And right at that moment something became very clear to me. Something I should have seen before. I wondered why I had been so dense. Once you made the proper assumption, a lot of things fell into their proper place. TEN I realized they were still talking, but I was no longer listening to what they said. Then I realized that Ruth had spoken to me. "I beg your pardon?" "I said I have to be running along." "Wait a minute. Please. Can we talk for a minute? You too, Mr. Peary." I saw that she was holding her shoulders as if she were chilled. The sun had gone under again and a raw April wind was blowing. "We could sit in my car a minute. I want to--make a guess as to what George was doing with the money." They looked at me oddly. Peary shrugged and said, "Sure." We crossed the street and got into my car, Ruth in the middle. "It's just a guess. You know that Rose Fulton has never been satisfied with her husband's disappearance. Prine investigated and he's satisfied. George was out of town when Eloise ran off with Fulton. A neighbor saw Eloise carry a bag out to the car. Now suppose that Eloise wasn't running away permanently. Imagine that she was just going to stay the night with Fulton. She didn't want to stay at the house in case George should come home. And there were the neighbors to consider. She wouldn't want to go to a motel or hotel in the area. She was too well known. So she planned to go up to the lake with Fulton. She took just the things she'd need for overnight. Was it the time of year when there wouldn't be people up at the lake?" "It was this time of year," Ruth said. "Now suppose George came home and found she wasn't home. He started hunting for her. And went to the lake. Or imagine that for some reason, driving back from his trip out of town, he stopped at the lake and found them there together. What would he have done?" "I see where this is heading," Ruth said. "It gives me a strange feeling. George loved Eloise and trusted her. I guess he was the only one who couldn't see what she was. If George walked in on the two of them, I think he would have gone temporarily insane. I think he would have killed them. He used to be a powerful man, Tal." "So he killed them up there at the lake. He got rid of the bodies. He could have wired weights to the bodies and sunk them in the lake, but I'm more inclined to think he buried them. Maybe he buried them on his own land there. He was lucky in that she had been seen at the Inn with Fulton and she was seen leaving with Fulton. He had no way to know it would work out so well. He killed them in anger, and buried the bodies in panic. For a long time he was safe. He tried to go on as though nothing had happened. He played the part of the abandoned husband. And then somebody found the bodies. They didn't report it to the police. They went to George."