Murder by the Book

"I didn't say she was perfect," Wellman protested. "She did- quite a few things I didn't think were right when sae did them. All I was trying to tell you ladies, she's dead now and it's different. I wouldn't change a thing about her if I could, not one single thing. Look at you here now, all this drinking -if your fathers were here or if they knew about it, would they like it? But if you got killed tonight and they had to take you home and have you buried, after they had had time to. think it over, do you suppose they'd hold it against you that you'd been drinking? Certainly not! They'd remember how wonderful you'd been, that's all, they'd remember all the things you had done to be proud of!"

He ducked his head. "Wouldn't they, Mrs. Abrams? Isn't that how you feel about your Rachel?"

Mrs. Abrams lifted her chin. She spoke not to Wellman but to the gathering. "How I feel about my Rachel." She shook her head. "It's been only two days, I will be honest with you ladies. While Mr. Wellman was talking I was sitting here thinking. My Rachel never took a drink. If I had ever seen her take a drink I would have called her a bad daughter in strong words. I would have been so angry it would have been terrible. But if it could be that she was here now, sitting at that table with you, and she was drinking more than any of you, so that she was so drunk she would look at me and not know me, I would say to her, 'Drink, Rachel! Drink, drink, drink!' "

She made a little gesture. "I want to be honest, but maybe I'm not saying it right. Maybe you don't know what I mean."

"We know what you mean," Eleanor Gruber muttered.

"I mean only I want my Rachel. I'm not like Mr. Wellman. I have two more daughters. My Deborah is sixteen and she is smart in high school. My Nancy is twenty and she goes to college, like Mr. Wellman's Joan. They are both smarter than Rachel and they are more fashionable. Rachel did not make eighty dollars every week like Joan, with office rent to pay and other things, but she did good all the time and once she made one hundred and twelve dollars in one week, only she