Murder at Mother’s Knee [= Something That Happened in Our House]

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.

She opened her purse, took out a large-size bill, and allowed it to be seen in her hand, in readiness to seal the bargain.

The boy’s mother was obviously swayed by the sight of it, but still being held back by fear of something. “We could use the money, of course,” she wavered. “But... but wouldn’t it be too far out for you, here?”

Miss Prince faked a slight cough. “Not at all. The country air would be good for me. Couldn’t I at least see one of the rooms?” she coaxed. “There wouldn’t be any harm in that, would there?”

“N-no, I suppose not,” Mrs. Mason faltered.

She led the way up a badly-creaking inner staircase. “There’s really only one room fit for anybody,” she apologized.

“I’d only want it temporarily,” Miss Prince assured her. “Maybe a week or two at the most.”

She looked around. It really wasn’t as bad as she had been led to expect by the appearance of the house from the outside. In other words, it was the masculine share of the work, the painting and external repairing, that was remiss. The feminine share, the interior cleaning and keeping in order, was being kept up to the best of Mrs. Mason’s ability. There was another little suggestive sidelight to the situation in that, to Miss Prince.

She struck while the iron was hot. “I’ll take it,” she said firmly, and thrust the money she had been holding into the other’s undecided hand before she had time to put forward any further objections.

That did the trick.

“I... I guess it’s all right,” Mrs. Mason breathed, guiltily wringing her hands in her apron some more. “I’ll tell Mr. Mason it’s just for the time being.” She tried to smile to make amends for her own trepidation. “He’s not partial to having strangers in with us—”

“Why?” Miss Prince asked in her own mind, with a flinty question-mark.

“But you being Johnny’s teacher— When will you be wanting to move in with us?”

Miss Prince had no intention of relinquishing the tactical advantage to be gained by taking them by surprise like this. “I may as well stay, now that I’m out here,” she said. “I can have my things sent out after me.”

She closed the door of her new quarters and sat down to think.

Until and unless she unearthed definite, specific evidence that what Johnny had seen that night was what she thought it was, she must keep an open mind and an unwarped sense of proportion, she warned herself, and not be swayed by appearances alone, no matter how incriminating they seemed. Positive evidence, not appearances.

The sun was already starting to go down when she heard the thud of an approaching tread coming up the neglected dirt track that led to the door. She edged over to the window and peered cautiously down. Mason, if that was he, was singularly unprepossessing, even villainous-looking at first glance, much more so than she had expected him to be. He was thickset, strong as a steer in body, with lowering, bushy black brows and small, treacherously alert eyes. He had removed a disreputable, shapeless hat just as he passed below her window on his way in, and was wiping the completely bald crown of his head with a soiled bandanna. The skin of his scalp was sunburned, and ridged like dried leather. The adverse impression was so overwhelming that she felt it was too good to be true, not to be relied on. Again, appearances.

She left the window, hastened across the unreliable flooring of her room on arched feet to try and gain the doorway and overhear his first reaction, if possible.

She strained her ears. This first moment or two was going to offer an insight that was never likely to repeat itself quite as favorably again, no matter how long she stayed here.

“Where’s Ed?” she heard him grunt unsociably. This was the first inkling she had had that there was still another member of the household. Who he was and what relationship he bore, she could only conjecture.

“Still over in town, I guess,” she heard Mrs. Mason answer timidly. She was obviously in mortal terror as she nerved herself to make the unwelcome announcement she had to. The listener above could tell that by the very ring of her voice. “Johnny’s teacher’s come to stay with us — a little while.”

There was suppressed savagery in his low-voiced rejoinder. “What’d you do that for?” And then a sound followed that Emily Prince couldn’t identify for a second. A sort of quick, staggering footfall. A moment later she realized what it must have been. He had given the woman a violent push to express his disapproval.

She heard her whimper: “She’s up there right now, Dirk.”

“Get rid of her!” was the snarling answer.

“I can’t, Dirk, she already give me the money, and... and she ain’t going to be here but a short spell anyway.”

She heard him come out stealthily below her, trying to listen up just as she was trying to listen down. An unnatural silence fell, prolonged itself unnaturally. It was like a grotesque cat-and-mouse play, one of them directly above the other, both reconnoitering at once.

