It had to be You

to their church on Sunday for a very long service. And for Sunday luncheon, Cook prepares trays of cold cuts and potato salad and cold cucumber soup that have to be brought up.”
    On their way home, Robert hadn’t even started the automobile before beginning to complain. Lily held her hand up to stop him.
    “We’ll make more money this way. Keep that in mind. And it’s not as if we have parties to go to on weekends anyway. Besides all that, Doreen works far harder than we do in that steamy room in the basement. We carry dry linens up and down. She has to wrestle with them waterlogged and hot, get them starched and dried, then work with a hot iron.”
    Robert hated to admit she was right, so he just shrugged.

Chapter 7

    Tuesday evening, while Robert sat in the library trying to find some news on the radio, and Lily was reading a new mystery novel that Miss Exley, the town librarian, had ordered specifically for her, Lily asked Robert, “Who do you think smothered that old man?“
    “Huh? What old...? Oh, Mr. Connor? It could have been anyone who lives or works there except us, and the Smith and Jones ladies.“
    “Probably not anyone, exactly,“ Lily said. “Doreen never comes upstairs. Neither does the cook. At least we’ve never seen her.“
    “The cook sends the vegetable-peeler-and-washer-upper girl up though,“ he said in a teasing voice.
    “Robert, aren’t you curious?“
    “Not especially. Everybody seemed to know he didn’t have much time to live anyway.“
    “But that’s exactly what’s so odd about it,“ Lily said. “Why risk smothering an old man who is going to die within a matter of a few hours anyway?”
    She finally had Robert’s attention. He turned the radio off and said, “That’s a good question. My money’s on Betty.“
    “Oh, no. She’s such a nice girl.“
    “You’re overlooking the fact that she was his primary tormentor. Messing about all the time with his knee, which must have been really painful before he went comatose. He probably was really mean and hateful to her.“
    “I’ll admit that,“ Lily said. “But not at the end. He couldn’t react to anything that was done to him. Why would she bother killing him on his last day of life? And he was a small, feeble old man. Anybody could have probably smothered him earlier. The visiting nurse, or that grandson. Or maybe even someone who sneaked in when nobody was looking. And there are times nobody is in that big living room. Anybody from outside the house could have come in.”
    Robert ignored almost everything she said, but commented, “Sometimes the little wiry old men are a lot stronger than they look.“
    “Still, I don’t think it was Betty,“ Lily said.
    “What about Miss Twibell then? She must have a long waiting list of people needing to fill that bed. Maybe some of them were really rich.“
    “That’s nonsense!“ Lily nearly yelped. “She’s too proud of her perfect record to take the chance, knowing he had only hours to live.“
    “Okay. I agree. So who else could have done it?”
    “The last person in his room, of course. His wife,“ Lily said.
    “Not if it’s true that she was there to ask his help to find new workers. Wasn’t that what we were told she was yelling at him about?“ Robert asked.
    “Maybe she simply got fed up with him pretending to be in deep sleep when she was there,“ Lily argued.
    Robert turned the radio back on. “It’s not our problem. It’s Howard’s job and he’s good at it.“
    “But we’ve usually been of some help to him with previous cases.“
    “Because we butted in,“ Robert said with a laugh. “He never really asked us to help.“
    “Yes, he did,“ Lily objected. “Remember when he wanted you to go with him to interview that tailor in New York? When you found a body in the old icehouse? And he asked me to go along last November when he was interviewing several young women.“
    “That’s only because he doesn’t have a woman assistant in the department, and wanted a witness to the fact that he wasn’t up to any hanky-panky if any of those young women complained to the officials.”
    Lily’s eyes lit up. “Maybe I could train to be a policewoman!”
    Robert’s laugh this time was nearly a bark. “Lily! Get away. You just want to hang around Walker. I don’t blame you. He’s a good-looking man. But he’s as poor as we are.”
    Lily was indignant. “You dare think I want to marry Howard? That’s an outrageous thing to