A GUEST to one of Bill and Dora Pemberton’s weekend parties tended to look forward to the meals prepared by the Pembertons’ positively divine French chef, Remi, a beautifully landscaped estate in which you could get lost for hours in the most exquisite trails lined with Mrs. Pemberton’s prize-winning foxglove, and countless other displays of the couple’s total disregard for cost.

But above all else, a visitor looked forward to the endless verbal fencing between Bill and Dora themselves; the most sharp-tongued and extraordinary wits anyone had ever seen. Particularly once their butler’s martinis were rolled out.

The present weekend’s entire party, seated on the veranda, watched in rapt delight as Dora looked her husband in the eye and said:

“I ought to cut your fucking balls off, you worthless piece of shit.”

Bill was nearly passed out in his wicker armchair, clutching his fifth or sixth martini of the still-young afternoon. The party’s eyes moved to him for a response, like a group in the front row at Wimbledon.

“Wha…? Whaddya want me to… to say? Say… I’m sorry?”

“That might be a start,” she snarled, ashamed of his drunkenness and overflowing with hatred for him.

“Okay. I am sorry… so sorry… that you’re such a… frigid cunt.”

Dr. Ritley, visiting the Pemberton’s for the first time, couldn’t help guffawing at the comment. Turning to look at him, Dora felt her face burn with shame. She stood and walked to the house, pausing only to splash her martini in Bill’s face. Confused, his eyes having been closed, Bill choked on the spray of liquid, coughed, and then fell to the floor, where he vomited what seemed gallons until his body rocked with dry heaves.

Shaking their heads and smiling to one another, the guests stood and started off; some toward the badminton courts, others in pursuit of a fresh cocktail.

It was around six o’clock that evening, following an early and unnatural darkening of the sky caused by black storm clouds swooping in from the west, that rain tore down and forced most of the guests into the library, where the butler served tall glasses of brandy.

Mr. And Mrs. Pemberton were noticeably absent, Bill being passed out drunk in his bedroom and Dora being inconsolable, her sobs audible throughout the hallways. Mrs. O’Neill stood in the middle of regaling the group with stories from her most recent visit to Madrid when a distant howling silenced her. The group looked about the room, locking eyes as if to confirm that they had heard what they’d thought they heard. Confirmation was not long delayed when a maid burst in, crying:

“Dr. Ritley is dead! Dr. Ritley is dead! Someone do something!”

A pair of the men started off with a sense of duty, but the rest, seeing the futility of aiding a man already pronounced dead, stayed put.

About this very time, Bill, emerging from unconsciousness with a frightful hangover, rang the servants’ quarters. Very soon after, Hulda appeared, a Bloody Mary on a tray.

“Read my mind as always,” he whispered, wincing and taking the Bloody Mary and taking it in a go. He threw up very lightly, not having much in his stomach, and Hulda, a stout old German who had worked for the Pembertons for years and years, stepped forward with a hand towel on the ready, mopping up Bill’s mouth, then the floor. “Fill it up halfway with vodka, will you?” he said, handing Hulda the empty glass.

Hulda, dutiful as ever, crossed the room to the vodka bottle on the bureau and filled the glass halfway with it. When she’d brought it back, Bill took it in trembling hands and chugged, hot tears streaking his face. But once he’d finished and taken several deep breaths, he appeared much better. Hulda decided it was as good a time as any, and sprung the bad news on her employer.

“Dr. Ritley appears to have been killed, Mr. Pemberton.”

“What? You must be joking.”

“I assure you I’d never joke of such a thing.”

“No, I supposed you wouldn’t. Just the same, I can’t believe it! Who’s responsible? What happened?”

“I’m afraid we’re very short on answers as of now, Mr. Pemberton. But the police have been notified and are on their way. Though with this awful rain it sounds as though many of the roads have been closed. So there’s no knowing how long it might take for them to arrive.”

“So in the meantime, we’re all stuck in this house with a murderer.”

“It would seem so, Sir.”

“Well,” said Bill, venturing to stand and feeling a white hot pain in his temple like an ice pick. He nearly collapsed but managed to keep to his feet as he motioned for the vodka bottle. Hulda brought it quickly and unscrewed the cap herself. After a few hot swallows, Bill steadied his stance and said:

“I know it may sound insensitive to poor Dr. Ritley, but could you also recount for me the earlier events in the day?”

“What do you mean, sir?” she asked, blushing.

