If anybody thinks that teachers' lives are dull, you need to watch this film. Louise Halloran, the school's young music teacher, is found bludgeoned to death, by Miss Hildegarde Withers (Edna Mae Oliver), at the school. She has a student call Detective Oscar Piper (James Gleason), with whom she worked on the Pengun Pool Murder. First the body disappears, and Piper thinks Hildegarde crazy - that there never was a murder. But then the murderer makes some mistakes - digging a grave in the cellar, hitting another policeman over the head, trying to dispose of Louise's body in the school incinerator and not quite beating the police to it, and then escaping out of the school emergency exit chute. So now Oscar knows the crime is real - as Louise may have died from the blow to the head, but she would have died anyways since the medical examiner determines that she was dying from pernicious anemia of the bones at the time of her death, which could have been induced by slow poisoning. Could there have been two different killers, each one unaware of the other's plot? Hildegarde pretty much solves this crime herself. Being a Renaissance woman who notices everything and has a variety of hairpins to help with tricky locks helps her along.
And she'll need her powers of observation. Because everybody has a motive. Louise's roommate, fellow teacher Jane Davis, has won the Irish Sweepstakes with Louise and her death allows Jane to keep all of the money. Then there was a romance between Louise and teacher Addison Stevens the previous summer that Stevens broke up so he could take up with Jane. Then there is principal McFarland who tried to take up with Louise also, wrote her love letters, and Louise would not let him have them back. McFarland is married, but that hasn't put a damper on him going after the younger female schoolteachers. Finally there is the school janitor who has tunneled his way into a warehouse of booze and has been taking some and selling it to the schoolteachers. Louise refused to pay him right before her death, claiming if she outed him he'd be fired.
Basically it boils down to Oscar controlling the cops and Hildegarde controlling the investigation. After they succeed at solving the crime they are having breakfast at a diner, and let's just say that Oscar has the last laugh as Hildegarde's sensibilities are shocked about how long it takes to grieve the loss of a loved one before replacing that loved one with another.
I'd say this didn't seem quite as good as Penguin Pool Murder, because the first one was such a welcome surprise, but it was certainly a worthwhile entry.
An aside - At the conclusion of Penguin Pool Murder it was insinuated that Oscar and Hildegarde were on their way to get married after a very rushed pretty much mutual marriage proposal. Here they are just friends. Being a married couple would have painted the humor into a corner, and it works better with them being allied, maybe even being a little bit romantically interested, but never really doing anything about it. Recommended.