He turned and went back again at last, when she was about ready to reel over from the long strain of holding herself motionless. She crept back inside her room and drew a long breath.

If that hadn’t been a guilty reaction, what was? But it still wasn’t evidence, by any means. It could have been just nosiness, too.

The porch-structure throbbed again, and someone else had come in. This must be the Ed she had heard them, mention. She didn’t try to listen this time. There would never be a second opportunity quite like the first. Whatever was said to him would be in a careful undertone. Mrs. Mason came out shortly after, called up: “Miss Prince, like to come down to supper?”

The teacher steeled herself, opened the door and stepped out. This was going to be a battle of wits. On their side they had an animal-like craftiness. On hers she had intellect, a trained mind, and self-control.

She felt she was really better equipped than they for warfare of this sort. She went down to enter the first skirmish.

They were at the table eating already — such a thing as waiting for her had never entered their heads. They ate crouched over low — like the animals they were — and that gave them the opportunity of watching her surreptitiously from their overhanging brows. Mrs. Mason said: “You can sit here next to Johnny. This is my husband. And this is my step-son, Ed.”

The brutality on the son’s face was less deeply ingrained than on Mason’s. It was only a matter of degree, however. Like father, like son.

“Evenin’,” Mason grunted.

The son only nodded, peering upward at her in a half-baleful, half-suspicious way, plainly taking her measure.

They ate in silence for awhile, though she could tell both their minds were busy on the same thing: her presence here, thinking about that, trying to decide what it betokened.

Finally Mason spoke. “Reckon you’ll be staying some time?”

“No,” she said quietly, “just a short while.”

The son spoke next, after a considerable lapse of time. She could tell he’d premeditated the question for a full ten minutes past. “How’d you happen to pick our place?”

“I knew Johnny, from my class. And it’s quieter out here than farther in.”

She caught the flicker of a look that passed between them. She couldn’t read its exact meaning, whether acceptance of her explanation or skepticism.

They shoved back their chairs, one after the other, got up and turned away, without a word of apology. Mason sauntered out into the dark beyond the porch. Ed Mason stopped to strike a match to a cigarette he had just rolled. Even in the act of doing that, however, she caught his head turned slightly sideways toward her, watching her veiledly when he thought she wasn’t looking.

The older man’s voice sounded from outside: “Ed, come out here a minute, I want to talk to you.”

She knew what about — they were going to compare impressions, possibly plot a course of action.

The first battle was a draw. No hits, no steals, no errors.

She got up and went after Mrs. Mason. “I’ll help you with the dishes.” She wanted to get into that kitchen.

She couldn’t see it at first. She kept using her eyes, scanning the floor surreptitiously while she, wiped Mrs. Mason’s thick, chipped crockery. Finally she thought she detected something. A shadowy bald patch, so to speak. It was both cleaner than the surrounding area, as though it had been scrubbed vigorously, and yet at the same time it was overcast. There were the outlines of a stain still faintly discernible. But it wasn’t very conspicuous, just the shadow of a shadow.

She said to herself: “She’ll tell me. I’ll find out from her what I want to know.”

She moved aimlessly around, pretending to dry off something, until she was standing right over it. Then she pretended to fumble her cloth, let it drop. She bent down for it, and planted the flat of her hand squarely on the shadowy place, as if trying to retain her balance. She let it stay that way for a moment.

She didn’t have to look at the other woman. A heavy mug slipped through her hands and shattered resoundingly at her feet. Emily Prince straightened up again, and only then glanced over her way. Mrs. Mason’s face had whitened a little. She averted her eyes.

“She’s told me,” Miss Prince said to herself with slow, inward satisfaction.

There hadn’t been a word exchanged between the two of them.

She went upstairs to her room a short while after. If somebody had been murdered in that room she had just been in, what disposal had been made of the remains? Something must have been done with them, they must be lying concealed someplace around — a thing like that couldn’t just be made to disappear.

She sat there shuddering on the edge of the cot, wondering: “Am I going to have nerve enough to sleep here tonight, under the same roof with a couple of possible murderers?” She drew the necessary courage, finally, from an unexpected quarter. The image of Detective Kendall flashed before her mind, laughing uproariously at her. “I certainly am!” she seethed. “I’ll show him whether I’m right or not!” And she proceeded to blow out the lamp and lie down.