Murder on the Blackboard

by Stuart Palmer

  “Very funny,” Miss Withers told him. “And now I think I’d like to get out of here. It smells like my Uncle Henry used to smell on the nights when my mother wouldn’t let me kiss him goodnight.”

  With even more difficulty than on the trip up, Miss Withers was lowered through the trap door again. Swarthout extinguished the lantern, not without a wistful eye at the straw-covered bottles. But Miss Withers waited below, and he had a very clear idea of what her attitude would be.

  “Get behind me, Bacchus,” he whispered, and dropped down through the hole. It was only the matter of a moment to pull the trap shut again, and to replace the board in the pile as it had been before.

  They found Sunshine Willis faithfully guarding the main door, a yellow newspaper in his hands and his sad face sadder than ever.

  “I’ll use the phone in the Principal’s office to notify Headquarters of what we found,” Swarthout told Miss Withers. “They’ll send a man down to take pictures of that hatchet before it’s moved.”

  Miss Withers paused beside Willis. Silently he extended toward her the newspaper. “Want to read it while he’s phoning?”

  She shook her head. “No, thank you. I’ve been through too much excitement to do any reading now. I’ve got to think….”

  Willis still held out the yellow sheet. “It’s an extra,” he explained patiently. “They were yelling it when we were in the cellar. You better read it.”

  Miss Withers took the sheet, and fumbled for her glasses. But she needed no glasses to peruse the screaming black headlines that announced with amazing clarity and conciseness…. “MURDER SUSPECT SOCKS DOC AND SCRAMS”

  “What in heaven’s name….” She sat down on the stoop and read on, breathlessly. “Suspected of Being Grade School Fiend, Janitor Knocks Distinguished Alienist Galleywest and Does Human-Fly Act From Window…. Olaf Anderson, arrested as a suspect in the murder of Anise Halloran, beautiful schoolteacher, made a clean getaway from the hotel room of Professor Augustine Pfaffle, eminent Viennese criminologist, at eleven o’clock this morning, first striking the professor unconscious. Anderson had been taken by police to Professor Pfaffle’s apartment for examination at the request of local police authorities and in the midst of a psycho-analytic test while alone with the professor, Anderson leaped to his feet, knocked the distinguished scientist unconscious, and made his escape through the window and down the ornamental façade of the Park View Hotel to the court. At an early hour this afternoon he had not been apprehended, although every exit to the city is blocked and the police state that an arrest is imminent … fiddlesticks!” The final word was added by Miss Withers herself, as she thrust the paper back at Willis.

  “Psycho-analyzing Anderson! Visiting criminologist or not, that man is pure daffy! Anderson is no deeper than a mud puddle—” Miss Withers broke off short. She remembered something. At that moment Swarthout came out of the door.

  “Look at that,” she said. He nodded.

  “What else do you think they’re stewing about over at Headquarters?”

  “Bother Headquarters,” said Hildegarde Withers. “Do you realize what this means?”

  He nodded. “We were so sure that the janitor was innocent of the murder because he couldn’t have been in the cellar and taken that crack at you! And now—it’s a thousand to one that he was the only person who could have done it!”

  “I’m not betting, even at those odds,” said Hildegarde Withers. “Come on, I’m going on an errand. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to go along. That hatchet made me a little nervous.”

  “Made you a little nervous!” Swarthout grinned at her. “Say, it didn’t come anywhere near me, and I’m plenty nervous myself. A good clean bullet isn’t so bad, even in the dark, but a tomahawk has never appealed to me.”

  “By the way,” the young man continued as they sought an uptown subway, “I suppose we’re going on a manhunt for the janitor? Got any idea where he might be hiding?”

  “I have not,” declared Miss Withers. “Let the police chase Anderson. The less I see of him, the better. There’s more point in searching for that missing Curran girl, to my mind.” She stopped as she saw Georgie Swarthout’s face.

  “Lord, I forgot to tell you,” he announced, above the roar of the train. “They did find her!”

  “What? Where? Is she dead?”

