Murder by the Book

He frowned at her. "Peoria? That's a city out in Illinois. She wrote us about different fellows she met, but it didn't sound to us like she was ready to tie up. We got to thinking it was about time, anyway her mother did, but she thought she had a big future with those publishers. She was getting eighty dollars a week, pretty good for a girl of twenty-six, and Scholl told me just last August when I was here on a trip that they expected a great deal of her. I was thinking of that yesterday afternoon. I was thinking that we expected a great deal of her too, her mother and me, but that we had already had a great deal."

He ducked his head forward to glance at Mrs. Abrams and came back to me. "Mrs. Abrams and I were talking about that upstairs. We feel the same way about it, only with her it's only been two days, and she hasn't had so long to think it over. I was telling her that if you gave me a pad of paper and a pencil and asked me to put down all the different things I can remember about Joan, I'll bet there would be ten thousand different things, more than that-things she did and things she said, times she was like this and times she was like that. You haven't got a daughter."

"No. You have much to remember."

"Yes, I have. What got me to thinking like that, I was wondering if I deserved what happened because I was too proud of her. But I wasn't. I thought about it this way, I thought there had been lots of times she did something wrong, like when she was little and told lies, and even after she grew up she did things I didn't approve of, but I asked myself, can I point to a single thing she ever did and honestly say I wish she hadn't done that? And I couldn't."

His eyes left me and went to my guests. He took his time, apparently looking for something in each face.

"I couldn't do it," he said firmly.

"So she was perfect," Claire Burkhardt remarked. It wasn't

really a sneer, but it enraged Blanche Duke. She blazed at Claire.

"Will you kindly get lost, you night-school wonder? The man's in trouble! His daughter's dead! Did you graduate from college with honors?"

"I never went to night school," Claire said indignantly. "I went to Oliphant Business Academy!"