2
The news of this killing¹, for which the three policemen subsequently received citations², was
eagerly conveyed to all the relatives of the deceased couple by newspaper reporters, and the next
morning the closest of these relatives, as well as a couple of undertakers, three lawyers, and a
priest, climbed into taxis and set out for the house with the broken window. They assembled in the
living-room, men and women both, and they sat around in a circle on the sofas and armchairs,
smoking cigarettes and sipping³ sherry and debating what on earth should be done now with the
baby upstairs, the orphan⁴ Lexington.
It soon became apparent that none of the relatives was particularly keen to assume responsibility
for the child, and the discussions and arguments continued all through the day. Everybody
declared an enormous, almost an irresistible⁵ desire to look after him, and would have done so with
the greatest of pleasure were it not for the fact that their apartment was too small, or that they
already had one baby and couldn’t possibly afford another, or that they wouldn’t know what to do
with the poor little thing when they went abroad in the summer, or that they were getting on in
years, which surely would be most unfair to the boy when he grew up, and so on and so forth⁶.
They all knew, of course, that the father had been heavily in debt for a long time and that the
house was mortgaged and that consequently there would be no money at all to go with the child.
They were still arguing like mad at six in the evening when suddenly, in the middle of it all, an
old aunt of the deceased father (her name was Glosspan) swept in from Virginia, and without even
removing her hat and coat, not even pausing to sit down, ignoring all offers of a martini, a whisky,
a sherry, she announced firmly to the assembled relatives that she herself intended to take sole
charge of the infant boy from then on. What was more, she said, she would assume full financial
responsibility on all counts, including education, and everyone else could go back home where

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