  Georgie shook his head. “Not exactly. The police up in Niagara Falls nabbed her in a rooming house, hiding out under the name of Mrs. Rogers.”

  Miss Withers leaned back in her seat. “This is surprise number two today,” she admitted.

  “It was a surprise for the girl, too,” Georgie went on. “The Lieutenant told me all about it over the phone when I called him from the school. You see, this Curran girl was hiding out under the name of Mrs. Rogers. Only it seems there’s a Mr. Rogers in the picture, and a wedding ring and everything. The Niagara police have ’em both in the hoosegow, which is a hell of a place to spend a honeymoon. But the Commissioner is wiring them to let the kids go, because it’s all on the level and they were married ten days in Hoboken. The names were phonied up a little, and the ages. But they’re married, sure enough.”

  “A secret wedding, I’ll be bound, and they had to do it because of course Betty Curran would lose her job if the Board knew she was married!” Miss Withers eagerly caressed the handle of her umbrella. “Nowadays young couples find it hard enough going with two salaries coming in—but the Board decided that preference must be given the unmarried teachers, because they needed the work worse! That’s it—that’s why Betty Curran left her rooming house, and told everybody at school that she was going to have an operation. That’s why the Strasmick girl started to object when I suggested sounding the alarm. I’m ashamed of myself—but somehow I was certain sure that the disappearance of Betty Curran had something to do with the Halloran case. And all the time the girl was only human—she was trying to eat her cake and have it, too. Marriage and her job—both.”

  “Sure,” agreed Swarthout. “If it’s no secret, where are we bound, and why?”

  “We’re bound for an apartment house on West Seventy-fourth Street, where I’m going to ask a question backwards.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m going to ask a question by telling the answer first,” promised Miss Withers. “Come on, here’s Grand Central. Let’s catch the Shuttle across town.”

  They finally reached the old brownstone house on 74th Street. Miss Withers started up the steps, but Georgie halted on the edge of the sidewalk.

  “I’ll just stick around here,” he suggested. “You’ll do better with your questions if I’m not around.”

  “You come along, young man,” she ordered. “I’ll do all right. Besides, I want to get your reaction to a young lady. A very beautiful young lady.”

  “If I must I must,” said Georgie Swarthout. He followed her up the steps, waited while she rang, and then climbed on up the two flights of stairs.

  The door was answered by Janey Davis herself, clad in shimmering cerise pajamas. Her hand went swiftly to her well-rounded throat. “I didn’t know anyone was with you,” she gasped. Then she turned and ran for a dressing-gown, stepping out of the closet in a pale green wrap that Miss Withers disapproved of, and envied a little. It showed practically all the pajamas, and a good deal of Janey.

  “You were right,” Georgie Swarthout told Miss Withers. “And I was going to stay outside on the cold sidewalk!”

  There were introductions, and Janey let the young man hold her hand for the merest fraction of a second. It was not hard to see that she had been crying recently, and that she was only waiting their departure to start crying all over again.

  “I know why you’ve come—I suppose,” she burst out as soon as the two guests had seated themselves. Janey leaned against the mantel, her arms outstretched and her head thrown back.

  “This thing is terrible! It’s driving me crazy! At first you broke the news so calmly that it stunned me. I didn’t believe it, I didn’t thin
k it was true. I didn’t realize that poor Anise would never come home any more. But I wasn’t able to sleep a wink since, nor eat anything today. It seems wicked to go on living with Anise, who loved life so much, lying on a marble slab somewhere while doctors desecrate her body….”

  “Well, well,” broke in Miss Withers. “You mustn’t let yourself go, my dear. Try to think of pleasant things. Don’t stay alone too much. I know this is terrible, but it could be worse.”

  “I don’t see how!”

  Miss Withers saw, very clearly. “If a certain somebody had been a better axeman, or if I hadn’t fumbled with a match this afternoon—but never mind that. You say you knew why we came?”

  Janey Davis nodded. “The police were here, and they say they’re coming back. About the lottery ticket. They don’t believe me when I say that half of it is mine, and my money bought it. They hinted—terrible things. As if I’d do anything like that for money!”

