100 Malicious Little Mysteries

Lot 721/XY258 by R. L. Stevens

It takes more than hatred to make a murderer.

William Willis had hated his wife almost from the day of their marriage seventeen years ago, but the thought of murder had never once crossed his mind. He was quite content to live out the days of his life without complaint, driving to the office each morning, returning each evening, and simply shutting his ears to the constant drone of her voice.

In her late thirties, Constance Willis had lost almost all the youthful beauty that had first attracted Willis to her in college. She was flabby of body and mind, hardly ever bothering to read a newspaper or pick up a book. Her days were spent in random shopping excursions with girl friends, at a weekly bridge club, and in countless hours on the telephone. But for all his hatred, William Willis had never thought of murder. In fact, he did not even think of divorce until he met Rita Morgan in the apartment downstairs.

Willis and his wife had no children, so they’d remained for many years in the pleasant garden apartment close to the downtown expressway. It was convenient to his office, and the surroundings had taken on the comfortable feeling of home. The apartment was one of the few things in their marriage that William and Constance agreed on.

When Rita Morgan moved into the apartment below them, Willis’ evenings and weekends immediately perked up. Rita was a twenty-five-year-old schoolteacher with long blonde hair and the sort of quiet beauty that couldn’t have passed unnoticed even among her fifth-grade pupils. Willis helped her move in, carrying a few cartons of books up from her car, and they became friends immediately. She was everything he’d seen in Constance seventeen years before. But more important, she was intelligent and witty.

“Were you down in Rita’s apartment again?” Constance asked one Saturday afternoon.

“One of her faucets was leaking,” he explained. “It only needed a new washer.”

“There’s a janitor to take care of those things.”

He sighed and opened a beer for himself. “You know she’d have to wait a month before he’d get around to it.”

Constance grunted, but he knew she was unhappy about his attentions to Rita Morgan. She need not have worried quite so much, for Rita was a virginal young lady — at least as far as Willis was concerned — who treated him only with neighborly good will.

Nevertheless, it was Rita’s presence on the scene that came first to Willis’ mind when he read in the afternoon paper about the food contamination. A twelve-year-old boy had died of botulism in Chicago after eating canned peaches that had been improperly sterilized. As a rule, peaches were rarely affected by botulism, but these had been processed in a special manner, making them more susceptible to the deadly spores.

Reflecting on the blind fate that had killed the boy, he could not help speculating on a similar fate befalling Constance. Driving home that night, his recent daydreams of divorce and marriage to Rita shifted focus. Now he imagined Constance dead, killed by some trick of fate like an automobile accident or contaminated food.

Constance did not mention the news of the botulism scare, and it passed from his mind for the night. She kept up so little on current events that he’d often had to explain at length some happening on the foreign scene or some new face on the political horizon. Her interest in events, and in people other than her own circle of friends, had virtually ceased the day she left college to marry Willis.

But he was reminded again of the canned peaches when one of the secretaries at the office mentioned it. The afternoon paper had further details, including word that all of one lot was being recalled by the canner. Can o’ Gold Fancy Prepared Peaches, lot 721/XY258.

Then the daydreams returned. He knew Constance ate canned peaches during the summer, often having them as part of her dessert. And he knew that she sometimes bought the Can o’ Gold brand.

He poured over the newspapers that afternoon, even walking three blocks to a store where he knew he could buy a Chicago paper. He read more about the boy’s death, and about the deadly effects of botulism poisoning, and the fantasy continued to grow in his mind. By the evening paper all Can o’ Gold fruit products were being recalled, and consumers were being warned to avoid lot 721 /XY258.

That evening at home, while Constance chatted on the telephone with some friend, William Willis glanced over the cupboard shelves, inspecting the canned goods. There were two cans of peaches, and one of them was Can o’ Gold. His heart skipped a beat as he peered in at the lot number embossed on the lid. It was lot 721/XY258. Studying it more closely, he noticed that the can was bulging a trifle — an almost certain sign of gases produced by the bacterial activity inside.

There, standing on a shelf in the cupboard, was one of the deadly cans of peaches.

He said nothing to Constance, but that night in bed the possibilities paraded through his mind. All he had to do was say nothing, and sooner or later Constance would eat the contaminated peaches and die of botulism. Everyone would be most sympathetic. No one would suspect a thing.

