Still, night after night, I continued to read aloud to her. And night after night she sat and stoically listened.
I developed the curious belief that it was not my writing that was at fault, but her listening. I became convinced that if she would just try to listen properly, she would like what she heard, and that would make the script a success. I decided she had been influenced by her mother to try deliberately not to like my work anymore, which enraged me because I felt that put a jinx upon it. If she could only bring herself to like my writing as much as she once had, I knew I could make a comeback. I didn’t want her just to pretend to like it, because that wouldn’t break the spell. It had to be sincere liking.
But she continued not to like anything I did. And her criticisms became harsher and harsher. When I finished reading her the last chapter of my thirtieth book, she gave her opinion in two words.
Rising to her feet, she said, “It stinks,” and stalked off to bed.
For that one my publisher cut my usual advance of $750 to $500.
It was then that I got the plot idea for A KILLER ANONYMOUS. The idea stemmed from a news item I read about a prominent local woman who had died of acute alcoholism. During the investigation it came out that no one at all except her husband — not even her parents who lived only a few blocks away — had been aware that for some years the woman had been a heavy secret drinker.
The murder gimmick that evolved from this springboard was that I had the killer tie his wife to a kitchen chair, then pour whiskey down the tube until she died of acute alcoholism. When she was dead, he untied her, removed the tube, leaned her head on the kitchen table and put the empty bottle and a whiskey-stained glass in front of her.
Then he went to visit his mother-in-law, to whom he confided that he was terribly worried about his wife’s drinking, and asked if she would try to talk her daughter into joining Alcoholics Anonymous. The mother-in-law returned to his house with him, where they discovered the wife dead, apparently as a result of her secret drinking.
A KILLER ANONYMOUS went beautifully from the moment I started to write it. The story line unfolded effortlessly, the characters came alive, and the suspense built until even I could barely stand it. I knew with absolute certainty that I had regained my lost talent.
The day I completed the first chapter, I casually announced after dinner that I had finished it.
“Okay,” Ellen said in a resigned voice. “Soon as I stack the dishes.”
“Oh, I’m not going to read it to you tonight,” I said.
She gave me a surprised look.
“I’ve broken the jinx,” I said. “This one is good. I mean really good. Better than MY FAVORITE MONSTER.”
“Then why don’t you want to read it to me?”
“Because your reaction, good or bad, would be bound to affect my approach. And I don’t want to rock the boat. Right now I’m sure this is the best writing I’ve ever done, and I want to retain that feeling right up until I type The End. I’ll read it all to you in a couple of sittings when it’s completely finished.”
“Well, all right,” she said. “However you want to do it.”
Usually a book took me about eight weeks, but I was so hot on this one that I finished it in six. Some of my enthusiasm began to rub off on Ellen. Each evening she would ask how the book was coming, and my self-satisfied answers began to convince her, too, that the jinx was broken.
By the fourth week, without my ever reading a word of the script, or telling her anything about it, she had become as enthusiastic as I was. She grew just as certain as I was that we had a best seller.
That quite naturally improved our relationship. Ellen stopped reminding me that she was the family’s main breadwinner, and began to be as admiringly attentive as she was in the early years of our marriage. I also suspect she asked her mother not to drop around so much until after I completed the script, because Mother Bellman’s visits suddenly decreased.
My hate for Ellen melted away. While I can’t claim that I fell back in love as deeply as on our honeymoon, I did start to develop a certain marital fondness for my wife again.
Eventually, one night after dinner, I announced, “Well, it’s finished.”
In the act of clearing the table, Ellen paused to stare at me. “The book?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re going to start to read it to me tonight?”
“Uh-huh. But there’s a condition.”
“What?”
“I don’t want your chapter-by-chapter reaction. I don’t even want you to comment when I finish reading tonight, because I contemplate getting only about halfway through. I.want you to withhold all comment until you’ve heard it all, then tell me your opinion of the whole book.”
“Why can’t you read it all to me tonight?” she asked. “This is Friday night, so I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. It won’t matter if we stay up all night.”
“It will to me. I would get laryngitis. We’ll do half tonight and half in the morning.”
“All right,” she agreed. “Go get the script while I scrape the dishes.”
As usual we sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table while I read. The book ran twenty-eight chapters. I read aloud fourteen that night.
When I finished, I looked across at Ellen and said, “No comments, please. None at all.”
“All right,” she said agreeably, keeping her face expressionless.
The next morning, immediately after breakfast, I read her chapters fifteen through twenty-eight, finishing just before noon. After reading the last line, I carefully fitted the script back into its box before looking across at Ellen. Her face was still as expressionless as it had been last night.
“Okay, let’s have it,” I said.
She looked at me steadily for some moments before finally emitting a sigh. “I know how much you’ve been counting on this one, Tom,” she said with an element of pity in her voice. “And I’m sorry to disappoint you. But that thing isn’t even going to bring a $500 advance. It’s the most unbelievable plot you’ve ever devised.”
I gazed at her absolutely stunned, unable to believe my ears.
“What’s unbelievable about it?” I eventually managed to whisper.
“Your murder method is physically impossible. There are all sorts of things wrong with it, but the most obvious is that the husband couldn’t possibly tie up his wife like that without first rendering her unconscious, which presumably would mean either drugging her or knocking her out. And either would show in the autopsy. Since he didn’t render her unconscious first, it’s simply not believable that he could tie her up so easily. She would have brought neighbors from every direction by screaming her head off.”
I started to get angry. Nitpicking always makes me angry, particularly when the nitpicker is wrong.
“You weren’t listening,” I said hotly. “He gagged her first.”
“I was listening,” she assured me. “That’s something else unbelievable. He wouldn’t have enough hands to hold the gag in place, keep her from scratching his eyes out, and tie her up too. But even assuming he got that far, the minute he removed the gag, she would scream.”
“I made that completely clear. He gave her no chance to scream. He shoved the rubber tubing down her throat at the same instant he removed the gag. Sometime try screaming with a rubber tube down your throat.”
“Poppycock. That’s a third unbelievable item. He could never have forced that tube down her throat. All she would have to do is bite down on it.”
“It’s a good book!” I yelled at her. “The best I’ve ever written! You’re saying all this just to jinx it!”