How does Mary's careful planning influence the outcome of the story? Use evidence from the text to support your response. Be sure to explain how each piece of evidence supports your analysis.

Mary's careful planning and plotting resulted that she was not convicted of the crime at the conclusion of the story.

Explanation:

"Lamb to the Slaughter" is a short story written by Roald Dahl. the story is about the homicide committed by a wife of her husband.

Mary Maloney is the wife of Peter Maloney, who is a detective, and she is pregnant. In the story, Peter comes to Mary to ask for a divorce. Peter wanted to leave Mary, his wife, and unborn child for someone else.

Mary in her state of shock murdered her husband with a frozen leg of the lamb. She then carefully plans everything. She has been a submitted and committed wife, so she quickly cleans all the evidence of murder and goes to the local shop to buy groceries and comes back home and call the cops.

She then tearfully pleads the cops to let her complete the cooking of dinner. The cops agree to this assuming that Mary is in a state of shock of being a new widow. While the cops discuss what could be the weapon of murder, they were eating the legs of the lamb (the murder weapon).

Mary's careful planning influences the outcome of the story that she is not convicted of the crime.

To support the answers some evidence has been mentioned below:

" She practiced them several times more. Then she ran downstairs, took her coat, and went out the back door, through the garden into the street." (She plans her conversation with the grocer, so that she may have witness that she was not present at home at the time of the murder. She behaved very normally with Sam.)

"You must be very hungry by now because it's long past your supper time, and I know that Patrick would never forgive me if I let you stay in the house without offering you anything to eat." (She erased the evidence, the weapon of murder under the nose of the cops, by showing herself to be a good wife. She urged cops to have supper because Patrick would never have been happy to know that the guests went without having anything.)