Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 924 & 925, September/October 2018

How Does He Die This Time? by Nancy Novick

Nancy Novick describes herself as a Midwestern transplant. For close to two decades she has lived in the New York City area, where she has worked as a medical writer, editor, and instructor. She’s currently the editor of West Side Words, a blog for and about readers and writers on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. How fitting it is that her first short story should be about a writer!

Ellen was sipping from her “Librarians Do It by the Book” mug when Charlie came downstairs, nursing a slight but nagging headache.

“Hello,” she said, and put her hand briefly over his as he sat down beside her at their kitchen counter. “That was fun last night, wasn’t it?”

He nodded, though he wasn’t sure he meant it. The party had been a great success for Ellen. Her editor, a tall woman with hennaed hair and black nail polish, was in from New York, and their friends had turned out in force. Even the rain held off until well after twilight, so the guests were able to spill outside onto the patio. If it had gone on a little later than Charlie would have liked, he understood. It was Ellen’s night.

He was pleasantly surprised now to find that the dishwasher was humming with the first load of dishes, though she tended to oversoap. Ellen handed him a cup of coffee from the fresh pot. She looked rested and pleased; her dark blond hair, streaked with silver now, was pulled back from her face. Ellen looked good, Charlie thought with satisfaction. She was one of those few fortunate women who got more appealing with age and had, in recent years, acquired a scrubbed-clean look, as if, now that the primary responsibilities of mothering were finished, she had shed a psychic weight. Ellen’s recent success, rather than overstimulating her, seemed to relax her.

Yes, it would be wrong, he thought, to begrudge her this moment. She had worked hard and she deserved it. And he certainly benefited from her achievements. The house, freshly painted and brightened by the recent purchases of a new sofa and curtains, had never looked better. They had indulged in some luxuries, a pool table for him, the new table lamps, and a whimsical iron coatrack with arms like tree branches. That last choice was a little over the top, but he had agreed to it with an uneasy feeling that it was her money in play. Still, it was odd that most of their guests now came to see Ellen, not “Ellen and Charlie.”

They had been celebrating the publication of Ellen’s fifth book. Deepest Sympathy was another mystery, this one set in Oregon, where they had spent six months thirty years earlier. “I’m worried it might be a little dated,” she told him when the idea first occurred to her, one of the few details she revealed about her project. But when he suggested a trip out West for “research” — he had lots of time on his hands these days — she had demurred. “I can probably find everything I need on the Internet.”

He would like to travel, though, to go someplace new, take the kind of vacation she used to bring up. Something with the university, maybe, with lectures to satisfy her academic side. There was one in Greece she had mentioned at least a few times, even if they couldn’t go this year. The publication of a new book would mean a tour and appearances, a remarkable vote of confidence in these days of limited marketing resources, but Ellen’s publishers, delighted with her success and the appeal of her small-town persona, were happy to support their golden goose. Well, maybe next year. In the meantime, he would think more about how he would spend his time while she was away. When the first book was published, he had enjoyed being on his own. He played golf often, went to bed early, and relished the orderliness of a house with no other occupants. Apart from their nightly phone call and the visit from their daughters, he savored the silence of his bachelor life. It was only toward the end of the tours that he would get lonely, even missing what otherwise bothered him, the damp bath towels left draped over a bedroom chair, or her habit of leaving her overflowing tote bag near the front door when she came back from running errands or her now part-time job.

Charlie watched Ellen now, wiping the counter carelessly, with a not entirely clean dish towel. When she had finished, a ring from the water pitcher remained on the shining granite surface. He held his tongue.

Outside, Razzie, the neighbors’ German shepherd, was barking in loud, insistent bursts. Charlie’s head began to throb

“God, I wish that dog would give it a rest,” he snapped.

“Oh, she’ll quiet down in a minute,” Ellen answered soothingly. “The Allens were nice enough to keep her in last night anyway.”

