Everyone looked at everyone else.
Caleb Stone wanted to know about the empty locked classroom. It was still locked, Principal Jones announced. Then the chief wanted to know about another door at the other end of the corridor. “It’s an unused storage room,” the principal said. “It’s never been used, so far as I know. Not in all the time I’ve been here.” Everyone gathered by the sealed door. The principal turned the knob, which didn’t move. “It’s locked, of course. I doubt if there’s a key.” The windowless door suddenly seemed ominous to me.
“Of course there’s a key,” Caleb Stone grumbled.
Homer Timm shrugged his shoulders. “This is an old building. There are a few closets and storage rooms not in use. With no keys.”
“That makes no sense,” Caleb Stone insisted. “Frana could have hidden inside the storeroom.”
“Impossible!” Homer Timm used the same word Miss Hepplewhyte just used. “How? The door is locked.” He snorted. “Or maybe you haven’t noticed.”
Caleb Stone ignored him. He tried the door again. Not only was it locked, it seemed frozen to the frame. “Where are the keys kept?”
Everyone looked at Miss Hepplewhyte, who raised her eyebrows and shook her head. A little grumpily, “I’m not in charge of keys.” A pause. “I’m sure Frana Lempke never paid it any attention either.”
True, in my four years at Ryan High School, I’d barely been aware of storerooms, locked or otherwise.
Mr. McCaslin babbled something about this being a waste of his time-he had work to do on the Senior Play-but stopped, suppressed a belch. Miss Hepplewhyte rolled her eyes. Even Mr. Jones frowned, ready to say something.
“Find Mr. Schmidt,” Principal Jones ordered Homer Timm, who seemed loath to move, his expression suggesting that he was not an errand boy. He shuffled off while we waited.
Homer Timm returned with August Schmidt, the school janitor and Kathe’s father. He looked nervous and frightened, his head flicking left and right. I knew him, of course-everyone did. He’d been the janitor at Ryan for years, ever since he’d emigrated from Germany years back. Now a beefy man in his forties, with balding head and large droopy ears, with saucer eyes and a bushy white moustache on a round face, August Schmidt spent his days cleaning the hallways, taking out the trash, and nodding repeatedly to passing students, who baffled him. I knew he spoke very little English-unable to master the new language, according to Kathe-and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible in the noisy school hallways. When students filled the hallways between classes, he stood with his back to the cement wall, eyes half-closed. Sometimes, passing by, I heard him singing in German, some soft lieder that sounded sad.
No, he said, in a garbled blur of German and fragmented English, he’d never opened the door. No need to because all his supplies were around the corner. In that storeroom. Yes, there was a key, he assumed. Maybe. He didn’t know. Yes. No. In the other storeroom, next to where he hung his coat, he said, there was a bracket loaded with old keys. He rushed off, bowing first to everyone, very Prussian, I thought, and returned with a dozen wrought-iron keys, several looking rusted and ancient. Methodically he inserted one after the other, so jittery that at one point he dropped the keys to the floor. He inserted the same key more than once and lost track of which was which. Impatient, Amos Moss shoved him aside, grabbed the key ring, and started over. At last everyone heard the hesitant click. The deputy tugged at the door, gripping the knob with both hands. The door sprang open as though freshly oiled, and everyone stared into a large storeroom filled with pieces of furniture.
Light from the hallway barely illuminated the shadowy space.
The principal located a kerosene lantern and Caleb Stone took it and stepped inside. Sidling near, I saw shafts of dust particles in the air. A stale smell, old wood and moldy books. An oak desk was pushed against a back wall. A glass-front bookcase occupied the left wall. Old desks were stacked alongside it. Some chairs were pushed against a wall. Caleb Stone motioned to his deputy, who joined him. When Homer Timm went to enter, the chief waved him back. I spotted what Caleb Stone was studying. There was a thick layer of decades-old dust covering the desk. But in the flickering glare of the lantern I saw a clear area, a stretch of exposed wood where something-a leg? an arm? — had either rested on the desk or slid across it. As Caleb Stone lowered the lantern, I saw a confusion of smudged footprints everywhere. Stubs of burnt candles were bunched on the desk.
Someone had been inside recently. Amos Moss, in a burst of discovery, exclaimed, “Someone was in here, I ain’t kidding.” Caleb Stone, angry, yanked him back.
The chief directed everyone to stand away as he walked out, eyeing all of us. He held something up to the light. It was an embroidered ribbon, a young girl’s bit of frippery from a dress or bonnet. I gasped, recognizing Frana’s embroidery. Frana, adroit with a needle, often decorated her bonnets and dresses with ribbons. Sometimes she wore them in her hair. She favored blue and gold. I once cruelly remarked to Esther that Frana was readying herself to be the Hester Prynne of Appleton.
He turned to me. “Could this be Frana’s?”
“It is hers.” I was emphatic.
“How do you know?”
“I know.” Behind me, Esther nodded.
“So now we know where Frana was hiding,” Caleb Stone concluded.
Rumbling in the hallway, everyone talking at once.
The principal spoke in a tinny, hesitant voice. “But how could she get inside? She had no key. Why would she even think to do so?” He looked flustered. “The door was locked. You’d have to have a key.”
Everyone turned to look at the quiet German. August Schmidt had been trying to follow the events, his head swiveling back and forth. baffled by most of it; but his gaze had become more and more agitated as time passed.
In German, Caleb Stone asked August Schmidt who else had access to a key. Schmidt mumbled something incoherent but suggested the only key he knew of was in his storeroom and never left the wall.
Amos Moss bellowed, “No way Frana Lempke couldn’t have had no key.” He turned to the janitor. “August Schmidt, did you grab Frana Lempke and drag her here?”
The man squirmed. “Frana Lempke?”
Caleb Stone asked him, “Did you know her?”
The man nodded. “Ja, ja. Yes. She come to house with Kathe. Yes. Frana.”
Amos Moss was beside himself. “Somebody let that girl in this here room.”
Schmidt clearly did not understand what was happening, except that every eye was on him, accusing. He started to blubber, and for some reason reached for the jangling key, still in the lock, and the deputy put out his hand, stopping him. Schmidt started to cry inconsolably, twisting his body as though looking for escape; and he whispered a torrent of rambling German. What I gleaned, in bits and pieces: Mein Gott…Ich…in himmel…bitte…nicht…mein Gott…zufiel ist…bitte…Sorry… I…So sorry… ” Sorry sorry sorry. On and on, pleading, apologetic; confessional. He crumpled, wrapped his arms around his chest and shook.
“But,” I remarked, “Frana had that fake note. She planned to sneak out at two. She planned it. I don’t think anyone grabbed her. She…”
“Please, Miss Ferber,” Caleb interrupted. “Not now.”
Staring at the whimpering man, lost in the tense hallway, I knew in my heart of hearts that August Schmidt had nothing to do with Frana’s murder.
Not so with Amos Moss, who boomed out, “Clear to me this here man lay in wait and he abducted her, the pretty young girl he probably watched every day, seen his chance, she alone in the hallway, maybe she was planning to sneak out of school, yes, maybe he saw her alone in the hallway, maybe tied her up, strangled her, left her there till darkness when he was the only one here, and then dragged her body back of the school to Lovers Lane.” As he spoke, he punctuated his fast declaration with angry glances at Schmidt. “Nobody around, late at night. Seems simple to me…”