Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 1. Whole No. 338, January 1972

How Could He Do It? by Avram Davidson{©1971 by Avram Davidson.}

’And soon they have the saw going back and forth again, push-pull, shove-tug”…

Bob and Peggy Morrison both say they like things to be in order, but they mean different things by this. Take the shirts.

Peg comes into the bedroom and there is her husband taking the shirts out of the dresser drawer and rearranging them. First shirt, collar flush against the side of the drawer. Second shirt on top of first, but collar at the other end. Third shirt, collar same as first — and so on.

“Why are you doing that?” Peggy asks.

No answer. Fourth shirt, fifth shirt—

“Why are you doing that?” Peg, plump, and worried about her plumpness. Bob, neither fat nor lean nor concerned with fatness or leanness.

“This is the way I like them,” he answers. “This way they — well, the other way the pile gets higher at the end where all the collars are and—” He is about to say, “and the top ones slide down and it looks disorderly.” But Peggy interrupts him, speaking loudly and firmly over his words.

“Isn’t that the silliest thing you ever heard of?” And soon they have the saw going back and forth again, push-pull, shove-tug.

Peggy is determined to root out the reason for Bob’s obsession with the topography of the shirt pile. “You are acting like a compulsive,” she says.

“Never mind,” Bob says, closing the drawer. “Since you can’t remember to do it, okay, then I’ll do it myself.” He moves to leave the bedroom.

“No, Bob,” Peg says quietly. But with determination. “We’ve got to settle this. I want you to verbalize the situation.”

Bob considers this, blinks a few times, then translates: “You mean you want me to tell you why I like the shirts head to toe, sort of? I told you. When all the collars are at one end—”

But Peg shakes her head rapidly. “No,” she says. “No. No. That’s an oversimplification. Who used to arrange your shirts that way?”

He starts to smile, breaks off the smile, frowns. Then his face settles into lines of utter surprise; his mouth opens, he looks at her, then looks quickly away.

Triumph rises in Peggy’s heart. “Oh, now we’re getting somewhere!” she exclaims. “It was your mother, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

Bob’s smile returns. He laughs. His mother never piled any shirts in her life, he says. Bob and his father had to bring them to the Chinese laundry themselves. But the smile ebbs away and once again he gives Peggy that quick look; then as quickly he looks away again.

She pursues the question. Then who was it? Who?

In a low voice Bob says, “Cathy. I forgot all about it, but it’s true, she used to—”

The triumph flees from Peg’s heart, the heart gives a really terrible thump. “Who?” Her voice is low. “Cathy? Who’s Cathy?”

Unhappily Bob says, “Well. I used to live with her. I was just a kid. She was even younger.”

Silence. Then Peggy says, “Well, thanks for letting me know. I mean, thanks for letting me know now.”

This irritates him. “Well, for Pete’s sake, I was twenty-six years old when we got married,” he explodes. “You didn’t expect me to be a virgin, did you?”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” says Peg. (But she does, she does!) “I mean — not telling me! Didn’t I have a right — I don’t understand how you—”

Bob makes an impatient gesture and once more starts to leave. Peg reaches out and takes his sleeve. “Where is she now? Cathy, I mean?”

Bob stands still, not looking at her. Then Peggy asks him a question about Cathy, an intimate question which she cannot restrain. How did Cathy compare to her? she asks. In lovemaking. Bob makes a throaty noise and Peg flinches. “All right, I’m sorry. But at least you can tell me where she is now. Is she here, in town? Do I know her? I mean, know her by sight?”

Rapidly Peggy considers if she knows any women, any young women, named Cathy. She cannot think of one and is relieved.

“I mean — am I likely to run into her when I go shopping? Does she know about me? And—”

Bob turns and this time looks right at her. “She’s dead.”

“Cathy?” Peggy wonders if he can hear the relief in her voice, the relief she is ashamed to feel. Then she decides she doesn’t care. Hot, frenzied images rise to her mind. Trying to dismiss them, she constructs a sudden notion that Cathy died tragically. An auto accident? Childbirth? Suppose the child is still living? Will Bob expect Peggy to adopt it? No, no, that would be too much.

Peg decides to drop the whole subject and never again refer to it, and she asks, “How did she die, Bob?”

And Bob says, very casually, “I killed her.”

He leans against the wall.

“A rotten joke,” says Peg.

“I was just a kid. We were boozing. She said something to me and I slapped her and she bit my hand and I lost my temper. I was lucky, I guess. I got only five years and I only served three.”

Inside her head Peggy laughs hysterically. He killed a woman and he says, I lost my temper — as if he just — as if he only—

“I don’t understand you,” she says. She feels very cold. “How can you stand there so calmly and tell me you killed your mistress? How could you do such a thing?” Her voice gets louder. “I don’t understand how you could do such a thing.”

Bob merely shrugs. “I was only a kid, I tell you. She kept— Ah, but what’s the difference? I paid my debt to society, didn’t I?”

Even more than she is appalled by the knowledge that the man she has been living with, loving with, has had a mistress and has killed her and is an ex-convict, even more than that, Peggy is appalled by the brutal and archaic phrase.

“Paid your debt? Oh, my God! Bob — listen — the three years you were — away — did you get any help? Did you get any therapy?”

It takes Bob a few seconds to realize what she means. “No,” he says, “I just worked in the print shop. But—”

“I just don’t understand how—”

“Listen, Peg, let’s forget it, huh? I’m sorry it’s come up. We’ll forget about it. Put it out of your mind and don’t let it bother you. She wasn’t worth it.”

He smiles and scans her face for reassurance. Which she cannot give.

“ ‘Forget it?’ I don’t understand how you can say that. How can I forget it?” Her voice rises. “How could you do a thing like that? I don’t understand! I don’t understand! How could you—”

“Peggy!”

But Peggy cannot stop. She screams and screams at him. “How could you do it? How could you do it?”

Bob slaps her face and she, as if rehearsed, seizes his hand and sinks her teeth into it, and his face grows red and dark and then, and only then, as his fingers close around her throat and the room swims and vanishes, she understands how he could do it.