Murder on the Run

by Medora Sale

  “Sounds great. Does she know any physics?”

  “Basically she’s a chemist, but she did enough physics in university to cope. I asked her—rather slyly, I thought—if she would mind teaching physics should the occasion arise. So all we have to do is to convince her that she would like to start working on Monday instead of next September.”

  “Tell her it comes with the job—you know, ‘oh, by the way, you start next week.’” Maggie laughed and retreated in the direction of her office. “I’d better try to raise la belle Jane at home. If the pattern holds, she’s probably still asleep.”

  Jane Conway’s phone rang shrilly in the empty apartment twenty times before Maggie gave up. She slammed the receiver down and went next door to the general office. Above the ringing of phones and clatter of office machinery, she asked whether either of the two secretaries had taken a message from Jane. In the controlled chaos of early morning, it was just possible, although not likely, that they might not have had time to pass along a message.

  Sylvia looked up from the list of absentees that she was annotating as she called homes to check on the girls who hadn’t shown up yet that morning. “Not a word. You mean she hasn’t come in again this morning? I could have used a couple of extra hours myself. Do you want me to call her?”

  “No thanks, Sylvia. I tried her a minute ago and there was no answer. How long would it take her to get to work, do you think?”

  Sylvia flicked open one of her folders, checked an address, and said, “Ten minutes? Fifteen, if she’s really tired. She only lives over on MacNiece.”

  “Okay. We’ll give her ten minutes or so. I wonder if she’ll have the grace to tell us she’s here, or if she’ll just sneak up to her classroom and hope that no one noticed she hadn’t turned up. I think I’ll just drift by there and see. Here, give me some of those absentees, and I’ll do them.”

  But fifteen minutes later, it was only a mildly irritated English teacher, marking essays, who was to be seen in Jane’s class. “Damn!” said Maggie, back in the office. “Do you suppose something has happened to her?”

  “If you mean Jane Conway,” said Ruth, glancing up from her typewriter, “someone said that she looked terribly ill yesterday.”

  “Yesterday,” said Maggie, ruminatively. “When was that? I can’t keep the days straight anymore.” She sighed. “But you’re right. She sat at lunch and stared at the lasagna as though it was laced with arsenic. She was absolutely pea-green. She lives alone, doesn’t she?” Sylvia, who knew everything, nodded. “I suppose I’d better go over there and see if something has happened to her. Oh, God.”

  “Why don’t you take Helen Cummings with you?” suggested Sylvia tactfully. “Joyce can hold the fort over at the infirmary until you two get back. Shall I give her a call?”

  “What an absolutely brilliant idea. Then if there is anything really wrong, she can cope. She has a stronger stomach than I have.” Maggie was not looking forward to this.

  The two women stood staring at each other in frustration on the front steps of the square yellow building. They had been alternately ringing the bell marked “Superintendent” and pounding fiercely on the front door for at least ten minutes. “Maybe we should go around to the back and see if we can get in another door,” suggested Maggie desperately. Then the door slowly opened, and a slightly tousled gray head poked around it.

  “Here now. Who’re you looking for? What are you making all that racket for? If they ain’t in they ain’t in.” She started to shut the door. “Any more of that and I’ll call the police.”

  “Just a minute,” said Maggie. “Are you the superintendent?”

  “No!” said the head. “Not exactly. Anyway, what do you want?” It drew back, preparing for flight.

  “Well, maybe you should call the police. We’re looking for Jane Conway, Apartment 403. We’re from the school she works at, and she hasn’t come in today. And she isn’t answering her phone. She might be very ill in there.”

  The head slowly re-emerged. “Well—if you think she’ sick, maybe we’d better go up and look.” She cautiously held the door open just wide enough for them to squeeze through. “Now, I don’t usually go into the tenants’ apartments, you know. There’s a law about that. ‘Quiet use and enjoyment,’ it’s called—that’s what they have. And that means the superintendent can’t go in when she feels like it, unless there’s a reason. But I guess this is a reason.” As she talked, she toiled toward the elevator, a large bunch of keys in her hand. “Not that I seen anything suspicious, mind you,” she said, as the elevator groaned up to the fourth floor under their combined weights, “so I don’t know what you expect to find.” She flipped through the keys on her ring, slowly picked out the right one, and inserted it into the lock. “There you are,” she said, as she turned the key with a grimace and flung open the door. “She probably spent the night out, I’d say. Not that it matters to me what the tenants do, as long as they don’t have wild parties and wreck the apartments.” She pushed her way in first, waddling slightly as she moved. “See? Nothing wrong here,” she said, looking around the neat living room. She opened the bedroom door slowly and peered inside. “There, you see? No one in there. Bed hasn’t even been slept in, I’d say. These girls are all like that. I don’t know why you worry—half the time they don’t come home at all at night.”

  “Do you know if she went out last night and didn’t come back?” asked Helen.

  “How should I know? They all have their own keys. They only bother me if something goes wrong. But I see them sometimes in the morning coming in, still all dressed up.” She waddled out of the bedroom. “None of my business, what they do.”

  “Would you mind if I looked in the bathroom?” asked Helen. “She might have fallen and hit her head in there.”

