Free A Death in Utopia by Adele Fasick

disappeared into her room.
    Soon it was time to dismiss the children from class. It had been a long day for the smaller ones. To Charlotte's surprise Daniel was standing in the hall downstairs. For a minute he seemed like a stranger. He looked just the same as before—thin and pale with those bright blue eyes. His smile hadn't changed and that was reassuring.
    "You're back again. You'll wear out the road walking back and forth so much. Have you discovered anything new about what happened to Winslow Hopewell?"
    "I didn't want to bother Mr. Ripley on a Sunday, especially because you people had a famous visitor here. But I wanted to get his permission to ask questions here." Daniel was standing very straight and he had a little smile on his lips as though he was quite satisfied with himself.
    "You look happy, so you must have been given the permission. And have you started asking questions yet?"
    "I talked with Mr. Ripley, of course, and asked him what he knew about Winslow Hopewell and whether anyone could have been very angry with him. But I didn't learn much. Mr. Ripley knows Winslow's father. Has known him all his life. Everyone in Boston knows everyone else it seems, except for those of us who know no one. Anyway Mr. Ripley has known the Reverend Thomas Hopewell for many years. According to Mr. Ripley, he is one of the most respected men in the city and no one has a word to say against him. Winslow has been a little more controversial because there are some people who believe he is too liberal in his teaching about theNew Testament. And he has half the women in Boston pestering their husbands about the sufferings of the slaves in the South. None of that sounds as though it would get him killed, does it?"
    Charlotte wondered whether one of those henpecked husbands might have killed Winslow just to stop the pestering, but that thought slid out of her mind as soon as it came in. It was too horrible to joke about when she could still see Winslow's white face in her mind.
    "No, that doesn't get us very far. Is the whole family perfect? What about Mr. Hopewell's mother and brothers and sisters?"
    "His mother died when he was ten years old and there were no other children. Thomas Hopewell never remarried and his son never married, so there have been no women in the family for many years."
    "Oh, yes there were," Charlotte started to say and then caught herself. She couldn't betray Abigail even though she didn't know what the story about being married to Winslow meant. How could they be married if no one knew about it? She hurried to try to correct the mistake. "I mean, there were women who admired Winslow. Remember how Fanny said once that he had women swooning over his sermons? Maybe some of them were jealous."
    "Silly women flutter over good looking ministers all the time," said Daniel loftily, "but they don't kill them. And none of those Boston women would have been out here at the Farm. Winslow Hopewell was a well-known and respected minister. Mr. Ripley knew him all his life from when he was a child. It's unlikely he had any guilty secrets in his life."
    "Everyone has secrets. No one knows about them because they are secret. But sometimes secrets come back to haunt people."
    "What do you mean? Do you think that Winslow belonged to some secret group the way my father did in Ireland? Was he a radical abolitionist? You don't think that Winslow stole church funds, do you? His family had plenty of money. What kind of secret do you think he might have had?"
    "I certainly don't think he was a revolutionary or a thief," Charlotte said scornfully. "If he had a secret it was more likely to be about someone he loved or...oh, I don't know. Don't ask me." She turned away, but Daniel reached out and caught her arm.
    "You know something you aren't telling me. What is it? Didn't we agree we'd try to solve this mystery together? How can we do that if you don't share what you know?"
    "I can't. I just can't! And I won't say another word." She