Free Small Plates by Katherine Hall Page

whole thing would be much easier if he were less of a gentleman, he thought bitterly. He wanted to kill his wife, but he didn’t want her to know he had. Let her go to her grave firm in the belief that she’d had a good marriage. It would be unspeakably boorish to behave otherwise. If he hadn’t cared about protecting her, he could simply have smothered her with a pillow and arranged the whole thing to look like an allergy attack. She’d certainly had some severe ones and was allergic to everything from dust to bee stings.
    Day after day he turned the problem over and over in his mind. He couldn’t arrange a car accident. Mabel had never learned to drive, and besides, he hadn’t the faintest notion of how to cut brake cables or whatever it was they were always doing in books. It got to the point where he couldn’t sleep at night. His ankle bothered him. It had been a nasty break and the pain matched the pain in his aching brain.
    After the fourth night in a row with scant rest, Mr. Carter called the doctor and that afternoon the drugstore delivered some chloral hydrate. He opened the bottle and sniffed. It smelled like cherry syrup. Not unpleasant at all. Then he read the lengthy printout—from a computer, of course—that listed the recommended dosage and all the side effects. He supposed the drug companies covered themselves this way. Terrify the consumer with a smorgasbord of alarming symptoms; cover themselves, so no one could sue. He read through the “Do not combine with alcohol” and “Do not operate heavy machinery” warnings, getting to the “May cause skin rash, mental confusion, ataxia”—he’d have to look that up—“headache, nausea, dizziness, drowsiness”—well, wasn’t that the whole point?—“stupor, depression, irritability, poor judgment, neglect of personal appearance”—they were really covering themselves here, and then a catchall—“central nervous system depression.” He went to the bookshelves and took down Webster’s. Ataxia —loss of the ability to control muscle movement.
    He put the book in its place and went back to his armchair, wending his way through the jungle of Mabel’s plants that filled the room. He picked up the bottle and held it to the light, watching the way the sun made a bright red blotch on the morning paper. Chloral hydrate. Just what the doctor ordered.
    Mr. Carter hadn’t mentioned his sleeplessness to his wife, nor his subsequent call to the doctor. Now he congratulated himself on his discretion. It was almost as if his unconscious mind was taking over and charting the right course. His conscious mind had simply not wanted to talk to Mabel. She wasn’t a drinker, but she liked to indulge herself every now and then with a liqueur after dinner. He found the peppermint schnapps, melon liqueurs, and cherry brandies she favored nauseatingly sweet. If he kept her company, which he seldom did, he sipped a small snifter of cognac. Mabel made herself concoctions poured over crushed ice, drinking them from their everyday tumblers. “It’s the same drink in a jelly glass or your precious crystal,” she pointed out. They hadn’t received many wedding gifts when they’d married and the crystal had been from his parents. Mabel had managed to break most of it over the years and he washed it himself now. Maybe if it had been from her parents, she’d have felt differently. They’d given the newlyweds a check—a rather small one.
    He bided his time. Each night he measured out his dose—and didn’t take it. When he had accumulated what would surely be enough, he put his plan into action.
    â€œYou’ve worked hard all day, my dear,” he said after dinner—Mabel’s famous “Vegetable Stew,” a mélange of whatever was ripe dumped into the pressure cooker. “Why don’t I make you a drink?