the very murder weapon they have been looking for. In the end Mary seems to be enjoying her triumph and her new freedom.

And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle. 

Patrick Maloney, on the other hand, is a flat character, pretty much a stereotypical cop. He is the strong, silent type. He is devoted to his job. He doesn't appear to have much of a life outside of being a policeman, plodding the same beat day after day. The fact that he wants to get out of his marriage to Mary does not prove that he is capable of changing. He handles the breakup with Mary in the same fashion in which he might deal with a woman suspected of shoplifting. He may have feelings, but he is not in touch with them. He has to get drunk in order to say what he has to say to his wife. He does not show her any pity or sympathy at all. He is brutal. But maybe his job has made him that way. If he were leaving Mary because he was having an affair with another woman, that would suggest some change in Patrick's character. But evidently he is not emotionally involved with anyone else, as indicated by his keeping regular hours at home and by his concern about avoiding any hint of misbehavior reaching fellow officers and superiors. He ends his long speech to Mary with these words:

"Of course I'll give you money and see you're looked after. But there needn't really be any fuss. I hope not anyway. It wouldn't be very good for my job."

Mary Maloney is the protagonist and her husband, Patrick Maloney, is the antagonist. Mary is the main character, around whom the story revolves, and this makes her the protagonist. The "pro" of protagonist suggests a positive quality and while many protagonists are the "good guys," "good girls," or heroes, this is not always the case; obviously, Mary's heroism is questionable to say the least. The protagonist is simply the main character: Mary. We can say that Patrick is the antagonist because he is the one who antagonizes Mary.

However, by that definition, a reader could contend that Mary is an antagonist as well because (although Patrick is not the protagonist) she opposes Patrick and/or antagonizes him (to death) when he reveals that he is leaving her. But in typical readings, Mary would be the protagonist and Patrick would be the antagonist. The policemen are also potential antagonists in the sense that they pose potential opposition to Mary when they come to investigate the murder. But in Mary's brilliant strategy, she turns them from potential antagonists to allies by making them unknowingly eat the evidence: 

"That's a big bar the murderer must have used to hit poor Patrick. The doctor says the back of his head was broken to pieces.

"That's why the weapon should be easy to find."

"Exactly what I say."

"Whoever did it, he can't carry a weapon that big around with him."

"Personally, I think the weapon is somewhere near the house."

"It's probably right under our noses. What do you think, Jack?"

The protagonist of the story is Mary Maloney, a peaceful housewife, married and pregnant to a policeman, Patrick Maloney.

 Her gentle acceptance of her ordinary life changes when her husband announces that the marriage is over, but that she will need to keep quiet about the separation for the sake of his job. He shows no compassion for her emotional reaction, nor for the fact that she is pregnant with their child.

 She kills her husband in a moment of dissociation – clubbing him with a frozen leg of lamb. It is her primitive desire to survive and protect her child which causes her to coolly plan her alibi and to cover her crime, unwittingly abetted by her husband’s colleagues. She indeed keeps any scandal from emerging, although the information she hides is not quite what her husband had envisaged.