“Thank you, Ted and Carol,” Miss Marvel stood and walked to the two of them. “Please sit down. Molly and Harold, will you please come up and make our final report.”
Molly stood up and walked to the front of the classroom. Harold replaced the poster that was there with the one they had created. Molly waited until Miss Marvel walked around the room to sit in the empty chair next to the slide projector. The glare from the projector blinded her slightly which, somehow, was relaxing because she couldn’t see everyone looking at her.
“Molly?” Harold said. “Don’t you go first?”
“Yes,” Molly said. “Sorry. On our poster, we have placed a chart that shows our Observations and Deductions. In the story, The Sign of the Four, Sherlock Holmes shares with Dr. Watson that the ideal detective has three qualities and they are, the power of observation, deduction, and knowledge. Here are our observations. Harold?”
Harold took a deep breath and said, “After we charted the gym in both configurations, we noted that when the thefts happened everyone was distracted. First, at the dance, well, it was the first dance at the dance exactly, and then at the play, it was intermission. Point 2 are the areas where the theft happened. No one was near the money boxes, meaning they were left unprotected. Point 3 is that there is no logical way of leaving the event unnoticed.”
Harold paused and pointed to the next point on the poster.
“I’ll address these last two observations,” Molly interrupted Harold. “Because they were actually mine anyway. Point 4 – at the play. When I was leaving the lobby, I noticed that a white sweater was hanging from a chair at the concession table. As far as we know, we were one of the last ones to leave that night. Finally, point 5, the brown bag.”
“Excuse me,” Miss Marvel interrupted from the rear of the room. “We will get to the brown bag in just a second. Move on the Deductions, please?”
“Okay,” Harold said and pointed to the Deductions column that had only two points listed there. “We deduced that based on our observations that it had to be one of the students or one of the sponsors who were at all the events and the best way to find out who did it is by conducting interviews and collecting fingerprints. Molly?”
“That leaves the last quality Sherlock Holmes claims that the ideal detective possesses, knowledge. What do we know? We know, through the interviews, where the sponsors and club members were at the time of the crimes. We also know, through our own observations, where the students and other adults were on the dance floor or watching the play. We also, know through our fingerprinting activity, that there is only one unknown print that was on all three money boxes. And…”
“Excuse me, Molly,” Miss Marvel said as she walked to the front of the room. “I will take it from here. Please sit down.”
Molly hurried to her seat and looked around the room. The adults seated around the walls were closely paying attention, focusing on Miss Marvel. Except for one of them, who was sitting upright and staring straight ahead.
“Let me begin by saying we have a suspect. Let’s start with the brown bag that Molly noted. It was noticed at the dance that the owner was wearing it at the beginning of the dance but not later. It was also seen at the play on the shoulder of the owner. It so happens that the owner is the same as the owner of this fingerprint. We obtained a comparison to the print on the boxes from two other sources, a History book and a recipe card.”
The slide projector snapped and beside Miss Marvel a fingerprint appeared. It was definitely a loop, tall thin lines rising and tipping from the left to the right, swooping down and out again. The projector clicked again, and the same print appeared, and it clicked once more displaying the same print. Miss Marvel stood next to the image and placed her hands in front of her, folding them carefully together. She waited.
Molly looked at Bev at the far end of the row who was staring straight ahead. Molly glanced at Harold, who looked at her and simply shrugged. Molly turned her head to look at the other end of the row and saw Jason at the far end, turned toward the door and to the person sitting next to it.
“The only thing we really don’t know is why. We have an idea, but we don’t really know,” Miss Marvel said casting her eyes toward the floor, waiting.
“It was me,” a voice quietly said.
Molly turned her head toward the voice even though she knew who it was and looked at Mrs. Young. All of the others had turned to face her, too, and like Molly, they all waited.
“As you know, my daughter has been in the hospital. She was a passenger in a car crash, and she was injured pretty badly. It was her ankle and there was surgery and weeks and weeks of therapy. The medical bills were expensive and even though she has insurance, she still needed help from us. We needed to eat, too. We all need to eat , don’t we? I took the money to feed ourselves,” Mrs. Young said as she began to cry. “but I felt so guilty and ashamed. I went to the grocery store just one time and used some of the money to pay for it but that was the only time.”
The room was so quiet that Molly actually heard the clock on the wall ticking. Harold turned his head forward and June reached out and placed her hand on his arm. Molly smiled.
“How much money is left?” Principal Marty asked her.
“Most of it, around $800 or so,” Mrs. Young said as she reached into her bag and pulled out a roll of money held together with a rubber band. “I couldn’t leave it from my sight. I am so sorry for what I did, and I am ready for to face the consequences.”
Mrs. Young leaned forward in her chair and burst into tears. The Whodunnit Club members squirmed in their seats, uncomfortable being around an adult crying so hard that no one noticed Detective Tracy slowly rising from his seat and walking toward her. He stopped in front and Mrs. Young looked up at him.
“Mrs. Young, Bethany,” Miss Marvel said as she walked to stand next to Detective Tracy. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Yes, it is,” Principal Marty spoke up and reached out, grabbing Mrs. Young’s hand. “After all, it is a school matter. Right, Detective?”
To be continued…
My First Stories 