"I suppose not. But we do what we do, at the time. We don't get much chance to turn the old clock back. You've got a inn to run."
"It's pretty tough trying to rent a room with a piece of yellow tape strung across it." Dean knew in time, he'd get over the sudden death of Edith Shipton but he also knew the fact he failed to stop her from killing herself would remain with him forever. Regardless of Weller's kind words, he realized deep down if he had been more understanding of the troubled woman, she might still be alive. Though he harbored no regrets in declining her invitation to sex, he knew he could and should have handled so obviously unstable a person in such a mental state far better than he did.
"Where is Jerome Shipton, Sheriff?" Fred asked.
"He flew back East to Virginia yesterday. They gave me the job of running him down to tell him the missus killed herself."
"Why did Shipton go back to old Virginia?" Fred asked. "I thought he was at death's door."
"He was limping and hurting, but not in bad enough shape to keep him hospitalized. He said he wanted his own doctor to take care of him. I guess he wasn't the ideal patient so the doctors weren't inclined to put up much of a fuss. He agreed to come back and testify if CBI needed him, when they pinned his accident on you. Corday wanted Shipton to hang around but couldn't stop him from leaving. After all, he was the victim, not the perp."
"So there's no unanswered questions?" Fred asked.
"I don't know why she hanged herself when she had a bottle of sleeping pills right next to her bed but wacky people do wacky things."
Gladys Turnbull, almost forgotten in the corner, spoke up for the first time. "Edith thought she was Annie," she said. Dean and his stepfather looked at her, surprised she was privy to the Annie Quincy saga. She explained. "Effie told me about the prostitute whose diary you're reading. The one Mr. and Mrs. Martin were trying to save."
"Oh, that one," Fred said, realizing Effie was perpetuating the misinformation about Annie Quincy's past, creating Annie the prostitute as a salvageable soul of Reverend and Mrs. Martin, a separate person from the true Boston ancestor.
"Who?" Weller asked. Fred O'Connor gave a brief-unusual for him-explanation of Annie, careful not to identify her as a Quincy and the sisters' ancestor.
"Well," Weller said smugly, "That locks it up even tighter. Mrs. Shipton was packaged a little loosely to start with, so the white dress and her being pregnant and all just pushed her all the further." He looked at Dean. "Too bad she decided to do it here at Bird Song."