Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973

Disorderly by Barry N. Malzberg

In life she had been untidy. But the way she died seemed too neat to be real.

Henry Wilson came home at six to find his wife Flora lying quite dead on the sofa, an open bottle of barbiturates clenched in her left hand, a suicide note draped across her chest.

Carefully putting down his briefcase and washing his hands from knuckle to elbow, Henry straightened out the house, closed the window shades and then picked up the note and read it.

The note was typed and she had not signed it.

Henry looked at it and his wife’s body for a very long time; then he straightened out the house a bit, getting the furniture back in place and raising Flora’s corpse so that he could take some of the minute dust off the couch. He flicked the shades a few times, put the desk in order — Flora had left the typewriter uncovered — and then, when he was sure that everything was in place, he picked up the phone and called the police.

“My wife has killed herself,” he said. “I came home to find her on the couch. It was an overdose of (Sleeping pills. No, she’s dead; I checked her breathing. I live at sixteen West Street on the ground floor. My apartment has a white door. I just painted it last week.”

“Hold on,” said a competent voice, “and we’ll be right out.”

“She’s dead,” Henry repeated and hung up.

In the few minutes before the police came there were still things which Henry saw he had to do, now that he had a chance to look the apartment over carefully. He closed the cabinet of the television set. He took a broom and flicked some grains of bread off the kitchen floor. He checked the bedroom to make sure that the bed he had made that morning was not rumpled. He changed the pillow case — there were a few tear drops on it and they had stained. He made up the garbage and disposed of it.

When he was certain that he had done everything to the best of his ability, Henry sat by the body of his dead wife and waited for the police. He waited for what seemed a long time, but, eventually they came. He heard the siren outside. He got up and opened the door for them.

Two policemen came up the walk, a short one and a tall one.

“My name is Rogers,” the short one said, “and this is O’Toole. You called the station house a few minutes ago?”

“That’s right,” Henry said. “My name is Henry Wilson and my wife has killed herself.”

“Killed herself, huh?” O’Toole said. “Well, let’s just check this out.”

“Before you go in,” Henry said, “would you do me a favor and wipe your shoes off on the rug outside? We have a new carpet and—”

O’Toole gave Henry a strange look.

“Your wife killed herself?” he said.

“Yes. If you’d just do me the favor—”

Rogers and O’Toole shrugged, looking at Henry carefully, and obediently scuffed their shoes in the hall, then followed Henry inside.

“That her?” Rogers said, pointing to the couch.

“That’s her. I came home and found her dead.”

The two policemen went to the couch, leaned over.

“She’s dead all right,” O’Toole said. “When did you discover this?”

“When I came home from work about half an hour ago. I work in a bank. I’m a teller.”

“Looks like suicide, all right,” Rogers said, picking up the empty bottle which Henry had centered on the coffee table. “She must of took forty of these things.”

“It was a terrible shock,” Henry said.

“Let’s check out the place,” said O’Toole. “Mind if we look around in here?”

“Not at all. You’ll find that our home — my home — is quite neat.”

The two officers disappeared into the bedroom and began to move things around; Henry shuddered as he heard the room being disarranged. Then one of them went into the bathroom and began to flush the toilet repeatedly. Henry twitched.

O’Toole came back in by himself. “You had any indications that your wife might commit suicide?”

“No,” said Henry, taking a chair, and putting it neatly against one of the walls, sitting down on it. “None at all.”

“Any trouble between you too?”

“None at all,” said Henry. “Oh, we had our disagreements. She wasn’t a very good housekeeper and I’ve always felt strongly about those things. But we’ve been married for two years and I thought we were very happy.”

“Then why did she kill herself?” Henry rubbed an infinitesmal scratch on his left shoetip. “I haven’t the faintest idea, officer.”

“Well,” Rogers said, coming back into the room and taking off his hat. “I guess we better call down the precinct and get them over here. It looks like suicide. I’m sorry, Mr. — uh.”

“Wilson,” Henry said.

“Just wait a minute,” said O’Toole, taking another chair from under the table and sitting down in it so heavily that it groaned and made Henry jump. “I just want to ask Mr. Wilson one or two questions. You said you came home to find her dead on the couch. Any suicide note?”

“Suicide note? Well, yes.”

“What did it say?”

“Well, it didn’t make much sense. Something about being unhappy, I think; about being sorry to leave me. She typed it and she made a lot of errors.”

“I see,” said O’Toole. “Where is it?”

“What?”

“The note. Where is it? It’s evidence, you know. Where did you put it?”

“Put it?” said Henry. “Well, I don’t know. I mean I’m not sure where it is now.”

O’Toole gave Rogers a long, meaningful look and Rogers swung his head, peered at Henry. “You don’t know?” Rogers said. “You don’t know where your wife’s suicide note is? Maybe you don’t know because there wasn’t a suicide note? Is that it?”

“Oh yes, there was. I read it. It was just that I... well, I incinerated it. I cleaned up the apartment a little and I put it in a bag and took everything downstairs to the incinerator.”

“Well, now, is that so?” said O’Toole.

“I had to get rid of it, you see. I can’t stand sloppiness. That was Flora’s problem. She didn’t know how to keep house and I had to do everything myself. I can’t stand things lying around.”

“So, you incinerated your wife’s suicide note,” said Rogers, “and then you cleaned up the place a little. So in other words, it’s just your word that she left a note. It’s just your word that she killed herself, right? You could have poisoned her and left her with that empty bottle on the couch and for all we know it would be suicide, right? It could be that way, huh, my friend?”

“But it didn’t happen that way,” Henry said, “and I wish you wouldn’t raise your voice. I told you, I can’t stand disorder. I cleaned up everything.”

“I’m going to call the precinct,” O’Toole said heavily. “You’re in custody Mr. — uh.”

“Wilson,” Rogers said.

“Wilson,” said O’Toole.

“But I told you,” Henry said, straining in his chair. “I told—”

But it was never revealed exactly what Henry had told them for at the first clinging, cold touch of the handcuffs on his wrist, the dirty brass touching his own skin, Henry gasped and sprawled over his rug in a perfect faint, knocking over his chair and disarranging his room. It was fortunate that he was hot conscious to see the disarray because it would have upset him even more.

The autopsy showed that it was barbiturates, of course. But that did Henry very little good at all. The shocking disorder of the cell in which he had been confined for two weeks completely undermined his sanity and although the judge was very sympathetic, there was nothing to do but to remand him to a mental institution for an indeterminate time. Henry is still there and although the outlook is uncertain he has brought a better appearance to the day rooms.

Flora might have been pleased.