2451. An accidental murder

Charlene hadn’t meant to murder her husband in quite such a spectacular way. She had intended to shoot him with a gun, but the bayonet attached to the end of the rifle got in the way and she accidentally stabbed him in the chest. In the long run it turned out a lot better than the original plan.

It wasn’t an intended stabbing as such, but as she was coming along the passageway towards the bedroom with the loaded rifle, she tripped on the cat at the very moment her husband appeared at the bedroom door to find out what all the noise was about. The action of Charlene falling over the cat created enough impact to stab and kill her husband.

The rifle with the attached bayonet was part of a collection of Charlene’s husband’s war paraphernalia. I presumed your Honour, said Charlene at the trial, that the gun was not loaded.

The thing the judge couldn’t understand was why she should have been walking down the passageway with a bayonetted rifle if she hadn’t intended to use it.

“There is a totally logical explanation,” declared Charlene. (She had had a month or two to reflect upon the incident). “The roller blind in the bedroom was jammed and I needed a long pointy stick to reach up to loosen the stuck blind. The rifle with the bayonet was all I could find.”

The jury found Charlene not guilty. It was a fortuitous thing indeed, in which Charlene not only got rid of her husband, but got off scot-free as well. Charlene’s husband’s brother knew Charlene had lied and accidentally blew her head off.

2152. A loaded gun

Elaine didn’t know a great deal about guns. Her husband D’Arcy had a gun; a rifle of sorts. He called it a 303. It was left over after the war. She had watched him fire the gun a few times, usually at birds in a tree; something like that. There was never any purpose to it; it was firing the gun at birds for the sake of nothing.

And then he shot her cat. It was just walking past, minding its own business, at the bottom of the garden. Elaine would never forgive him for that. She made meticulous plans to use the gun herself.

She knew to point the gun and pull the trigger. She would do it as he came in through the back door into the kitchen. That way, if the bullet went straight through him, it would go outside into the garden and not make a hole in the wall.

Here he comes now; home from work. He always used the kitchen door. Elaine had the gun sitting on the bench. She grabbed and pointed.

“Goodbye D’Arcy,” she said as she pulled the trigger. “You’ll never kill another cat.”

No one had told her about ammunition.

2074. Evening classes

When Melba took evening classes in gardening it wasn’t exactly so she could learn how to pull out a weed. It was so she could devise a plan to rid herself of something noxious in her garden, namely her husband. He was more than annoying; he was a downright pest. Melba never got any rest from his bragging stupidity. For example, he couldn’t stop going on and on about the evening classes he was attending. That’s what had given Melba the idea to attend evening classes herself.

Specifically it was the section on organic weed killers that interested her. It would be a lot easier to construe death by organic weed killer as accidental. “Oh I had no idea, Officer, that that was poisonous. I thought it was an antioxidant.”

And indeed! Melba learned that a sturdy dose of toxicity would be enough to rid herself of her garden pest. Her course finished next Friday. She would perform the deadly deed on Saturday!

Her husband’s course finished on Thursday, just a day before hers, so he would be home and available for dosage.  His favourite part of his evening classes on Rifle Shooting was “How not to miss your mark”.

1390. Bull’s eye

When Esther attended the night school rifle shooting classes over a six week period, it was for one specific reason: she wanted to shoot her husband. Dead. None of this hanky-panky lovey-dovey nonsense that many murderers espoused. No! She wanted it to be fast and clean. And accurate.

She took the night school classes because quite frankly she didn’t have a clue how to fire a gun of any sort. The aim was to grow in confidence; to become familiar with the firearm; and to have the wherewithal as to how to use it.

Her husband, or more particularly her ex-husband, suffered from schizophrenia. He was so bad that Esther had joked (only to herself of course) that she would need more than one bullet in the gun to kill all his different personalities. True, he was the father of her only child, a son called Steve. Steve would visit Esther quite often, but he would have nothing to do with his father. His father was present at his conception, but apart from that he’d played a very minor part in Steve’s upbringing. Anyway, with the schizophrenia it was very difficult to know which personality was his true father – so to speak.

Esther’s night classes had finished. She loaded the gun. She waited in the sitting room. The door opened. She shot the gun. Bull’s eye! Dead as a door nail.

It was just a pity it was her son’s fiancée.