NUTSHELL STUDIES OF UNEXPLAINED DEATH, LOG CABIN, 1942

— after Frances Glessner Lee’s murder diorama

More often than not, assumptions kill an investigation. They close off possibilities and tighten focus. Other scenarios fail to add up. No doubt, though, investigators walking into this scene made a few of them. Remote log cabin, the Hy-Da-Way. Local insurance salesman, Arthur Roberts, face-down dead on the floor from a gunshot that passed from his chest through his back at close range. The woman who reported everything, Marian Chase, said he’d pulled out a cigarette but dropped it on the floor. When he bent over to pick it up, she heard a gunshot and watched him fall to the ground. Marian told police she had picked up the gun in her panic before dropping it back onto the ground where it presently lay. She also mentioned the couple were married, but not to each other, and that Arthur had broken off the affair upon arriving at the cabin. Marian insisted there had been no quarrel. It’s those last two admissions, Marian handling the firearm and there not having been an argument after the breakup, that would have led detectives down assumption boulevard. I’m sure of it. Marian’s purse was left on the bed, letting the cops know where she thought the rendezvous was headed, and the gun was dropped on Arthur’s left side a foot from his head, an unusual drop if he’d shot himself bending over as Marian’s account implied. Two people having an affair. One breakup. One dead body. One survivor. One story. The math practically sums itself.