Murder on the Blackboard

by Stuart Palmer

  “Of course, of course.” The man was swinging his eyeglasses so vigorously that Miss Withers feared he was about to let them go flying, discus fashion. “Supposing for the sake of argument—supposing that this unfortunate happening does prove to be—to be murder”—he tasted the word carefully—“I was wondering if you would be willing, in the light of your previous experience in such matters …”

  “Willing to what?” Miss Withers’ nerves had stood about all they intended to stand, for one day.

  “I was wondering, as I was saying, if you, in the light of your previous experience in such matters, would be willing to act in my behalf and in the behalf of the Board of Trustees, who are very upset over the matter, as a sort of—as a sort of—”

  “You mean, you want me to play detective?”

  “Exactly!” Mr. Macfarland was not a beaming person, but he was very close to beaming now. “You would, of course, be relieved of your duties for the length of time necessary to clear up the unpleasantness. A substitute would be provided, and any expenses—any really necessary expenses …” He sneezed in his cupped hand.

  Miss Withers was both pleased and puzzled. “I suppose this is an honor,” she said. “But I’m not a detective. I was mixed up in one murder case because I happened to be at the Aquarium when a dead body appeared in the penguin tank upside down, and in another because I was having tea with the Inspector when he heard the alarm. But—”

  “I should consider it the greatest of favors,” said Waldo Emerson Macfarland. “In fact, if this matter could be settled expeditiously and quietly, I should be willing to consider making a change in the staff of the faculty at Jefferson School. It has always been the custom to have a man as Assistant Principal, but I am not sure that a woman might not serve the purpose most admirably. Mr. Stevenson has not been everything that I could wish, I must admit. In fact, Mr. Champney and Mr. Velie, of the Board, have agreed to follow out any recommendations I might make for a change at the end of the semester.”

  “Mercy sakes,” said Hildegarde Withers. Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane with a vengeance.

  “Then we’ll consider it settled? Of course, you will keep me informed of all developments and so forth. It has always been my belief that the intellect can easily triumph over force, and perhaps I can aid and guide you.”

  Miss Withers said nothing to that.

  “It is a deep mystery to me,” went on Macfarland in his high, excited voice, “a very deep mystery why a crime was committed in Jefferson School when the murderer must have known, as everyone associated with the school from the janitor to myself knows, of your remarkable success in solving such cases in the past. It was a terrible mistake he made….”

  Miss Withers frowned. “I’ve just begun to wonder if it was a mistake,” she said softly. But Macfarland did not hear her.

  “We shall simply put it down as the intervention of Divine Providence,” said the Principal. “He was ignorant, or else he forgot. In either case, you were on the spot when the deed was done, and you must have heard or seen things which will lead you quite easily to a solution of the crime. Eh?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Miss Withers admitted. “It looks as though I was deaf, dumb and blind this afternoon.”

  Mr. Macfarland was seemingly able to conceal his disappointment at this. “I shall always regret,” he went on, “that I hurried away from the school at two o’clock this afternoon, cancelling my last class in eighth grade history, and came home to nurse my cold.” He sniffed, and sought a handkerchief, while Miss Withers mumble polite wishes. “If I had only been there, as is my custom, until five o’clock or so, this unfortunate accident would never had occurred. To think that I sat calmly here writing at my daily essay when the quiet halls of learning entrusted to me were being violated….”

  He motioned toward the large ledger-like book which graced the exact center of his desk. Miss Withers knew that Macfarland prided himself upon having written, every day for the past dozen years or so, an essay upon any subject that struck his fancy. One whole shelf of his library was devoted to the ledgers, each page filled from margin to binding with microscopic script. Miss Withers had seen them, had even been permitted to read as many of them as she could manage. “Twilight,” “My Garden,” “Eternal Youth,” “Children,” “The Orient,” “Friendship” … the range of Waldo Emerson Macfarland’s subjects was as wide as his experience was limited.

  “Anyway,” ventured Miss Withers a little daringly, “you’ll have a new subject for tomorrow’s essay, won’t you? Murder as a Fine Art, perhaps?”

  Macfarland looked pained. “But my dear Miss Withers, that title was used by De Quincey some years ago.”

