“Do you know if she went out last night and didn’t come back?” asked Helen.

“How should I know? They all have their own keys. They only bother me if something goes wrong. But I see them sometimes in the morning coming in, still all dressed up.” She waddled out of the bedroom. “None of my business, what they do.”

“Would you mind if I looked in the bathroom?” asked Helen. “She might have fallen and hit her head in there.”

“Go right ahead,” said the super. “It’s through the bedroom, there.”

Helen opened the door, looked around briefly, and shook her head at Maggie. They walked slowly back into the living room. There was nothing in it that would give a hint to its owner’s whereabouts—a briefcase was sitting next to the desk; on it there was a neat pile of student papers, probably waiting to be marked.

“Should we call the police?” asked Helen.

“I don’t know,” said Maggie. “We’d feel like awful fools if she’s sitting in the physics lab right now.”

But as the two women looked hesitantly for the telephone, Sergeant Dubinsky of Homicide was carefully removing leaves and brush from the cold and stiffened remains of the girl they were looking for. The unhappy couple who had stumbled across her stood uneasily nearby, their story told, with no reason to stay, but loathe to depart.

Chapter 5

Eleanor Scott slipped her Rabbit into the last free parking space in front of Kingsmede Hall and looked uncertainly around her. Something very peculiar was going on. Two police cruisers were pulled up in front of the main entrance, giving the school a decidedly ominous air. She walked around them and went slowly into the building, where she cautiously peered into the room marked “Principal.” It contained only the principal’s secretary, deep in conversation on the telephone. “Is she available?” Eleanor mouthed soundlessly.

Annabel looked up and shook her head. She covered the mouthpiece long enough to hiss: “If you want to wait, she might be able to see you—but you know how things are right now. It’s pretty bad.”

“I’ll be in the staff room,” she muttered, completely baffled, “if no one minds.” Her explanation was lost in a renewed spate of earnest conversation on the phone. She slithered into the teachers’ lounge, hoping to find a familiar face. The head of the science department waved to her from a corner where she was sitting, clutching a mug of tea and a black and green cookie. Eleanor breathed a sigh of relief as she headed for the large comfortable chair beside her.

“What in hell is going on, Cassandra?” whispered Eleanor as she sat down. “What are all those police cars doing here?”

“Omigod—you don’t know. It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened since someone rang the fire alarm during the Christmas dance ten years ago. Actually, I shouldn’t be talking about it so flippantly. It really is awful. One of our teachers—poor kid—was attacked by that guy down in the ravine.”

“Attacked? Is she all right?”

“Hardly. He killed her.” Cassandra shrugged as she delivered the line. “I’m sorry. This is awful, but it’s been a terrible day. And she was just a supply—that’s not a nice way to put it, is it?—I mean, no one really knew her very well. And she was kind of a nuisance when she was here, too. Very difficult to get along with and not very reliable. Still, that’s no reason for someone to get killed.” Cassandra looked a little more somber as she attacked another mint Oreo. “I really don’t like this combination of flavours,” she said. “But between teaching and all this hysteria I am absolutely starved.”

“Was this the person who was filling in for Vicky?”

“Hmmm,” said Cassandra, with her mouth full. “So she was my baby, so to speak. Roz is in there talking to a terribly cute policeman. I’m just sitting here waiting for my turn. I wonder why it is that the prospect of talking to the cops always makes you feel guilty? And as soon as I finish talking to him I have to interview her replacement. That’s one nice thing—Roz was going to fire Jane today if this new one was available, and now she doesn’t have to bother.”

“You do have a gruesome turn of mind, Cassandra,” said Eleanor, shivering. The staff-room door opened to interrupt her rebuke, however, and Annabel’s beckoning finger drew them out of their chairs.

“There we go,” said Cassandra cheerfully. “My turn to be grilled.” She followed Eleanor toward the door.

She gave it a healthy tug, caught sight of the principal, and started to make her excuses. “Look, Roz, I’ll come back some other—” She stopped dead. Standing directly in front of her as the door opened wider was a tall, slightly mournful-looking man who had obviously been in mid-sentence with Roz Johnson. There was a moment of grim silence as they stared at each other, first self-conscious, then embarrassed. Eleanor recovered first, however, and automatically extended her hand to him. “John, how pleasant to . . . I mean, this is a surprise. I didn’t expect to see you here.” He just as automatically took her hand and shook it. Damn! That was exactly what she had done the first time she had met him, just as if he were a potential client with a large house he wanted to sell. She dropped his hand like a hot potato.

“What are you doing here?” he asked brusquely. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put it that way.” He took her by the elbow and steered her away from Cassandra and Roz, who were looking on with considerable interest. “Look, I have to talk to the head of the science department and then get some photos of the dead woman. But then I’d like to talk to you. I mean, alone somewhere. Not about this. For God’s sake, Eleanor, you know what I mean. Say something!” His voice was low, but tense with exasperation.

“I’ll be in the parking lot after I talk to Roz. Same old Rabbit, over in the corner there. Don’t be too long.” She smiled uncertainly and walked back to the other two.

Twenty minutes later, and not much wiser, John Sanders walked out of the spare, utilitarian vice-principal’s office which had been turned over to him for interviews. He bumped into Dubinsky, who was coming in search of him out of the small seminar room where he had been talking to a motley assortment of hastily assembled staff members. “Braston called while you were locked up in there,” he said, nodding across the hall. “She has the preliminary findings.”

“Come back in here, then, and let’s hear them,” said Sanders. “Anything interesting?”

“Well, maybe,” said Dubinsky, opening his notebook and flipping back a couple of pages. “See what you think. The cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage, probably occasioned by one or more heavy blows on the temple with a broad, flat instrument.”

“A rock?”

“Not necessarily, apparently, although it could have been a broad, flat rock. She had been dead about ten to sixteen hours before she got to the morgue, which places her time of death at between 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. yesterday. Which fits in with her having been teaching until 3:30, at least.” Sanders opened his mouth to comment but stopped himself as Dubinsky carried on. “There were traces of recent intercourse (blood type O positive), bruising on right knee, and what boils down to nasty scrapes on the left knee and left hip, containing a great deal of imbedded gravel, like the stuff found on the path close to where the body was found. Also on both elbows and forearms—scrapes, that is, and gravel. No bruising anywhere else.”

“None?” said Sanders. “Thighs, belly, neck?”

“Nope. She was healthy, well-muscled, in good condition. Nothing remarkable about her except that she was ten to twelve weeks pregnant.”

“Pregnant? Any knife marks anywhere on the body that we didn’t notice?”