Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

The Stones’ last bitter altercation had been, in a way, about the railroad. It took place in the basement, where Olive seldom went because the steep, narrow stairs were difficult to negotiate because of her extreme obesity. She moved like a pitching ship at sea, as her weight was transferred from one foot to the other. It was a Friday afternoon in mid July, at the start of Ham’s two-week vacation. He wanted to spend it riding railroad trains in the Western mountains. Olive could not see train travel without a destination as being a vacation, particularly in their case. They had been arguing about it for some time, and whenever the subject came up, Ham would just go down to the basement and work on his railroad. With his vacation time already begun and the argument not settled, she was forced to take her case into his territory.

Ham had a habit, when concentrating on his work, of emitting a tuneless humming of which he was himself unaware but which got on Olive’s nerves like a dentist’s drill. She heard this continuous, monotonous sound during her journey down the basement stairs, and when she reached the bottom, out of breath from the exertion, she wheezed, “Stop that!”

He stopped working on a signal that was stuck at a siding and the humming automatically stopped also.

“I’d like to go to Miami Beach,” she said.

“No one with any sense would go to Florida in July,” said he.

“No one with any sense spends half his life playing with toy trains.”

“Don’t you call it a toy! It’s a railroad, and there’s no finer model railroad in the country!”

“I’d like to smash it to pieces!” cried Olive.

“Just you try and we’ll see who gets smashed to pieces!”

“You care more about that contraption than you do about me!” she shouted.

“You bet I do!” he shouted back.

The golden retriever, which had been lying on the floor in a corner, came forward, twitching his tail, upset by the sound of the raised voices. Olive, now trembling with rage, laid hands on a water tower alongside the railroad track where a car was waiting to take on water. Ham seized both her hands and pulled her away roughly. She fell. He stood over her, fists clenched, glaring down. The dog pushed between them, separating them, not taking sides. There was an awful moment when neither husband nor wife moved, each fearing she might have broken a hip or an ankle, despite the padding of fat, but she managed to get to her feet laboriously, without help.

“I’m leaving this house,” she declared, short of breath. “I’m going to go to Mom’s and stay there till you come to your senses.” She climbed the stairs with difficulty, stopping on each one to catch her breath. At the top she turned back and called the dog. “And I’m taking Rex,” she said. “You needn’t drive us over, Mom will come for us.” (Olive had never learned to drive a car.)

Ham heard her telephone to her mother and then move about overhead, presumably packing a suitcase. After a while, the front door was opened and closed, followed by the faint sound of an automobile being driven away.

He sat down to think and let his wrath subside. His present anger, brought on by present grievances — about the train, the vacation, the dog, the leaving for Mom’s — began growing bigger like a snowball, gathering to itself other grievances of long standing: Olive’s laziness, her unpunctuahty, bad housekeeping, childlessness, until he was consumed by an anger greater than he had yet known.

He would go away for his two weeks’ vacation and ride trains through the Rockies and Sierras, even the Copper Canyon in Mexico. It would be wonderful to do it all alone, as he could strike up acquaintance with all sorts of people in coach cars, dining cars, club cars, bars, restaurants, hotel lobbies. It would be a glorious two weeks. But then — after it was over, he would have to come back here, Olive would return from her mother’s, all would be again as it was now. And it was intolerable.

He decided to go away for good. He knew he had two weeks before he would be reported missing, and by that time Hamilton Stone would be gone, disappeared, vanished without a trace; he would have ceased to exist.

Fortunately, the Savings and Loan was open until late on Fridays, so he was able to withdraw all the money from Frank Johnston’s account. He ate his supper in the kitchen, where he found in the refrigerator a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, a loaf of Honey Krust bread, two pies — a custard and a lemon meringue — a gallon container of chocolate-chip ice cream, and a carton that had held a dozen Hershey bars, with almonds, of which three remained. When he had eaten sparingly — a few bites of everything — he turned off the refrigerator and speculated happily about what the contents would be like after two weeks.