By Esther Cohen
After weeks of obsessively evaluating the evidence (what did that even mean?) Beulah Hill, school teacher turned detective at the age of 71, decided, after much thought, after filling 11 black and white notebooks with interviews, with details, with anything that crossed her mind about Delores, about suspects, and about murder as a crazy phenomenon, she whittled down the suspects to two: either John, Delores’s devoted lover, or Emily, his wife.
She was pleased with herself with writing so effortlessly -something she’d never been able to do all her life. But the purposefulness she felt, putting as much as possible onto those pages, was incomparable. She hoped she would be able to do it again: to solve another crime?
She believed that John and Delores really truly loved one another: but could love be a motive for murder?
And although Emily was an obvious choice because jealousy was such a clear and definite motive, Beulah believed all her life that women are so often blamed for things – being a bad mother was a common and unfortunate notion. Fathers were blamed far less often.
And everyone she talked to – family members especially, said John seemed like a much nicer person than Emily.
People used the word kind often. Did that mean he couldn’t murder Delores? Could you be kind and commit murder?
Although the very idea seemed impossible, maybe that’s what happened.
In her notes about Emily (all in her Emily notebook) Beulah recorded the attributes she’d learned: intelligent, competent, reliable, cautious, athletic, organized, and straightforward. What you see was what you get was what several people said.
Once more Beulah decided to confront them both at church.
Her second church visit in so many years. Church seemed like a neutral ground. Driving over on Sunday morning for the ten o’clock service, she tried hard to decide: Emily or John? John or Emily? The killer was down to that.
In a way, they both had motives. Delores was in the way of their longtime marriage. Although John seemed to love her, and Emily certainly didn’t.
Maybe John wanted the problem out of the way.
Or maybe, Emily still wanted the life she’d had for years with John. Imperfect, of course, but so was everything else.
Beulah dressed for church in her one navy blue suit, and she even put on her twenty year old pair of low navy heals. They were called pumps when she bought them. She chose a seat on one of the back pews, with a good view of Emily and John. She sat through the whole service, humming the hymns, listening to the priest whose sermon was about Helping Others. Delores was who Beulah wanted to help. By finding out who’d killed her.
At the end of the service, she waited by the old wooden church door, not knowing quite what she’d say to Emily and John when they walked by. When they came at last, they were holding hands. “Hello, Beulah,” John said. Looking right into her eyes. He smiled at her, and didn’t let go of Emily’s hand. “Hello Beulah,” Emily said too. She too looked right at Beulah. “We’re ready to tell you what happened,” said John. “We killed her together,” added Emily. “In the end, we wanted to be together without any complications.” “Isn’t murder a big complication?” Beulah replied. “Maybe,” said John. “And maybe not.”
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