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it was a nine-year-old girl named Jenny. Mrs. Epworth walks into the living room on Saturday night and finds her husband lying on the floor stabbed to death with an especially lethal dagger plunged into his back—he had a collection of them mounted on his wall. Blood all over the place, the child Jenny gone, her bloody fingerprints on both dagger and doorknob. A few drops of blood in hallways. The girl had obviously fled, the bed prepared for her never slept in. Time of death, half past nine.”
    â€œA nine-year-old child!” exclaimed Madame Karitska. “Did she hate him so much? Was he unkind?”
    He shook his head. “That’s what’s so baffling. Epworth was particularly kind to her because she resembled the daughter from his first marriage, killed with her mother in an auto accident. From all reports the child adored the Epworths, not being accustomed to such kindness, according to the people at the home. The Epworths—both of them—went out of their way to befriend Jenny . . . not the first time they’d had her for a weekend. Treats, that sort of thing.”
    â€œThey’ve searched the building for the girl?”
    He nodded. “What’s difficult to understand is why nobody has seen her; she must have been splattered with blood. There’s a doorman—he could have been talking to someone, or dozing on his feet, but he insists he saw no child leaving.”
    â€œAnd Mrs. Epworth?”
    â€œDistraught. Hysterical and furious. At once cut off future contributions to the Home for Disabled Children. Recklessly threatening to kill the child once found.”
    Madame Karitska frowned. “But how far could a physically disabled child
go
?”
    â€œThat is a problem in itself,” said Pruden wearily. “She’s not physically disabled, she’s what I believe is called a mute. The girl can neither hear nor speak.”
    â€œGood heavens, how tragic,” said Madame Karitska, startled. “Yet strong enough to kill with a dagger? What can have possessed her?”
    Pruden nodded grimly. “How can one possibly guess what a child like that would feel or know if she can’t talk? There’s no way of knowing, not really, what hatred or resentment was seething inside of her.”
    â€œYet she must have been likable for them to be so partial to her. How does Mrs. Epworth describe her?”
    â€œToo grief-stricken to be coherent, but according to the people at the Home for Disabled Children, it was Mrs. Epworth who chose Jenny for the weekend. Two weekends ago it was a child in a wheelchair, this weekend Jenny. All Mrs. Epworth screams over and over is, ‘To think, after all we did for her, and she
killed
him!’ ”
    â€œIf they were alone he wouldn’t have—I hate to say this—tried to molest her?”
    Pruden sighed. “Since there were no witnesses, one can’t say no to that, but there’s been no history of it. Swope’s interviewed every child who’s spent a weekend with them; he comes off fatherly, thoughtful, full of jokes with them; they’ve taken children to the circus, movies, beach trips in summer. . . .”
    â€œAnd you can’t find the child . . . but if unable to speak or hear, surely she’s learned sign language?”
    Pruden sighed. “No, Epworth was arranging for just such a teacher—the home is so
very
underfunded—but he’d not found anyone yet.” He shook his head. “And with her fingerprints everywhere—on dagger and doorknob—”
    â€œShe has to be found,” Madame Karitska said. “Has to be.”
    He nodded. “It’s been six days—no, this morning begins seven—and if in hiding, by now she could be dead, too, if she’s had nothing to eat. We’ve circulated one old ID photo the home had of her.” He pulled a copy out of his pocket and said wryly, “Just in case you see her, but