The Expendable Man

by Dorothy B. Hughes

“Don’t you know ‘The Children’s Hour’?” “I never watched that.”

So sorry, but there was another girl . . . in another country, and the wench was dead.

This is a reference to an exchange in Christopher Marlowe's 1589 play "The Jew of Malta": "Thou hast committed..." "Fornication: but that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead."