When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later, punctually as always, she heard the car tires on the stones outside, the car door closing, footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock. She stood up and went forward to kiss him as he entered.
The author wants to dispel any suspicion that Patrick might want to get out of his marriage because he was having an affair with another woman. Roald Dahl gives several indications that Patrick is not absent from the home except when he is working as a policeman. If the investigating officers had any suspicion that Patrick was having an affair, this could lead them to question Mary's alibi. In a great many cases of murder of one spouse by another, the motive is either jealousy or money. Both these things are easy to trace. A man can hardly be conducting an affair without being seen by witnesses. If a man is having financial problems, this can easily be checked out through credit reports and examination of bank records. The police often find out that one spouse has taken out a life insurance policy on the other.
"Sit down," he said. "Just for a minute, sit down."
This indicates that Mary is always fussing over him, mothering him. He doesn't want all that attention. This is one of the reasons he has decided that he wants to end their marriage.
"But I've thought about it a good deal and I've decided that the only thing to do is to tell you immediately."
If Patrick has decided to give Mary the bad news "immediately," this is another sign that there has been nothing slowly building up, such as an extramarital love affair. Some readers get the wrong idea about Patrick's motive. They think he is in love with another woman. This is not true. He has just fallen out of love with this one woman to whom he is married.
"So there it is," he added. "And I know it's a tough time to be telling you this, but there simply wasn't any other way. Of course, I'll give you money and see that you're taken care of. But there really shouldn't be any problem. I hope not, in any case. It wouldn't be very good for my job."
The fact that Patrick is very much concerned about his job and wants to avoid any possible scandal is intended to serve as proof that he has never talked to anyone about his dissatisfaction with his marriage. He has let everyone believe that he and Mary have a perfect marriage. This obviates any possible suspicion that Mary might have killed Patrick in the course of a family quarrel. Such fighting between spouses, as the police well know, is one of the most common reasons for spousal murder. (As a matter of fact, this was actually the case. Mary killed her husband in a fit of rage--but nobody in the whole wide world knows or even suspects that, except for us readers.)
She carried the meat into the kitchen, put it into a pan, turned on the oven, and put the pan inside. Then she washed her hands, ran upstairs, sat down in front of the mirror, fixed her makeup, and tried to smile.
The author has Mary fixing her makeup and practicing her smile just as a way of killing time. Her biggest problem is getting that leg of lamb cooked before the police ever think of it as a possible weapon. They could consider a frozen leg of lamb a weapon but not a cooked one.
"We usually go out on Thursdays, you know, and now I don't have any vegetables in the house."
It seems unusual that Mary, who is such a domestic woman. wouldn't have any canned vegetables or potatoes on hand and would have to run to the grocery story just because her husband wanted to stay home on the one night when they usually went out to dinner. The trip to the grocery store is intended to be part of Mary's alibi--but it should be one of the main clues that would make the investigating officers suspicious. Furthermore, if the fictitious murderer had been watching the Maloney house, he ought to know that they usually went out on Thursday evenings and would plan his attack for some other evening.
Mary benefits all the way through the story by the fact that all the policemen know her and Patrick and believe they have a perfect marriage.
Later, one of the detectives sat down beside her. Did she know, he asked, of anything in the house that could have been used as a weapon? Would she look around to see if anything was missing.
If Mary was being ultra-cool she might have suggested that a frozen leg of lamb could have been used as a weapon. Naturally it would have been the first thing she would have thought of. The police must have looked inside the freezer while they were searching the house. Didn't any of them think that a big hunk of frozen meat might make a good murder weapon?
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