Lamb to the Slaughter

Lamb to the Slaughter Summary | Detailed Summary

Mary Maloney loves her husband, and each day she eagerly awaits his arrival from work. At a few minutes to five in the afternoon, with his usual afternoon drink ready to be mixed, lighting subdued enough to be restful but cheerful at the same time, she awaits his arrival. This day is no exception. As the minute hand creeps closer to five, she begins to listen for the sounds of his car, ready for her day of solitude to be over. As usual, Patrick Maloney arrives at a few minutes to five, and she takes his coat, makes his drink, and then sits down again to bask in her beloved husband's presence, as would a sunbather on a warm summer day. She is six months pregnant, and she has a happy glow about her. She does not pressure her husband for conversation, she understands that he is tired from a hard day's work, and is content to merely sit and enjoy his silent company.

Finally, she asks if he is tired. He replies in the affirmative, and promptly finishes his whiskey and soda in one swig. After a moment, he rises to refill his glass, despite his wife's offers to do it for him. He tells her to sit down, and she obeys, merely observing the amber color of the drink the high whiskey to soda ratio. She offers to get his slippers, and he declines in an uninterested tone of voice. She tries to make conversation, commenting on the lamentable state of affairs when a police officer of his high rank should have to work so hard. He offers no response, and the silence is filled only by the ice clinking against the side of Patrick Maloney's empty glass.

She offers him some cheese as a final attempt to break the silence, but he declines once again. Thursday is their night to eat out, so she has not prepared anything for supper, but seeing how tired he is she offers to cook so that they do not have to go out. When she receives no response, affirmative or negative, she decides aloud that she will bring some cheese and crackers anyway. "I don't want any," he says firmly, his voice flat and hard. She decides to bring it anyway, and he can eat it or not, she says. He asks her once again to sit down, and she is suddenly frightened, and obeys him.

"Listen," he begins ominously, "I've got something to tell you." She asks, "What is it, darling? What's the matter?" She notices a muscle twitching near the corner of his left eye. He preempts his announcement with a warning that what he had to say would be a shock, but assures her that he has thought long and hard about the matter before coming to a decision to tell her about it. He finishes his prelude with a hope that she will not blame him too much.

His announcement takes only four or five minutes, and through it, Mary Maloney sits quietly in a dazed horror. When he has finished telling her, he acknowledges the poor timing of his announcement, but assures her that he will give her money and see that she is looked after. However, he adds, "There needn't really be any fuss I hope not anyway. It wouldn't be very good for my job."

Mary's first reaction is one of disbelief and rejection of the reality of what has just taken place. She thinks that perhaps she has imagined his brutal words, and decides that the most sensible course of action is to assume that she had indeed imagined them. This time he does not stop her as she heads for the kitchen, managing to croak out quietly, "I'll get the supper."

Once she has left the room a wave of nausea hits her, and her actions become automatic. She goes down to the cellar, opens the deep freeze, and pulls out the first thing she lays her hands on. It is a frozen leg of lamb. Lamb for supper, she decides numbly, and carries it back upstairs, holding it by the thin bone that jutted out of the meat. As she leaves the cellar and walks through the living room towards the kitchen, she sees her husband standing by the window, and stops. He hears her, but does not turn around. "For God's sake," he says to the drawn curtains. "Don't make supper for me. I'm going out."

Assured now that she had not imagined his words, Mary Maloney walks up quietly behind him, and without hesitation she musters up all her strength and swings the large, frozen piece of meat high in the air, bringing it down as hard as she can on the back of his head. As if in a cartoon, Patrick Maloney stands for four or five long seconds, swaying, before falling dead on the carpet.

The noise of the crash brings the stunned woman out of her reverie. "All right," she says, "so I've killed him." She suddenly is able to see everything very clearly, and her mind begins to think very fast. She wonders briefly if an unborn child is spared when its mother is given a death sentence, but immediately dismisses the thought from her head. She is not prepared to find out.

