Murder on the Blackboard (5 page)

She pointed into the darkness. A blurred figure was disappearing toward the gate, around the teeter-totter.

“McTeague!” shouted the Sergeant again. Then, to Miss Withers—“I guess he’s wise to the way out. Hey, McTeague!”

There was the shuffle of footsteps behind them, and Miss Withers whirled around to stare into the placid countenance of—McTeague!

“Here I am,” said the big Irish copper. “Who wants me?”

Miss Withers and the Sergeant both turned to the window again, but the blurred figure was gone. They looked at each other in silence.

Then Miss Withers whirled on the hapless McTeague. “Say, didn’t the Sergeant tell you to patrol the stairway and this upper hall? Where were you? You went off duty and let somebody sneak through here….”

McTeague blinked. “But I heard a suspicious noise, ma’am. A sort of knocking….”

“Yes? Where was it?”

“Well …” McTeague removed his uniform cap and scratched his head. “It wasn’t no place. I mean it was every place. It was in the radiators, ma’am. Just steam.”

“Just steam, eh? Well, we heard that, too, Taylor. Steam rattling in the radiators.”

Miss Withers looked around, quickly. There was a large radiator of the flat type hung on the ceiling over their heads, well out of the way.

“Will one of you jump up and touch that?”

McTeague willingly boosted himself up the wall and brought a large red palm in contact with the metal. He withdrew it, redder than it was before, and used a word not common in polite society.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he added. “But that’s hotter than hell.”

Miss Withers nodded slowly and wearily. Her face was drawn, and the excitement of the chase was gone.

“None of us thought it was unusual for a schoolhouse to have steam coming on at this hour of the day,” she said slowly. “The weather has been so warm that there’s only been a small fire in the morning, to take the chill off the place. I suppose you and those stupid men of yours who are down in the basement thought that somehow the janitor had come in and built up a fire for your comfort this evening?”

Sergeant Taylor was puzzled. “Huh?” He frowned. “Say, I’d like to find that janitor fellow. Allen and Burns don’t seem to be getting anywhere with their search downstairs—they haven’t got either the janitor or the body.”

“You’d better go on down to the basement,” Miss Withers told him, “and tip them off that they need only search for the janitor now. I know where the body is.”

The Sergeant’s mouth dropped open in unison with McTeague’s. “You know
what … where?
”

Miss Withers told him.

“Good God! Come on, McTeague! You coming, Miss Withers?”

She shook her head. “Not for anything in the world.”

“But, ma’am, with all this going on I’d feel safer about you if you’d stick with us….”

“There’s nothing to worry about now,” Hildegarde Withers told him calmly. “We know where the body is—and the murderer is safely out of here and far away. He—or she, for that matter—happened to know his way out of the building. And out of the playground, even if it was dark.”

Sergeant Taylor’s face brightened. “Then all we got to do is to find out the people who know their way around this place, and the murder is solved!”

“Simple, isn’t it?” Miss Withers agreed as they walked down the hall. “You’ve narrowed the suspects down to thirty or forty thousand. Don’t you realize that New York is full of men and women who spent the best part of eight years of their childhood in Jefferson School?”

They came down the stair, and Miss Withers paused outside the door of the Principal’s office. “I’ll be here,” she informed the Sergeant. “I want to make a phone call.”

Downstairs Taylor came upon the two detectives, Allen and Burns, in a hot argument.

They were standing beside a rude grave in the far corner of the long basement. It was a dark corner, between heavy stone arches that supported the floors above, and had never been completed or floored. There was hardly room for the Sergeant to stand erect, and McTeague was bent almost double.

“I tell you, this hole was dug this afternoon at the latest,” Burns was insisting. “Look at the shovel marks. Look at the dirt. It’s not dried, is it? Say, you can’t fool me about dirt. I used to be on a farm when I was a kid. I’ve walked plenty of miles behind a plow, and I tell you that dirt is black when it’s just dug, and then it dries out and gets grayish-like.”

“Never mind that, boys,” Taylor told them. “We got to get busy. Quick, where’s the furnace down here?”

