The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

For thirty-five years, six months, and seven days, ten of them mildly happy married years, John Benton Cansdale, A.B., M.S., respected chemistry instructor of the Laurell Park Senior High School, had lived a moral, upright, almost ascetic existence. That had been two years before she had come into his life.

It was during breakfast on the morning after his return from the annual teachers’ convention in Detroit that he decided to kill his wife. It was strictly an economic move. Two years of playing hide-and-seek had proven conclusively to his modest savings that three cannot live as cheaply as two — especially when one of the three is demanding.

The decision sufficed for the moment. It would be a simple affair. Cansdale prided himself on being too intelligent a man to erect an elaborate structure for Homicide to tear down. Too many murderers had tried to be too clever. When the proper moment had arrived he would simply hit her with a hammer, or whatever might prove handy.

It had been a broken lock on the kitchen window and the headline in the morning paper that had given him his inspiration. His wife had asked him fifteen times to have the lock repaired. He had promised that he would. The headline in the morning paper stated in bold type: Killer Strikes Again.

Cansdale read the details with morbid interest. For months a moronic killer had preyed upon the city, his victims always women. The police had sought for him in vain. No living person had ever seen him. The details of his crimes were revolting. Cansdale noted them with care. Passion was a strange and fearful thing. It warped and twisted a man from what he was into another being.

He thought of the week just past, smiled grimly as his blood began to pound. The week had been most satisfactory. There could be no chance of scandal. He had been too circumspect. He was in love, but not a fool. He had read of too many carelessly conducted triangles that imprudence had turned into wreck-tangles leading to the divorce courts and the chair.

He and Evelyn had been discreet. Both had their positions with the school board and their reputation to maintain. Still, they had managed. And once Mazie was out of the way—

“Mazie.” He rolled the name on the tip of his tongue. It tasted bitter. Making full allowance for his youth, not to mention the ten-thousand-dollar dowry that she had brought him, most of which he had invested within the last two years in “little” things that Evelyn had wanted, Cansdale wondered why in the name of God he had ever married her.

She had no soul, no intellect, no fire. She had never read Balzac, Boccaccio, or Rabelais. He peered furtively around his paper at his wife. He was her superior in every way — still at times he had a feeling he bemused her.

She looked up as he peered at her. “More coffee, honey? Toast?”

Tiny, dark, languid, after twelve years of his superior association, she still spoke with the unaffected southern drawl of the hills where she was born.

Cansdale shuddered at the eager smile on her half-parted, too-full lips. He wanted it over with, wanted her dead.

“No,” he told her curtly, “thanks. I’ll just make my first class as it is.” He folded his paper neatly and put it in his pocket so she wouldn’t see the headline.

“I’ll get your hat and coat,” she offered.

He watched her leave the room, her slim hips swaying beneath the outrageously tight dressing-gown that she affected because she believed it made her look like some movie actress or other. Confession magazines, the movies, bridge, they were her life. She had been a pretty girl. In a way, she still possessed a certain charm at thirty.

“You’ll be home early t’night, honey?” she asked as she helped him with his coat.

He wished that she wouldn’t call him “honey.” She called everybody “honey,” from shopgirls to the milkman.

“No,” he told her primly as he took his hat. “You know that I always work on my book on Friday nights.”