Dear Miss Demeanor

He sighed, shook his head, and left with Miss Dort. I guessed I had ten minutes or so before they returned, so I perched on the mauve-and-green and tried to look inconspicuous. In that my face was still greenish, it was moderately successful. The photographers snapped numerous rolls of film, and the fingerprint men dusted surfaces. The medical examiner came out of the ladies room, his face as green as my own despite his years of experience. Jorgeson directed traffic.

“.Jorgeson,” I said sweetly, “have you received the analysis from the lab concerning the cyanide that killed Herbert Weiss?”

“I guess it won’t hurt to tell you it came from an organic source rather than a manufactured process. The Gutzeit test confirmed the presence of the compound in the peach compote, but we’ve asked for further tests to pinpoint the precise source.” He scratched his chin. “Did you know peach pits contain cyanide, as do apple seeds, cherry pits, apricot pits, and a whole bunch of fruit like that? Gawd, I used to eat apple cores all the time. It seemed tidier. Gawd!”

“I suggest you throw them away in the future,” I said without sympathy. Time was of the essence, in that Peter was apt to be displeased if he returned to find me grilling his minion. “Are we assuming the cyanide came from peach pits?”

“I don’t think the lieutenant wants you to assume anything. Mrs. Malloy. He’d probably demote me if he found out I even talked to you. You’d better run along and wait for him at your house.”

“I shall run along. Don’t worry about demotion, Jorgeson; there’s no reason why the lieutenant should ever know about our little chat, is there?” I gave him a beady look, then gathered up the newspapers and graph paper and went upstairs, wondering if Miss Parchester’s recipe included such toxic ingredients as peach pits. Surely it would have been noticed over the years.

I took a few turns in the corridor to avoid the office. Once in my car, I checked the addresses and drove to Mrs. Platchett’s house, a respectable little box in a respectable little neighborhood. She came to the door in a bathrobe, her head covered with brisdy pink rollers. “Mrs. Malloy,” she said through the screen, “how interesting of you to drop by una

I considered a variety of lies, then settled for the truth about Pius’s untimely demise and Miss Parchester’s escape from Happy Meadows. She was appalled, although it was difficult to decide which bit of information caused the greater grief. It proved to be the latter.

“Emily is wandering around Farberville with some wild notion that she will investigate Mr. Weiss’s death?” Mrs. Platchett said, shaking her head. “Great harm is likely to happen to her. She is too trusting for her own good, and easily taken advantage of by anyone who claims an interest in the Constitution. You must locate her at once, Mrs. Malloy.”

“I thought she might have come to you.” I peered over her shoulder at the interior of the house. “Are you sure she’s not hiding in a back room?’’

“She is not here.” Unlike some of us who shall remain nameless, Mrs. Platchett was not amused by the idea that she would aid and abet an alleged felon. “If you wait on the veranda, I will call Mae and see if she has heard from Emily. but it is almost inconceivable that she would make contact with either of us, and Tessa is still at the hospital. Emily knows we could not hide her from the authorities. It is against the law, and possibly unconstitutional.”

I nodded. “Please don’t bother to call Miss Bagby. Her apartment is on my way home, and I can stop by to speak to her in person.” I hesitated for a minute. “Ah, do you happen to have any peaches, Mrs. Platchett? I know it sounds strange, but it may help Miss Parchester.”

Unconvinced and visibly in doubt of my sanity, she disappeared into the house and returned with a lumpy brown bag. She handed it to me and watched through the screen door as I climbed in my car and drove away.

Mae Bagby invited me in for a cup of tea, although she did so in a listless fashion, murmuring that the funeral had drained her. I told her about Pitts. She closed her eyes, then took a swallow of tea and said, “This is truly dreadful, Mrs. Malloy. First poor Mr. Weiss, and now Pitts. Whatever are we to do?”

“The police will be unobtrusive tomorrow and finished with the crime scene by the next day. I suppose the students will appear to seek knowledge and the teachers to offer it to them.”

“I don’t know if I can bear to return to the school,” she sighed. “It’s not only the events of the last few days that motivate me to consider early retirement from my profession. The school has changed so much in the last forty years, and always for the worse. The students are so unconcerned about academics and morals, and they blithely break the law by consuming alcohol and drugs. Some of them actually engage in sexual activity to the point of promiscuity. It is all I can do to interest them in biology, in the discovery of the glories of nature. Perhaps I shall inquire about retirement.”

I made a sympathetic noise, then asked if she had chanced upon the errant Miss Emily Parchester. Miss Bagby was as perturbed as Mrs. Platchett, but as firm in her avowal that she could not, under any circumstances, however justified, friendship or not, hide a fugitive. I gave her my telephone number in case the fugitive appeared, patted her shoulder, and drove home to conduct an experiment worthy of a Nobel Prize.

I was sitting on the sidewalk with the peach and a hammer when Peter pulled up to the curb. He almost smiled at what must have been a peculiar picture, then remembered his role as Nasty Cop. Slamming the car door hard enough to spring a sprocket, he stomped up the walk and glowered down at me. “I called earlier, but you were not here. I thought I told you to go home and wait for me.

I took a bite of peach. Yummy. “You did. What if I’ve been sitting out here since I arrived home?”

“I drove by several times.”

“It takes me awhile to scurry home with my tail between my legs.” I wondered where Mrs. Platchett bought her produce. Peach juice dribbled down my chin. I wiped it on my sleeve, finished the last bite of peach, and picked up the hammer. “I’ll account for my whereabouts in a moment, but first I want to see how hard it is to get out the pit.”

“And why would you want to ascertain that information?” he snapped, unmoved by my quest for knowledge.

“Peach pits contain cyanide; everyone knows that. Because the peach compote contained an organic cyanide compound, it does seem probable that the pits are implicated-if they’re not impossible to extract.”

“Not everyone knows the chemical structure of peach pits. When did you chance upon it? High school chemistry-or more recently?”

Lacking an acceptable answer, I ignored the remark and smashed the seed with a mighty blow. It bounced into a pile of dried leaves. “Damn, this is harder than it looks,” I said as I crawled across the walk and started to dig through the leaves.

Peter leaned over and picked up the peach pit. “Let me try,” he said in a grudging voice-since he hadn’t thought up the brilliant experiment.

I handed him the hammer and sat back to watch him smash the seed. His expression was enigmatic, to say the least, but his single blow was forceful enough to shatter the outside covering and expose an almond-shaped pit. He studied it for a second, then handed it to me. “It isn’t difficult. Anyone could do it.”

“Not little old ladies with tremulous hands and poor eyesight,” I said. “It takes the male touch to pulverize an i

“Ah, Miss Parchester. Couldn’t you have told me where she was-before she disappeared? You knew damn well that I wanted to question her, Claire. The fact that you knowingly failed to tell me her whereabouts borders on a felony.”