Free Murder in Little Egypt by Darcy O'Brien

they settled into an apartment at Canterbury Gardens, in the University City section of St. Louis. Marian returned to nursing, working in a doctor’s office. She found the routine tedious after the freedom of flying, but she knew that the job was temporary.
    Marian assumed that once Dale completed his internship at St. Louis Maternity Hospital, he would become a resident there or at some other city hospital. As usual he was taking on as much as anyone could, learning surgery as well as obstetrics and gynecology, and acquiring advanced techniques in anesthesiology. He would end up so well qualified that he would have his pick of jobs anywhere, she believed; he might even think better of his rejection of the Baltimore offer and return East, a prospect Marian would still have welcomed, although she loved St. Louis as always. Any city in the Midwest or East appealed to her, any place with energy and cultural attractions.
    When in June 1954 Dale abruptly announced to her that they would be moving to southern Illinois in September, Marian was dumbfounded. There was a small hospital in McLeansboro, Dale said. The town’s main doctor was retiring, leaving a ready-made practice behind. Dale and another young St. Louis doctor, Ed Everson, were going to take everything over. It would be like having his own hospital. He would have total control. It was a great opportunity.
    “Where is it?” Marian asked.
    “Where’s what?”
    “McLeansboro. What’s it near?”
    “It’s just a few miles north of Eldorado. You’ll like it.”

    If Marian seemed unenthusiastic, and she tried not to be, Dale ignored it. He was so excited about the position, and he presented it so forcefully as an accomplished fact, that she could hardly register objections. Nor did she believe, in spite of her misgivings, that it was her place as a wife to argue with Dale about his professional decisions. But she did a lot of thinking.
    She tried to understand Dale’s reasoning. There must have been a great deal going on inside of him that she had failed to notice. There had never been so much as a hint, that she had picked up on anyway, of his desire to return to southern Illinois. She had taken the change in the cornerstone at Pearce Hospital as a symbol, and an unambiguous one, that the Eldorado chapter of Dale’s life had closed along with his first marriage.
    Why had he not confided in her? Had he been afraid that she would object, throw a fit, even threaten to leave him? That was absurd. She felt wholly committed to him. His experience with Helen Jean must have scarred him. He was probably still unable to trust any woman. Whether it was true or not that Helen Jean had married him only to get out of Eldorado—and Marian doubted this—Dale must still have suspected as much. Helen Jean had gone on to marry Chet Williams; they had moved to a large city in the Southwest. It would not do for Dale to suspect that Marian had married him only on condition that they live in a big city. If he thought that, he would never trust her.
    Marian decided that somehow she would have to try to overcome Dale’s doubts by being absolutely loyal and unquestioning. He was still at the outset of his career; he must be full of misgivings in spite of his outward self-confidence. He was human; time would take care of his skittishness. She found his frailty endearing, even amid her deep disappointment at the prospect of southern Illinois, which she had thought depressing the moment she had laid eyes on it. The idea of actually living there!
    The more she ruminated, the more signs Marian recognized of Dale’s having made up his mind long ago to return home. Why else would he have refused the Baltimore offer? And his specializing in obstetrics and gynecology and basic surgery—that fit in as well. Those would be exactly the skills required of a country doctor. Most of his practice would consist of delivering babies, diagnosing routine ailments, performing appendectomies, that sort