  She knew that. She also knew Danny Ahearn’s recent classic “How to Commit a Murder” was much more interesting and to the point, but she did not mention the fact to the Principal.

  Miss Withers rose to her feet. “I’ll do what I can, of course,” she agreed. “I’m not making any rash promises but I’ll try, if I’m allowed a free hand. You’ll excuse me now. I’ve had a very hard and exciting day.”

  Instantly Macfarland was bursting with sympathy. “Of course! Of course, my dear Miss Withers! And you came ’way up here in the midst of all this inclement weather. I shan’t let you go until you have some refreshment. A cup of tea, of course.” He raised his voice. “Chrystal!”

  “Mrs. Macfarland will be most happy to join us,” he confided. “Oh, Chrystal!” He began bustling about with a spirit lamp on the table behind his desk, and at that moment a heavy lacquer screen across the room swung aside and a tall and formidable person appeared. Miss Withers greeted the better half of Mr. Macfarland.

  She wore a loose cotton coolie-coat ornamented with brilliant dragons biting their tails, and her hair was thin and curly. Her bare feet were displayed through woven sandals of some sort of yellow grass, and in one hand she carried a sickly peony.

  “I’m so very happy!” said Mrs. Macfarland. Her voice was very throaty and full. She moved the peony to her left hand and offered her right to Miss Withers, who found it very like a dead fish in texture and temperature.

  Chrystal Macfarland—she preferred to be known as “Madame Chrysanthemum” since a venture into Numerology—was the result of a lifetime spent in pursuing the bypaths, the isms and the ologies of this world. She had begun as a choir singer in a little Methodist church in Minnesota, had studied Brahmanism, become a convert to Sister Aimee, Prince Rhadipore, Margery the Medium, Mrs. Eddy, and Nicholas Roerich in the order named, and now was enjoying a peaceful existence halfway between hypochondria and New Thought, combining, Miss Withers thought, the worst features of both. She was also a determined Orientalist, and her fingers bore multitudinous rings of Nevada jade and Fourteenth Street scarabs.

  She sank languorously upon a long couch which stood beside a teakwood coffee table. “There is something tremendous in the rite of pouring tea,” she contributed to the conversation. “I vibrate strangely to tea.”

  Miss Withers thought to herself that no one should laugh at the Principal’s interminable essays and the other queer quirks of his personality without at least imagining what his life with this dim-witted semi-invalid must have been.

  With a can of Sterno blazing merrily beneath the copper pot, Macfarland looked up at the guest. He held a lemon in his hand.

  “You like your tea Russian fashion, of course?”

  She hesitated the fraction of a second. “If it isn’t too much trouble, I’d like cream, please….”

  He put the lemon down. “It’s in the ice-box downstairs. No trouble at all.” He disappeared.

  Madame Chrysanthemum dabbled at the air with the peony. “Ah, tea!” she murmured. “What should I do without its blessing? Waldo has always left me much alone, you see, but while I have flowers and tea …”

  “Alone?” Miss Withers prompted.

  “Ah, yes! In the summers, when he goes to our place in Connecticut. Do you know, all this afternoon, while my Waldo was out
gathering atmosphere for his essay on ‘Sidewalks,’ I lay on my couch here absorbing the fragrance, even the very soul, of a bowl of peonies!”

  “Um,” said Hildegarde Withers. She rose from her chair and moved idly toward the desk. Madame Chrysanthemum, deep in the soul of her peony, was oblivious to everything else. Deftly the schoolteacher leaned against the oak desk and extended her hand toward the ledger, drawing it closer. She flipped it open … to today’s date. “November fifteenth” was written in Macfarland’s fine hand. Beneath it, scrolled and rescrolled, was the title “Sidewalks.” The rest of the page was blank.

  “Um,” said Miss Withers again. She returned to her chair, and after a few moments of tea seasoned with Macfarland’s long sentences and his wife’s moonings, she took her departure.

  The Principal walked with her to the door. “I am happy that you consent to serve Jefferson School and of course the cause of justice and right by taking this case upon your own shoulders,” he concluded. “I shall arrange for a substitute to assume your third grade tomorrow.”