She carries the meat into the kitchen, and puts it in a pan in the oven. She turns the oven on and washes her hands. Upstairs in her bedroom she practices a smile in front of the mirror. She practices speaking aloud, repeating her words until they sound natural to her ears. "I want some potatoes please, Sam. Yes, and I think a can of peas."

Once she is satisfied, she gets her coat and walks to the corner grocery shop. "Hullo Sam," she says cheerfully. She repeats the lines she has rehearsed, improvising some easy banter with the grocer Sam, commenting in passing that her husband had come home tired that night and wanted to stay in for dinner, so she was going to cook some lamb and vegetables for him. Sam suggests some cheesecake for dessert, and within minutes, Mary Maloney is marching gaily out of the store with her vegetables and cheesecake.

As she hurries home, she coaches herself mentally that she is returning home to cook dinner for her husband. She must hurry, because he is tired and hungry, and thinks that if she were to come home and find something tragic had happened, naturally she would be overcome with grief. Not that she was expecting to find anything. "Do everything right and natural," she reminds herself. "Keep things absolutely natural and there'll be no need for any acting at all."

She is smiling and humming to herself as she enters the house, and calls out gaily to her husband. When there is no response as she goes into the living room, it really is quite a shock to see her husband lying there on the floor, and she finds that she actually does not need to act at all. She begins to sob, kneeling by his side, not acting, but at the same time marveling at how easy and natural it all seems.

A few moments later she goes to the phone and calls the police station, a number she knows off by heart. When a voice answers, she is ready with a hysterical "Quick! Come quick! Patrick's dead!"

After a few brief questions, the patrol car arrives in no time, and she knows the policemen who are in it. She tells them the story of Patrick coming home tired, and them deciding to stay in for dinner as a result. She tells them that she went to the grocer, bought a few things, and when she came home, she had found him lying on the floor. The two men inspect the corpse, and find congealed blood at the base of his skull. Soon the house is full of men. A doctor, two detectives, a photographer, and a man looking for fingerprints, all ask her to repeat her story, and question her in detail. They check her story with Sam the grocer, and her alibi is confirmed.

Jack Noonan, one of the officers she knows, is particularly concerned for her well-being. He offers to take her to her sister's house, and when she refuses, he asks if she would like to lie down. She tells him that she is too weak to move and prefers to stay where she is, so they continue about their work as she looks on. Jack Noonan keeps her updated as they look for clues and examine the body. They determine that Mary's husband has been killed by a blow to the back of the head with a weapon that is almost certainly large and made of metal, he tells her. Although they are still looking for it in the house, it is also possible that the murderer has taken the weapon with him. In a situation like this, he tells her, "Get the weapon, and you've got the man."

The detectives ask her in the course of the investigation to think about the contents of her home, to try to think of what could have been used as the murder weapon. They suggest a heavy metal vase, or a big spanner, neither of which she has in the house. The night wears on and the investigation continues. At around nine o'clock, she asks Jack Noonan if he would fix her a drink, and have one himself while he is at it. One by one, the men are all persuaded to have a drink in the living room with Mary Maloney.

After a while, Sergeant Noonan remembers that the meat is still cooking in Mrs. Maloney's kitchen. He offers to turn it off for her, and she thanks him gratefully for remembering. When he comes back in from the kitchen, she asks a favor of him and the other officers. Knowing how important hospitality was to her late husband, Mary Maloney tells Sergeant Noonan that she cannot in good conscience let the men leave without feeding them supper. Jack Noonan resists at first, but as he and the other men are hungry, they are finally persuaded to tuck into the large leg of lamb in the oven.

She overhears the men talking in the kitchen as they eat, enjoying the feast that they were talked into eating. They are talking about the size of the murder weapon used to hit poor Patrick. The report from the doctor showed that his skull was smashed to pieces, as if it had been hit with a sledgehammer. Which is why, they reason, it ought to be easy to find. A weapon of that size would be hard to hide, and the murderer certainly would not want to carry it around with him for long. One of them belches loudly and voices the opinion that it must be on the premises, for that very reason. "Probably right under our very noses," another agrees, through a mouthful of succulent lamb. "And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle."