summary of short stories

1. Three Is a Lucky Number by Margery Allingham
Ronald Torbay is the killer in this story. He has a very well organized plan to kill. He meets a woman, he
marry her, and he kill her in the bath with a heater at the bottom of it. He killed two women this way just for
their money
So then he met a middle-aged woman called Edyth. They married, and three weeks after plaining how to
kill her, Ronald decided to do it.
Ronald prepared a bubble bath for Edith, he put the heater in the bathtub and then he turns off the power.
Edyth "got into" the bath. Ronald waited one minute to turn on the lights again. When he did it he asked
"Edyth?", because he wanted to know if she was still alive.
Half an hour later, Ronald found a book with Edyth´s documents. Finally, he found a letter with his name
on it. He read it.
The letter said that Edyth realized that Ronald is trying to kill her because the police showed Edith other
cases of women’s dying in bathtubs, and some photos of Ronald at one of his other dead wife funeral.
Full Circle by Sue Grafton
A girl named Caroline is shot while in a tragic car accident, and the witness to the whole accident happens
to be a private detective named Kinsey Millhone. Kinsey asked the victim’s mother if she can investigate the
“accident”.
At the end of the story we find out that Caroline’s murderer Terry Layton dies at the same location and in a
car accident just like Caroline. This is the power of karma.
How's Your Mother? by Simon Brett
Humphrey Partridge is the main character in this story. Humphrey pretendent to live with his mother just
because he wanted do seem always busy carrying for his mother.
One day, the curtain from his kitchen burnet and it started a fire. The postman saw the fire and he rushed
to put the fire out and look for Humphrey’s mother. But he found out that Humphreys mother was not
there. When he went home, Humphrey told the postman that his mother is actually dead and that she died
two days ago.

2. Some days later a police officer is suspecting that Humphrey actually killed his mother. The cop asked
Humphrey some questions but he snapped and he told the cop that he had never met his mother because
she left him and that he grew up in a children’s home. He also explained that the day when the curtain was
burning he won a competition and that he obtained a big amount of money.
The next days his mother shows up to his house (because she heard that he won a competition and that
he has a lot of money) asking him if she could take her with him in Canada. In that moment Humphrey killed
his mother by strangulating her.
In the end everyone thought that Humphrey was crazy so they let him go in Canada.
Slowly, Slowly in the Wind by Patricia Highsmith
Edward (Skip) Skipperton, a man with bad temper wants to buy a piece of land to fish on, only his
neighbour refuses to sell it. A feud ensues. This is made worse when the angry man’s daughter runs off with
the land-owners son the neighbours son).
Then Skip murders the neighbour and puts him in a scarecrow. When a group of kids discover the body on
Halloween, the angry man kills himself knowing that he will go to jail for life or even worse. His farmhand
Andy, despite knowing what happened with the murder, does not tell the police.
The Absence of Emily by Jack Ritchie
The story is talking about 2 sisters named Millicent and Emily. The sisters are completely different in looks
and in character. Millicent is tall and rather thin and Emily is rather short, and fat. Millicent likes to control
everyone around her including Emily. And then we got Albert who married Emily (Emily is Albert’s second
wife).
For three weeks, Emily had been away. Millicent was watching Alber closely because she thought that he
killed her sister. Since then Millicent was really sure that Albert killed her sister and she wanted him to
confess that.
But in the end we find out that Emily was going to a health farm in San Francisco, to lose
Weight, and that she didn’t want her sister to know that so she wouldn’t be ashamed.