Murder on the Blackboard

by Stuart Palmer

  “You heard me,” said Miss Withers. “You can prove where you were when the murder was committed?”

  Janey looked blank. “Of course I can,” said Bob Stevenson. “I went to the public library early this afternoon, and I stayed there in the Genealogy Room until I came here to take Janey out to supper. I do that often, it’s a hobby of mine to trace back on my family tree. I’m preparing a paper on my mother’s family. We put a lot of stock in those things down where I come from.”

  “And where’s that?” Miss Withers wanted to know.

  “Virginia,” Stevenson told her. “I’ve got rid of the accent, being up north the way I have.”

  “We have been known to put a lot of stock in those things up where I come from, in Boston,” Miss Withers reminded him. “Janey, what did you do this afternoon?”

  The girl blinked. “Me? Why—just nothing. I sat around home, that’s all. I was going to a gym class, but Anise promised she’d hurry home and go with me, and so I waited for her until it was too late. She hasn’t been looking at all well lately, and I argued her into doing something about it. And now—”

  “And now she’s in the Morgue,” Miss Withers observed. “It’s too late to do anything about that—but we can find out who did it. Can either of you offer any suggestions?”

  “I didn’t know her so very well,” Stevenson admitted. “This is her first year at Jefferson School, and mine, too. I’ve seen her around the building, and thought how nice looking she was—and then of course since I’ve been coming here to see Janey, we’ve got to be quite friends.”

  Miss Withers looked at Janey Davis. “And you?”

  “We’ve just roomed together this month,” Janey admitted. “I had this place alone, and I thought it would be nice to cut the rent in two. Anise didn’t like the place she was living in, because they frowned on boy friends, and so she moved in with me. I don’t know much about her except that she came from somewhere in the middle west. Chicago, I think. She told me her parents were both dead.”

  Miss Withers was busy making shorthand notes. “And the ‘boy friend,’ as you call it—the one they objected to in Anise’s last place. I suppose he’s been here often?”

  Janey hesitated. “Often? No, not at all—unless someone came when I was out. I never thought of it before, but maybe it is funny. Anise had lots of dates out, but I didn’t know her well enough to ask her where she was going, and she never seemed to want to tell me. She’s been strange lately … worried, and thin looking.”

  “Worried about what?”

  “Her health, I guess. She complained that she wasn’t ever hungry.”

  Miss Withers nodded. “I’d like to look through her room before the muddling detectives get here,” she suggested. “Will you help me, Janey?”

  “Of course!” Janey stood up. “But she didn’t have any room. There’s only this room, and the kitchen-dinette over there. That’s her closet, and the little chest of drawers holds her things.”

  “I’d better be running along,” said Bob Stevenson. “Unless there’s something that I can do?”

  Miss Withers appreciated his delicacy. There was something a little indecent and irreverent about unfolding the personal belongings of the dead girl in front of a man’s alien eyes.

  Stevenson paused at the door. “I wonder—you don’t happen to know if school keeps tomorrow or not, do you?”

  Miss Withers had her own ideas, but she did not expose them. “I’m going down there at the usual time in the morning,” she said. “I think it would be best if we all did.”

  “Right!” He crossed the room and took Janey’s hand. “This is tough for you,” he said. “Good night.”

  Miss Withers watched Janey’s blue eyes follow the young instructor as he went out. Unless she was very much mistaken, Janey Davis saw Sir Galahad, Rudolph Valentino, and H.R.H. Prince Charming incarnate in that well-muscled figure.

  The two women stood for a moment facing each other, and then they set to work. A search of the closet and the chest of drawers brought nothing to light that should not have been there. Just a few clothes and dozens and dozens of shoes, the latter well-worn on the inside of the heel.

  Strangely enough, there were no keepsakes, no letters, no personal photographs. “Anise told me she threw them all away when she moved,” Janey confided. “She wanted to start over again, I guess.”

  Miss Withers nodded. With sure, deft fingers she refolded the silken garments that had covered and warmed Anise Halloran’s round young body only a few hours before. She stood the pairs of high-heeled shoes back on their shelf. Then she rose to her feet.