Charlie reached past her for the plastic pill container. Only two pills, both of which kept his blood pressure in check, and a couple of vitamins that his doctor had assured him would keep him feeling good and “out on the links” for a long time to come. But he resented the little routine of morning and evening pills, nostalgic for the time when he freely ate what he wanted and slept like a baby. Ellen had dripped some soapy water from the sponge onto the container, which slipped from his hand to the floor. He pressed his lips together in irritation as he reached down for it.

All that morning he was out of sorts. He found a smeared, crusty spot on the new sofa, where someone had spilled some food the night before, and then tried, ineffectually, to rub it off with a napkin.

He suffered from a vague and frustrating feeling of wanting something, but not knowing exactly what it was. It happened fairly often now that he was retired, or semiretired, as he liked to tell his friends, thinking that it made him sound less obsolete. The firm that had recruited Charlie right out of graduate school continued to send some consulting jobs his way, and he wrote the occasional article for an industry magazine. “Civil engineering is valuable work. Lives depend on it,” he would tell the children back when they were young. Recently he had started serving on the town council — not really a job, if truth be told, but he preferred to think of it that way. Though others clearly didn’t.

“How is it, being a kept man?” Al Kinney had asked after their last council meeting. Al still worked in the city, though as a senior partner he was able to make his own schedule. The two were in the parking lot walking toward their cars. “Can’t beat it,” Charlie had replied, smiling, aware that condescension weighed more heavily than envy in Al’s tone.

Ellen’s writing had started as a hobby, something to fill her time when Tara, their youngest, had left for Oberlin. In a way, it was surprising that she hadn’t tried it before. With her years of experience as the children’s librarian at the town’s only branch, he had assumed she would try her hand at picture books, something about woodland animals or an eccentric child with a special talent. When her manuscript turned out to be a mystery, he recalled that Ellen had been in the habit of bringing home volumes of Agatha Christie and P.D. James, and then a writer named Patricia Highsmith. More than once he had found her in the kitchen reading with such rapt absorption that he’d had to speak to her twice before he could get her attention.

He must have encouraged her along the way, but it was difficult to remember how. Ellen’s writing initially seemed to have been like the hobbies she had adopted when their other two children had gone to college. Decoupage when Eliot left for Kent State, beading with Carrie’s departure for Vassar, and now this.

He had noticed how committed she was to her writing, sticking to a daily schedule of two hours every evening after dinner and Sunday afternoons. It had worked well for both of them. Charlie had spent many happy afternoons undisturbed, watching golf without the little shade of guilt he had occasionally felt in the past that his attention was being sought elsewhere.

Shortly before Tara was due to come home for her summer vacation, Ellen announced that she was taking a break for a few months and Charlie assumed she was finished with writing for good. The manuscript pages would be placed in a box in the attic, beside the table with the garish decoupage top gone wrong, once destined for their enclosed porch. He would not prod her to clear either one out. Watching the children leave had to have been harder for her than for him. She had spent so many hours with them, wiping noses, making doctors’ appointments, and responding to their emotional crises once they entered their teens. She had been the receiver of their confidences too. Their marriage had been traditional in that way. But he hadn’t shirked his responsibilities, he thought. He had tried to be close to the children, to explain practical things to them: how to change the oil in the car, manage their money, and choose a college. But they seemed to prefer the company of their mother, who was, admittedly, more patient.

He knew that they thought them old-fashioned. Carrie, especially, who had always been the most observant of the three; he remembered her as a baby sitting in her bouncy seat, gazing at him seriously for minutes at a time. She had even said as much during her summer break after sophomore year.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she had said. “I’m glad Mom was always there for us. But didn’t you two ever think of mixing it up a little?”

“It works for us,” Charlie had told her, shrugging, and Carrie did not pursue the conversation, although later the same year she started telling him he should check his privilege. Whatever the hell that meant.