  “Go right ahead,” said the super. “It’s through the bedroom, there.”

  Helen opened the door, looked around briefly, and shook her head at Maggie. They walked slowly back into the living room. There was nothing in it that would give a hint to its owner’s whereabouts—a briefcase was sitting next to the desk; on it there was a neat pile of student papers, probably waiting to be marked.

  “Should we call the police?” asked Helen.

  “I don’t know,” said Maggie. “We’d feel like awful fools if she’s sitting in the physics lab right now.”

  But as the two women looked hesitantly for the telephone, Sergeant Dubinsky of Homicide was carefully removing leaves and brush from the cold and stiffened remains of the girl they were looking for. The unhappy couple who had stumbled across her stood uneasily nearby, their story told, with no reason to stay, but loathe to depart.

  Chapter 5

  Eleanor Scott slipped her Rabbit into the last free parking space in front of Kingsmede Hall and looked uncertainly around her. Something very peculiar was going on. Two police cruisers were pulled up in front of the main entrance, giving the school a decidedly ominous air. She walked around them and went slowly into the building, where she cautiously peered into the room marked “Principal.” It contained only the principal’s secretary, deep in conversation on the telephone. “Is she available?” Eleanor mouthed soundlessly.

  Annabel looked up and shook her head. She covered the mouthpiece long enough to hiss: “If you want to wait, she might be able to see you—but you know how things are right now. It’s pretty bad.”

  “I’ll be in the staff room,” she muttered, completely baffled, “if no one minds.” Her explanation was lost in a renewed spate of earnest conversation on the phone. She slithered into the teachers’ lounge, hoping to find a familiar face. The head of the science department waved to her from a corner where she was sitting, clutching a mug of tea and a black and green cookie. Eleanor breathed a sigh of relief as she headed for the large comfortable chair beside her.

  “What in hell is going on, Cassandra?” whispered Eleanor as she sat down. “Wha
t are all those police cars doing here?”

  “Omigod—you don’t know. It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened since someone rang the fire alarm during the Christmas dance ten years ago. Actually, I shouldn’t be talking about it so flippantly. It really is awful. One of our teachers—poor kid—was attacked by that guy down in the ravine.”

  “Attacked? Is she all right?”

  “Hardly. He killed her.” Cassandra shrugged as she delivered the line. “I’m sorry. This is awful, but it’s been a terrible day. And she was just a supply—that’s not a nice way to put it, is it?—I mean, no one really knew her very well. And she was kind of a nuisance when she was here, too. Very difficult to get along with and not very reliable. Still, that’s no reason for someone to get killed.” Cassandra looked a little more somber as she attacked another mint Oreo. “I really don’t like this combination of flavours,” she said. “But between teaching and all this hysteria I am absolutely starved.”

  “Was this the person who was filling in for Vicky?”

  “Hmmm,” said Cassandra, with her mouth full. “So she was my baby, so to speak. Roz is in there talking to a terribly cute policeman. I’m just sitting here waiting for my turn. I wonder why it is that the prospect of talking to the cops always makes you feel guilty? And as soon as I finish talking to him I have to interview her replacement. That’s one nice thing—Roz was going to fire Jane today if this new one was available, and now she doesn’t have to bother.”

  “You do have a gruesome turn of mind, Cassandra,” said Eleanor, shivering. The staff-room door opened to interrupt her rebuke, however, and Annabel’s beckoning finger drew them out of their chairs.

  “There we go,” said Cassandra cheerfully. “My turn to be grilled.” She followed Eleanor toward the door.

  She gave it a healthy tug, caught sight of the principal, and started to make her excuses. “Look, Roz, I’ll come back some other—” She stopped dead. Standing directly in front of her as the door opened wider was a tall, slightly mournful-looking man who had obviously been in mid-sentence with Roz Johnson. There was a moment of grim silence as they stared at each other, first self-conscious, then embarrassed. Eleanor recovered first, however, and automatically extended her hand to him. “John, how pleasant to . . . I mean, this is a surprise. I didn’t expect to see you here.” He just as automatically took her hand and shook it. Damn! That was exactly what she had done the first time she had met him, just as if he were a potential client with a large house he wanted to sell. She dropped his hand like a hot potato.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked brusquely. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put it that way.” He took her by the elbow and steered her away from Cassandra and Roz, who were looking on with considerable interest. “Look, I have to talk to the head of the science department and then get some photos of the dead woman. But then I’d like to talk to you. I mean, alone somewhere. Not about this. For God’s sake, Eleanor, you know what I mean. Say something!” His voice was low, but tense with exasperation.

  “I’ll be in the parking lot after I talk to Roz. Same old Rabbit, over in the corner there. Don’t be too long.” She smiled uncertainly and walked back to the other two.

  Twenty minutes later, and not much wiser, John Sanders walked out of the spare, utilitarian vice-principal’s office which had been turned over to him for interviews. He bumped into Dubinsky, who was coming in search of him out of the small seminar room where he had been talking to a motley assortment of hastily assembled staff members. “Braston called while you were locked up in there,” he said, nodding across the hall. “She has the preliminary findings.”