  Miss Withers moved across the room toward the kitchen. It was little more than a closet set in the wall, with one narrow window and an alcove with a built-in table and two benches.

  “We didn’t eat in much,” Janey said. Miss Withers looked idly through the cupboard shelves. A tall dark bottle caught her eye. It bore no label, but it was half full of a pungent amber liquid. Miss Withers removed the cork, sniffed at it, and replaced it.

  “That’s Anise’s medicine,” Janey offered.

  “Bad medicine,” said Miss Withers. “Anise wasn’t the type to have a taste for whiskey.” Her eyes roamed the shelves, but there was no sign of cocktail shaker or even of mixing glasses. Just the tall brown bottle—

  “She drank it straight, too,” concluded the schoolteacher.

  Janey Davis was defiant. “Well, what if she did? This isn’t 1850, Miss Withers. What Anise did was her own business. Besides, she never drank at school, and it didn’t affect her teaching.”

  Miss Withers, who knew differently, did not speak. She led the way back into the living room, glanced idly at the bath, and then came back to the easy chair.

  “This is a nice apartment,” she observed. “But didn’t you find it a little lonely here for the two for you? Weren’t you a little frightened sometimes?”

  Janey Davis shook her head, innocently. “Frightened—of what?”

  “Oh, burglars, prowlers, men—anybody. Weren’t you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why did you have this?” And from her breast Miss Withers drew out the little automatic that she had found in the drawer of Janey’s desk at Jefferson School.

  Janey’s face showed that she was startled.

  “That? Oh, yes, that. Why, I … I bought it for Anise. She didn’t tell me why she wanted it, she just wanted it.”

  “She planned some target shooting, no doubt,” Miss Withers suggested. “But why didn’t she buy it herself?”

  Janey almost smiled. “Only last week she came to me and asked me to get it for her. You see, my brother has a hardware and sporting-goods store over in Newark. And the laws are pretty strict about selling firearms in New York. So yesterday I had dinner with my brother and got the gun. But I forgot to bring it home.”

  Janey Davis stretched out her hand for the gun, but Miss Withers replaced it in its hidden resting place.

  “Later, perhaps,” she said. “Someone may want to look at it. This mystery isn’t cleared up yet, you know.”

  Janey Davis, like everyone else at Jefferson School, knew of Miss Withers’ occasional connection with the Police Department of New York, and so she submitted to the somewhat high-handed proceeding.

  “It all seems so strange, so terrible,” she said brokenly. “Why, Anise wasn’t ready to die. I know she didn’t want to die—she was afraid of dying. Who could have wanted to kill her? What motive could there be? Anise had nothing—nobody could have gained by her death!”

  Miss Withers shook her head, slowly. In her hands she still held the newspaper which she had bought when she took the taxi, and which had served no purpose to this moment except to shield her hat.

  Idly she began to refold it, and then her eagle eye caught, on the second page, a name that was all too deeply burned into her consciousness. She read the item in silence, and her face betrayed nothing. She fought for control, and then the room steadied again.
/>
  “Motive,” she repeated calmly. “Motive—hm, let me see. Do you think this little news item could cast any light on the subject?”

  She extended the folded paper to Janey Davis, with one long forefinger firmly pressed against the paragraph in question.

  The girl read, and slowly the blood mounted to her neck and face. It was a very short item indeed. A headline announced “LUCKY NUMBER DRAWS FAVORITE IN IRISH SWEEPSTAKES.”

  Beneath the head were these words: “Dublin, November tenth, AP Lucky number 131313, according to an official announcement made by Mr. Shamus Donnell, president of the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes Commission at the conclusion of the drawing late today, won the name of Kangaroo Lad, favorite for the Midlands Derby. This last great race of the season will be run two weeks from today, and the holder of the lucky one-pound ticket, said to be one A. Halloran of New York City, is certain to receive a prize of from five hundred pounds if Kangaroo Lad merely enters the race, to a possible five thousand to ten thousand if he shows, places, or wins. Other tickets winning—”

  Slowly Janey Davis put down the newspaper. Her red little mouth was open, and she expelled a deep breath.