The review of Ellen’s first book in the Clarkstown Gazette was practically a love letter. “Ellen Porter has produced a work worthy of serious attention. Could the next heir to Ruth Rendell live right here in town?” But the critic was a friend from church who liked to drop literary names and was seldom known to take a harsh view of any creative endeavor in her circle. This review notwithstanding, it came as a not altogether pleasant shock to Charlie when the same novel was praised by the Plain Dealer as “a remarkable debut, a slice of small-town Americana with a dark underbelly.” Charlie had made a bad joke about his own underbelly and Ellen had paused and given him an indecipherable look before offering up a perfunctory chuckle.

Apart from Ellen’s editor, no one had read the new book yet. Not even Charlie. Ellen was superstitious that way. She had kept the first book a secret too, up until the day the Book Nook had it in stock and she’d brought him in triumphantly to see the display the staff had created for their local author. Charlie was surprised to find that he was a little hurt, but was mollified after she told him, “I wanted it to be a wonderful surprise. I wanted to make you and the kids proud.”

He even played along.

“Can you believe it?” he asked the Johnsons at a dinner party they threw to celebrate. “Our Ellen. And she didn’t tell a soul! That’s not like her.”

Ellen’s face was flushed. It must have been the wine, which she seldom drank. He put his arm around her waist with what must have been a little too much enthusiasm, because he felt her flinch for a moment before she moved away.

Their friends knew they would have to wait to read the new book too. Ellen never revealed anything in advance and she never pushed them to buy it. “Come get it at the library in a few months,” she told them, though she knew that many of them would head to the bookstore as soon as it was in stock.

“Just tell us one thing,” Annie Johnson had called back over her shoulder as she was leaving the house the night before. Her face was animated — and looked almost greedy in the overhead porch light that illuminated the front walkway. “How does he die this time?”

Ellen had shaken her head and laughter had followed as the group scattered to their cars.

The question had become a joke among their friends and a minor obsession among her growing number of fans, after a reviewer used it as a headline. The murder victims were almost always men — often cheating husbands or lovers — and their deaths were always gruesome.

What had struck more than one interviewer was the seeming mismatch of author to content. Ellen, in her unremarkable clothes, with her kind pedantry when in her librarian mode — she particularly liked to talk to children about geography — wrote chillingly explicit murder scenes. There had been the unfaithful lover whose entrails had been lovingly arranged around a photo of the dead man and his betrayed partner. The injection of poison into the back of the hand of the cheating husband, exactly where the wedding ring had been removed before a liaison, and the electrocution in prison of one miscreant, cleverly planned by the brother of one of his victims. Some had thought the husband who died with a fork in his forehead, placed perfectly in the center, after the man had been shot twice directly into his heart, was too much. But the diehards loved it, and the blurb from a popular crime writer that appeared on the book jacket of that particular novel read “Stick a fork in it — Ellen Porter has done it again.”

There was more to the novels than these murders, of course, but Ellen’s descriptive powers were at their most vivid (“florid” prose, one unsupportive critic had noted) in these scenes. Blood flowed like raspberry syrup; an open eye stared glassily at detectives while the mouth of the dead man was frozen in a rictus of passion or terror; the color of the poisoned man’s skin recalled the yellowish-grey skies that one sometimes sees before a storm. It was those images her readers would refer to at signings as they eagerly offered up their copies to be inscribed. Ellen always used a red fountain pen and liked to shake it so that after the inscription, a few drops of ink appeared on the page like a bit of spattered blood. She made a ceremony of it, blowing lightly on the ink before closing the book and returning it to the owner.

Charlie didn’t read much fiction, and though he told no one, the bloodiest passages in Ellen’s books made him feel queasy. But he knew that some people’s taste ran that way and he understood the curiosity of Ellen’s readers. How much of the protagonist was Ellen and how much was a figment of her imagination? And he had seen some of the e-mails she received, most of them from women.

My husband was just like Bradley in Esther’s Last Stand, but instead of killing the bastard I divorced him. LOL KathywithaK.

And I feel like you really understand me, Sandee12 had written after Ellen had been interviewed on the Book Comer segment of AM Cleveland Live.