“Your blush confirms my fears,” sighed Bill. “But please, the details.”

“In short, Sir, Mrs. Pemberton happened to come upon you and Miss Vaughn in your bed.”

“Oh no,” he moaned. “Oh no! How could I?” It didn’t take long for him to burst into sobs.

“Mr. Pemberton,” said Hulda as Bill collapsed at last, curling up on the floor as his body rippled with weeping.

“Go away Hulda. Thank you for your help, but I need to be alone right now.”

“But Sir…”

“Go!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs. Once she’d reluctantly obeyed, closing the doors quietly behind her, he restrained his crying and whispered: “Go, so that I might withdraw as well. Forever…” and he looked to a photo of Dora framed on his writing desk and a razor blade on the counter of the nearby sink.

A few moments and several deep swigs of vodka later, he’d gathered the razor and set it beside the photograph, and stared at both as he wrote in rigid cursive on a sheet of paper:

“Beloved Dora. How I long to quote Wilde or Keats to you, or to make some mad plea for turning back time and recapturing the love that once bound us. But I cannot undo what has been done. And I can not ask for that which I do not deserve… your forgiveness. Know that you have always been the exclusive possessor of my heart. You are my everything. Your Adoring Husband, B.”

Bill then poured a glass full of vodka, took a slow, savoring swallow, and dragged the razor across his wrist. It did not manage to break the skin. Closing his eyes, he tried to make a fast hard swipe, but missed altogether. After several additional tries, he finally managed to break the skin and draw blood, but only a faint trickle. Nowhere near a vein.

Leaving Dr. Ritley’s room, finding that he was indeed dead and managing to think of nothing to do apart from spreading a sheet over him, Messrs. Robertson and Delvaney were stopped by Dora, whose breath reeked of vodka.

“You heard about my husband no doubt?” she asked. In spite of the fresh impression of the dead body of Dr. Ritley, the men smiled in anticipation of Mrs. Pemberton’s inevitable bon mot.

“What about him?” asked Roberston.

“That he cheated on me with that little slut Ms. Vaughn and I walked in on them in the act.”

“Oh I’m sure there’s some reasonable explanation, Mrs. Pemberton,” said Delvaney, the swelling grin on his face making clear that his only desire in defending the husband was to set up the best possible witticism from Dora.

“The only explanation is that he’s a piece of shit, but that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that my mother always said that pay back’s double. So why don’t you boys come with me and we’ll see about making a little double trouble?”

“Oh Mrs. Pemberton,” they chuckled, patting her shoulder fondly and continuing their walk back to the library.

When Roberston and Delvaney had returned to the library, they bowed their heads stoically to confirm to their fellow guests that Ritley was indeed dead.

“But how?” asked one of the ladies. “Dr. Ritley seemed in perfect health. It must have been foul play.”

“Perhaps,” said Delvaney, “but not apparently. No wounds of any sort. He did appear to have bled some from the mouth, but perhaps that’s indicative of something as natural as a heart attack. I’m no authority, and I fear that Dr. Ritley was the only one among us who could be counted as such.”

“But,” said another of the ladies, “if it were a murder, then it would have to have been commited by one of the individuals under this roof, no?”

Though the truth of this was undeniable, no one dared speak to acknowledge it. They only cast uncertain glances at the others that filled the room.

“Well now let’s not be morbid,” said Delvaney. “This damned weather I’m sure could put anyone in a black mood, but I’m sure that Ritley died naturally, and at any rate, the police are on their way.”

“But with the weather, it might take them who knows how long to arrive!” cried one of the ladies.

“You all seem to forget,” said Roberston, lighting a cigarette, “that under this roof already is one of the finest minds in the world of criminal justice. Yes, Bill Pemberton is the superior to any detective that’s ever lived!”

“But you know what though?” said Dora, appearing suddenly in the room’s doorway. With no exceptions, everyone in the room felt better for her presence. “Fuck him. Fuck him. And I don’t want anyone here pretending that something didn’t happen.” By now, Dora had locked eyes with Ms. Vaughn, and her face flushed with loathing. “You know what? I’m not even mad at you. You know what? I feel sorry for you, honestly, honey.” Dora stepped forward and grabbed one of the other ladies’ half-full martini from the coffee table, much to the lady’s delight. She drank half of it in a go before continuing, “Because you’re the kind of girl who isn’t really that bright or that good looking or whatever. You probably can’t even attract a man unless he’s married, because then, he’s just excited by the prospect of fucking someone other than his wife.” Dora drained the glass, stumbled to the side as if gravity had shifted, and concluded: “P.S. You’d better get yourself tested, if you know what I mean.”