  Then she jumped to her feet and ran across the room to the mantel which hung above a fireplace boasting only a gas heater. She fumbled for a moment among a little pile of letters and papers there. Then she paused.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “Wait—I remember.” She ran to the bookcase, and searched busily through its shelves.

  She found at last a little limp leather volume, with a gold cross on its cover. She brought it out to the table, and flipped through the leaves.

  “Anise put it somewhere in her prayer book because she thought it would bring us good luck!” said Janey Davis. “Now if I can find it … I told her not to put it here. I said it was bad luck to use a prayer book for such a purpose, but I guess I was wrong. Here it is!”

  She drew forth a large oblong stiff cardboard, bright cerise in color, with an emerald green border of tortuous engraving. It bore the scrolled insignia of the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes, and the number embossed across its face was 131313.

  Janey Davis was breathless. “The prayer book brought her good luck after all!”

  “Such good luck that tonight she lies, a blackened thing of horror, in the City Morgue,” Miss Withers reminded her. “Such luck that her skull was broken in the darkness, and her face streaked with blood, and then cast into the fire….”

  “Stop! Stop, I tell you!” The girl drew back, her hands to her lips. The lottery ticket whirled to the floor like an autumn leaf. But Janey Davis stooped to snatch it.

  “It’s half mine,” said the girl. “Why, I even loaned her the money for her half. She came home, all excited, saying that she had a chance to get a very lucky number, and would I go halves with her? The ticket was five dollars, and I paid it. They only allow space for one name, and she put hers down, but we were halves on it. Why—”

  “You’re going to have to prove that,” Miss Withers told her. “Don’t you see what a position this puts you in? Half of that ticket may be worth, let me see—even with taxes and things, it might mount up to twenty thousand dollars if that horse comes in ahead of the other horses.”

  Janey looked bewildered. “But—why should that have anything to do with me? My half is my half. We agreed on that. Bob Stevenson was here when we talked about it, he’ll bear me witness. Why should her death have anything to do with this?”

  “If she was dead—you had the ticket,” Miss Withers pointed out. “The whole ticket is worth more than half, and I imagine one would have little difficulty in getting the name changed. Believe me, my dear, the police are going to make things very difficult for you, even if you can prove that you bought this ticket for Anise.”

  “I can! I can prove that. Look here!” Janey ran to the mantel, and took up a folded black leather oblong. “Here’s my check book—the stub will show. See?”

  She riffled the stubs, and then displayed one which gave evidence that on September sixth she had drawn a check for the amount of five dollars to Anise Halloran, lowering her account from eighty-seven dollars to eighty-two.

  “And if the police won’t believe that, they can look at the cancelled check and see for themselves,” Janey declared. She snatched up a long manila envelope, and dumped out its contents on the table. A moment later she presented a single bit of paper, riddled with bank perforations, to Miss Withers.

  It was the check for five dollars, payable to Anise Halloran. Idly Miss Withers turned it over. There were three endorsements on the back of the check. The first was the thin, neat signature of Anise Halloran. The second was a heavy, almost illegible scrawl that Miss Withers made out to be “Olaf Anderson” and the last was “Palace Grocery, B. Cohen, cashier….”

  “Anderson?” Miss Withers frowned.

  “Yes, the janitor at school. You know. He came through the building with these things, selling them.”

  “He didn’t come to me,” Miss Withers remarked. “But then, he wouldn’t. I’m not the gambling type.” She toyed with the check a moment.

  “I guess that proves it,” said Janey triumphantly.

  “It proves something, anyway,” Miss Withers agreed.

  VII

  In a Pig’s Eye!

  (11/15/32—10:00 P.M.)

  IT WAS LATE THAT evening when Hildegarde Withers finally inserted a key in her own door, and let herself into the little flat on Seventy-sixth Street which enclosed her Lares and Penates.

