Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan

I

Wednesday night, October 10, 1900.

Dear Judy: I am just home from Quilterville where I got your telegram asking me to tell you the truth about what has happened here. I told Grandfather and the others that they had no right to lie to you, and that they couldn't fool you if they tried. I knew you could tell from the crazy telegram we sent to you that we were hiding something from you.

Judy, I'm going to do for you what I'd want you to do for me. I'm going to tell you the truth. This business of sparing you and all that is sentimental twaddle. It isn't only your right to know, it is your duty to know that Father did not die mercifully and peacefully and all that rot last Monday night.

Father was murdered in his room. He was shot and killed. That would seem horror enough, wouldn't it? That isn't the horror. That isn't why we have been lying to you. That isn't what has beaten us. I'll tell you what the real horror is. And yet-it can't be true. If it can't be true, it must be false. I'll tell you why. I've thought it all out. I've thought it all out carefully. It can't be true. I mean, it can't be true that some one of us right here in the house that night, some member of our family, the Quilter family, murdered Father.

That is the first thing we have to do, Judy, you and I. We have to prove that no member of the Quilter family murdered Father. When that is out of the way, we can think straight again. We can go ahead and find out who did do it-damn him! And we'll attend the hanging.

That's why, before I tell you anything else, I'll have to tell you what I have thought out about the family. You know I'm not as crumby about the family as the rest of you are. You know I can think more clearly about them than you could. I know that we are a doggone faulty bunch. I have accepted that. I think it wise to accept that, first.

Beginning with Grandfather, who is the best of the lot now Father is dead. Grandfather is a sentimentalist, and something of a poseur, and -- Let it go at that. What's the use? Next to Father, Grandfather is the decentest person, man or woman, that I have ever known or ever shall know. He's not perfect, I suppose. But he comes too darn near being for me to point his imperfections. Any denial of wrongdoing for Grandfather would be desecration. Grandfather's world revolved around Father-and Aunt Gracia and Lucy.

Now for the handsome Christopher. Chris is wormy with selfishness, and lazy as a dog, and weak as water, and conceited. All right. But when it comes to murder-he's as clean out of it as Grandfather or Lucy, and there's no sense in dodging it. Chris would half kill Father with worry-he's been at that, hard, for six months now. But, in his way, we are bound to grant that Chris loved Father. He wouldn't shoot him, if he had the best reason in the world for doing it. We know that. And we know, too, that right now Chris needed to have Father alive, as an excuse for selling Q 2 and to manage the smaller ranch Chris said he was going to get for us. Father's death puts a decided crimp in Chris's plans.

Olympe. She's vain and affected, and has her share of common ordinary faults. But could any living being, in his senses, suggest that Olympe would shoot a dying kitten to put it out of its misery? If Chris has sold us out, as he was threatening to do, Father's ability to establish us on another place was Olympe's best chance for keeping out of the poorhouse she's been talking about all the time lately. Olympe loved Father.

Aunt Gracia. She has had her mind all mussed up for years with that fool religion of hers. She has gone a bit sour, of late, as the rest of us have, from overwork and overworry. But anyone who would whisper murder in the same breath with Aunt Gracia's name would be a liar and a criminal fool, and I know it, and you know it, and everyone who has ever seen her knows it. Just writing it makes me hot. Aunt Gracia loved Father.

Irene. She is one of the crumbiest specimens I ever saw. She's at the bottom of Chris's threatening to sell the place-she has nagged him into it. She has caused all sorts of trouble here from the first night she came. I've hated her like a burr under the saddle. I hate her yet. Partly because of that I know that she would not commit a murder-could not have committed this murder. It took a smart person, and a plucky person, and a darn tricky person to get away with this business on Monday night. Irene is a first-rate idiot. She is a chatterbox, and a coward. Tell me that a woman who is afraid of a cow will walk into a room and shoot a man dead? Not on your life she wouldn't. If she had wanted Father out of the way, she might have tried slow poison. She had no reason for wanting Father out of the way. She didn't love him, or anyone. But she liked Father; she couldn't help it. Three months ago Father gave up trying to influence Chris in any way about selling Q 2. Irene needed Father alive for the same reason Chris needed him-his ill health as an excuse for selling us out; his ability to manage the new place for us.

Lucy and I were the only other people in the house on Monday night. The missionaries who had been visiting here left Q 2 early Monday morning, and old Dong Lee went in with them to Portland to see a dentist.

I'll be damned if I'll defend Lucy. And Neal Quilter didn't do it. I know that. The others here may not know it. If I were any one of them, I'd suspect Neal Quilter, and with good cause.