Roberston, reflecting the feeling of every other person in the room, let loose a guffaw and said:

“Oh that’s too rich, Mrs. Pemberton, brava!”

The next sound to fill the room jolted the party. A horrific noise, like a shrieking baby, formed itself into Bill Pemberton, entering the room with a 7-11 Big Gulp cup full of vodka, sobbing:

“You have to forgive me!”

“Oh my God,” slurred Dora, spinning to face her husband. She nearly fell over, and her martini glass crashed to the ground. “I’ve never been so fucking humiliated in my life. Why do you have to cry like a baby in front of our friends?”

“You have to forgive me!” he shrieked even louder and at an even higher pitch. “You have to forgive me you vindictive bitch!”

“Please call me a bitch again, Bill, that’s a surefire way to get me to forgive you.”

“Aaahhhhhh!” he shrieked, hurling his cup at her and grabbing his hair out of frustration.

“Thank goodness you’re here, Mr. Pemberton,” cried Delvaney. “You have of course, heard by now that Dr. Ritley is… is no more?” Spotting the decanter of brandy that the butler had left in the room Bill dropped to the floor and crawled toward it. When he’d reached it he stood, yanked out the stopper, and drank straight from the decanter. “And,” continued Delvaney, as if Bill had actually acknowledged him, “have you had the opportunity to examine the… the deceased?”

“Wha?” coughed Bill, attempting with great difficulty to focus his eyes on Delvaney. “Oh, uh, the doct… doctor or… yeah, I can’t fuckin’ believe that… he died, you know, when he was all… all for good and helping people alive. But uh, did I… you know, check out the guy’s body? No. No I didn’t even know that I… you know, I just didn’t even do it yet.”

“Well perhaps I could take you to see it myself, Mr. Pemberton. And you could perhaps begin to shed a bit of light onto this mystery.”

“And perhaps,” said Dora, staring at Roberston, “Mr. Roberston could come with me to discuss a few matters regarding the death of Dr. Ritley.”

“Of course, Mrs. Pemberton,” said Roberston, following Dora out the door.

In turn, Bill allowed Delvaney to guide him from the library and down the long hall that echoed with claps of thunder, toward the room of the late Dr. Ritley.

Standing just outside the library, Dora watched Bill and Delvaney disappear, at which point she took Roberston by the arm and guided him to her bedroom.

“Do you have any idea?” she asked, her face really beginning to sink under the weight of her intoxication, “how bad I want you inside of me?”

“Mrs. Pemberton,” chuckled Roberston. He stifled the chuckle with a sigh, saying, “you delight me more than you can know, but I must admit it does feel a tad inappropriate joking around like this with Dr. Ritley freshly dead only a few feet away, and the murderer here among us!”

Dora swiped her hand softly against his neck and widened her eyes to look up at him, fully exposing the blue and gray-flecked pools of her irises.

“I will give you whatever you want, Mr. Roberston. The freakiest thing you’ve ever heard about and not dared admit to yourself you’d enjoy, I will do. I will ride you until your eyes roll up into your skull and you die and sit swapping tales with the Devil himself about the greatest lay you ever had in your whole life.”

“Mrs. Pemberton!” giggled Roberston, trying to restrain his mirth by clamping his hand to his mouth. “I really must insist you stop! I feel absolutely wretched laughing like this at such a time!”

“Ye Gods!” cried Dora, throwing her arms in the air and pacing to the window. “Is my husband the only man with a pair of balls in this entire house?”

Meanwhile, Bill and Delvaney entered Ritley’s room. Seeing the expired doctor laying on the floor–on the horizontal plane rather than the vertical, like most men–wrecked Bill’s sense of equilibrium and he pitched forward and toppled as if tripped. And landing squarely on Ritley’s corpse, he moaned quietly for an extended period of time.

“Well?” pressed Delvaney, hardly able to contain his excitement. “What can you tell, Mr. Pemberton?”

“Unh…” growled Bill, recovering from having passed out. He managed to roll off of Ritley and lie on his side, facing him. He sent out a trembling hand with difficulty, his depth perception lacking as a result of not being able to focus his eyes. But eventually he took hold of the sheet and pulled it down, revealing Ritley’s face. The eyes pointed forward in a loose-locked gaze and his mouth gaped, the source of a small patch of caked blood.

