Murder on the Blackboard (12 page)

It was Dr. Levin, Assistant Medical Examiner for the County of New York, and he was in a hurry.

“Hello, Miss Withers—how’s the Inspector? Hello, Keller. Well, here’s our report, such as it is. Want to look it over before it goes to the Commissioner?”

The Lieutenant wanted to look it over, and so did Miss Withers. “But where’s the little package you were going to bring me?” asked the former.

“The package? Oh, you mean the teeth.” Levin shook his head. “No use, Lieutenant. They wouldn’t do you a bit of good in making an identification of the body.”

“Why not? Say, I’ve got to have those teeth. We’ll find out what dentist this Halloran dame went to, and let him identify them. It’s a cinch … unless they were destroyed in the fire….”

“It is not,” Levin contradicted. “It is not a cinch at all. Because while the teeth of the body I just performed an autopsy on are uninjured by the fire, they’re also uninjured by anything else, including dentists’ drills. In other words, this girl never had a cavity in her life. So how are you going to prove anything with them?”

The Lieutenant was flabbergasted. “But how are we going to establish the identity of the corpse without them? Miss Withers here thinks she saw Anise Halloran dead in the Cloakroom, but how are we going to make a jury believe that the body in the furnace is the same girl? It stands to reason—but that isn’t legal proof. We’ve got to show a corpus delicti … and when a body’s been in the furnace for half an hour, blazing merrily, there isn’t much corpus left.”

Miss Withers picked up the report, on an official form of the Medical Examiner’s Office. It stated, in medical terminology, that the cadaver examined was that of a young woman of the Caucasian race … that the cause of death was a fracture of the frontal bone of the skull by means of a heavy sharp instrument, probably an axe, and that death was instantaneous due to injury to the brain.

“It’s not much of a report,” Levin admitted. “There was less than ninety pounds weight in the cadaver. Everything burned off—hair, face, skin of the body—even both legs were consumed and one hand. Half an hour longer and there’d have been only the thorax, and not much of that.”

“Whoever put that girl in the furnace knew how to work the drafts,” Lieutenant Keller suggested. “If he gets out of the Chair, this janitor ought to get himself a job in a crematorium.”

Miss Withers wrinkled her nose. “I’m beginning to be convinced against my will, that this was the work of fiend, after all.”

Dr. Levin, lingering as if there was still something on his mind, nodded. “The funny part of it is that it was all so unnecessary,” he said slowly.

“Unnecessary? But isn’t murder usually unnecessary?”

“This one more than most. Because Anise Halloran—if this is the body of Anise Halloran—was in a pretty bad way before she was ever hit over the head.”

The young doctor leaned against the table. “It came up almost accidentally,” he admitted. “I was making a little test of my own to determine how long the body had been exposed to extreme heat. There is a change in the structure of the bones after a certain length of time, and I was working with sulphuric acid on a specimen of the bone of the hand. I stumbled on an interesting little detail. The subject was pretty far gone with pernicious anaemia of the bones—one of the littlest known and most deadly forms of anaemia. She might have lived, but she would have been a hopeless invalid all her life. The animal structure of her bones was wasting away—and no amount of fire could cause that!”

He put on his hat. “So long, everybody. Give my regards to the Inspector when you see him. Good thing for the Department that he was hit with the flat side of the axe instead of the sharp. I suppose the boys will be chipping in one of these days to buy some flowers or something to send up to him. Don’t forget, Lieutenant, I want a hand in it….”

“Wait!” Miss Withers clutched his arm as he was making for the door. “Hand! That’s it,
hand!
Didn’t you say that the fire destroyed both legs and one hand of the body?”

Dr. Levin nodded. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Plenty!” Miss Hildegarde Withers drew herself up to her full height. “That leaves, if my count is right, one hand that wasn’t burned?”

Levin nodded. “The left hand it was. According to the boys who dragged the body out of the furnace after using fire extinguishers on it, that hand escaped because it had fallen down, under the coal, so that it protruded into the ash-pit underneath. But what about it?”

“This about it,” said Hildegarde Withers. “Anise Halloran was very dainty, very fussy about herself. The other teachers used to gossip about her because she always went to a beauty parlor over on Lexington Avenue for a manicure, instead of doing it for herself.” Miss Withers pointed a long bony finger at the Lieutenant. “Get busy and find that manicurist, the one who was used to doing Anise Halloran’s finger nails. Take her down and show her the unburned hand—she’ll identify the body as well as any dentist could!”