  Miss Withers shook her head. “I don’t think that will be necessary, Mr. Macfarland. I’ll be able to learn more if I keep to the usual routine, and don’t give the murderer any warning that I’m on his trail. Don’t you think so?”

  Mr. Macfarland hemmed and hawed a moment. “My thought was this,” he finally told her. “In your investigation it will quite possibly be necessary for you to leave the city. In fact, I was going to advise that you start at once for Mr. Stevenson’s home in the south, Virginia I think it was. I’m very much in doubt about that young man, and I think a few days spent investigating his past would throw much light on this case.”

  Miss Withers was thoughtful. “Perhaps you are right. I’ll have to consider it. Of course, you promised me a free hand if I took the case …”

  “Of course,” Macfarland agreed. “Certainly, beyond a doubt. Just an idea.”

  She left him, and went out into the rain. At the next corner she stopped and looked back at the old brownstone house.

  “Just an idea, indeed!” she said aloud. “I go to Virginia on a wild-goose chase, and when I get back the case is stale potatoes!” Turning her face southward again, Miss Withers used a phrase that would have brought instant reprimand upon young Leland Stanford Jones.

  “In a pig’s eye!” she announced to the night and the storm.

  VIII

  Recess

  (11/16/32—7:00 A.M.)

  ALL THROUGH THE LONG hours of that night, Detectives Allen and Burns had leaned over the stolid figure of Olaf Anderson, sending wave after wave of questions over his head, and after each wave Olaf Anderson remained, eyes glazed, mouth open, as impregnable as Gibraltar.

  Sweat poured down the red faces of the two inquisitors, wilting their collars. Slowly their voices grew hoarser, and their tempers more short. But Olaf Anderson’s cropped, knobby head remained unbloody and unbowed.

  They gave him, aided by recruits from the station reserves, what is known as “the works.” A bright, unfrosted bulb beneath a glaring reflector cast a hundred watts into his faded blue eyes. He sat in a hard chair, denied even the grace of a table to lean his arms upon. Cigarettes lay just out of his reach, a water cooler stood across the room, denied to him until such time as he should decide to make a voluntary confession of his own free will.

  Everything had been tried. Anderson had been locked in a cell with a detective masquerading as a fellow-felon. His thick tips had never opened. He had seen a supposed suspect—also a masquerading detective—dragged into an inner room, and howls and bellows of pain issuing therefrom. He had even been given fatherly, kindly advice by the venerable Desk Sergeant, but even then he had shown no interest in the idea of “coming clean and making things easy for yourself….”

  His eyes were glazed and bloodshot, but so were Allen’s and Burns’. His lips were cracked and dry, but so were the two detectives’. Finally, as a last resort, a tall bottle of whiskey was brought before him, together with a pair of glasses. This bait held even less lure for the big Swede. He shut both his eyes very tightly and turned his head away.

  Finally Burns reached in the pocket of his coat and removed two unusual looking bits of paraphernalia. One was a ten-inch length of garden hose, plugged at the ends. The other was a man’s sock, the toe and part of the foot stuffed, Santa Claus fashion, with sand. The detective laid these objects on the table, in full view of Anderson.

  “Go ahead, sock him,” urged Allen. “The Captain says it’s all right as long as we know he pulled the job. If that won’t make him talk, I got other ideas that will.”

  Anderson the janitor, staring straight ahead of him, opened his mouth wide enough to say “I told you I kill nobody,” and closed it again.

  Burns leaned closer. “I’ll give you one more chance,” he offered. “You killed that Halloran kid, didn’t you? And then stuffed her body in the furnace? And then you hit the Inspector over the bean with a shovel and hid out in the cellar? Come on, where did you hide out?”

  “I kill nobody that I remember,” Anderson insisted.

  “All right, you asked for it,” Allen told him. He caressed the stuffed sock lovingly, and then brought it down across the Swede’s forehead.

  The prisoner blinked and shook his head. The sock burst, and sand flowed down the front of the denim overalls.

  “Will you talk now?”

  Anderson seemed stirred out of his lethargy. “I tell you if I kill anybody I don’t remember,” he insisted. “I was drinking.”

  “Yeah? Well, we’ll help your memory for you. How’d you like to be put on the floor and dangled up and down by the drawers, huh? We got another trick we call the rocking-chair. You’d go crazy over the rocking-chair. Want to know what it is?”

