A judgement in stone

Eunice takes a job as housekeeper to a family of four. She cannot read or write, and she guards that secret with an obsessive, watchful cunning. Her new employers know nothing of her past: she has already killed the father she nursed, and her references are forged.

She cannot fit into the society around her, and she reads each kindness the family shows her as a threat. Resentment builds in the house. Eventually she steals the guns that are normally kept locked away.

With the help of another social misfit, Eunice murders the entire family. The crime is not hidden from the reader, and the book is built around how it comes to light rather than who did it.

Her illiteracy is the flaw in her cover. It stops her from spotting a written clue left behind, so she cannot get rid of it. Later, investigators find a recording of the shooting that one of the victims captured on tape. Eunice is charged, and the court proceedings expose the secret she has worked so hard to protect.