Allen pointed with his thumb. “Over there in the corner. Why? Looking for a hot scent?”

“You don’t know how hot,” the Sergeant told him. “Come on.”

Back under the arches they went, past three gaping coal bins, and along a board walk to where a squat black furnace stood.

“I don’t see why we’re monkeying around here,” Allen complained. “We got to get busy and find whatever there is to be found in this place. Doc Levin is outside, and he says he’s going home. He figures the whole thing is a false alarm, and he isn’t going to set around and wait …”

Allen suddenly paused, as he saw the expression on Sergeant Taylor’s face.

“Wha-what’s up?”

“Plenty. You searched this basement, didn’t you? Well, you’d be a good one to send after trouble. Because you couldn’t find anything. You couldn’t find Times Square if you came out of the Paramount.”

Gingerly, the Sergeant caught the handle of the furnace door and threw it open.

A horrible, sickening odor burst out in their faces, and they drew back. McTeague crossed himself, and his lips moved wordlessly.

They were a hardened little group, those four policemen, who stood there aghast at the contents of that flaming bubble of iron. The life of a metropolitan policeman is not such as to make for squeamishness, and those four had looked on death, sudden death, in most of its more horrible forms.

But never in all their lives had they seen a sight like this one. Within the furnace a blackened, fleshless horror grinned out at them, through billows of murky yellow smoke and flame.

They had found the body of Anise Halloran.

“I
NSPECTOR PIPER?” SAID THE
voice at the other end of the line, very sweetly. “Oh, yes, Inspector Piper. He’s resting quietly, madam.”

“Oh, he is, is he? Well, you listen to me, young woman. That resting quietly stuff may go well with most of your telephone enquiries, but it won’t do for me. I want you to put down your magazine and take that gum out of your mouth and go to the floor nurse and find out how the Inspector is, do you hear me?” Miss Withers was rapidly losing her temper.

“But, madam …”

“Don’t you ‘but’ me! Or I’ll come over there to Bellevue Hospital and put you over my knee and spank you.”

There was a gasp, and then a long silence. Then the voice came again, still sweet.

“Inspector Piper is in the operating room now, madam. They say he has a comminuted fracture of the skull, and severe concussion, but that he is doing as well as can be expected. His heart is stronger. But of course he isn’t conscious yet. He may not be conscious for a day or more, the doctors say. Is there anything else?”

The harshness went out of Miss Withers’ voice. “No, thank you, child. Good night.” It took her three trials to get the telephone back on its hook, and her face was drawn with weariness as she slowly rose to her feet.

Outside in the hall she could hear Detective Allen’s voice, hysterical and high. He was evidently talking to the police photographer. “… and believe it or not, we used three fire extinguishers before we could draw it out of the furnace. There won’t be much for you to take pictures of….”

They passed onward, toward the cellar stair, and Miss Withers pulled her sailor down over her ears. It was a traditional gesture of defiance with her, a sort of nailing her colors to the mast-head.

She was resolved not to go near the cellar as long—as long as the body was down there. Miss Withers had seen enough of violence and sudden death for one evening. There remained the classrooms of the second floor to search. The police would do it eventually, but Miss Withers was a firm believer in the idea of striking while the iron is hot. The Inspector had always said that more sleuthing could be done in the first twenty-four hours after a murder than in all the time following. Here she was, given the opportunity of being almost an eye-witness to the murder—and as yet not one ray of light penetrated the mystery.

She started for the stairs again, and then thought better of it. She had little respect for the intelligence of the police when Oscar Piper was in charge of a case, and none at all now that he lay on the operating table in the emergency ward at Bellevue.

“I’ve got to make hay while the sun shines,” she resolved. Acting on impulse, she went back into the Principal’s office. Somewhere there ought to be a record of the home addresses and telephone numbers of the faculty of Jefferson School. It might be in Mr. Macfarland’s desk—no, there was no sign of it. She came back into the outer office and leaned over Janey Davis’ typewriter desk.

She tried the upper right-hand drawer … to find only stationery, stamps, an old letter or two, and a package of lemon mints. The second disclosed a small red pasteboard file box, the object of her search.

