The first class of the morning had started fifteen minutes earlier. Cassandra Antonini was moving purposefully in the direction of the prep room when she heard a shriek and a burst of giggles coming through the open door of the physics lab, followed closely by a rapidly lurching Slinky toy. Damn that woman. Doesn’t she realize it’s my ass in a sling if some kid electrocutes herself while she sleeps in again? Cassandra was a biologist, happy surrounded by fish and plants and pickled frogs, but nervous with the peculiar equipment in the physics lab. She swooped down on the Slinky. A second later she steamed into the room, roaring the group into order:

“Sally, Heather, Carol, sit down. Everyone, open your textbooks. Let’s see, Miranda, how far did the class get yesterday? Right. Carry on, finish reading chapter seven and make notes on it. Silently! Susanne, go down to the vice-principal’s office and tell Mrs. Lorimer that Mrs. Conway has been delayed. Run! And I shall be next door, with the connecting door to this lab open. I expect absolute silence from all of you.” Awestruck, the girls subsided into stillness.

Maggie Lorimer received the news from Susanne in stony silence; then, reflecting that it wasn’t really the poor child’s fault that her teacher had not shown up for work that morning, she smiled as warmly as she could manage and thanked her for bringing the message, before sending her back to class. With a resigned sigh she reached for her list of teachers who were free this period and the next, jotted down some names and went in search of someone to hold the fort. On her way back she stuck her head in the principal’s office and gave her the news.

“It’s really too much, Roz.” Maggie dropped down in one of the comfortable chairs in front of the desk and spread her hands in annoyance and frustration. “What am I supposed to do? This is the third or fourth time she’s done this since she came. She’s driving me crazy. And the people who have to cover her classes are not too pleased about it, either. There’s going to be a general revolt, I think. They’ll start hiding in broom closets.”

“Relax, Maggie. Our troubles may be over. I interviewed an absolutely marvellous woman last night for the part-time science job next year. She’s been in Europe for two years with her husband, just got back, was teaching for the Etobicoke Board before that, and everyone thinks she’s super. I checked around last night about her. Don’t worry. She’s coming back this afternoon, and if Cassandra likes her, I think I’ll offer her a job starting Monday and get rid of Jane Conway at once. There shouldn’t be a problem, I hope.” Thoughts of lawsuits sprang briefly into her mind. “She’s only here as a supply on a per-diem basis.”

“Sounds great. Does she know any physics?”

“Basically she’s a chemist, but she did enough physics in university to cope. I asked her—rather slyly, I thought—if she would mind teaching physics should the occasion arise. So all we have to do is to convince her that she would like to start working on Monday instead of next September.”

“Tell her it comes with the job—you know, ‘oh, by the way, you start next week.’” Maggie laughed and retreated in the direction of her office. “I’d better try to raise la belle Jane at home. If the pattern holds, she’s probably still asleep.”

Jane Conway’s phone rang shrilly in the empty apartment twenty times before Maggie gave up. She slammed the receiver down and went next door to the general office. Above the ringing of phones and clatter of office machinery, she asked whether either of the two secretaries had taken a message from Jane. In the controlled chaos of early morning, it was just possible, although not likely, that they might not have had time to pass along a message.

Sylvia looked up from the list of absentees that she was annotating as she called homes to check on the girls who hadn’t shown up yet that morning. “Not a word. You mean she hasn’t come in again this morning? I could have used a couple of extra hours myself. Do you want me to call her?”

“No thanks, Sylvia. I tried her a minute ago and there was no answer. How long would it take her to get to work, do you think?”

Sylvia flicked open one of her folders, checked an address, and said, “Ten minutes? Fifteen, if she’s really tired. She only lives over on MacNiece.”

“Okay. We’ll give her ten minutes or so. I wonder if she’ll have the grace to tell us she’s here, or if she’ll just sneak up to her classroom and hope that no one noticed she hadn’t turned up. I think I’ll just drift by there and see. Here, give me some of those absentees, and I’ll do them.”

But fifteen minutes later, it was only a mildly irritated English teacher, marking essays, who was to be seen in Jane’s class. “Damn!” said Maggie, back in the office. “Do you suppose something has happened to her?”

“If you mean Jane Conway,” said Ruth, glancing up from her typewriter, “someone said that she looked terribly ill yesterday.”

“Yesterday,” said Maggie, ruminatively. “When was that? I can’t keep the days straight anymore.” She sighed. “But you’re right. She sat at lunch and stared at the lasagna as though it was laced with arsenic. She was absolutely pea-green. She lives alone, doesn’t she?” Sylvia, who knew everything, nodded. “I suppose I’d better go over there and see if something has happened to her. Oh, God.”

“Why don’t you take Helen Cummings with you?” suggested Sylvia tactfully. “Joyce can hold the fort over at the infirmary until you two get back. Shall I give her a call?”

“What an absolutely brilliant idea. Then if there is anything really wrong, she can cope. She has a stronger stomach than I have.” Maggie was not looking forward to this.

The two women stood staring at each other in frustration on the front steps of the square yellow building. They had been alternately ringing the bell marked “Superintendent” and pounding fiercely on the front door for at least ten minutes. “Maybe we should go around to the back and see if we can get in another door,” suggested Maggie desperately. Then the door slowly opened, and a slightly tousled gray head poked around it.

“Here now. Who’re you looking for? What are you making all that racket for? If they ain’t in they ain’t in.” She started to shut the door. “Any more of that and I’ll call the police.”

“Just a minute,” said Maggie. “Are you the superintendent?”

“No!” said the head. “Not exactly. Anyway, what do you want?” It drew back, preparing for flight.

“Well, maybe you should call the police. We’re looking for Jane Conway, Apartment 403. We’re from the school she works at, and she hasn’t come in today. And she isn’t answering her phone. She might be very ill in there.”

The head slowly re-emerged. “Well—if you think she’ sick, maybe we’d better go up and look.” She cautiously held the door open just wide enough for them to squeeze through. “Now, I don’t usually go into the tenants’ apartments, you know. There’s a law about that. ‘Quiet use and enjoyment,’ it’s called—that’s what they have. And that means the superintendent can’t go in when she feels like it, unless there’s a reason. But I guess this is a reason.” As she talked, she toiled toward the elevator, a large bunch of keys in her hand. “Not that I seen anything suspicious, mind you,” she said, as the elevator groaned up to the fourth floor under their combined weights, “so I don’t know what you expect to find.” She flipped through the keys on her ring, slowly picked out the right one, and inserted it into the lock. “There you are,” she said, as she turned the key with a grimace and flung open the door. “She probably spent the night out, I’d say. Not that it matters to me what the tenants do, as long as they don’t have wild parties and wreck the apartments.” She pushed her way in first, waddling slightly as she moved. “See? Nothing wrong here,” she said, looking around the neat living room. She opened the bedroom door slowly and peered inside. “There, you see? No one in there. Bed hasn’t even been slept in, I’d say. These girls are all like that. I don’t know why you worry—half the time they don’t come home at all at night.”