  “Of course not,” agreed Miss Withers, tongue in her cheek. She’d seen practically everything done for money, including bloody murder.

  Georgie Swarthout tore his eyes off Janey’s face long enough to chime in. His voice had the ring of sincerity. “We know you didn’t have anything to do with it, Miss Davis. We just want your help, that’s all.”

  The girl gave him a grateful look. Then she turned back toward Miss Withers. “I must have seemed a cheap, common thing to you the other night. About the lottery ticket, I mean. But I’d been praying so for it, and I needed it so. You see, my father and mother live in a little town upstate. They’re quite elderly, and they’re losing their home because they can’t get it refinanced. It wasn’t for myself.”

  Her face softened. “But I see I can’t take the money, even my half of it, now,” she went on. “Not since the ticket was in Anise’s name, and since it won just before her death. It would be … grave robbing.”

  Miss Withers nodded approvingly. “A very worthy attitude. But, my dear child, this is an important decision to make. Have you thought it over?”

  Janey nodded. “I’ve thought it over and talked it over. With Bob, I mean. He thinks I’m a little goose, I guess. But I think he’s proud of me, too.”

  “Bob, I infer, is Mr. Stevenson?” Miss Withers inquired.

  Janey Davis nodded. She smiled, as though she knew a deep, delicious secret.

  “All the same,” Miss Withers proceeded, “we didn’t come up here to talk about the lottery ticket. Let that lie between your own conscience and the lottery commissioners themselves. I came up here to ask you, as Anise Halloran’s roommate, why it was that you didn’t tell me the other night that she bought whiskey from Anderson, the janitor?”

  “You mean the brown bottle—what she called her medicine?”

  Miss Withers nodded. “Yes, that and the bottle in her desk down at school. Why didn’t you tell me, especially since the janitor is involved in this business?”

  Janey Davis’ eyes were very wide and very innocent. “I didn’t tell you it because it wasn’t true! Anise never bought any liquor from Anderson. I didn’t know he sold it, and neither did she. The only thing she ever bought from him was the lottery ticket, and that was unpleasant enough. It turned out that she chose the number that he wanted for himself, or something like that. Anise was quite upset about it but she got her own way, as usual.”

  Miss Withers shrugged her shoulders. “Suppose I happen to tell you that I know positively that it was Anderson from whom she bought her liquor?”

  Janey Davis shook her head, so that the curls danced about her ears. “No, not Anderson. It was Tobey, the candy man across the street, that she bought her liquor from.” Her hand went to her lips. “I—I didn’t mean to tell that.”

  “And why not?” Miss Withers wanted to know.

  “Because I didn’t see why it mattered in this case. Anise is dead, and she’s suffered enough without having her name dragged through the mud any more. Her secrets are her own. Besides, she only drank because her nerves were bad. She bought the stuff herself because she said other people’s liquor tasted like cleaning fluid. She was sick, really she was. It was just in the past two or three weeks that she took to drinking.”

  Janey Davis was almost crying. “Why can’t you and the police search for her murderer, and forget about her little—failings? There isn’t a person living who doesn’t have something in his life that he isn’t proud of. I have, and so have you!”

  Miss Hildegarde Withers let that pass without committing herself one way or the other. “These things are bound to come out sooner or later,” she said slowly. “It would be better if you gave us all the help you can, instead of hindering.” But her remarks fell on stony ground.

  Janey sobbed quietly into her handkerchief, while Georgie Swarthout made vague gestures of comfort. The situation was relieved by a shrill buzz of the doorbell.

  Janey Davis came out of her sobbing spell, and went to the door. Her face lighted up at what she saw there—Bob Stevenson, his dark Chesterfield coat flecked with snow. He began to shake the wet drops from his hat, but the girl clutched his arm and drew him through the door.