  Anderson showed no enthusiasm.

  “Well,” explained Allen, “it’s a great little stunt to bring back bad memories. We lay you on your back on the floor, and then I put my right foot on your Adam’s apple and my left foot in your gut. Then I stand on the right foot and ask if you’ll talk, and then I rock over on the other foot and give you a chance to talk. And if you don’t, then I rock back and forth until you do. Wanta try that game for awhile?”

  But the detectives’ ideas of playfulness were rudely interrupted. The uniformed man whose broad back had blotted out the light behind the glass of the door now interposed his head.

  “That school-marm is upstairs,” he informed them. “I can hear her arguing with the Captain.”

  Detective Burns replaced the garden hose in his pocket, and his teammate identified Miss Withers profanely and colorfully. But all the same—

  “She’s like this with the Inspector,” Allen reminded him. He held up two fingers. “And Oscar Piper hasn’t kicked in yet.” They came to attention.

  The voice was coming closer. “They say it’s down this way, Doctor. And of all the dark, damp, and gloomy holes I ever saw in all my born days—”

  Hildegarde Withers was not in the best of tempers. She was not accustomed to rising with the sun, and its pale beams had only begun to tinge the street outside.

  She entered the room like a squadron of cavalry with banners flying. “So here you are! Up to your old tricks, you two! I suppose you have a basket full of useless confessions?”

  There was a man with her, a weary little man whom both the detectives knew. They saluted, awkwardly. A police-surgeon is far above the rank of Second-grade Detective.

  “Dr. Farnsworth, I demand that you examine this man,” she said, pointing to Olaf Anderson. “Thoroughly….”

  “Yes, yes,” agreed the Doctor. “But I’ve been up all night at the hospital with Inspector Piper,” he reminded her. “Any time today would have done as well for this.”

  “Say, there ain’t a mark on him,” Allen objected. “We only been talking to the guy. You don’t need to—”

  “I want him examined for drunkenness and alcoholism,” snapped the schoolteacher. “Any time today would certainl
y not do as well. He’s probably sobered up now, if he was drunk. But it ought to be established whether or not he was as drunk as he says he was.”

  Dr. Farnsworth rubbed his head. “As a rule, in cases of this kind we establish soberness or the contrary by making the examined person try to walk a chalk line twelve feet long. If he makes it without wobbling, he’s sober. But—”

  “But it won’t work vice versa,” Miss Withers completed his sentence. “Because if this man is faking his drunkenness he could wobble, too. Aren’t there other tests?”

  The Doctor nodded. “The best of all is to analyze the brain for alcohol,” he informed her. “It’s a regular part of a thorough autopsy. Dr. Bloom or Dr. Levin over at the Medical Examiner’s Office could tell you about that. But I can’t analyze the brain of a living subject.”

  He reached for his little black case. For the first time during that long and gruelling ordeal, Janitor Anderson looked worried.

  Then the Doctor shook his head. “I have a better idea than that,” he offered. “I’ll send for a stomach pump and analyze his digestive tract. The by-products of alcohol are easy to define. Want to stay and watch it?”

  Miss Withers emphatically did not. “I’ve got to get down to my school,” she informed him. “And I’ve got an errand or two to do first. Would you be kind enough to telephone me at the school when you make an official decision in this matter?”

  The Doctor would.

  As Miss Withers flounced out of the room, the lifeless bluish eyes of the janitor followed her. An expression filled them which might have been one of dumb animal gratitude, and which also might have been one of calm and calculated suspicion. But Miss Withers did not see, and Allen and Burns were not students of the subtle.

  For all of thirty minutes Miss Hildegarde Withers stood on the steps of the New York Public Library, awaiting the august pleasure of its gray-clad minions in opening the doors for the day. Once inside, she crossed the wide marble rotunda, and stalked grimly up the stairs. On the third floor she turned west, through the almost-vacant catalogue room, and on toward the main reading rooms. Here she turned right, without a moment’s hesitation. She marched on past the desks, with their uncomfortable chairs and their reading lamps undoubtedly designed to throw all the light off the book and in the eye for the benefit of the spectacle industry.