The Lieutenant nodded, and then hitched up his belt. “Say! It might work at that. Where’s this beauty parlor at? I’ll put a man on it immediate.”

“I suppose it’s going to be just a little hard on the manicure girl,” Miss Withers told Dr. Levin as the Lieutenant bent over the telephone across the room. “Identifying a partially cremated corpse!”

The young doctor grinned. “Say, dentists get calls to do it all the time. And I never saw a manicure girl yet who wasn’t harder boiled than any dentist who ever breathed.” He picked up his hat again. “This seems like a lot of red tape in order to prove that a body of a girl is really her own body, but that’s the way these things have to be done.”

Miss Withers nodded agreeably. “I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that perhaps the body of this girl
isn’t
really her own body? Another young teacher disappeared recently from Jefferson School. And before long I’m going to find out where and why!”

“You’ve got a nice day for it,” said Dr. Levin as he went through the doorway.

“A
LL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT.”
The Lieutenant moved wearily toward his telephone. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t have the shoes sent up here, did I? I just said you wouldn’t get anywhere with them. Why that janitor fellow took it into his head to collect dames’ shoes is more than I can figure out. But everybody to their own taste, as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.”

“Maybe Anderson could furnish some explanation of the shoes,” Miss Withers suggested.

But the Lieutenant shook his head. “He’s foxy, that Swede. Just plays dumb and tells the boys he never heard of the shoes. Says somebody must have brought ’em in and hid ’em in his room, which is a fat chance.” He bent closer to the inter-office phone.

“Hello, McTeague? Who’s got the box of slippers the boys dug up in the janitor’s room at Jefferson School the other night? Property clerk … oh, the D.A., huh? Well, leap over and get ’em, will you?”

A few minutes later Miss Withers bent above a small cardboard box, of the type used for packing groceries or druggists’ notions. In it were five pairs of shoes. All were well-worn and of last year’s mode, and all but one pair of oxfords were frivolous and light in weight. She took out an opera pump, surveyed its battered heel, and then placed it thoughtfully on her hand. She surveyed it from several angles, and then put it down and took up a strap of sandal. This also came in for close scrutiny.

The Lieutenant watched her. “I don’t see what that’ll get you, ma’am, I honestly don’t. They’re just old shoes that Anderson picked up in the garbage cans or somewhere. He’s a queer duck—but the shoes haven’t got anything to do with this case.”

“No? That’s what Sergeant Taylor thought, too.” Miss Withers pushed the box toward the policeman. “Come, come, Lieutenant. See anything strange about these shoes that you think Anderson picked up from garbage pails or dump heaps?”

Keller shook his head. “Just shoes far as I’m concerned, ma’am. All dames’ shoes look alike to me.”

“That’s just it! These shoes look too much alike. There’s a reason—they’ve all been worn by the same feet. All five pairs are just the same size, and the heels are worn down the same peculiar way. What’s more—” Miss Withers lowered her voice to a whisper—“what’s more, I’ll stake my life on it that the person was Anise Halloran!”

“But how …?”

“I looked through Anise Halloran’s closet last night,” Miss Withers confessed. “I saw her shoes, and studied them closely. I always notice gloves and shoes. Well, these are not only of the same size and type, they’re identical—even to the angle of the heel’s wearing away!”

Miss Withers suddenly stood up. “Give me that telephone,” she said abruptly. “This morning I objected to Allen and Burns giving the janitor a third-degree. That’s why I brought the doctor up to examine him, for the most part. But now I’m going to call the precinct house and tell those two strong-arm detectives that they can go as far as they like with Anderson. They can knock the stuffing out of him, for all I care. Because there’s no innocent reason why he could have started a collection of the dead girl’s shoes. He’s in this case up to his neck, Lieutenant.”

But even as the Lieutenant was handing the phone across to her, it buzzed under his hand. “Hello? Oh, hello, Sergeant. No, no report on the Curran girl yet. Give the out of town boys more time. Who? Yeah, she’s here. Oh, the Principal. Wait a minute.” He looked up at Miss Withers.