“Do you see yourself as a voice for women who have been lied to?” the perky blond interviewer had asked Ellen. Watching his wife on television, Charlie felt a stirring of erotic interest. With her stage makeup, and wearing a new fitted blue suit the henna-haired editor had advised her to buy for TV appearances, Ellen looked prettier than usual, less like the woman he was used to waking up to. She was, he had to admit, remarkably comfortable in front of the camera.

Some fans wondered if she wrote from personal experience, though Ellen made a point of thanking Charlie for his support in the acknowledgements of every one of her books and frequently mentioned her long marriage, when asked to speak publicly. In the beginning, when her appearances were still a novelty, he would go with her. Sometimes she pointed him out in the audience and he would lend a comical note to the proceedings by offering up an obliging wave, as if to prove he was still alive. Still, he supposed, it was satisfying for the Sandee12s of the world to think of Ellen as an ally in the plight of the betrayed and a fellow sufferer of male infidelity. Of course, he was not without fault. What man, married or not, hadn’t committed at least a few minor transgressions? Had his eyes lingered too long on a young neighbor’s backside? Had he flirted once or twice with Ellen’s sister? Hugged her a little too long one drunken Christmas Eve? Yes. But unlike the victims in Ellen’s novels, his lapses had been contained and surely if he were to be punished, his karma would be something far short of murder. There was nothing he could do about any suspicious thoughts Ellen’s fans might harbor about him. Or even any misplaced concern on his behalf.

Just last night, Jenny Trumble, who “still had a thing” for Charlie, as Ellen put it, had leaned into him a bit drunkenly toward the end of the evening as they sat together in the newly decorated living room. “All those men Ellen kills off. Doesn’t that make you worry, Charlie?” she had asked, then unsteadily reached past him to dip a carrot into the sour-cream mix. When she sat back again, he was a little repulsed to see that a blob of the whitish stuff had landed on her sweater where the fabric had been stretched by her pendulous bosom. She put a plump, moist hand on his leg. Charlie had laughed, and to get away from the unpleasant weight on his thigh, stood up with an offer to get her another drink.

Charlie didn’t worry. When he thought of his history with Ellen it was with satisfaction. He had met her in college, where he rowed crew and majored in business. He knew he was not conceited to think that he was the more desirable one back then. Even her family saw it. Charlie was tall and, in those days, good at every sport he tried. His strong clean features and calm decisive personality drew people to him and the prizes he won for his engineering designs won him the admiration of the department. Ellen was different from the pretty sorority girls he had been dating, more athletic and practical. She took a heavy course load to finish her degree in three years, studying library science and minoring in psychology — and she played doubles tennis with her best friend every Saturday through the spring and summer. It was the friend who had first caught his eye, but Sharon had a boyfriend she was faithful to, and later on, Charlie found himself unexpectedly drawn to Ellen’s straightforward manner and undemanding nature. They had several months of friendly, athletic lovemaking before he proposed marriage and they settled down to a more moderate routine. For a long time there was, primarily, companionship, which he expected would carry them through to the end.

Briefly, when she started writing, Ellen had surprised him by showing more interest. She had initiated love-making half a dozen times and startled him one morning by turning from the stove where she had been about to scramble some eggs, abruptly turning off the flame, and dropping her robe to the floor. “Let’s skip breakfast,” she had said, taking his hand and pressing it to her bare hip. But though he had been willing, for some reason she abruptly changed her mind when he picked up her robe and, after handing it to her, told her to go upstairs to wait while he tidied up. And then things had gone back to normal.

Maybe it was the very stability of their marriage, their many largely uneventful years together, that encouraged Ellen’s imagination. She had mentioned a French writer one day during a talk, someone whose stable, middle-class life had left him free to create an adulterous heroine who was willing to risk everything to be with her lover.

“Writing opens worlds up, Charlie,” she had told him one night in an outburst that seemed almost girlish. It was shortly after the first review had appeared. “I love that people like the books. But it’s more than that. I feel as if I see things more clearly now that I’m doing this.”