  It was characteristic of the lady that she first methodically put away the damp copy of the World-Telegram which bore the news of the sweepstakes ticket. Then she cast a longing eye at the comfortable slippers which lay neatly beneath the head of the davenport that, when properly managed, became her bed.

  But she crossed directly to the telephone. The girl at the hospital phone desk must have recognized her voice for she spoke quickly. “Oh, yes—Inspector Piper. He’s resting quietly. I mean, he’s really resting quietly. Yes, ma’am. Dr. Hampton operated at seven o’clock and it was a success. He’s going to be all right in a little while …”

  “Never mind that,” cut in Miss Withers. “When will he be conscious?”

  The nurse didn’t know. “Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps it will be several days. Head injuries often are that way, you know. Perhaps if you’ll phone tomorrow …”

  “You can depend on it that I shall,” Miss Withers promised. She hung up the receiver with a decided click,

  She had her hat off, and her slippers and dressing gown on, when the telephone went off like an alarm clock across the room. She answered it wearily, and then suddenly the weariness went from her voice.

  Her ears were filled with a tenor staccato which she recognized as belonging to Mr. Waldo Emerson Macfarland, Principal of Jefferson School, and scholastically speaking, her superior officer.

  Mr. Macfarland’s meaning was not entirely clear, owing to the excitement under which he was laboring. But she gathered that he wished to inform her that there had been a regrettable accident at the School; that the police and the newspapers had been having him on the telephone; that it was of the utmost importance that within the next few minutes he have an interview with his third grade teacher.

  “I’m coming over to see you at once,” she was told. “Immediately. Without a moment’s delay.”

  Miss Withers thought hastily. “Wait a minute!” She looked longingly at the comfortable davenport, and then at the door to the inner bedroom in which her two roommates were sleeping soundly after their day’s labors over the river in Flatbush Junior High Number Two. This was not the time nor the place to receive Mr. Macfarland, or any other gentleman.

  “I’ll be over at your house in ten minutes,” she promised. Off came the slippers, and back on went the serge suit and the sailor. Then she fared forth into the night again. It was lucky, she thought, that Mr. Macfarland’s residence was only a matter of a few blocks north along the Park. It wa
s less lucky, of course, that the rain and snow were still combining forces, and that as usual the myriad cruising taxicabs that always infest Manhattan in good weather had vanished at the first breath of bad.

  Hildegarde Withers strode briskly north past the mammoth new apartment hotels, beneath sign after sign with their pitiful notices, “Vacancy—fourteen rooms, eight baths—at revised rates,” until she came at last to the barren reaches above Eighty-first Street where some of the old brownstones still hold grimly on like a breakwater before the dark tide of Harlem to the north.

  She climbed the steps of 444 and rang the bell, which jingled dismally somewhere in the dark interior. She had no long wait this time, in fact the door sprang away from her. There was Waldo Emerson Macfarland, in his shirt-sleeves. He spun his glasses wildly on their wide black cord, and his gray hair was a rumpled halo above his usually placid countenance.

  “I answered the door myself, because I think Rosabelle is asleep,” he confided. This was a standing cliche in the Macfarland greeting. It was true enough, Miss Withers knew. The slatternly sepian lady who “did for” the Macfarlands was quite certainly sound asleep far away on Lenox Avenue, since it was a matter of years since the place had afforded a full-time servant.

  She followed the Principal through a combination foyer-reception room, past the foot of the really magnificent staircase, and into a book-lined study in the rear. Macfarland dropped instantly into the leather chair behind the battered oak desk, and rapped busily on his fore-teeth with his fingernails. Miss Withers hesitated for a moment, and then sat down.

  “I have received a telephone call from Sergeant Taylor of the Police,” the Principal began. “He wishes me to call at Headquarters first thing in the morning. I have also received telephone calls from several odd persons representing the newspapers. I am informed that a regrettable accident, a very regrettable accident, has befallen a young woman we both know. In short—”

  “In short, Anise Halloran was killed this afternoon, and there was no accident about it,” Miss Withers aided him. “For heaven’s sake, come to the point. You didn’t bring me out into the rain to tell me what I knew hours ago.”