Murder on the Blackboard

by Stuart Palmer

  A narrow sign “Genealogy” graced the door. She came through into a smaller room, its walls filled with three tiers of ancient and musty books, mostly privately printed and bound in leather. Wrought iron stairs and scaffolds gave access to the upper levels, and already several old gentlemen, as ancient and musty as the books themselves, were roaming among the stacks or huddled in the little wall-recesses.

  Miss Withers looked around, questioningly, and was signalled by the lady at the desk. “Sign the register, please….”

  “I’m not planning on taking out any books,” Miss Withers admitted. But all the same, the gray-haired guardian of the books insisted.

  “The volumes in this room are so valuable,” she explained. “Most of them could never be replaced. We require everyone to sign.”

  Miss Withers signed. Then she looked up, an idea lighting her face. “Could you let me see yesterday afternoon’s page, please? I want to check up on someone.”

  “Oh, now. The records of the library are confidential.”

  “Very well. I’ll go and get an officer.” Miss Withers spoke with the voice of authority.

  The register was placed before her, with alacrity. Miss Withers took out her glasses, and went slowly down the page. Near the top of the list was the boyish scrawl—“A. R. Stevenson,” followed by his address.

  “Were you on duty here yesterday afternoon?” she asked the librarian.

  “I was. I always am. I’ve been here, woman and girl, for thirty years come April. And if you ask me, I don’t see …”

  “I’m not asking you to see. I want you to remember.” Miss Withers pointed out Stevenson’s signature. “Do you know the man who wrote that?”

  “Hm, let me see. Mr. Stevenson. Would that be a tall, elderly gentleman with a toupé?”

  “It would not. It would be a youngish gentleman with glasses, and a pair of football shoulders, if you know what I mean. A sort of nice smile.”

  The librarian’s face lit up. “Oh, yes! The young man with the smile. He comes here often, very often. I think he’s doing some sort of special research. Perhaps he’s writing a book. Everyone is, nowadays.”

  “Well, was he here yesterday afternoon?”

  “Oh, yes.” The lady consulted the register. “According to the records, he came in quite early, too. His name isn’t far from the top of the list, and a new page is put out fresh at one o’clock. He must have arrived about two or three at the latest.”

  “And what time did he leave?” Miss Withers was eager.

  The librarian frowned. “I can’t say, exactly. It seems to me that he was here until late, but of course I can’t be sure. If I knew what books he was using, I could tell.”

  “Doesn’t the record show? I mean, don’t people sign out, too?”

  The librarian shook her head. “Only in. But if I could remember what reference book he used, we could check it by that. We keep track of the time a book is in use, and after three hours, if another reader calls for it, the first person must give it up.”

  “Hm, I see.” Miss Withers toyed with a pencil. “Well, can’t you find out what book he was reading by means of the withdrawal slip? I see that every person has to sign one of those too, before he is allowed to take the book to a desk.”

  The librarian looked blank. “Yes, he must have signed a slip. But so did some thousand or so other readers yesterday. They keep the slips somewhere on file, but they are listed under the title of the book, and not under the name of the reader. It would be an impossible job to discover—”

  “Impossible nothing,” demanded Hildegarde Withers. “A man’s life may depend on this. Do I have to see the Head Librarian, or do I get the information I want?”

  “Well,” relented the white-haired lady, “I suppose I can have one of the boys do it. But it may take hours.”

  “I don’t give a hoot if it takes days,” said Miss Withers. “I want it done. Find me the name of the book that Mr. Stevenson was reading yesterday, and the hour he took it out and brought it back. And as soon as you get it, phone me at either of these numbers.” She scribbled on a piece of paper. “Here—and, oh, yes. Do you happen to remember where Mr. Stevenson sat yesterday?”

  “Where—oh, yes. Where he always sits, of course. Right over there.” The librarian led the way across the room to a little recess between the cases. There was a bench-like chair, a narrow desk, and a dim reading light.