It certainly seemed to energize her, which he liked. And it was pleasant to think that she had something constructive to do with her time. He should be happy, he thought. Still, like every couple, there were those little irritating habits. If you wanted to stay married, you had to overlook them, that was all. Like Ellen’s tuneless little hum. He heard it on almost a daily basis as she walked through the house, or sorted through the mail, or served dinner. He had mentioned it once, not long ago, and she had just laughed.

“What’s that song, anyway?” he had asked her.

“Song?” she responded absently.

“The one you’re humming?”

“Am I humming?” She gave him that fond, indulgent look she had when she thought he was being endearingly obtuse.

It was maddening. “Yes, yes, the song. I hear you humming most days, but I can never make out the melody.”

“Honestly, Charlie. I couldn’t tell you. I don’t even know I’m doing it. But I guess it means I’m happy,” and she had kissed him on the cheek.

Charlie tried to feel gratified by her answer and then to ignore it. Had she always done this? Or did it start after he retired? Either way, it seemed to become more frequent. And there was no way to bring it up again without appearing petty. In self-defense, as a way to vent his irritation, he started drumming his fingers on the arm of the couch or on the dinner table. But she never seemed to notice.

The paranoia, that’s what it must be, Charlie told himself, set in a couple of weeks after the party. Ellen made his favorite meal, a chicken casserole with potatoes and asparagus in cream sauce.

“Voilà!” she said as she placed it proudly on the table where she had lit two long tapers. She was flushed from the heat of the kitchen.

He knew she was making an effort. She had been away from home for a few days, teaching a workshop, and wanted to do something for him. The meal looked delicious, but Charlie thought it tasted a little off, and after taking a few bites, he mentioned it to Ellen.

“I don’t think so, Charlie,” she said, the lines between her eyebrows furrowing a bit. “I bought everything fresh this morning, but if you don’t like it, there’s some tuna fish in the fridge.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” he said, forcing a smile, and after pouring himself some more wine, changed the subject and continued eating.

But later he had been horribly sick, and was awake for most of the night. Ellen eventually went to sleep in the guest room, “I’ll be right here if you need me, sweetheart,” she said. “I just have to get a few hours of sleep. Here, you poor thing,” she added as she moved a bucket to the bedside. “Just in case you don’t make it to the bathroom.” He had been too miserable to respond with anything more than a raised hand.

When she checked on him in the morning, she was glowing with good health. So much for the dinner being bad. But he had the strangest feeling, for just a minute, that she looked pleased.

“You must have come down with some horrible bug,” she told him. She efficiently straightened the covers over him and removed a stained washcloth he had used during the night from the bedside table. He could tell she was trying. “What you need is to get some more rest.” He did sleep fitfully for another few hours, the kind of sweaty, interrupted sleep with bad dreams he couldn’t fully remember when he opened his eyes. He put on his robe and went downstairs to find Ellen in the kitchen, taking a large bite of the chicken in cream sauce, and he had to run back upstairs.

It was almost a week before he felt like himself again. It may have been three days after that, while he was lying on the couch in the den, that his eye fell on the shelf of Ellen’s books. There had been a death by food poisoning, he remembered, but which book was it? He thought of asking her, but was embarrassed. He spent the next hour rereading parts of her books. The truth was that he hadn’t read her novels closely. He really didn’t care for mysteries. Military history and biographies were more his speed. Ellen’s habit of keeping her manuscripts a secret until they were published was probably for the best. It was easier to be enthusiastic about a successfully published work that brought in royalties every few months than an untested draft.

He found the poisoning in the third novel. A young woman serves her older lover some brandy laced with arsenic. Ellen had included it as a red herring from the primary plot, which revolved around an art expert who plagiarizes his artist wife’s work. The expert ends up dead, floating in the pool of a famous collector, the aqua water tinged with red streaks that flowed from a severed artery in his neck. Charlie started to feel queasy again as he read, and deciding that he wasn’t altogether better, lay down on the sofa, and turned on the end of a golf tournament.