Bill coughed violently for several seconds, and then, recovering again from a brief unconsciousness, remembered where he was and wondered if there was anything in the room to drink. He resolved suddenly to conquer his alcoholism once and for all and from now on would only drink wine or beer. And then he remembered that Delvaney stood in wait for an answer.

“Unh… Oh… oh yeah. I think… oh yeah, I definitely get it now. You see… see the blood there? Just a little, on the mouth? Yeah, that’s… oh yeah, I understand it now.”

“Top notch, old boy! I knew you’d crack this in no time!”

“Yeah. Would you help me up, please? I think that I got a cold… and it’s… inner ear sort of messed–” Bill was interrupted by an abrupt but light fit of vomiting. “Oh,” he moaned once he’d finished, seeing the pool of vomit that splashed Ritley and mixed with the blood from his mouth. “That’s definitely going to confuse the police…”

Delvaney laughed as he took Bill by the arm and aided him to his feet.

“There we are!” said Delvaney.

“Thanks. Now, I’d like for… you… for… help me to… the roof. But first, we’ll pop by the drawing room to grab a bottle of merlot.”

“Roof, eh? Intriguing! You expect to see the last bit of the puzzle you’ll need from up there, eh?”

“Uh.. yeah… let’s just say I expect to conclude the case.”

Remi stood in the center of the vast kitchen situated at the rear of the house with easy access to the garden filled with carefully tended herbs and fresh vegetables. He clucked and fretted over the evening’s bouillabaisse, slicing bits of orange peel into a simmering tank. And as Dora spied on him through the doorway, she wondered if he had not yet heard of Dr. Ritley’s death, or whether his devotion to his work was such that he kept on despite it.

She situated her breasts appealingly in the nightie she’d slipped into upstairs, and loosely tied a short silk bathrobe over it.

“You’d better live up to your reputation, Frenchman,” she growled quietly to herself as she entered. Her head felt foggy and the room seemed to spin so terribly that she could barely walk a straight path toward the chef. Bumping accidentally into a cart covered with dirty plates, Dora caused a light racket and Remi looked up. Startled, he stood at attention and addressed her:

“Ah! Good evening to you, Madame.”

“Relax Remi, please go about your business.”

“Merci beaucoup, Madame Pemberton,” he said with a sharp dutiful nod, and instantly returned to peeling oranges. Dora leaned over the counter, looking down to make sure her breasts dangled as visibly as possible over her low necklines.

“Remi, is there anything to drink down here?”

“I am afraid, Madame, that there is not anything for the drink. Unless,” he said with a throaty French chuckle, nodding his head at a bottle beside her, “you are liking the cooking sherry!”

She looked at him as he turned his eyes back to the bouillabaisse and she coyly lifted the bottle and took a long drink from it. Souring her face and gasping at the taste, she forced a swallow. Her eyes watered, but her brain smoothed into relief from the influx of alcohol.

“Hmmm…” she moaned, leaning further over the counter, so that anyone who made half an effort would have been able to see through her cleavage and to her belly button, “it didn’t taste very good, Remi. It was salty and sour. But I swallowed it anyway. I just think that’s polite.”

“Very good, Madame,” he said, mustering a quick glance and a distracted smile.

“Remi,” she meowed, standing and walking even closer to him, keeping a hand on the counter at all times to steady herself.

“Yes, Madame?”

“I am very, very hungry.”

“Oh Madame!” he exclaimed, dropping his knife onto the cutting board. “Why did you not say this from the beginning?”

A relieved smile spread over her mouth and seemed to melt her entire body. “Allow me to be serving you, Madame. What would you like?”

“Maybe,” she said, casting a glance at Remi that was practically obscene, “something spicy.”

“Perhaps a spicy andouille posole? Just a small portion with the glass of chianti? C’est magnifique!”

“I was thinking… something even hotter.”

“Oh, I see, Madame. I could then make for you a simple Szechuan chicken with chili peppers?”

“No,” she said, beginning to feel sick with the frustration of having debated weepingly over the idea of whether or not to avenge Bill’s philandering once and for all and now being unable to realize the decision. “I think you’re not understanding me, Remy…” She untied her bathrobe and shrugged a shoulder, expertly sending a strap of her nightie over the edge, bringing down the top just enough to reveal the shade of a nipple. “What I want is something French in my mouth.”

