Escape Artist

that hallway and learned nothing he didn’t already know. No student, gazing dreamily through the small glass of the classroom door, bored perhaps with math or Christopher Marlow or a parsed sentence, had spotted Frana Lempke walking past. Then Chief Stone, with the imprimatur of the principal, sent the students home for the afternoon. While Esther and I stood in the hallway, hordes of excited, gabby students rushed out over the lawns, headed away from the school. They buzzed about Frana, the police, the murder. I nodded to Titus Sharpe, the craggy reporter from Appleton’s other paper, the morning Post, slouching in a chair in Miss Hepplewhyte’s office, gazing into the hallway. He’d never said a complete sentence to me. He had a skinny reedy upper torso, with a giraffe neck under a freckled, blotchy face, all resting on an enormous bottom that shook like a bowl of unpleasant aspic when he walked. Like Sam, he was a Civil War veteran, and claimed to have been in Washington D.C. when Lincoln was shot.

“Yes?” he said to me as I walked into Miss Hepplewhyte’s office. It was a dismissive word.

I focused my eyes on his Adam’s apple, the most delicately inoffensive of his many questionable features. “No,” I answered flatly. His eyes grew wide. I shuttled by him, Esther close behind me.

Chief Stone walked into the small room, nodded at me and Titus, but looked askance at the presence of Esther, who, nervous, stood so close to me we kept bumping into each other. Still, he said nothing. When Deputy Amos Moss, clearing his throat and deciding to become officious, pointed at her accusingly, Caleb Stone gave him a look, and the deputy shut up. Chief Stone led everyone into the deserted corridor, a small group of teachers and staff huddling around him, and announced that he wanted to reenact the time sequence, if only, he said brusquely, “to give me a sense of what in tarnation happened that afternoon.”

“I’ve told you…” Miss Hepplewhyte began, but the principal’s stare made her keep still.

Principal Jones looked drained and I felt sorry for the man. When he lifted his chubby hand, it was trembling. Homer Timm stood there with a pad and pencil, his eyes following Caleb’s every turn, and I wondered whether he’d been appointed recording secretary.

Miss Hepplewhyte, severe in a slate-gray smock, her hair drawn into an awesome bun at the back, seemed ready to do battle. Doubtless she felt accused. She was a collector of slights, I realized; of accusations, real or imagined. That important note had been placed on her desk, and she’d informed Miss Hosley of Frana’s intended premature departure. She was a featured player in this tragedy.

Standing as far from her as possible, Mr. McCaslin, an English primer gripped between his fingers, looked miserable, and kept glancing at Miss Hepplewhyte as if she were to blame for everything. Mildred Dunne was absent.

The diplomatic Caleb Stone announced that no one-staff, teachers, even (his quick glance suggested) Esther and me-was to blame. He wanted information. “Frana had to leave the building somehow.” He even mustered a chilly smile. “This is a reconstruction”-he stretched out the word, deliciously-“like, say, Sherlock Holmes would do.”

Homer Timm grumbled and tapped his foot, then regretted the move when heads turned toward him. His sheepish look suggested an apology.

Everyone stood in front of Miss Hosley’s classroom.

Amos Moss, directed by Caleb Stone, played Frana, leaving class at two o’clock and waving to a friend in Mr. McCaslin’s classroom. He started to mimic girlish gestures, but a cutting look from Chief Stone stopped that indelicacy. Everyone trooped into the notoriously unlocked classroom. Caleb pointed out a cloakroom where, he said, Frana could have hidden. Everyone breathed a sigh, as though the answer was in front of us.

“Impossible!” Miss Hepplewhyte preened herself like a peacock. “As I told you before.” When Christ Lempke appeared and did not find Frana waiting, and she knew Frana had not left with other students, she thought Frana might still be in the building. She noticed the unlocked classroom. “And, of course, having dealt with students for many, many years, I immediately opened the cloakroom door. After all, I knew Frana was not happy with her uncle’s guardianship. Frana wasn’t hiding there.”

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