2330. The best laid plans

Rudolf thought he had planned his wife’s murder down to the last detail. He would strangle her with his bare hands and then hang her from the garage rafters to make it look like suicide.

The strangulation was easy. Everything went as planned. He had studied it in detail online. That was one of the advantages of the internet – you could find most things on it, and how to strangle a spouse popped up on his screen after clicking on a few links. It was what happened after the strangling that things began to go awry.

When Rudolf went to hang her corpse from the rafters he discovered that the bit of rope he had to do the job was too short. There was nothing for it but to get in the car and scoot off to the hardware store for a rope.

He quickly selected a rope and when he went to pay for it the date on his bank card had elapsed. He had to leave the rope there, go home, and rummage through his late wife’s purses to find the right card. She had several cards and he knew the pin number of one of them at least. He just wasn’t sure which card it was.

He had to go to four different hardware stores to try the different card with the number he knew. As luck always has it, it was the last card he used in the fourth store that worked.

By now, considerable time had passed. He quickly tied a noose around the corpse’s neck and hung the corpse from the rafters. Well blow me down! Rigor mortis had set in and his wife hung like the letter C, in a big curve. Nothing seemed natural. What a conundrum! What a dismal failure he was as a murderer!

Taking his wife’s working bank card, he locked the garage door, locked the house, and set out in his car for a month-long, all-expenses-paid, summer vacation.