Anything Goes

coped with the change in your lives. It appeared from the reports 1 received that you had both made the best of your limited resources and lack of knowledge of real work. While neither of you were educated to be of any benefit to society or to accomplish anything on your own, you didn’t go on the dole. At least, not as far as I know.
     
    Lily had to smile bitterly at this remark. It was so devastatingly true.
    She went back to reading.
     
    Thirdly, and most important, you seem to have made no attempt to get in touch with me. Relatives far more distant than you two, and far less needy, suddenly took a quite inappropriate interest in me when the financial tide turned for them. I left a forwarding address with the people in Connecticut who purchased my house there and quite a number of relatives attempted to take advantage of that to seek me out and pretend an interest and affection that they had never evidenced previously. But you two did not do so. You asked nothing of me.
    I take this to mean that you have a certain amount of pride and honor, though how you might have come by it, raised in such useless and frivolous luxury, perplexes me. I could be wrong in my secondhand assessment of your more important qualities.
    Therefore, I have bequeathed you my home and fortune with the restrictions with which you are already familiar. You will have a home and fuel to keep warm. Elgin Prinney will supervise, quite strictly I hope, any other vital financial needs, such as household necessities and reasonable medical care in case of accident or illness.
    But, as you know by now, you must stay in the house, and you must support yourselves. I believe you can and will do this. I hope that you have the integrity, the ambition and the intelligence to become useful and self-supporting. And if you do, it will be a lifelong credit to your inherent good qualities—if in fact, you have such qualities. I wish you well.
     
    Your uncle, Horatio Brewster
     

Chapter 20
     
    It was four in the afternoon. Jack was in the newspaper office, pounding out the story of Billy Smith’s death on the battered old typewriter he shared with Mr. Kessler. Kessler had apparently, against all the odds, not heard about the murder. Jack had found his boss sitting in his office chair, feet on the desk, smoking a foul stogy and carving away at one of his stupid little animal figures.
    “I know all about it, sir,“ Jack said. “I’ve been following the police chief and my Cousin Ralph around all day. Heard most of the interviews. I’ll write it up.“
    “And I’ll do the revisions,“ Kessler said. “The paper doesn’t come out until Tuesday. Plenty of time to fix up your version.”
    Fix up my version, Jack thought angrily. As if it’ll need fixing.
    He’d put the two sheets of paper and the carbon (nearly a cobweb with age and overuse) into the typewriter and written:
     
    A TRAGEDY IN VOORBURG
     
    Last night a lifelong Voorburg resident, Billy Smith, was killed at Grace and Favor Cottage (formerly Honeysuckle Cottage). The police have determined that his death was a murder which took place during the early hours of the evening when the house was almost vacant.
    Residents and owners Miss Lily Brewster and Mr. Robert Brewster were at a neighboring home having dinner at the time. Mr. and Mrs. Elgin Prinney, who also reside at the house, were also away visiting friends. The only person in the home at the time was Mrs. Smith, the wife of the victim, who claims she was in her room the entire evening working a jigsaw puzzle and heard nothing alarming or untoward.
    Mr. Smith met his demise either from strangulation or from a knife wound. The coroner has not yet determined which.
     
    Jack chewed on his pencil for a moment. The coroner would probably know before the paper went to press. He could alter that sentence and fill in the actual cause of death later.
    He went on:
     
    Mr. Billy Smith was a lifelong resident...
     
    No, he’d already said that in the first paragraph. He X’ed out the sentence.
     
    Mr. Billy Smith, who is said to have been 34 years old, had been born and raised in Voorburg and married the former Miss Mimi O’Hare approximately ten years ago. Mrs. Smith is currently living at Grace and Favor Cottage as live-in help.
    Mr. Smith had a long history of convictions for disorderly conduct...”
     
    Could he get away with saying that? It was the truth. And who was there to object?
     
    This paper has formerly noted his many