A Judgement in Stone

George Coverdales: Head of the Coverdale family, 57 years old, remarried

Jacqueline Coverdales: George's second wife,

Children of George and Jacqueline

Gilles: Son of Jacqueline

Melinda: Daughter of George

(Peter)

Joan and Eunice Parchman : killed the Coverdales family

(Eunice Parchman = illiteracy)

In the beginning of the story, Jacque went to London to interview a housekeeper, called Eunice Parchman. After the short interview, Jacque was almost sure that Eunice Parchman was the exactly housekeeper that she was looking for, so she decided to accustom her. Eunice Parchman was a plain and calm woman. She had a one weakness: she was an illiteracy, which means she couldn't read or write. And because she was illiterate, she spends most of her time in her house doing cleaning. She didn't want people to discover her secret.

The Coverdales family was very satisfied with Eunice because Eunice did her work very well. Eunice got her own room, bathroom and a TV.

However, Eunice Parchman got addicted with the TV set in her bedroom because she had never watched TV before. So she spent most of her spare time in her bedroom-enjoying cops movies. No one in the family knew that she was illiterate but George was already aware that she had a lack of emotion.

One day during a walk in a village nearby, she met Joan Smith who lived in a village store and owned a post-office. Joan Smith was married with Norman. She had a complicated background. Before she was married to Norman she was a liar, fugitive and a prostitute. However, she confessed her sin and became a member of a religion. Since then she had regarded herself as a tool in God's hand and she wanted to punish anyone who had done something wrong against the Bible. Because George was married twice, and this was against the Bible, Joan found him a disrespectable man and she hated him a lot.

Joan and Eunice Parchman became friends and they started to go out together every Sunday.

One day, Joan visited Eunice but George who had just come home saw them.

George told her that Joan were not allowed to come to visit her anymore and Joan got angry and hate him more and more.

George had always disliked Joan because she always says things about him and Jacqueline. George also suspected her for opening his mails because when they got a letter, the letter was opened and sealed again.

Meanwhile, almost a year had past and the secret of Eunice remained unknown although there had been some suspiciousness. One day Melinda who was asking her to read something out of a magazine finally discovered the secret.Eunice didn't say anything but Melinda was sure about her problem because that would explain a lot of things. Melinda told this to her parents and her parents fired her and give her one-week to prepare for her new job. After a week she should leave. The Coverdales didn't tell to anyone else about Eunice's secret.

When Joan heard that Eunice had been fired, she was even angrier because she thought that the family fired her because she was insolent.

Then the day came when the family got killed. After a meeting in a church, Joan followed Eunice to the Coverdales house. They entered the house quietly through the gunroom. Joan saw the guns and took one of them off the wall. She started playing with them but Eunice only looked at her. But then Eunice also took a gun and played with it. Then Eunice loaded her gun and Joan followed her. Joan suggested to kill the Coverdales and Eunice didn't really mind as this was not her first time to kill someone. George who was listening to