LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER by ROALD DAHL

LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER by ROALD DAHL
The room was warm, the curtains were closed, the two table lamps were lit. On the cupboard behind her there were two glasses
and
some drinks. Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work.
Now and
again she glanced at the clock, but without anxiety: She merely wanted to satisfy herself that each minute that went by
made it nearer the time when he would come home. As she bent over her sewing, she was curiously peaceful. This was her sixth
month expec
ting a child. Her mouth and her eyes, with their new calm look, seemed larger and darker than before.
When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later, punctually as always, she heard the ca
r tires
on the stones outsid
e, 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.
"Hello, darling," she said.
"Hello," he answered.
She took his coat and hung it up. Then she made the drinks, a s
trong one for him and a weak one for herself; and soon she was
back again in her chair with the sewing, and he was in the other chair, holding the tall glass, rolling it gently so that the
ice knocked
musically against the side of the glass.
For her, this
was always a wonderful time of day. She knew he didn't want to speak much until the first drink was finished, and she
was satisfied to sit quietly, enjoying his company after the long hours alone in the house. She loved the warmth that came ou
t of
him whe
n they were alone together. She loved the shape of his mouth, and she especially liked the way he didn't complain about
being tired.
"Tired, darling?"
"Yes," he sighed. "I'm thoroughly exhausted. And as he spoke, he did an unusual thing. He lifted his
glass and drank it down in one
swallow although there was still half of it left. He got up and went slowly to get himself another drink.
"I'll get it!" she cried, jumping up.
"Sit down," he said.
When he came back, she noticed that the new drink was a ve
ry strong one. She watched him as he began to drink.
"I think it's a shame," she said, "that when someone's been a policeman as long as you have, he still has to walk around all
day
long." He didn't answer. "Darling," she said," If you're too tired to ea
t out tonight, as we had planned, I can fix you something.
There's plenty of meat and stuff in the freezer." Her eyes waited to an answer, a smile, a nod, but he made no sign.
"Anyway," she went on. "I'll get you some bread and cheese."
"I don't want it,
" he said.
She moved uneasily in her chair. "But you have to have supper. I can easily fix you something. I'd like to do it. We can have
lamb.
Anything you want. Everything's in the freezer."
"Forget it," he said.
"But, darling, you have to eat! I'll do
it anyway, and then you can have it or not, as you like."
She stood up and put placed her sewing on the table by the lamp. "Sit down," he said. "Just for a minute, sit down." It wasn'
t until
then that she began to get frightened.
"Go on," he said. "Sit
down." She lowered herself into the chair, watching him all the time with large, puzzled eyes. He had
finished his second drink and was staring into the glass.
"Listen," he said. "I've got something to tell you."
"What is it, darling? What's the matter?"
He became absolutely motionless, and he kept his head down.
"This is going to be a big shock to you, I'm afraid," he said. "But I've thought about it a good deal and I've decided that t
he only
thing to do is to tell you immediately." And he told her. It
didn't take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat still through it
all, watching him with puzzled horror.
"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 c
ourse, 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 woul
dn't be
very good for my job."
Her first instinct was not to believe any of it. She thought that perhaps she'd imagined the whole
thing. Perhaps, if she acted as
though she had not heard him, she would find out that none of it had ever happened.
"I'll fix some supper," she whispered. When she walked across the room, she couldn't feel her feet touching the floor. She co
uldn't
feel a
nything except a slight sickness. She did everything without thinking. She went downstairs to the freezer and took hold of th
e
first object she found. She lifted it out, and looked at it. It was wrapped in paper, so she took off the paper and looked at
aga
in
---
a
leg of lamb.
All right, then, they would have lamb for supper. She carried it upstairs, held the thin end with both her hands. She went in
to the
living room, saw him standing by the window with his back to her, and stopped.
"I've already told yo
u," he said. "Don't make supper for me. I'm going out."