  “He likes this because it is quiet and out of the way,” the librarian explained. “In the afternoon this place gets pretty crowded, and most of the regular people leave the main tables in the middle of the room and creep in one of these.”

  “I see.” Miss Withers poked at the light, rubbed her hand over the back of the bench, and then pulled out the drawer of the desk. It was narrow and shallow, and it bore only a blotter—pristine and un-inked. Gently Miss Withers shoved it shut, and bade her adieu to the white-haired librarian.

  She came out of the library, descended to the Queens subway for one stop as a substitute for the Crosstown, and then took a Lexington local south. Five minutes later she was ascending the steps of Jefferson School, surrounded by a clamorous crowd of children.

  “Miss Withers, don’t we have any school today? The cop says we can go home!”

  “Miss Withers, did you see the murder? Was there lots of blood, Miss Withers?”

  Leland Stanford Jones was there, his face alight with excitement. He clung to her hand as she came through the mob of children at last. “I guess you’ll show ’em, Miss Withers, won’t you? I guess you’ll find the criminal, won’t you? They can’t get away from you!”

  Miss Withers rapped him smartly on the top of the head with her knuckles. “Run home, you scamp,” she ordered. She approached the door, with its blue-clad guardian. “They can’t get away from me,” she repeated to herself. “They can’t—I wish!”

  She paused beside the man at the door. “Good morning, Tolliver. Did you and Mulholland have a pleasant vigil?”

  “Not half so pleasant as if we’d been stationed next door,” admitted the copper, with a wink and a twist of his thumb toward the warehouse which loomed at the left of the doorway. Miss Withers looked at him blankly.

  “You’re to go in room 1A,” Tolliver told her. “I got instructions to send all the teachers in there as they get here, and to send the kids home. Only the kids say they want to stay and see the fun.”

  “I’ll settle that quickly enough,” Miss Withers promised. She turned around and faced the swarm, clapping her hands for silence.

  “Children,” she told them, “if you all will wait quietly here I am sure that we will be able to get back to our classes and our work in an hour or two.”

  Even as she spoke, the fringe of the crowd began to melt away. Children scampered toward the playground, others made a beeline for Tobey’s candy store, and still others raced down the street toward the distant elevated.

  Miss Withers looked around again as she stood in the doorway. Not an urchin remained in sight, with the single exception of Leland Stanford Jones. “Aw, I don’t want to go home and I don’t want to go to classes,” he announced.

  “What in Heaven’s name do you want to do?”

  “I want to go with you,” he announced bravely.

  She took his hand and led him past the officer. “That’s just where you’re going,” she promised him. “I’ve got a job for you.” Tolliver looked surprised, but said nothing.

  There were voices within Miss Cohen’s room—1A—but Miss Withers lingered a moment outside. Mulholland’s bulky figure graced the far end of the hall, but she had no thought for him.

  She searched in her handbag and extracted a key. She pressed it into Leland’s moist palm, with whispered instructions. He nodded, eagerly.

  “Bring it, and the key, to me here,” she told him. “Scamper now, and let no one see you.”

  She watched him race up the stairs toward the second floor, and then drew a deep breath and plunged into the assembled facul
ty meeting.

  They were all there, every man jack of them. Miss Withers felt vaguely disappointed at that fact. She had hoped that some of them—the guilty one, of course—had made a bolt for it, thereby proving the innocence of the others.

  At that time, Hildegarde Withers put little or no faith in the guilt of Anderson the janitor, in spite of the various unexplained angles to the case. Later developments, as we shall see, bid fair to change her mind.

  As she took a seat toward the back of the room, she could not help wondering if the murderer of Anise Halloran, and the would-be murderer of her own friend the Inspector, was perhaps sitting beside her, or across the aisle?

  Could it be the young and handsome Bob Stevenson, who was so busily engaged in separating the various thin leaves of a built-up cardboard match from a paper before him? Could it be Alice Rennel, she of the sharp eyes and the sharper tongue, or Vera Cohen, so young and ambitious and buxom?