When Charlie came within feet of the downed power line, Ellen was remorseful. Of course, she couldn’t have known that it lay just yards from where the car was parked in the driveway. But she never should have asked him to go out and get her laptop from the car, he heard her telling Annie Johnson on the phone. “At the very least I should have gone for it myself. When I think what could have happened. What would I do without Charlie?”

There had been a wild storm the night before and she had raced into the house without an umbrella — she had forgotten it on the hall table — leaving a puddle in the front hall that Charlie stepped in half an hour later when he went to check that the door was locked. He had scolded her. But Ellen only looked up from her book with a mild expression and an unsatisfying “Oopsie.”

She seemed to have caught a chill, though, and the next morning although the storm was over, they realized the power was out and that she couldn’t turn on her office computer.

“Would you mind, Charlie?” she asked. “I promised I’d finish this chapter by the end of the week.”

It was still miserable outside and he cursed as the wind shook the trees and rain falling from a branch dripped on his head and down the back of his collar.

With the laptop under his arm, he was just closing the trunk when he saw the flashing lights of the Con Ed truck and a worker called out for him to stay back. Razzie, restrained by her leash on the Allens’ front porch and eager to run out toward the street, was barking wildly. As Charlie turned back toward the house, frightened and angry, he wished the Allens would let her off the leash.

Charlie and Ellen had spent the rest of the day inside, quietly. “It’s nice not to have to go anywhere,” Ellen had said. Charlie, who had a new biography of Patton to read, didn’t feel as pleased and after volunteering to make lunch — “Such a nice surprise,” Ellen said — found himself watching her periodically as she sat across from him in their pleasant living room. She was reading a book with the unsettling title Delusions of Gender, a paperback with a glossy cover and a photo of a baby doll in a blue satin dress. “Research,” she said, smiling, when she looked up to find his gaze directed at her.

The next morning, electricity restored, Charlie felt restless again. As soon as Ellen left for the library, he straightened up the kitchen and wiped down the surfaces. Must she always leave the refrigerator door sticky? Time to get out of the house, he thought as he headed upstairs for a shower. But here too there was disorder. The slick soapy residue of the mango bath gel Ellen favored had left a pale orangish glaze on the bathtub enamel. The cloying sweet scent filled the room. She knew he wouldn’t let this go and she could count on him to wipe it away. But today was different. He’d be damned if he’d clean up her mess, and he strode down the hall to what he still thought of as the kids’ bathroom, which was cramped, but clean. He shaved there too, and distracted by the lilac-and-white flocked wallpaper in the mirror’s reflection, cut himself on his chin,

In their bedroom, as usual, he found her damp towels slung over the chair and a pile of papers next to the bed. He thought for a moment of leaving the towels on the chair, but didn’t want the upholstery to stain. Exasperated, he picked up the papers.

Crumpling them a bit in his hand, he went to Carrie’s old room, which, with the proceeds from Fond Regrets, Ellen had converted into her office. Charlie seldom went in. If her disorderliness distressed him, they had agreed, it was better not to look. Inside the desk was messy with open files, copies of her latest book, miscellaneous pages of notes, and the mail from the last few days. Charlie dropped the handful of papers on one of the piles and resisted the urge to straighten and stack the files and close the half-open center drawer that was stuffed with pens, paperclips, a ball of yarn, and some hard candies with loosened wrappers. Ellen had scribbled in the margins of some typed pages that rested precariously at the edge of the desk, and he noticed a sticky note on which she had scrawled in purple ink: Dangerous fish and mollusks? Patricia High-smith smuggled snails.

Her computer was on sleep mode, but realizing why he’d really come in here, he started sifting through the debris in her drawer. Her password, Pluto3, was on a card — where anyone could find it — on a list of other “Important Information” that also included her ATM password. Charlie went right to her browsing history — he had read Ellen an article from the AARP magazine on the importance of covering your electronic trail, which she had naturally ignored. He found searches for death by bee sting, electrocution, hunting accidents, animal bites, and transportation. He scrolled past these entries and clicked on The Top 5 Causes of Accidental Home Injury Deaths. Charlie clicked on this title and found falls, poisoning, fire and burns, airway obstruction, and water. More than 18,000 Americans die from accidental injuries in the home each year, the article said.