At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause, she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in
the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head. S
he might as well have hit him with a steel bar.
She stepped back, waiting, and the strange thing was that he remained standing there for at least four or five seconds. Then
he
crashed onto the carpet.
The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table
overturning, helped to bring her out of the shock. She came out slowly, feeling
cold and surprised, and she stood for a few minutes, looking at the body, still holding the piece of meat tightly with both h
ands.
All right, she told herself. So I've kille
d him.
It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very fast. As the wife of a detectiv
e, she
knew what the punishment would be. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, w
hat about the
baby? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill them both
--
mother and child? Did they wait until
the baby was born? What did they do? Mary Maloney didn't know and she wasn't prepared to take a chance.
She carri
ed 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 smile was rather peculiar. She tried again. "H
ello, Sam" she said brightly, aloud. The voice sounded peculiar, too. "I want
some potatoes, Sam. Yes, and perhaps a can of bean.s." That was better. Both the smile and the voice sounded better now. She
practiced them several times more. Then she ran downs
tairs, took her coat, and went out the back door, through the garden into the
street.
It wasn't six o'clock yet and the lights were still on in the neighborhood grocery. "Hello, Sam," she said brightly, smiling
at the man
in the shop.
"Good evening, Mrs
. Maloney. How are you?"
"I want some potatoes, please, Sam. Yes, and perhaps a can of beans, too. Patrick's decided he's tired and he doesn't want to
eat out
tonight," she told him. "We usually go out on Thursdays, you know, and now I don't have any vege
tables in the house."
"Then how about some meat, Mrs. Maloney?" asked the grocer.
"No, I've got meat, thanks, I've got a nice leg of lamb, from the freezer."
"Do you want these potatoes, Mrs. Maloney?
"Oh, yes, they'll be fine. Two pounds, please."
"A
nything else?" The grocer turned his head to one side, looking at her. "How about dessert? What are you going to give him for
dessert? How about a nice piece of cake? I know he likes cake."
"Perfect," she said. "He loves it."
And when she had bought and
paid for everything, she gave her brightest smile and said, "Thank you, Sam. Good night."
And now, she told herself as she hurried back home, she was returning to her husband and he was waiting for his supper. She h
ad
to cook it well and make it taste as
good as possible, because the poor man was tired; and if she found anything unusual or terrible
when she got home, then it would be a shock and she would have to react with grief and horror. Of course, she was not expecti
ng
to find anything unusual at home
. She was just going home with the vegetables on Thursday evening to cook dinner for husband.
That's the way, she told herself. Do everything normally. Keep things absolutely natural and there'll be no need for acting a
t all. As
she entered the kitchen by
the back door, she was quietly singing to herself.
"Patrick!" she called. "How are you, darling?"
She put the package on the table and went into the living room; and when she saw him lying there on the floor, it really was
a
shock. All the old love for
him came back to her, and she ran over to him, knelt down beside him, and began to cry hard. It was
easy. No acting was necessary.
A few minutes later, she got up and went to the phone. She knew the number of the police station, and when the man at the ot
her
end answered, she cried to him. "Quick! Come quickly! Patrick's dead."
"Who's speaking?"
"Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Patrick Maloney."
"Do you mean that Patrick's dead?"
"I think so, " she cried. "He's lying on the floor and I think he's dead."
"We'll be ther
e immediately," the man said.
The car came very quickly, and when she opened the front door, two policemen walked in. She knew them both. She knew nearly
all the men at the police station. She fell into Jack Noonan's arms, crying uncontrollably. He put he
r gently into a chair.
"Is he dead?" she cried.
"I'm afraid he is. What happened?"
In a few words she told her story about going to the grocer and coming back, when she found him on the floor. While she was
crying and talking, Noonan found some dried blo
od on the dead man's head. He hurried to the phone.
Some other men began to arrive
--
a doctor, two detectives, a police photographer, and a man who knew about fingerprints. The