Epilogue

//The Epilogue begins on page 230//, and it is only two pages long.
 * Edmund Swettenham and Phillipa Haymes have now returned from their honeymoon to Chipping-Cleghorn, and Edmund mentions to Phillipa that they "ought to order some papers" (230).
 * Mr. Totman the postmaster greets them with "affability" and asks Edmund about Mrs. Swettenham (230).
 * Although Edmund doesn't really know, he responds affirmatively, preferring "to believe that all was well with those loved, but frequently irritating beings, parents" (230). This note of humor builds the tone of the section, which is now happy and amusing compared to the morbid tone of most of the book.
 * Mr. Totman mentions Edmund's play running in London, which is entitled //Elephants Do Forget,// and Edmund responds that it's very successful.
 * Totman says "I always thought they didn't--//forget//, I mean," and Edmund responds "I've begun to think it was a mistake calling it that. So many people have said what you say" (321). Mr. Totman can hardly help but include that hes always understood it as "a kind of natural history fact" and Edmund responds a little facetiously, "Like earwigs making good mothers" (321).
 * They move on to talk about the papers Edmund and Phillipa would like to order, including //The Daily// Worker, Edmund's favorite communist worker paper. They order six different papers in total.
 * "//And// the //Gazette//, I suppose?" asks Mr. Totman. They have left out the //North Benham News and Chipping Cleghorn// Gazette, the newspaper in which the murder was announced at the beginning of the book (321).
 * //"'//No,' said Edmund. 'No,' said Phillipa" (321).
 * Mr. Totman asks them three times, "You //don't// want the //Gazette!" (321).//
 * Mr. Totman asks his mother to make a list of all their paper choices. She immediately adds the //Gazette,// and Mr. Totman insists they said no.
 * "You don't hear properly. Of course they want the //Gazette!// Everybody has the //Gazette.// How else would they know what's going on round here?" (322)
 * That quote from Mrs. Totman is the punch line to the book. All along, the closeness of the neighborhood has been stressed; all the neighbors know each other and their residences, that they trust each other, they leave their doors unlocked for each other. In short, it's a close knit community that has all of the right ingredients for a murder mystery.

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