Lamb to the slaughter

She stepped back a pace, waiting, 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. The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of the shock. 

Beginning middle or end of the story?

Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work. Now and again she would glance up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he would come.

Beginning middle or end of the story?

a.     Her first instinct was not to believe any of it, to reject it all. It occurred to her that perhaps he hadn’t even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing.

 

 

b.     She watched him as he began to sip the dark yellow drink.

 

 

c.      After a while, the photographer and the doctor departed and two other men came in and took the corpse away on a stretcher.

 

 

d.     ‘This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, I’m afraid,’ he said. 

 

 

e.      Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work.

 

 

f.      Why don’t you eat up that lamb that’s in the oven. It’ll be cooked just right by now.

 

 

g.     She stepped back a pace, waiting, and the funny thing was that he remained standing there for at least four or five seconds, gently swaying.

 

 

h.     Both the smile and the voice were coming out better now. She rehearsed it several times more.

 

 

i.      The car came very quickly, and when she opened the front door, two policemen walked in.