Mary Maloney waits for her husband to return home from work. She is an attentive wife and a good housekeeper. While waiting for his return, Mary watches the clock “to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time he would come home.” Mary ________ her husband.

Mary is content with her middle class life and looks forward to the future because she is _______.

To pass the time while she waits for her husband’s arrival home, Mary _______.

Patrick Maloney is punctual; he arrives home from work every day at ten minutes to five. Mary greets him with “Hullo, darling,” but he merely replies “Hullo,” leaving off the term of endearment. This omission could be considered to be an example of ________.

Mary knows Patrick likes to sit and have a drink before they talk. When he enters their home, she hangs up his coat and makes two whiskey and sodas. Mary is accommodating and compliant, “She made the drinks, a strongish one for him, a weak one for herself.” The drinks could be considered examples of _____.

"For her, this was a blissful time of day. She knew he didn’t want to speak much until after the first drink was finished, and she was content to sit quietly, enjoying his company.” Mary loves just being with her husband and looking at him. He has a “faraway look in his eyes, “ and she thinks he is _______.

Patrick empties the last half of his drink “in one swallow,” which is quite unusual, and then he gets up to make himself another drink, even though Mary usually makes the drinks. She says she will make it, but he refuses her offer. Patrick wants to talk, and he needs the alcohol to give him ________.

Patrick upsets Mary’s perfect world of domestic happiness by telling her he is ______.

Patrick tries to comfort and console Mary by saying, “I’ll give you money and see that you are looked after.” Patrick feels _______.

“There really needn’t be any fuss. I hope not anyway,” Patrick says. He is concerned about his ______.

Mary usually has dinner ready for Patrick, but on this night she has not made supper because it is Thursday, and on Thursday they go _________.

Mary’s world is shattered. Instead of dealing with the pieces, she decides to pretend the last ten minutes never happened; she deludes herself: “It occurred to her that perhaps he hadn’t even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing. Maybe, if she went about her business, … she might find that none of it had ever happened.” Mary is stunned; she is in a state of ________.

Mary goes into “automatic mode;” robotically and almost involuntarily and unconsciously, she goes to the cellar to the freezer to take out a piece of meat to cook for her husband’s dinner. Mary reaches into the freezer and without looking pulls out the first frozen package her hand touches, a leg of lamb. She walks up the cellar stairs and into the living room, “holding the thin bone end with both her hands.” The description in the last quotation evokes an image of a ______ and subtly foreshadows the next scene.

When Mary enters the living room, Patrick’s back is to her; he is standing at the window. He speaks to her, but never turns around, “ ‘Don’t make supper for me. I’m going out.’ At that point Mary walked up behind him and without any pause, swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his ______.”

The leg of lamb is frozen solid. “She might as well as have hit him with a _______ club.”

Mary’s decision to attack her husband is ________.

Curiously, Mary watches him, “and the funny thing was that he remained standing there for at least four or five seconds, gently swaying. Then he crashed to the carpet.” In this quotation “funny” means _______.

The noise of her husband hitting the floor brings Mary out of her state of shock. “All right, she told herself. So I’ve killed him.” She recognizes and acknowledges what she has done, and then her mind clears very quickly because “she knew quite well what the penalty would be.” She has little concern for herself; in fact, she admits the punishment “would be a relief.” However, she is very concerned about her _______.

Mary decides to tidy herself up and practices reciting an alibi. She manufactures a story for the grocer, saying she is there to buy ______ and _____ to go with some meat she is cooking for her husband’s supper.

Sam, the grocer, suggests she should also buy a slice of ________ for Patrick’s dessert.

Returning home from the grocery store, Mary convinces herself that this is like any other visit to the market. She tells herself, “… if, when she entered the house, she happened to find anything unusual, or tragic, or terrible, then naturally it would be a shock, and she’d become _______ with grief and horror.”

Mary does an extremely good job of convincing herself that nothing has happened. She keeps telling herself to “Do everything right and natural.” She does such a good job of self-persuasion, that when she gets home she is not “expecting to find anything at all.” She reaffirms that if she keeps everything “absolutely natural, there’ll be no need for _______.”

policemen want her to go somewhere, “to her sister’s perhaps,” but Mary says she is too exhausted to even move. The police continue their investigation and deduce Patrick was probably killed with large, heavy, metal object, maybe a big metal vase or a “spanner” (a pipe wrench). The police search the ______.

Mary seems surprised when Jack Noonan, one of the policemen, tells her she left the ______ on.

Mary knows the men are tired and hungry, and she asks them to eat the dinner she prepared as a _____.

While the men eat the leg of lamb, Mary stays in the adjoining room and listens to the ________.

The police literally eat the evidence while discussing the whereabouts of the __________.

One of the policemen thinks the weapon is still “right here on the premises,” and another man replies, “Probably right under our very _______.”

Mary is questioned but not interrogated because the police do not consider her ________.