Tales of the Unexpected

body.
    ‘Is he dead?’ she cried.
    ‘I’m afraid he is. What happened?’
    Briefly, she told her story about going out to the grocer and coming back to find him on the floor. While she was talking, crying and talking, Noonan discovered a small patch of congealed blood on the dead man’s head. He showed it to O’Malley who got up at once and hurried to the phone.
    Soon, other men began to come into the house. First a doctor, then two detectives, one of whom she knew by name. Later, a police photographer arrived and took pictures, and a man who knew about fingerprints. There was a great deal of whispering and muttering beside the corpse, and the detectives kept asking her a lot of questions. But they always treated her kindly. She told her story again, this time right from the beginning, when Patrick had come in, and she was sewing, and he was tired, so tired he hadn’t wanted to go out for supper. She told how she’d put the meat in the oven – ‘it’s there now, cooking’ – and how she’d slipped out to the grocer for vegetables, and come back to find him lying on the floor.
    ‘Which grocer?’ one of the detectives asked.
    She told him, and he turned and whispered something to the other detective who immediately went outside into the street.
    In fifteen minutes he was back with a page of notes and there was more whispering, and through her sobbing she heard a few of the whispered phrases – ‘… acted quite normal… very cheerful… wanted to give him a good supper… peas… cheesecake… impossible that she…’
    After a while, the photographer and the doctor departed and two other men came in and took the corpse away on a stretcher. Then the fingerprint man went away. The two detectives remained, and so did the two policemen. They were exceptionally nice to her, and Jack Noonan asked if she wouldn’t rather go somewhere else, to her sister’s house perhaps, or to his own wife who would take care of her and put her up for the night.
    No, she said. She didn’t feel she could move even a yard at the moment. Would they mind awfully if she stayed just where she was until she felt better? She didn’t feel too good at the moment, she really didn’t.
    Then hadn’t she better lie down on the bed? Jack Noonan asked.
    No, she said, she’d like to stay right where she was, in this chair. A little later perhaps, when she felt better, she would move.
    So they left her there while they went about their business, searching the house. Occasionally one of the detectives asked her another question. Sometimes Jack Noonan spoke to her gently as he passed by. Her husband, he told her, had been killed by a blow on the back of the head administered with a heavy blunt instrument, almost certainly a large piece of metal. They were looking for the weapon. The murderer may have taken it with him, but on the other hand he may’ve thrown it away or hidden it somewhere on the premises.
    ‘It’s the old story,’ he said. ‘Get the weapon, and you’ve got the man.’
    Later, one of the detectives came up and sat beside her. Did she know, he asked, of anything in the house that could’ve been used as the weapon? Would she mind having a look around to see if anything was missing – a very big spanner, for example, or a heavy metal vase.
    They didn’t have any heavy metal vases, she said.
    ‘Or a big spanner?’
    She didn’t think they had a big spanner. But there might be some things like that in the garage.
    The search went on. She knew that there were other policemen in the garden all around the house. She could hear their footsteps on the gravel outside, and sometimes she saw the flash of a torch through a chink in the curtains. It began to get late, nearly nine she noticed by the clock on the mantel. The four men searching the rooms seemed to be growing weary, a trifle exasperated.
    ‘Jack,’ she said, the next time Sergeant Noonan went by. ‘Would you mind giving me a drink?’
    ‘Sure I’ll give you a drink. You mean this whisky?’
    ‘Yes, please. But just a small one. It might make me feel better.’
    He handed her the glass.
    ‘Why don’t you have one yourself,’ she said. ‘You must be awfully tired. Please do. You’ve been very good to me.’
    ‘Well,’ he answered. ‘It’s not strictly allowed, but I might take just a drop to keep me going.’
    One by one the others came in and were persuaded to take a little nip of whisky. They stood around rather awkwardly with the drinks in their