Thread: how can one inactively kill somebody?

If you're going for irony/karma rather than plotting on the wife's part, then the medications are only good if, say, she is too teary-eyed after a fight, or has a swollen black eye, to see which medications she was giving him. Even passively watching him die without doing anything is too close to "killing" on her part, she still wants to see him die and lets him do so. Unless that's what you're going for.

I'm thinking more along the lines of, the husband does something to her that directly causes his death. Rustgold's idea of locking herself in a room sounds good, if he was, say, having a heart attack or something, and needed her to take him to the hospital, but she didn't know and was too scared to come out. SeverinR's idea of an ignored subarachnoid hematoma is also a really good one.

Or perhaps she has open medicine bottles, and he knocks her into them or knocks into them himself, and some similar-looking meds get mixed up?

He has a pre-existing condition that he does not know about, and is getting himself worked up beating her, and keels over from a heart attack? That isn't strictly caused by some action/inaction on her part, but it fits into the same "karma" idea.

The only problem I see with diabetes is that unless she switches the insulin for another substance, the husband should have no trouble in treating himself. Perhaps a severe allergy could work better?

Deadly allergies like food(especially shellfish or nuts) or medication could work well, but then again it's no more interesting than poison, she would have to plant it. A scenario comes to mind where she can kill him in a very elaborate but indirect way:

Her husband has a severe allergy toward bees. According to him the only reason they haven't been wiped off the earth is that people would miss honey cake, his favorite dessert. After an unusually severe beating, the woman discovers that a hive of bees has started to form in the neighbors wall. she plays with the thought a bit. "what if he would just get stung and nobody got him to a hospital?"

Later on in the story she's gazing out the window again, towards the bees and how they are flocking particularly toward a specific type of flower in the garden. She hears the neighbor calling the exterminators and that they will be there in two days. Her daydream dies and she begins to prepare dinner. Her husband comes home after having a bad day and for one reason or another he is not pleased with the way he is received. He beats the living crap out of her and she swears to make everything perfect for him next time he comes home.

The next day she starts preparing a marvelous dinner for him. She scrubs and cleans the whole house, takes out the best plates, buys his favorite beer, and while the dinner cooks in the oven, she runs out to buy a tons of flowers and puts them in every window, exactly the kind of flowers that the bees love. Finally she puts on an old jazz record, his favorite songs, and the crackling of the scratched record mixes in with the melody and the old speakers add a slight humming, buzzing sound to the tunes.
She leaves the oven on and open while she serves the food, opens the blinds and the curtains to let the sun in, and leaves hot water running in the shower and in every sink; turning everything off right before her husband arrives.

When he comes home he complains about the heat, so she opens all the windows. While he eats he complains about the flowers but she insists that she bought them just for him, making up some corny compliment to justify the type of flowers and the amount of them. As he eats, one bee after another start flying into the house, their buzzing masked by the sound of the scratched old record and the speakers. He keeps eating, unaware of their intrusion until the very last bite of food, when a bee lands on his plate. He freaks out, gets up, and begins noticing the multitude of bees that surround him. He starts waving anything he can find, trying to swat them or chase them out but ultimately he only succeeds in angering them.

He gets stung several times and while he collapses, choking to death from his own throat closing up, she goes to the store to buy dessert: a delicious honey cake with rum and a zert of orange.

A very feminine murder, coupled with an alibi at the end.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________

EDIT: This is of course a planned murder, not an accidental twist of fate.

Not sure if this is what you are after but how about this. She shares her woes with somebody who is a person in authority but sworn to secrecy, say a therapist or a priest. She tells of the years of abuse and the feelings of helplessness. This person is in reality a vigilanty killer who goes around writing the wrongs done to people in his/her care. They could set up an elaborate trap for the husband to fall into or just slaughter them. They could tell husband that they are acting on behalf of the wife withot her consent. There are many ways that this could go but essentially she would be responsible for his death because she unwittingly alerted some psycho to kill him.


I hope this is research for fiction