  “Come back in here, then, and let’s hear them,” said Sanders. “Anything interesting?”

  “Well, maybe,” said Dubinsky, opening his notebook and flipping back a couple of pages. “See what you think. The cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage, probably occasioned by one or more heavy blows on the temple with a broad, flat instrument.”

  “A rock?”

  “Not necessarily, apparently, although it could have been a broad, flat rock. She had been dead about ten to sixteen hours before she got to the morgue, which places her time of death at between 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. yesterday. Which fits in with her having been teaching until 3:30, at least.” Sanders opened his mouth to comment but stopped himself as Dubinsky carried on. “There were traces of recent intercourse (blood type O positive), bruising on right knee, and what boils down to nasty scrapes on the left knee and left hip, containing a great deal of imbedded gravel, like the stuff found on the path close to where the body was found. Also on both elbows and forearms—scrapes, that is, and gravel. No bruising anywhere else.”

  “None?” said Sanders. “Thighs, belly, neck?”

  “Nope. She was healthy, well-muscled, in good condition. Nothing remarkable about her except that she was ten to twelve weeks pregnant.”

  “Pregnant? Any knife marks anywhere on the body that we didn’t notice?”

  “None. Braston pointed out that she could well have simply stumbled and fallen, except that she obviously landed on her left side, and it was the right side of her face that was injured. And that when people in good shape fall face forward and to the side, and land on their arms, they don’t usually bash themselves in the head fatally. In her opinion. But she isn’t entirely ruling out accidental death.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Sanders, scribbling down bits and pieces from the account onto the paper in front of him. “It doesn’t really sound much like the others, does it? Of course, the Parsons woman didn’t fit the pattern precisely either. Maybe he was interrupted again. Did Melissa think she had been raped?”

  “She didn’t have any opinion on the matter. She got a bit ratty about it when I tried to push her. Intercourse she is willing to testify to, which might or might not be forcible rape.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t. If he did rape her, he’s leaving more and more clothes on them. This one seemed to be mussed up but was probably still wearing everything she came out in.”

  “Yeah,” said Dubinsky, “but look at what she was wearing. He didn’t have to take much off, did he? She’s practically inviting him, dressed like that.”

  “Have you checked whether the gravel on the body comes from that section of the footpath?” Sanders suddenly looked at his watch. It was getting late, and there was a limit to the amount of time that Eleanor would be willing to wait. Dubinsky shook his head. “Then get on to that, and I’ll go over what we have from here, and talk to that building superintendent. No need for you to hang around any longer.”

  “Sure,” said Dubinsky, picking up his raincoat and heading for the door. “Have fun with the super.”

  Sanders scooped up the papers lying on the desk and strode quickly out toward the main door. As he passed the principal’s office, Annabel popped out with two glossy eight-by-ten black and white prints. “These were taken for the yearbook, and they’re the only pictures we have with her in them, but Miss Johnson said that you’re welcome to them. We really don’t need them back.”

  He took the prints with a vague smile and headed rapidly out to the parking lot. Eleanor was sitting in her car, flipping aimlessly through a copy of Vogue when he opened the door and slid in beside her. She jumped. “Oof! You scared me. I wasn’t expecting you to show up so soon. I must be getting a bit edgy.” She smiled tentatively at him. “You’re looking pretty good, John.” She paused a minute. “Well, actually, you don’t, now that I look at you. Ghastly is more like it. Have you been sick?”

  “No, I’m fine,” he said abruptly. “Look, I can’t talk to you in a school parking lot. The last time I tried that I must have been sixteen. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Sure.” Eleanor extracted her keys from her purse and started the car. “Where do you want to go?”

  The answer to that one leapt into his mind with ferocious speed. He knew exactly wh
ere he wanted to go, and also knew that it would be impossible. They were so close to Eleanor’s huge, uncluttered apartment, with its low, sloping ceiling and its glass doors that led out onto a deck that overlooked garden and ravine. But that would not be a good idea right now. “Let’s get a drink somewhere quiet. Some place close, since I have to interview an apartment super over on MacNiece.”

  “Why don’t you see him first, then, since it’s just around the corner from my place? Then we can walk over to Yonge and Bloor. Would you like a ride to MacNiece? It’s on my way. What did you do with your car?” She had looked around for an understated Toronto unmarked police car and had seen only the usual varied collection of teachers’ and shinier parents’ cars.

  “I came with Dubinsky and sent him away again with it. Subconsciously I must have assumed that you would offer me a ride.” He grinned and put the pictures in his hand down on his knee as he twisted to do up the seat belt.

  “What are these?” asked Eleanor, picking them up. “Not pictures of the girl who was killed, are they?” She looked more closely at the one on top. “You know, I think I’ve met one in this group—in a funny kind of way. She lifts weights over at the health club I’ve joined. Snarky as hell. That one, with the longish hair.” Eleanor pointed to the picture of Jane Conway standing with the rest of the science department in a huddle on the front steps.

  “That one?” said Sanders. “Are you sure?” He took the pictures and pulled the second shot out to show her. “Do you recognize her in this group?”