  He looked up, and saw Miss Withers’ eyes boring into his own. “I see that the Spanish inquisition is still on,” he observed. “Janey here didn’t have anything to do with the case. Why can’t you leave her alone? They’ve got the murderer, or at least they did have him until they let him get away. I don’t see …”

  “You don’t need to see, young man,” Miss Withers told him. “The investigation is bound to go on, whether we like it or not. I’m trying to be as human as possible about my part of it, but I’m going right straight ahead. Also, having learned what I came to find out, I’m going home. Oh, you must pardon my forgetfulness. Mr. Stevenson—Mr. Swarthout, of the police also, I might add.”

  The two young men nodded, and mumbled their delight at meeting. Miss Withers marched toward the doorway. Suddenly she hesitated.

  “It’s another nasty cold day,” she observed. “Janey here is all unstrung, Mr. Stevenson is chilled and wet through, and we’re both of us likely to be before we get a block away. I think under the circumstances, and to show that there is no hard feeling in all this, we ought to have a drink together.”

  Georgie Swarthout stopped as if shot. “What? Say, my ears must be going back on me. What you just said sounded like ‘we ought to have a drink together’!”

  “That’s what I did say.” Miss Withers made her best attempt at a convivial smile.

  Bob Stevenson was smiling vacantly, his eyes wide. Janey Davis was the first to move.

  “I—I’m sorry, but there’s nothing to drink here. The police came and took Anise’s medicine….”

  “Heavens, child, I didn’t mean that.” Miss Withers reached beneath her coat, and after much tugging she brought forth a single tall quart bottle.

  Georgie’s eyes widened. The label was Dewar’s Dew of Kirkintilloch—and that bottle was from the liquor warehouse they had just left.

  She set it on the table with a flourish. “Have you some glasses?” she asked Janey.

  The girl looked questioningly at Bob Stevenson, and then moved woodenly toward the kitchen. Miss Withers had certainly dropped a bombshell into the conversation.

  Stevenson began to be amused by the whole situation. “And to think that all this time I’d figured you for a Puritan,” he told Miss Withers. He accepted one of the three glasses that Janey Davis brought. She herself didn’t want any.

  Georgie Swarthout tossed his off first, his eyes still on Miss Withers with wonder and amazement. Miss Withers took one gulp, but her eyes welled up with tears. Only Georgie, who stood beside her, saw that she poured most of the contents of her glass into a little Japanese garden that stood on the telephone table.

  But A. Robert Stevenson sniffed his with considerable gusto. “It isn’t often one gets liquor like this nowadays,” he admitted.

  “Very seldom indeed,” agreed Miss Withers, who had never tasted this or any other
kind in all her life. She put her empty glass on the table.

  “I was just thinking,” she said slowly, her eyes on the ceiling, “how Anise Halloran would have enjoyed being here, if she were alive. Congenial company—two of you with whom she’s often drunk in the past—and really genuine liquor—”

  Miss Withers let her voice soften. “Suppose she is here, trying to touch us, peering over our shoulders, trying to scream into our ears the name of the person who sent her into the shadows forever….”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, stop!” Janey flung her lithe young body into a chair, and crouched there, her head buried in her hands. Georgie moved toward her, but Miss Withers waved him back.

  There was the faintest trembling of Bob Stevenson’s hand as he put down his partially emptied glass and knelt beside the girl.

  “That’s all right, Janey,” he told her comfortingly. “Miss Withers didn’t mean to frighten anybody….”

  “Miss Withers jolly well did mean to frighten somebody,” said that lady under her breath.

  Janey’s hand clutched Stevenson’s shoulder, pulling his well-tailored coat out of shape. He stroked her arm, comfortingly.

  “That’s all right … all right….” He looked up at Miss Withers. “You’d better leave her to me,” he suggested. “Come back some other time; the child is hysterical now.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Miss Withers admitted. “Come on, Georgie. We’ve put our foot in it again.”

  They went down the stairs in silence. Miss Withers looked at her young companion, her eyes twinkling.

  “What do you make of our visit?” she asked.

  Georgie shook his head. “I’ve got a hunch you suspect the smart young instructor of something or other, only I don’t know what. Was that why you rang in the act about the dead girl listening in and so forth? If it was, he never batted an eye.”