He closed the browser and looked at her documents. He opened one named Home Sweet Home, which described a house like theirs and a list of needed repairs. Stairway bannister safe? she had noted at the bottom. And the name and number of a repairman, Cole Edwards (unlikely... they always called Jim Strensky when something needed fixing), was underlined. Could this be a working title? As with her physical files, her digital filing system was disorganized. Before he turned the computer off he opened a file called The Murderer’s Habit. In it Ellen had written a single paragraph:

Enough, he told himself and, getting up suddenly, felt the edges of his line of vision darken. He knew it was a sudden drop in his blood pressure, a condition that his doctor had cautioned him about. Sometimes controlling blood pressure was a balancing act, Dr. Jones had said, and stress could be a factor. Charlie was almost sure he had taken his pills that morning as usual. Best to check, he told himself. There had never been a problem before; this was something new.

But when he got downstairs and opened his pill container, he felt his hands grow clammy. The familiar shiny salmon-pink ovals were there, but the number looked wrong. He counted and found that an extra pill had been added to each of the tiny slots allocated for the rest of the week. Had he done this? He had never seen Ellen pay any attention to this routine, except to ask occasionally if he needed anything at the pharmacy when she was on her way there. Charlie picked out the extra pills, dropped them in the sink, and turned on the garbage disposal. Stop, he told himself. There’s an explanation.

She picked up on the third ring.

“Charlie, sweetheart, hold on a sec. I’m just helping one of the Kellner twins find something.” She kept him waiting for four long minutes.

She had no idea what he was talking about. She never touched his pill container, she assured him. She knew how he liked everything just so. In fact, she said she had been trying lately to be more conscious of how he wanted the house to be run. She knew he found her scatterbrained sometimes — here her voice trembled a bit — but she was really trying.

But there was something off in her voice, Charlie thought; the trembling sounded stagy and he wondered if she had an audience. Hadn’t there been a character in one of her books who played the devoted wife — up until the very moment that she bludgeoned her elderly husband to death with a large French cookbook? One of the kids had mentioned it the last time they gathered for a family brunch. Ellen had made crepes.

He muttered something reassuring to Ellen and hung up. His next call was to the doctor’s office. Dr. Jones was in with a patient, his receptionist said in her chirpy, efficient voice, and transferred his call to a nurse Charlie remembered from his last visit. He had liked her up until the end of the visit when he heard her telling the receptionist what a “sweet old guy” Mr. Porter was.

“You were right to call,” she told him. “It sounds like you felt faint because of the extra dose. So I want you to take it easy for the rest of today. Drink plenty of water, lie down if you need to, and if you have any more symptoms, call us back.

“Chances are this isn’t anything to worry about,” she added. “Lots of people your age make this kind of mistake. But in the future, please be extra careful when you fill up that pill container. Maybe someone at home can help you.”

“I’ll manage fine on my own, thank you,” Charlie told her drily as he hung up.

Charlie sat at the kitchen counter. Could he really have done this? Ellen was the one who was scatterbrained, not him. He was the one in the family who paid attention to details. He felt feverish and cold at the same time. The clammy feeling in his hands grew more intense. It might be a good idea to let someone else know what was happening. That’s what they did in books and movies, wasn’t it? He thought about which one of their friends was the most rational and settled on Annie Johnson. She had known both of them since the early days of their marriage, and never played favorites.

It took just a few minutes to scribble a letter to her, describing briefly what had happened, then added, Annie, You know I’m not the type to imagine things. And there’s probably nothing going on here, but I wanted to tell you. Just in case. Either Ellen has changed in some frightening way or else I am losing my mind. Anyway, if something happens to me, show this note to someone in charge. Whatever you do, don’t show it to Ellen.