“Ah, I have it then! Remi’s special Crepes Avec Andouille–”

“I want you to have sex with me.”

“Oh Madame Pemberton!” roared Remi, putting his fists on his hips and leaning his head back to let a fit of laughter flow from his throat. “You are an absolute delight!”

“Fuck you, Remi.”

Wind and rain whipped brutally across the sky as Delvaney fought to open the door to the roof and Bill followed, his mind clearing as he chugged half the second bottle of merlot he’d snatched from the parlor. Streaks of red wine ran down his chin.

“I say,” shouted Delvaney to be heard over the whistling howl of wind, “it’s Hell’s own bells out here!” Venturing to the edge of the widow’s walk, he peered down at the miles of hilly countryside obscured by mist and rain. Bill, meanwhile, lay down and curled his body around the wine bottle like a suckling babe. “Can’t see a damned thing though, Pemberton. What do you expect to find up here?”

“Release,” he answered, his voice fixed and solid and sober.

“What’s that you say, old man?”

“I say the end of a life so wretched and selfish that it has ruined a girl that was purer and more sublime than any of God’s own cherubim.”

“Do you mean to say that Dr. Ritley was caught up in some sort of sex scandal?” gasped Delvaney, shocked, scandalized, but thrilled.

Bill stood and shrieked and pitched the empty bottle into the wind. It tumbled, spinning, into obscurity beyond the edge of the roof.

“I curse the foul drink that has made me the broken wretch I am!” He shook his fist at the Heavens and whether tears or rain drops made his cheeks glow, only Bill and the Almighty knew, though the fact that he was screaming and crying and pretty much always having some manner of emotional breakdown definitely pointed toward tears. “And yet,” he sighed, letting the fist loosen and fall to his side. “It is truly the wretch who curses the weapon with which he has murdered. Look on these hands, Delvaney! Look!”

“I see them,” he replied, not understanding the relevance to Ritley’s death but trying very hard.

“These hands are bloody. Though they have never claimed a life they have come as close as is legally permissible. The question of morality, however, is of course entirely separate from the law. Oh that you might have seen Dora on one of those pink afternoons when her face was fair and we sipped Champagne on the bow of her father’s boat but were intoxicated only by the presence of one another. Oh my dear Delvaney…”

As he spoke in an increasingly hushed tone, overcome with nostalgia, Bill approached the edge of the roof, wrapped his hands on the wrought-iron of the railing and then climbed over, his body at last steady.

“Ah, yes, you may very well have a better chance of seeing if you get to the absolute edge,” said Delvaney. “Though I must admit I still can’t imagine what out there might solve the case.”

“Will you tell Dora something for me, Delvaney?” he asked, subduing his sobs.

“Yes, of course.”

“Tell her that the wind smells of her hair and reminds me of Barcelona. Tell her I go with joy in my heart to think of the Heaven that might reunite us, or the Hell that might finally purge the black guilt of how I defiled her, the most precious flower ever to spring from God’s Earth. Tell her that I must go because I did not know how to love her. And that the man who can be blessed with such as she and yet not love is the man who does not deserve breath.”

With that, Bill closed his eyes and let go of the railing. And he spread his arms out wide and leaned out to let gravity take hold and guide him down to the warm bosom of the earth.

And then Delvaney laughed and grabbed him by the arms and pulled him back onto the roof.

“Oh Mr. Pemberton, I must admit you had me there. You know, I was warned about these parties of yours and I thought I’d never fall for such a gag, but I have no shame in admitting that you got me. I believed every second of it! I daresay my heart stopped beating when I thought you were actually about to kill yourself!” By now, tears streaked Delvaney’s face, and he had to grab his stomach to allieve the pain of laughter he could not control. “Oh, Mr. Pemberton! Have mercy! Between you and Mrs. Pemberton, I can hardly–”

“Fuck you, Delvaney,” he growled before starting back down the steps for a tall glass of Scotch.