  Miss Mycroft, motherly and placid, the guide and mentor of the first grade, looked upset and worried this morning. The cameo pin at her throat was pinned askew, and the beautiful gray hair was coming undone from its Greek knot at the back of her head. Miss Mycroft had taken a motherly interest, almost more than a motherly interest, in the young singing teacher.

  They were none of them looking their best, Miss Withers decided. It must have been a problem in many an apartment that morning of what to wear under such tragic circumstances. Most of the “girls,” as she called them, compromised on black or dark blue serge, unrelieved by the usual flounces and cuffs and collars of lace. Miss Hopkins, for some unknown reason, had blossomed out in bright peach. Miss Jones and Miss Casey, sitting together in one seat at the side, whispered incessantly, until Hildegarde Withers was almost moved to rap upon her desk with a ruler.

  Natalie Pearson, she who had shared a top floor office with the dead girl, sat alone in a front seat, a tiny lace handkerchief to her mouth. Her eyes were red and swollen. Miss Withers found herself remembering, unreasonably, the pressed orchid in a theater program in Miss Pearson’s desk. There must be a sentimental streak even in this stiff and starched young woman with her low-heeled oxfords and her tweed suits.

  Across the aisle from Natalie Pearson sat Miss Murchison, whose duty it was to divide her time between the school library, in room 2D, and her own fourth graders in 2A and 2B combined. She was engaged at the moment in showing Miss Strasmick, she of the too-red hair and the too-pink dress, something written on the back of an envelope. Miss Withers would have given a good deal to have seen what it was—though she realized that she was getting to be nothing but an old snoop.

  Waldo Emerson Macfarland sat on the platform, with Janey Davis at his side on a low chair. When he had waited long enough to make it very evident that Miss Withers was very, very tardy, he coughed, sneezed, and then tapped on the desk.

  “Inspector Taylor has asked me …” he began.

  “Sergeant,” corrected Miss Withers, sotto voce.

  “Sergeant Taylor has asked me to get you all together, in a body, in one place, as it were,” he went on heavily. “Now that we are all together, of course with the exception of Miss Curran—”

  Sergeant Taylor appeared in the doorway. “Say, who’s this Curran dame who doesn’t show up, huh?”

  He was assured by the Principal that Miss Curran, who divided her time between this school and Washington Heights Number Two as an instructor in sewing and domestic science, was unavoidably absent due to an operation for appendicitis. “She has been at Brooklyn Hospital for more than ten days now,” the Principal informed him, “so I think she can play no possible part in this investigation.” Mr. Macfarland sniffled delicately. “We have not as yet got a substitute.”

  The Sergeant waved his hand, and Macfarland drew a deep breath and prepared to go on with his speech. The shrilling of the telephone across the hall interrupted the course of his thoughts.

  Janey Davis took her eyes from Bob Stevenson’s, and prepared to answer it, but the Sergeant waved her aside. “You go, Mulholland,” he ordered.

  A moment later the big copper was back at the door. “It’s somebody for Miss Withers,” he announced, and winked heavily.

  With every eye focussed upon her, Hildegarde Withers rose from her seat and passed out of the room. She cast a look of gratitude toward Mulholland for not announcing before them all the name of her caller.

  It was, strangely, the librarian of the genealogy room at the Library. “We found the information you wanted,” she was told. “Luckily it was among the A’s, so it only took a few minutes. According to the records, Mr. Stevenson took out volume one, a rare book titled ‘The Addison Family Previous to 1812,’ by Robert Addison. He signed for it yesterday afternoon at exactly three-thirty, and returned it to the desk at a quarter of six.”

  Miss Withers asked another question. “Oh, no. If Mr. Stevenson had left the library during the afternoon his book would have been collected by the pick-up boy and returned to the desk, since no books may be taken out. The boy makes his rounds every half hour. I’m sure you’re very welcome. No, I won’t speak of it to a soul.”

  Miss Withers hung up the receiver. There was a noise in the hall. She looked out and caught the eye of a fellow-conspirator. It was Leland Stanford Jones. He came at her whisper, and handed her a key. She looked at him questioningly. But he shook his head. “It’s gone, teacher. I looked all through her desk!” Miss Withers patted his shoulder and motioned toward the door. Then she returned to the telephone, and made a call.

