She surveyed him with eyes that were not exactly lanterns of esteem. “I cross-questioned the youngster. Today, after class. Before coming here. He insists it was not made up — that it’s true.”
“Naturally he would. The detail — I mean the assignment, was for them to write about something true, wasn’t it? He was afraid he’d have to do it over if he admitted it was imaginary.”
“Just a minute, Mr.—”
“Kendall,” he supplied.
“May I ask what your duties are here?”
“I’m a detective attached to the Homicide Squad. That’s what you asked for.”
It was now her turn to get in a dirty lick. “I just wanted to make sure,” she said dryly. “There’s been no way of telling since I’ve been talking to you.”
“Ouch!” he murmured.
“There are certain details given here,” she went on, flourishing the composition at him, “that are not within the scope of a child’s imagination. Here’s one: his mother was standing still, but she was all out of breath. Here’s another: a hat lying in just such and such a place. Here’s the most pertinent of the lot: her scrubbing of the kitchen floor at that hour of the night. It’s full of little touches like that. It wouldn’t occur to a child to make up things like that. They’re too realistic and undramatic to appeal to it. A child’s flights of fancy would incline toward more fantastic things. Shadows and spooks and faces at the window. I deal in children. I took a course in that. I know how their minds work.”
“Well,” he let her know stubbornly, “I deal in murders. I took a course in that. And I don’t run out making a fool of myself on the strength of a composition written by a kid in school!”
She stood up so suddenly her chair skittered back into the wall. “Sorry if I’ve wasted your time. I’ll know better in the future!”
“It’s not mine you’ve wasted,” he countered. “It’s your own, I’m afraid.”
Her footsteps went machine-gunning out of the place. He went over and draped himself against the sergeant’s desk. “Ever hear of anything like that? A kid in her class writes a composition, and she—”
It was a full ten minutes before they could quit roaring about it.
Chapter Two
Quiet Rooms for Rent
A few minutes after her class had been dismissed the next day, a “monitor,” one of the older children used to carry messages about the building, knocked on the door. “There’s a man outside would like to talk to you, Miss Prince.”
She stepped out into the hall. The man, none other than Detective Kendall of the Homicide Squad, was standing tossing a piece of chalk up and down in the hollow of his hand.
She surveyed him coldly.
“Thought you might like to know,” he said, “that I stopped that Gaines youngster on his way to school this morning and asked him a few questions. It’s just like I told you yesterday. The first words out of his mouth were that he made the whole thing up. He couldn’t think of anything, and it was nearly four o’clock, so he scribbled down the first thing that came into his head.”
If he thought this would force her to capitulate, he was sadly mistaken. “Of course he’d deny it — to you. That’s about as valid as a confession extracted from an adult by third-degree methods. The mere fact that you stopped to question him about it, frightened him into thinking he’d done something wrong. He wasn’t sure just what, but he played safe by saying he’d made it up. Don’t you know by now that the policeman is the most feared of all things to a child?”
“I’m not in uniform,” he protested.
“It doesn’t matter, he sensed you for someone in authority. They’re smart that way. I saw the frightened look on his face even after he got here. I can imagine how tactful you were about it, too!”
He thrust his jaw forward. “You know what I think is the matter with you?” he told her bluntly. “I think you’re looking for trouble! I think you’re just trying to find something wrong, no matter how you do it, to give yourself some excitement!”
It was a case of perfect mutual hostility, although she may have had a slight edge on him in this regard.
“Thank you for your co-operation, it’s been overwhelming!” she said arctically. She snatched something from him as she turned away. “And will you kindly refrain from marking the walls with that piece of chalk! Pupils are punished when they do it!”
She returned stormily to the classroom. Her victim sat hunched forlornly, looking very small in the sea of empty seats. “I’ve found out it wasn’t your fault for being late, Johnny,” she relented. “You can go now, and I’ll make it up to you by letting you out earlier than the others tomorrow.”
He scuttled for the door.
“Johnny, just a minute, I’d like to ask you something.”
His face clouded and he came back slowly toward her desk.
“Was that composition of yours true or made up?”
“Made up, Miss Prince,” he mumbled, scuffing his feet.
Which only proved to her he was more afraid of the anonymous man with a badge outside than he was of his own teacher, nothing else. She didn’t press the point.
“Johnny, do you live in a fairly large house?”
“Yes’m, pretty big,” he admitted.
“Well, er — do you think your mother would care to rent out a room to me? I have to leave where I am living now, and I’m trying to find another place.”
He swallowed. “You mean move into our house and live with us?” Obviously his child’s mind didn’t regard having a teacher at such close quarters as an unmixed blessing.
She smiled reassuringly. “I won’t interfere with you in your spare time, Johnny. I think I’ll walk home with you now, I’d like to know as soon as possible.”
“We’ll have to take the bus, Miss Prince, it’s pretty far out,” he told her when they had emerged from the building.
It was even farther than she had expected it to be, a weather-beaten, rather depressing-looking farm-type of building, well beyond the last straggling suburbs, in full open country. It was set back a sizable distance from the road, and the whole plottage around it had an air of desolation and neglect. Its unpainted shutters hung down askew, and the porch-shed was warped and threatened to topple over at one end.
Something could have happened out here quite easily, and gone unrevealed, she thought, judging by the looks of the place alone.
A toilworn, timid-looking woman came forward to meet them as they neared the door, wiping worried hands upon her apron. “Mom, this is my teacher, Miss Prince,” Johnny introduced.
At once the woman’s expression became even more harassed and intimidated. “You been doing something you shouldn’t again? Johnny, why can’t you be a good boy?”
“No, this has nothing to do with Johnny’s conduct,” Emily Prince hastened to explain. She repeated the request for lodging she had already made to the boy.
It was obvious, at a glance, that the suggestion frightened the woman. “I dunno,” she kept saying. “I dunno what Mr. Mason will say about it. He ain’t in right now.”
Johnny was registered at school under the name of Gaines. This must be the boy’s step-father then. It was easy to see that the poor, harassed woman before her was completely dominated by him, whoever he was. That, in itself, from Miss Prince’s angle, was a very suggestive factor. She made up her mind to get inside this house if she had to coax, bribe or browbeat her way in.