Halfway to his room, his mind set on a nap as he gulped his Scotch, Bill ran into Dora. They stood staring indignantly at one another for several seconds, both at a loss as to what to say, until Bill, looking Dora over in her irresistable nightgown, set his glass down firmly on a bookshelf and said:

“Dora. Beautiful Dora.” He took her hand and looked into her eyes. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I don’t deserve your love. Mostly I don’t deserve you. But the thing I realize is that despite all of that, I love you. And I always will. And if that means anything to you… if my love interests you or appeals to you somehow, I can’t promise you perfection or sinlessness, but I can promise you that every day I see you smile, I will know–”

“Eat a dick, Bill,” she said, snatching her hand away. “Now if you don’t mind, I need to go sit down because I’m sore from getting railed by literally every man under this roof. Except you of course.”

A faint twitch in Bill’s eye, and a tightness in the corner of his mouth were the only displays of emotion before his face and body went as blank as death. This delighted Dora enough to completely undo her miserable feelings of unattractiveness following her rejection by literally every man under their roof, except Bill, of course. And she turned and walked into the bedroom to change, slamming the door shut. And Bill nodded slowly and breathed.

“Thank you all for coming,” said Bill, his voice like ice as he stood leaning on the mantle.

He looked more crisp and groomed and sober than anyone could ever remember seeing him. He wore a pressed suit and had his hair neatly coiffed, and he looked terribly handsome as he swirled a small tumbler of bourbon, ice and glass clinking.

The party stared at him from their various seats throughout the library. Even Dora, situated proudly in the armchair, so comfortable and happy in her pure hatred of Bill, completely unsullied by any last lingering hint of affection that she rather enjoyed being in his presence, waiting eagerly for him to embarrass himself. So complete was her emotional break from the man, that after being assembled into the room, she’d taken a moment to let everyone know that while the legalities might take awhile to work out, the marriage was absolutely dissolved and that they should all call her Ms. Tipton, her maiden name. They’d all laughed delightedly, apart from Bill, who showed no displeasure but only swirled his Bourbon and stared with bulging eyes through the window at the weakening rain. “Soon,” Bill resumed, “the police will have finally overcome the dreadful roads and will arrive and find a rather gruesome scene. And they will quickly piece together the facts but I recognize that many of you here have come as you might come to the theater, with a desire to see a show. An amateur detective piecing together, impossibly, a thousand tiny clues into one undeniable case.”

“And not just any theater!” said Roberston, beaming. “The best damned theater in the world! And the best damned detective!” Standing, Roberston lifted his glass and cheered “Here’s to Mr. Pemberton!”

“Here here!” agreed the party, lifting their glasses. Bill did not acknowledge them but stared at Dora. And even though there was no ounce of emotion or feeling in his dead eyes, Dora felt unspeakably violated.

“And of course,” added Delvaney, “to his delightful wife, our hostess. To Mrs. Pemberton! Or rather,” he chuckled, “to Miss Tipton!”

The whole party really erupted at that line.

“Yes, quite,” continued Bill, his mouth slightly agape. “At any rate, you all wish to know about Dr. Ritley’s death. At a glance, it appears natural. There is no indication of a struggle or foul play of any means. There is no wound and no sign of any cause of death but something natural and completely internal. On the other hand, Dr. Ritley was in better health than any other man or woman in this house. I must admit that I was puzzled absolutely. I couldn’t see any trace of evidence or motive whatsoever. But then I remembered something simple, yet vital.” As he spoke, Bill began to walk the perimeter of the assembled guests. “You see, Dr. Ritley wasn’t the only death in this house. Oh no. A marriage died here as well, which I know you are all painfully aware of. And I, for one, apologize for any discomfort this may have caused.” Bill came to a stop behind Dora’s chair and rested his hand on it as he took a restrained and genteel taste of Bourbon. She grinned to hear him acknowledging his failure as a husband in front of God and everyone. “But while I went about blaming myself, I fell so deep into self-loathing that I failed to realize that a failed marriage can never be the fault of one person. And that every mortal that has ever tread this earth has made mistakes and that this is not what destroys us, but rather our capacity for cruelty, our inability to forgive. We do not have to be faultless. But we have to forgive. We have to forgive.”

With this, Bill swiftly summoned a pistol from his jacket pocket and stuck it downward against the top of Dora’s skull. Without a word or a pause, he pulled the trigger. And Dora, unable to register a reaction, spilled blood from her mouth and slunk in her chair, her eyes rolling up. “We shall be reunited in Hell,” he muttered as he carefully set the still-full glass of Bourbon on the coffee table, stuck the barrel calmly to his upper palate and pulled the trigger a second time.

As he dropped like a weighted sack to the floor, the party sat in stunned silence.