Grime and Punishment

Stapler, the woman next door to Mrs. Nowack’s on the other side. She says she brought her salad over around one-thirty and spoke to you?“
    “I think it was a little bit before that. Ten or fifteen minutes, probably. I started the carrots at one and—“ She was about to do it again, gab about telling time by carrot cookedness.
    “You didn’t start the carrots until that afternoon?“ Shelley interrupted.
    “I didn’t see her leave, though,“ Jane went on hurriedly. “I was leaving when she came. She must have been the last one in the house. Let’s see—“ Jane got up and opened the refrigerator door. “Shelley, you haven’t moved any of this since then, have you?“
    “Well, I—the kids aren’t home and we ate out—“
    “I’m not accusing you of keeping a piggy kitchen. I just wonder if you got these potluck dishes out of order. Isn’t this Laura’s bowl on the top of the stack?”
    She shut the door and thought a minute. “That doesn’t matter. I mean, it doesn’t tell us anything that’s necessary to know.“
    “Why not? I thought it sounded good,“ Van-Dyne said, looking like he hated to admit it.
    “The dishwasher was still on prewash when I came over after Shelley called. So Mrs. Thurgood must have started it just before she was killed, and everybody had come and gone before then.”
    VanDyne got up and looked at the controls of the dishwasher. “Mrs. Nowack, had you set this to start in the afternoon?“
    “What do you mean? Oh, yes, it is one of those, isn’t it?“
    “One of what?“ Jane asked, joining him and bending over to see what he was looking at. “What in the world are all these buttons, Shelley?“
    “It’s got a thing where you can load it up and program it to start in the middle of the night.“
    “Why in the world would anybody want to do that?“ Jane asked.
    “I have no idea. It would scare the stuffing out of me if it started gushing and thrashing at four A.M., so I never bothered to learn anything but ‘wash’ and ‘cancel.’ “
    “It’s so you can use it at nonpeak water consumption hours,“ VanDyne explained. “In some parts of the country that matters.“
    “So—“ Jane began.
    “So we’ve been looking at this dishwasher business as proof she was alive and it isn’t necessarily. You’re sure you didn’t set it yourself, Mrs. Nowack?“
    “Not unless I did it accidentally. I don’t know or care how that timer gadget works.“
    “Wait a minute!“ Jane said. “Don’t you have a pathologist or coroner or somebody who can tell when she died?“
    “Yes, but he can’t set a very good time in this case. You see, that’s determined in large part by the temperature of the body in relation to weight, room temperature, and the stage of rigor mortis, which is also influenced by surrounding temperature. That was a guest room, which Mrs. Nowack keeps closed off with the furnace vents also closed. It was pretty chilly the night before, so the room might have been quite cool. We don’t know. When Mrs. Thurgood opened the door, she let it start warming up from who knows what temperature. In addition, the body was lying in a shaft of sunlight, which also threw off the temperature calculations. The coroner puts a tentative time of death at between noon and two. So, you see, the dishwasher evidence was in contradiction to that, and now we know—or suspect why.“
    “You’re saying whoever killed her very calmly set the dishwasher to start at a time when she—or he—had an alibi?“
    “Not necessarily. It might have just been a last-minute gesture to generally confuse the issue. And it has.”
    Jane sat down shakily. She hadn’t adjusted to the idea of one of her neighbors killing someone, much less doing it cold-bloodedly enough to think of something like that.
    “Did any of the women who brought food see the cleaning lady when they came?“ Shelley asked.
    “Mrs. Wallenberg didn’t, of course, because she was here before Mrs. Thurgood and didn’t come in anyway. Mrs. Williams says the house was quiet, and so does Mrs. Revere, who came right after her. But Mrs. Jones was here an hour after that, and she mentioned that the victim was vacuuming the living room. Mrs. Greenway heard her moving around in the study. Mrs. Stapler says she didn’t see or hear anything, but she also made the point that she stayed only briefly.“
    “Terrified, no doubt, even though she had no way of knowing anything was wrong. She’s like that,“ Jane