Crime is Murder by Helen Nielsen

suggested.
    That wasn’t the right answer. The professor fixed her with a penetrating gaze.
    “Does he intend to marry that girl?”
    “That girl.”
Another slip, as bad as the one on the athletic field.
    “He does,” Lisa said. “And apparently she intends to marry him.”
    The news didn’t surprise the professor; it merely confirmed the scowl of dismay on his forehead. He waited a bit, trying to think out his words. Johnny was getting impatient. Lisa had learned to wait.
    “I know what you’re thinking,” he said at last. “You’re thinking that I’m a meddling old bachelor trying to break up a young romance. You’re wrong, Miss Bancroft. I love my nephew and have always felt a great sense of responsibility for him, but I’m not reluctant to let him grow up. I want him to be happy—much happier than I’ve ever been.”
    The professor fell silent again. He seemed embarrassed to have brought himself into his story. Schoolteachers weren’t supposed to have lives. They lived behind textbooks or the little pitch pipes dangling over their flat chests. The thought was there, all the stronger because it was unspoken, and then the professor continued.
    “As you now know, I deliberately tried to arouse your interest in Marta Cornish from the day of our meeting in the tearoom. I wanted to get to the truth of this matter. I needed assistance, and no one in Bellville, I’m sure, could be considered to have a truly unprejudiced mind. I knew that I wouldn’t have to say very much: a suggestion here and there and you would learn the rest in your own way. Gossip is easy to find.”
    “Too easy,” Lisa said. “Truth doesn’t come that easy.”
    “Exactly, Miss Bancroft. And yet, where there’s smoke—”
    “Somebody’s liable to get burned,” Johnny said.
    “Yes.” The professor nursed that thought for a moment. The scowl had never left his face. “Oh, I know how you must have felt about all this in the beginning—perhaps still do. I went through that phase myself. I came to Bellville shortly after Duval’s death. I heard the tongues wagging and shrugged it off as malicious gossip. When the Hubbard death was brought to my attention I reacted just as I did when you mentioned it this afternoon. I still think that’s nonsense.”
    “But not the Duval rumors?” Lisa asked.
    “That depends on which rumors you mean,” the professor answered, “but I’m getting ahead of my story. At that time
—
when Duval’s death still had the town buzzing—I was quite unconcerned. I’d seen Marta Cornish a few times—she couldn’t very well be missed in this town—but I felt very much the same as you did that day in the tearoom. I knew a girl of her position would be a natural target for gossip, and thought the stories about her hideously cruel. It never occurred to me to question her sanity or her morals.
    “But I
knew
Howard Gleason. Duval was just a name to me, the name of a man who met an unfortunate death. Howard Gleason was a living thing—a fine, talented young man of great promise. I saw him first before he won the award. I saw him last the day before he killed himself.”
    The professor’s pause was pregnant with implication. No one had to be prepared for his next words.
    “He didn’t die suddenly, Miss Bancroft. Death was instantaneous when the bullet entered his head, but he’d been dying very slowly for a year. Kill the spirit and you kill life.”
    “And you think that Marta Cornish killed his spirit?” Lisa asked.
    “Someone did,” the professor answered. “All I know is that Howard Gleason fell in love, so much in love that he gave up his scholarship to study abroad and remained on in Bellville as a simple instructor. He took a modest apartment here in town, but every week end was spent at Bell Mansion. Apparently he was well received by Mrs. Cornish. There’s no reason to think that anything or anyone came between him and Marta.”
    “Except Marta,” Johnny suggested.
    “A girl