Escape Artist

“She wouldn’t tell Kathe. But Kathe believed Mr. Timm had it in for her.”

“That makes no sense.” I took a bite of my doughnut. “Are you sure it was a disciplinary problem?”

“What else could it be?”

“Mr. Timm is nobody’s friend, Esther. He hates the students. God knows what makes that man tick. He…” I paused. “Frana probably tried to smile her way out of…” Another pause. “Oh, my God. You don’t think…” My eyes got wide. “Is it possible…”

“What?”

“Could he have…”

Esther gulped. “For God’s sake, Edna, he’s a scary, humorless…”

“He’s a man to trust.” As I said the words, I remembered my father’s words. “Yes, a severe man, but who knows what sweet talk a man can muster up.”

“Well, I don’t believe it.” Flat out, clipped. “It’s impossible.”

“Well, neither do I, frankly. But who knows.”

Early on, I’d considered the men at the high school, but those dull, plodding men, locked into the routines of the school, seemed so far from Frana’s fantasy world. Part of me never trusted Mr. McCaslin because he always seemed to be performing. He was always darting off to Milwaukee. Principal Jones, the grieving widower, seemed too…too sad. But Homer Timm. He told his brother he was headed back East. Escaping. It was all so…impossible. Dismissible. But the idea took over, grew; and then, in a lightning flash, it made bizarre sense. Homer Timm? The lonely man away from his family. My father’s words came to me: The key to the murder is in that mysterious passageway.

“I have to go.”

“Where?”

“Nowhere.”

“Well, you’re in a hurry to get there,” Esther said. “And you’re making no sense now.”

“Lately I’ve been very good at that.”

Late afternoon the high school was nearly deserted, the cacophony of student voices gone from the hard- polished halls. I passed a few straggling students rehearsing a skit in one classroom, and Principal Jones was writing at his desk. He looked up, puzzled. “Miss Ferber, may I help you?” At his side Miss Hepplewhyte looked curious, but I waved and mumbled something about a follow-up story on Houdini.

As I walked past, I glanced over my shoulder. I saw Miss Hepplewhyte eying me suspiciously. No matter. Miss Hepplewhyte viewed the world with distrust. It gave her purpose in a universe cluttered with rosy-cheeked schoolchildren.

I turned the corner, headed toward the auditorium where I’d spent so many delightful hours rehearsing plays and my oratory. I’d won first place in the state competition my last year at the school and had returned home at midnight from Madison to a massive bonfire and my protesting body carried high on footballers’ shoulders, one of them being Jake Smuddie’s. Those were intoxicating years at Ryan, and I roamed the hallways as the Close and Personal Editor for the Clarion.

I skirted past the library where Miss Dunne was berating a student worker. The auditorium was eerily quiet. Most of the vast room was dark, though here and there gaslight flickered. I paused in front of the three stairs that led to the landing and the janitor’s storeroom. As a student, I scurried up and down while working on scenery, spouting lines, laughing and chatting with friends. Sometimes a student would rush up there for a pail or broom. No one lingered there. No one discovered that secret storeroom. Except the murderer.

A murderer who knew the school intimately.

I remembered an episode in high school when the football team hid on that landing, some sort of practical joke. I tried to remember: Was Jake Smuddie there?

I stepped onto the dimly-lit stairs but backed down; I needed light. I found a lantern on a shelf, struck a match and lit it, and the swaying lantern reminded me of how nervous I was. At the top of the landing I stepped into the janitor’s storeroom and surveyed the orderly display of August Schmidt’s domain: brooms and brushes and pails and wash rags and soap, everything neat and tidy, a careful man’s prideful organization.

A patina of dust lay on the surfaces now. Mr. Schmidt had abandoned this room, of course. Bending down, I examined the latched panel. Partially blocked by a small table covered with paint cans, it was unobtrusive. I slid the table over. Simply by undoing the small wooden latch, I was able to push open the door, exposing the unused storeroom with the discarded furniture. It was, I told myself, just a door in a wall. Nothing more. How simple! Scarcely hidden. Actually, not hidden at all. There was no Edgar Allen Poe intrigue here, no need for M. Auguste Dupin’s ratiocinative process. Certainly no locked chamber of horrors. No, it was simply that no one cared. No mystery.

Stooping a bit, I walked inside the musty, secret room. I placed the lantern on the dusty desk and looked around. I turned the knob of the outside door, opened it a crack, and for a brief second peered into the final hallway of Frana Lempke. I feared Miss Hepplewhyte, marching through on military surveillance, might spot me peering out that door; but no one was there. The hallway was quiet. How easy it was to spy on students passing by! I shut the door and heard it latch, locking. Caleb Stone and Amos Moss had investigated the forgotten room. Or had they? How thoroughly, these two inexperienced marshals? I doubted whether they’d read Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, as I had. Twice. Or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Or, I realized, Israel Zangwell’s thrilling Big Bow Mystery, with that dreaded locked-door intrigue. There was always something left behind. I’d learned that from those dark gothic writers.

I looked.

Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of the Hansom Cab. What was the mystery of the locked room? I owned that gripping detective romance. Perhaps I’d read it again. A literary roadmap to a solution.

Back in the janitor’s storeroom, the panel shut behind me and latched, the table slid back in place, the lantern suddenly went out, and I yelped as the small room was plunged into darkness. No matter. I was near the stairs. For a moment I stood there, quiet. I could hear someone in the hallway. Homer Timm was humming a tune. No, he was singing. Worse, he seemed to be having a good time.

Ida, sweet as apple cider

Sweeter than all I know.

Come out in the silvery moonlight,

Of love we’ll whisper, so soft now.

God! That dour man was enjoying himself.

Slowly, I stepped onto the top stair but I stumbled, knocking the lantern against the wall. The noise echoed in the space. I fell to my knees and then, breathless, I sat on the top step, regaining my composure. As I balanced myself to stand, my fingers brushed a piece of paper, so tiny I almost missed it, but I wrapped my fingers around it. I slipped down the stairs, and in the light I found myself staring at a cigar label, dusty and torn. A Grand Avenue cigar, a common enough brand, I knew, for my father had once smoked it-until blindness robbed him of the pleasure. I tucked it into the pocket of my dress. Moving, I tore the hem of my long dress, which had got caught on a jagged piece of molding. I frowned. I hated sewing and I knew I couldn’t ask Fannie to accommodate me. Not, at least, for a few more days.

I replaced the lantern and followed what I assumed was the path the murderer and Frana had taken, moving around the edge of the stage and toward the back door that led to small wooded copse where students sometimes studied on warm days. In fact, I read a good part of Les Miserables in the shade of one of the sycamores there.

Frana and friend had followed this route without being seen. Someone knew the auditorium would be empty then.

I opened the door and stepped out into sunlight, disoriented. I reached in my pocket and extracted the cigar wrapping and fingered it. Probably every other man in Appleton smoked Grand Avenues, a popular Milwaukee cigar, save the pipe and cigarette smokers. Many teachers at the high school did, and even the principal. Maybe even August Schmidt. And Homer Timm. I’d seen him with such a cigar, the tip of one often visible in his breast pocket. I thought of him singing that awful tune in the hallway…

“Miss Ferber!”