And William Willis would be a free man.

He rolled over on his side and gazed into the darkness, thinking of Rita Morgan downstairs.

On his way out in the morning he saw Rita washing her car with a hose. “Hello, there,” he called out. “I didn’t think teachers ever got up this early in the summertime.”

“I’m going on a picnic,” she answered, beaming a smile his way. “Trying to get some of the dirt off this thing first.”

“If I didn’t have to go to work I’d help you out.” He stood chatting with her for another few moments, until he noticed Constance watching them from an upstairs window. “Gotta be going,” he said finally. “Be seeing you.”

That day in the office he tried not to think about it. But after lunch, while reading the latest newspaper account of the can recall, he let the idea of murder cross his mind.

If Constance died from eating those peaches, was he guilty of murder?

No, no — he refused to accept that. He had not even touched the can. Constance had purchased it, Constance would open it, Constance would eat it — possibly during the day when he wasn’t even at home. How could it be his fault?

Accident. Or death by misadventure, as the British liked to say. But certainly not murder.

William Willis went back to work and tried not to think of the can of peaches waiting on the shelf for Constance.

When he got home that evening the first sight that greeted him was Constance sitting at the kitchen table eating peaches and ice cream.

“Won’t that spoil your dinner, dear?” he asked a bit stiffly.

“It’s too hot to cook dinner in the apartment. I thought we might just go out for a sandwich later. All right?”

On any other night he might have grumbled, but this evening he simply said, “Sure,” and walked behind her back to the cupboard. The Can o’ Gold peaches were still on the shelf. She was eating the other brand.

They talked very little that night and for the first time in many years he found himself getting through the hours with Constance without feeling the old hatred. When they returned from dinner, Rita came upstairs to borrow some milk, and Constance greeted her in a friendly fashion and even invited her in for coffee. Willis went to bed that night feeling good.

The feeling persisted the next day at the office and he wondered if he might be mellowing toward Constance. He made a point of buying the New York and Chicago newspapers, where the story of the botulism scare was still very much alive on the inner pages. One paper carried a detailed account of the boy’s death agonies, of the gradual impairment of various parts of his brain until finally he simply stopped breathing. Willis read it grim-lipped, imagining Constance as she might be during those long hours of dying.

He grabbed the telephone and dialed his home number, but the line was busy. She was chatting with a girl friend again.

His hands were trembling when he put down the phone, and he knew he must get a grip on himself. He’d been only an instant from warning her, from telling her of the contaminated can and thereby revealing the dark presumptions that had run through his mind. He must control himself. He was not a murderer. He was not even an instrument of chance.

And yet — if Constance died would he ever be able to look at himself in a mirror again? Would he ever be able to love Rita Morgan without the memory of Constance’s death to haunt them?

He picked up the phone and dialed his number again. The line was still busy.

“I have to go home,” he told his secretary. “Emergency.”

He got the car out of the lot and headed for the expressway. It was nearly midafternoon and he knew she sometimes had her peaches about this time of the day. The drive home seemed longer than it had ever been at rush hours. Driving fast, almost recklessly, he imagined finding her stretched out dead on the kitchen floor — even though he knew from the newspaper articles that botulism took several hours to show its first symptoms.

He turned into the drive next to the apartment house and parked in his usual spot. The second-floor window of his apartment seemed the same, the place itself seemed unchanged. Perhaps he’d made the drive for nothing, and he’d have to explain it to Constance. And somehow get that can out of the house.

“Dear! I’m home early!”

There was no answer and he went into the kitchen seeking her. The first thing he saw was the open, empty, discarded can of Can o’ Gold Fancy Prepared Peaches by the sink. That, and an empty dish, with its dirty spoon and telltale juices.

“Constance!”

She appeared then, coming from the bathroom. Her face was pale and somehow a little strange. “What are you doing home?” she asked.

“I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Oh.”

“Constance, did you eat those peaches?”

She glanced at the empty dish and the discarded can by the sink. Then her eyes met his and there was something in them he’d never seen before.

“Oh, no, dear. That nice Miss Morgan came up to borrow something, and she stayed and chatted, and I persuaded her to have a little snack.”