On the way to the Johnson house, Charlie stopped for a donut and coffee as a pick-me-up. He was headed back to the car when a young man behind him tapped him on the shoulder.

“I think I’ve seen you around town,” he said. “You’re married to the mystery writer, right? Tell your wife my girlfriend loves her books. She especially likes it when the husbands get it. Guess I need to watch my back, right?”

“They’re just books,” Charlie replied irritably. “I’m sure you don’t have anything to worry about.” And he watched the good-humored expression leave the other man’s face.

Back in his car, Charlie headed for the Johnsons’, where he slipped the note through the mail slot. At home he began to feel foolish and wondered if he was sick again. He picked up the paper and stretched out on the couch.

He was still dozing when Annie Johnson came to the door and rang the bell. Getting up suddenly, he felt the black margins coming back around his vision. Shaking it off, he was within three steps of the door when he fell. Outside, Razzie was barking and Annie failed to hear the thud Charlie made when he landed or the cracking sound of his skull against the base of the iron hat rack. She waited a few minutes, but when there was no answer, she headed for the library.

When Ellen let herself in late in the afternoon she felt a weight against the front door as she pushed it open. It wasn’t like Charlie to leave things in the way, but he had been acting odd lately. Nervous and secretive. Just that afternoon, Annie Johnson had stopped by the circulation desk and asked if she could have a word with her. Stepping into the vestibule, Annie had handed Ellen a sealed letter addressed to Annie in Charlie’s handwriting. On the envelope he had scrawled, In case of emergency.

“Charlie must have left this at our house this morning,” Annie told her, pushing the envelope into her hands. “But I felt funny about it and didn’t open it. Martin agreed and told me to throw it away and forget it. Frankly, he’s been wondering if everything was all right with you two. I hope you don’t mind my repeating that. But I worry and I don’t like to interfere with anyone else’s marriage, so...”

Ellen took a couple of deep breaths and thanked Annie. She was right, she told her. Charlie had grown suspicious and sullen, ever since the night of the party. Why, he had called her not more than a few hours ago, insinuating that she had given him the wrong number of blood-pressure pills, she confided to Annie. Even though she never touched his medication. At first she thought it was retirement, that he just had too much time on his hands. She hadn’t wanted to face it, but she would now. She shed a few tears as she told Annie that she realized Charlie needed some help.

Ellen’s shift ended shortly after Annie left. In the car she checked her hair and lipstick in the rearview mirror before turning the key in the ignition. Poor Charlie, she thought. Maybe she should agree to go on vacation with him. It had felt wonderful to be the center of attention after so many years, to ride on the good feeling of her success. But she hadn’t anticipated this resentment and paranoia. It was almost more annoying than the years of fastidiousness, the pained looks and sighs. If he were a character in one of my novels, I suppose I’d have him killed. She quickly suppressed the thought as she turned into the driveway.

By pushing her hip hard against the front door Ellen was able to open it enough to slip in sideways. Charlie’s body was sprawled at an odd angle and there was a pool of blood from his left temple that had seeped into the carpet. Ellen put her hand to her mouth, then set her bag down and looked down into his blue eyes. “Oh dear, Charlie,” she said, shaking her head with regret, “that’s going to leave a stain.”

Stepping neatly around him, she thought that what to do was to be orderly, just the way Charlie liked her to be. There would be phone calls to make, the police, the children, and, of course, Annie Johnson, who would be terribly sympathetic. Later, her publisher should know. She felt stressed thinking about it, though, and dreaded the evening ahead of her. Maybe a quick shower, she thought, just to calm her nerves before she got started. Charlie wasn’t going anywhere.

Humming, she went upstairs, got her robe from the closet, and turned on the shower. Just before she stepped in, she turned to see her reflection in the mirror and smiled. “You’ll soon be feeling as good as new,” she said out loud. Ellen’s last impressions as she slipped and grabbed ineffectually at the slick shower wall were of the soothing hot water and the sweet scent of mangoes.