In the Still of the Night

good.
    And he’d gone to school with upper-class people when he got his two years of college by secretly working at an ice cream stand when he wasn’t in classes. He was now firmly in the middle class and on equal footing with the people of Voorburg. But all that experience wasn’t serving him well.
    Mr. Prinney went to his office downstairs with the intention of calling Walker at home, but found the man sitting in his office already. Or still. “Have you been here all night?“
    “Thought I should be. I took a look around the house every hour and napped in a room Miss Brewster had made up for me between times.“
    “That’s taking your job rather too seriously, isn’t it?”
    Mr. Prinney was glad when Walker took offense. “It’s impossible to take murder lightly,“ Walker said.
    “I’ve been thinking about this,“ Mr. Prinney said. “And all wrong, I believe.”
    Walker leaned forward and looked at him intently. “What do you mean?“
    “I was considering Mrs. Ethridge’s—let us say—allure. She was a most attractive woman. But in my experience money is the key to most crimes. Of course, I’m a property attorney, so my view may be skewed. But I’ve had clients who came to blows over their grandmother’s little nest egg when it didn’t amount to a hill of beans.”
    Walker leaned back in Mr. Prinney’s chair. “Money...“ he said thoughtfully.
    “Blackmail money more specifically. It crossed my mind this morning that the murderer wasn’t the only one with a motive. Mrs. Ethridge came here for a reason and I think you should find out what it was.”
    Howard Walker got out his notebook and licked his pencil. “Talk.”

Chapter, 19

    The fête got going earlier than it was supposed to. The backyard of Grace and Favor was full of about two dozen townspeople either setting up games and tables or looking over the preparations.
    Lily and Robert roamed around among them, introducing themselves to those they hadn’t met and chatting with those they knew. About half the people greeted them cordially. A few were obnoxiously friendly and the remainder were a little stand-offish.
    In a brief quiet moment, Lily said, “I wonder how they’d all react if they knew we’re as poor as most of them are these days.“
    “Probably the same,“ Robert said. “The really chummy ones would quit being so chummy. But the rest would still regard us as strangers. I think you have to have lived here for quite a few generations before you count as really ‘local.’ “
    Lily nodded. “It was the same before the Crash in the circles we moved in. It wasn’t enough to have money. It had to be very old money to count socially. You could always recognize the new money people because they dressed too well and spent too much and talked about money too often. And we treated them like ‘newcomers.’ Expecting them to prove themselves worthy of our company. What snobs we were.“
    “Everybody’s snobby about their ‘own kind,’ I think. Still, we ought to be getting some credit here for being a distant part of a family that’s been around Voorburg for ages,“ Robert said. “Maybe more people will warm up to us eventually. At least nobody’s been openly hostile.”
    They went down on the long, lush lawn that overlooked the river. Men were laying out lanes for foot races by pouring crushed lime from the spout of a galvanized can. A big group of children, mostly boys and a few tomboyish girls, were practicing running and shrieking with glee.
    A few families had laid out quilts on the grass, and the husbands were napping while the wives visited with neighbors. A horseshoe pitching field was being assembled. Some of the young girls could be seen flitting around woods next to the lawn picking wild flowers to put in their hair or to make daisy chains.
    Robert looked around and said, “Lily, I hate to admit this, and will deny I ever said it if you ever tell any of our old friends, but today I really like living here. I thought it was going to be so dull in the country. But today proves it sometimes isn’t. Just today, nobody’s thinking about the economy or where the next job or meal is coming from.”
    Lily took his arm. “I like it almost all of the time. But I always liked staying at our houses away from the City better than being in the middle of society’s pressures. You thrived on that. I do hope we’ll eventually make real friends here.“
    “We have. Mr. and Mrs. Prinney. Jack Summer. Chief