  Surprised at the result, she made several more. Finally she put down the instrument and strode triumphantly back into the faculty meeting.

  “I’d like to interrupt with one question,” she said. Mr. Macfarland looked annoyed.

  “Yes, Miss Withers?”

  “I’d like to know where it was that you learned that Miss Betty Curran, our domestic science teacher, was convalescing from an appendicitis operation at Brooklyn Hospital.”

  Mr. Macfarland frowned. “She told me so, before she left. Why, we sent flowers—you remember that, Miss Withers! All the teachers contributed.”

  Miss Withers nodded. “But did anybody go to see her?”

  There was a general shaking of heads. “Brooklyn is a long way by subway, and besides, she asked us not to. Said she’d rather be alone.” Miss Strasmick looked at Hildegarde Withers. “Why?”

  “Exactly. Well, perhaps Mr. Macfarland was wrong when he said that she could play no possible part in this investigation. Betty Curran was a good friend of Anise Halloran’s, and Anise Halloran is dead. What’s more, I just phoned Brooklyn Hospital, and four or five other big hospitals in that part of the city, and at none of them is there or was there a patient named Betty Curran!”

  Mr. Macfarland gasped, audibly. “I never … heard of such a thing! Then where is Miss Curran? What’s she been doing all this time?”

  Miss Withers nodded. “I wonder!”

  IX

  That’s What Little Girls Are Made Of

  (11/16/32—10:00 A.M.)

  THINGS WERE GETTING OUT of the Sergeant’s depth. He looked at Miss Withers, but got no help from that lady. He looked at the Principal, who seemed in need of help himself.

  Sergeant Taylor had gathered these teachers together in the hope of garnering from them information which would fasten the net tighter around Anderson the janitor. And now things seemed to be getting out of hand, what with the introduction of new names and new avenues of approach. Taylor liked his cases simple

  “I don’t see—” he began.

  “Quite evidently,” Miss Withers told him. “Very evidently you don’t see.”

  There was a shuffling among the teachers, and an exchange of whispers.

  The Sergeant pushed his hat up on his forehead. “I suppose you mean that this Curran dame is hiding out, and that she killed Anise Halloran? It don’t make sense, to me. That sort of a killing ain’t often done by a woman. Women kill each other with a gun or else with poison.
Besides, where’s a motive?”

  “I mean nothing of the sort,” said Hildegarde Withers. She surveyed the assemblage. “This is neither the time nor the place to tell you what I mean. But, Sergeant, I think you’d better stop this futile speech making and send out a broadcast to pick up Betty Curran. Check up on her boarding house or wherever she lived. Send out her description. That missing girl is important to this case, and don’t forget that for a minute. The janitor is safe in a cell, and he’ll keep. There’ll be weeks to dig up evidence against him—but you may only have hours to find that girl.” Miss Withers lowered her voice, so that only the Principal and the detective could hear. “You may be hours too late!”

  The Sergeant’s eyes narrowed. “You mean … say! A fiend, huh? Two victims instead of one! You don’t think we’ll find this Curran girl even if we do send out the alarm … not alive, anyway!” He turned to the gathering.

  “Excuse me, folks. I’ve got to get to the telephone—you all wait right here.”

  The teachers settled back in their seats resignedly, all but Miss Strasmick, the wide-faced, red-lipped mistress of the fourth grade. She half rose in her seat.

  “You can’t do that!” she began. “Betty Curran is a friend of mine.”

  The Sergeant faced her. “I can’t do what?”

  “You can’t sound the alarm as if she was a criminal or something. I—I’m sure she has nothing to do with this. It’s cruel—it’s …”

  “Exactly,” Bob Stevenson chimed in. “Suppose Miss Curran is simply in some other hospital? Isn’t what she’s doing her own business?”

  “Well, for the—” But Miss Withers cut the Sergeant short.