But Hildegarde Withers had no eyes for the address file now—for just behind it, wrapped in a gold and blue scarf, was a businesslike little automatic pistol.

She picked it up gingerly. The Inspector had once showed her the workings of an automatic, if she could only remember. She adjusted her pince-nez carefully, and then scrutinized the weapon. “This—and that—and then this….”

With a click the magazine slid out of the gun. It was fully loaded—but Miss Withers frowned in perplexity. The shell in the chamber, and all but one in the magazine, were blanks!

One solitary cartridge was complete, with a wicked looking copper sheath over its leaden slug.

It was the third in succession, allowing for the shell already in the chamber. In other words, this little gun would have to be fired twice before it would do anything but make noise.

Miss Withers squinted down the barrel. The gun looked as bright and clean as a new penny. There was no soot in the barrel, and no odor of powder.

“Never been fired, I’ll be bound,” Miss Withers decided. All the same, it might play some part in this mystery of mysteries.

“If I leave it here, it will only get Janey Davis into trouble,” she decided. “Besides, I may need it myself before this night is over.” Acting on the thought, she replaced the magazine, and tucked it away in her dress.

Then she picked up the address file, skimming rapidly through the colored cards it contained.

There was supposed to be, Miss Withers realized, a card here bearing the home address and telephone number of every teacher and every employee of Jefferson School. Anderson, the janitor, led off the list with an address far down on East Fourteenth Street. Natalie Pearson was listed as a resident of the Martha Washington. Mr. Macfarland himself was here, with a number on Central Park West, and the assistant principal, Mr. A. Robert Stevenson, gave an address which Miss Withers recognized as one of the quieter sections of the Village, and Betty Curran, the half-time domestic science teacher, was listed as residing at a well-known Brooklyn boarding house.

Then she came at last to the card for which she had been searching. “Anise Halloran, phone Morningside 2-2333, apartment 3C, 441 West 74th St.”

Miss Withers added this to her notes, and then skimmed on rapidly through the list until she reached her own name, the end. Then she frowned.

Janey Davis’ own address was not listed here. She went back to make sure.

That was strange. There must be a record somewhere … suddenly Miss Withers thought of the letter that she had seen in the top drawer. That might have it. It did.

The envelope was of the glassine window type, and she drew forth its contents.

The letter was the usual formal greeting from the Metropolitan Gas and Coke Company, congratulating Miss Davis on becoming a new customer of the company and assuring her that the Metropolitan Gas and Coke Company wished to be known, not as a business institution, but as a personal friend of hers—“please ask our meter readers to show their credentials, thank you….”

It was addressed to Miss Jane Davis, apartment 3C, 441 West 74th Street, and dated two weeks before. Miss Withers had it copied on her list before she realized that the address and apartment number were identical with what she had written just above!

Then Janey Davis and Anise Halloran were roommates—or had been, until today! Not that there was anything so strange about it. Most of the teachers at Jefferson School shared apartments with someone.

Miss Withers carefully put the address file where she had found it, and straightened the desk. Then she bustled out into the hall, confidently hoping that the bulky gun next her body was not too evident.

She drew back into the office doorway again to let pass a canvas-covered stretcher, with two burly morgue attendants grasping the poles. Sergeant Taylor was close behind, in the company of a thin, yellow-faced little man in a blue serge suit.

“Hello, there,” greeted the Sergeant. “You know Dr. Levin, don’t you?”

Miss Withers admitted that she had had the pleasure. “And what do you find, Doctor?”

The Assistant Medical Examiner shrugged his narrow shoulders. “So what should I find? How can I tell? Even a full autopsy can’t give us much information when the body has been burning merrily for half an hour or so. Death appears to be caused by a blow on the forehead with a sharp instrument. But that’s not official. See you tomorrow.”

His little black case swinging on his arm, Dr. Levin bowed his way out past the bluecoat at the main door. Miss Withers did not envy him the night’s work which lay ahead.

“The body was there where you said it would be,” the Sergeant admitted to Miss Withers. “I don’t know why the boys didn’t find it before then, though. I guess they never thought of looking for it in the furnace.”