Mary sits alone in a warm, tidy living room, sewing contentedly and waiting for her husband Patrick to return from work.

Patrick Maloney arrives home and greets his wife with cold, monosyllabic responses, rejecting her warm and loving welcome.

Patrick gulps down his first whiskey unusually fast and pours himself a second, noticeably stronger drink.

Patrick makes a brief but shocking announcement that he intends to leave his pregnant wife.

In shock, Mary goes down to the cellar and brings up a frozen leg of lamb from the freezer.

Patrick turns his back on Mary and coldly declares he is going out for the evening without eating.

Without pausing to think, Mary swings the frozen leg of lamb and clubs Patrick hard over the head.

Patrick sways for a moment and then crashes to the floor dead.

Mary places the leg of lamb in the oven and begins constructing her alibi.

Mary visits Sam's grocery store just before closing, cheerfully explaining that Patrick is too tired to eat out.

Mary returns home, enters the house, and telephones the police station to report that Patrick is dead.

Sergeant Noonan and O'Malley arrive at the crime scene and treat Mary as a grieving widow rather than a suspect.

A detective visits Sam's grocery store to check Mary's alibi and returns satisfied by Sam's account.

Mary suggests the police search the garage while the real murder weapon cooks undetected in the oven.

The police devour the cooked leg of lamb — the murder weapon — while Mary listens from the living room and laughs.

Mary Maloney, a devoted homemaker, waits eagerly for her husband Patrick to return from work, but his cold behavior signals that something is deeply wrong. Patrick shocks Mary with an announcement that he intends to leave her, and when he callously declares he is going out without supper, Mary kills him with a frozen leg of lamb. Thinking quickly, she places the lamb in the oven, visits the local grocery store to establish an alibi, and calls the police to report finding her husband dead. The investigating officers — Patrick's own colleagues — treat Mary as a grieving widow rather than a suspect, never questioning her account. After a thorough search of the house and garage fails to uncover any evidence, Mary persuades the hungry officers to sit down and eat. The story closes on its darkest irony as the police unknowingly devour the very murder weapon they have spent the evening searching for.

Mary Maloney's murder of her husband and her cold-blooded cover-up.

Before Patrick's arrival, Mary has fresh ice cubes and two prepared glasses waiting on the table.

Patrick refuses Mary's offer to fetch his slippers and orders her to remain seated instead.

Patrick repeatedly and curtly declines Mary's desperate offers to make him supper.

Mary stares at Patrick with a kind of dazed horror as his announcement slowly sinks in.

Patrick assures Mary she will be provided for financially but asks only that she avoid making a fuss.

Mary considers that the death penalty might be a relief but is determined to protect her unborn child.

Mary tidies her appearance and practices speaking cheerfully in front of the mirror before leaving the house.

Sam suggests that Patrick might enjoy cheesecake for dessert, and Mary enthusiastically agrees to buy it.

Walking home from the store, Mary repeats to herself that she is simply a wife returning to cook supper.

More investigators arrive at the crime scene, including a doctor, two detectives, and a photographer.

Patrick's body is taken away from the house, leaving Mary with the remaining police officers.

Sergeant Noonan asks if Mary would like to stay with a female relative; she declines and stays in the house.

The police officers speculate that the murder weapon is a heavy instrument, most likely made of metal.

Mary asks Sergeant Noonan to pour her a whiskey, and he accepts a glass for himself despite being on duty.

The other police officers come in from outside searching and also accept Mary's offer of alcohol.

From the perfectly prepared drinks to Patrick's dismissal of his slippers, the opening moments of the story reveal a marriage defined by deep imbalance and unreturned devotion. Patrick's repeated refusals to let Mary cook for him and his cold assurance that she will be financially provided for expose the cruelty underlying his announcement. After killing Patrick, Mary carefully reconstructs her domestic persona — tidying her appearance, practicing cheerful speech, and letting Sam the grocer talk her into buying cheesecake. A full complement of investigators descends on the crime scene, treating Mary with consistent sympathy as Patrick's body is removed and the search for evidence begins. As the evening wears on, Mary persuades the officers to drink on duty, dulling their professional instincts one glass at a time. With the evidence cooking in the oven throughout, the cover-up is complete before any of the men in the room realize they have been outmaneuvered.

The telling details and overlooked moments that made Mary's plan possible.

The ice cubes crash against Patrick's empty glass as he drains his drink unusually fast, unsettling Mary.

Patrick harshly orders Mary to sit down, exposing the controlling power dynamic at the heart of their marriage.

A twitching muscle near Patrick's eye betrays his hidden tension, and Mary feels frightened without understanding why.

Patrick's announcement plays out in just a few minutes, shattering Mary's entire sense of identity and purpose.

Mary cannot feel anything after the announcement except physical nausea, as if her body has absorbed the blow of betrayal.

In a mechanical trance, Mary carries the frozen leg of lamb upstairs as if simply going through routine domestic motions.

Patrick's callous final words — declaring he is going out without supper — become the precise trigger for Mary's attack.

Mary stands over Patrick's fallen body, still gripping the leg of lamb, and slowly grasps the full weight of what she has done.

Mary re-enters the house after her grocery trip and is genuinely shocked by Patrick's dead body, bursting into real tears.

Sergeant Noonan refers to the murderer as he and him throughout, never suspecting that the killer is standing before him.

By nine o'clock the police have searched for hours and found nothing, confirming that Mary's cover-up is holding.

When Noonan notices the oven is still on, Mary seizes the chance to invite the officers to eat the cooked lamb.

Mary insists that Patrick would have wanted the policemen to eat the lamb, framing the offer as an act of loyalty to her dead husband.

The policemen declare the murder weapon must have been something like a sledgehammer as they unknowingly consume the evidence.

One officer casually remarks that the murder weapon is probably right under their very noses, unaware of how true this is.

The story's tension builds through small but telling signals: ice cubes crashing against an empty glass, a harsh command to sit down, and a twitching eye muscle that foreshadows Patrick's devastating announcement. The news leaves Mary physically numb and emotionally hollowed out, but Patrick's final heartless words push her to act with sudden and lethal force. Standing over her husband's body, Mary transforms from passive victim into calculating survivor, a shift confirmed when she re-enters the house and her genuine shock at the sight of the corpse provides an unwitting rehearsal for the arriving police. The investigators' unquestioned assumption that the killer is a man becomes Mary's most powerful asset, and by nine o'clock their empty-handed search signals that her cover-up has fully succeeded. The story ends with the police themselves declaring the weapon must be right under their noses, a statement of devastating irony that Mary savors in silent, laughing triumph.

The pivotal decisions and chilling realizations that define the story's dark arc.