, but that she was used to it and fairly confident after ten years that he lacked the balls to follow up on his lusting. She was scornful, not scorned.”

  I yielded for the moment, although I was not convinced. “You could have saved me a lot of trouble, you know. I had to learn all this the hard way.”

  “I’m not sure you ever learn anything, Claire.” He shot me a discouraged look. “To continue, I also discussed the l
etters with Cheryl Anne, who was properly ashamed of her conduct and bravely offered to turn in her crown. Once she stopped sniveling at the idea, she pointed out that neither she nor Thud could enter the lounge without being noticed.” He propped his feet on his desk, toppling a stack of folders, and crossed his arms. “That’s pretty much what I’ve learned in the last few days. May I assume you’ve been equally open, despite your innate tendencies to the contrary?”

  “You may assume so, Peter. I was trying to help Miss Parchester,” I said, sighing. “I seemed to have mudaed things more so than usual, and I’m sorry. If you’re adamant, I will call Bernice Dort and tell her I won’t be available to substitute tomorrow. No matter how deafening the jackhammer, I’ll stay in the Book Depot and mind my own business. It needs minding, actually. I haven’t been in for a week; the mice have probably invited all their friends in to nosh the paperbacks.”

  He rubbed his forehead, crossed his arms, rearranged the pile of folders, made noises under his breath, and generally allowed me time to suffer. I remained determinedly penitent. There were rumbles outside his office, cars coming and leaving, voices barking into telephones, lots of footsteps in the hall. All we needed were a few locker doors to be slammed, and we’d be in dear old Farberville High School between classes.

  When I was about to exit with whatever dignity I could muster, he finally looked up and said, “You are convinced Emily Parchester is innocent. Despite your continual, maddening, eternally intrusive interference, I do value your opinion-if not your tactics. I suppose you might as well continue to substitute so that you can keep an eye on things in the lounge. You will, of course, report everything to me, without regard to your personal analysis of its value to the proper authorities.”

  “Of course,” I murmured, somewhat disappointed I hadn’t been ordered back to the bookstore for the duration. the thought had appealed. “May I be permitted to make amends to you?”