“It’s Sergeant Taylor, and he’s hopping mad. Says you walked out on a quiz he was giving. And he says the Principal is there at the other end of the line and wants to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to him,” Miss Withers decided.

“I can guess what he’s got to say to me … no, I’ll take it. I might as well get this over with.” She picked up the receiver. “Hello, Mr. Macfarland?”

If that worthy gentleman was worried or irate he concealed it perfectly. “My dear Miss Withers,” he began. “When I had our little interview last night, I did not know that the murderer of Anise Halloran had been apprehended. With the janitor safe in jail, there’s hardly any need for you to undertake the case in our behalf. In fact, upon more mature consideration, I’m afraid that I shall have to ask you to disregard our little chat.” He paused long enough to sneeze.

“Just supposing it wasn’t the janitor?” Miss Withers suggested slyly. “You must have read enough mystery novels to know that the janitor and the butler never commit a murder. It’s always the nice man who seemed so disinterested and helpful all through the progress of the story.”

Macfarland hesitated a moment. “Yes, yes, of course. But after a chat with Mr. Champney and Mr. Velie, of the Board, I think best to ask you to drop the investigation you took up this morning at my request. The police assure us that the janitor is guilty and that there is an open and shut case against him.”

“It’s open, but it’s not shut,” Miss Withers said to herself. She murmured something over the wire, and then hung up.

“It isn’t enough to know who did it,” she said aloud. “We’ve got to know
how
and
why
and
when
and, in this case, even
where.
”

She moved toward the door. “This office isn’t the same without the Inspector sitting in there with his feet on the desk and a cigar clamped between his teeth,” she said. “I think I’ll go up to the hospital and find out if they’ll let me see him yet. Oh—one more thing, Keller. What did the analyst decide about that little bit of melted metal found in the furnace with the body? You know, the little thing that looked like a lead doughnut?”

Lieutenant Keller shook his head. “Van Donnen isn’t through with it yet, I suppose. Hasn’t reported here, at any rate. I’ll phone him, though, and ask him to come up.”

Max Van Donnen was through with his analysis, after all. He brought back the bit of metal, together with two sheets of official pink paper.

“Simple,” he announced. “Very simple. Now if this could haf been a bullet, ja, I could show you somedings. But this—it is merely a trinkety ring for the finger. White gold alloy, and the gold no more than five carat. Worth maybe five dollar, no more.”

Miss Withers was hanging on his words. “No sign of a setting or a stone? Or would that have burned off? Diamonds burn, I’ve heard.”

He shook his head. “The ring is intact, though the metal started to fuse,” he told her. “It did not have a setting. It is a wedding ring, no doubt about it. The body was in the fire, ja? Well, the ring burn off the finger and finally fall through the coal and embers, which is why it was not completely burned. It iss all in my report.”

Miss Withers was fingering the pink sheets. “Wait a minute … what’s this?”

Dr. Van Donnen came back. “That? Oh, der second sheet? Sergeant Taylor brought me some liquor to analyze this morning. One bottle with a label, and one without.”

Miss Withers knew without being told why Leland Stanford Jones had failed her. The Sergeant had happened upon the bottle in Anise Halloran’s desk, and also on the brown bottle that she had left standing on a shelf in the kitchenette of the apartment uptown.

“Subject A,” began the report. “One quart bottle labelled Dewar’s Dew of Kirkintilloch. Contents ¾ quart. Label genuine, and at least yen years old. Fingerprints, none. Analysis of liquid contained in bottle shows pure aged Scotch Whiskey. Fusel oil, none. Alcoholic content, 60 per cent. Foreign substances, none.”

Miss Withers passed on to the second paragraph. “Subject B … one brown glass bottle, originally used for bottled soft drinks, contents
¹
/
₅
of a gallon. No label, no prints. Half full, see above.”

Miss Withers looked up in surprise. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” explained the little old Doctor patiently, “that in so far as the laboratory can tell, the contents of both bottles are one and the same. Analysis shows the same percentage of alcohol and inert ingredients, and the same general texture, flavor—” the Doctor licked his lips—“and reaction to fluoroscope. It would be difficult to prove in a court of law, but I will stake my professional reputation that both bottles contained the same liquor. It is very seldom that such whiskey is discovered nowadays. It is far superior even to drugstore prescription liquor, ja. Goot-bye.”