Rex Stout - Murder by the Book

He was still a moment. "Well, I don't know about that. I told you she graduated from Smith College with honors." "Yes."

"There was a young fellow from Dartmouth we thought maybe she was going to hitch up with, but she was too young and had sense enough to know it. Here in New York-she was here working for those publishers nearly four years-she wrote us back in Peoria about different-"

"Where's Peoria?" Blanche Duke demanded.

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!"

"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

worked nights too. But you ladies must not think I put her nose down on it. Some of our friends thought that, but they were wrong. She was glad in her heart that Nancy and Deborah are smart, and she made Nancy go to college. If she got some dollars ahead I would say, 'Buy yourself a pretty dress or take a little trip,' and she would laugh and say, 'I'm a working girl, Mamma.' She called me Mamma, but Nancy and Deborah called me Mom, and that's the whole difference right there."

She gestured again. "You know she is only dead two days?" It sounded rhetorical, but she insisted, "You know that?"

There were murmurings. "Yes, we know."

"So I don't know how it will be when it is longer, like Mr. Wellman. He has thought about it a long time and he is spending money for Mr. Wolfe to find the man that killed his Joan. If I had money like him maybe I would spend it that way too, but I don't know. All I think about now is my Rachel. I try to see why it happened. She was a working girl. She did her work good and got paid for it the regular rates. She never hurt anybody. She never made any trouble. Now Mr. Goodwin tells me a man asked her to do work for him, and she did it good, and he paid her the regular rates, and then after some time goes by he comes back and kills her. I try to see why that happened, and I can't. I don't care how much explaining I get, I don't think I can ever see why any man had to kill my Rachel, because I know so well about her. I know there's not a man or woman anywhere that could stand up and say, 'Rachel Abrams did a bad thing to me.' You ladies know how hard that is, to be the kind of woman so that nobody can say that. I'm not that kind of woman."

She paused. She tightened her lips, and then released them to say, "I did a bad thing to my Rachel once." Her ehin started to quiver. "Excuse me, please." She faltered, arose, and made for the door;

John R. Wellman forgot his manners. Without a word, he popped up, circled behind my chair, and followed Mrs. Abrams. His voice came from the hall, and then silence.

The guests were silent too. "There's more coffee," I told them. "Anybody want some?"

No takers. I spoke. "One thing Mrs. Abrams said wasn't strictly accurate. She said I told her that the man who paid Rachel for typing the script came back and killed her. What

I told her was that Rachel was killed because she had typed the script, but not that it was the man who had paid her for typing it."

Three of them were dabbing at their eyes with their handkerchiefs. Two others should have been.

"You don't know that," Dolly Harriton challenged.