The first adjective that bests describes the police officers who are at the house of Patrick Maloney investigating his murder is easily led.
Although it took persuasion from the part of Mary Maloney, the policemen at the crime scene yield twice to the woman's requests for them to take either food or drink right in the middle of the fresh investigation of her husband’s cold-blooded murder.
This shows that they are easily led and manipulated based on how they set their priorities. Although the reader knows what happened, what the policemen know is that a member of their own police department has been murdered in his own home, and under mysterious circumstances. The fact that a police officer has presumably been the victim of crime is a really serious matter that could affect the entire police department. Yet, rather than putting into place the protocols that are necessary to preserve the purity of the crime scene, they accept Ms. Maloney’s invitations to share food and drink in the same scene of the crime. Soon enough, they are all drinking whiskey and having dinner. Unbeknownst to them, the main dish is the murder weapon: the leg of lamb with which Mary hit her husband over the head after snapping.
One by one the others came in and were persuaded to take a little nip of whiskey. They stood around rather awkwardly with the drinks in their hands, uncomfortable in her presence, trying to say consoling things to her.
They even acknowledge the awkwardness of the situation, and yet do nothing about it. They slowly start to lose their inhibitions, a side effect of alcohol, and will end up feasting on the leg of lamb.
The woman stayed where she was, listening to [...] their voices thick and sloppy because their mouths were full of meat.
"She wants us to finish it. She said so. Be doing her a favor."
"Okay then. Give me some more."
A second word that could help describe them is shortsighted.
Their actual eyesight may be working well, but their observation and analytical skills are not. The synonyms used for the word “shortsighted”, according to Encarta, are: “thoughtless”, “limited”, and “restricted”.The reason why these descriptors fit the policemen at the scene is because the men’s sense of perception, their sleuth mentality, and their ability to look further than the immediate clues in front of them, seem to be null. Moreover, they are quickly satisfied with what they can get instantly, and then become blinded to everything else around them. They are satisfied with just the quick information that Mary provides, and then get distracted with the shot of whiskey that she offers, and the dinner that she invites them to eat. Have they so quickly forgotten what had just taken place at that very house?
Additionally, there is no sign of them employing any sophisticated methods to test the area, nor do they come up with viable theories. Even when the policemen are eating at the table, not one of them offers anything of importance to the investigation. Moreover, the food and drink in front of them seems to be of higher importance than the tragic event. Their lack of brilliance and poor observation of facts will help Mary to, literally, get away with murder.
One final adjective that can be used to describe the policemen is inefficient.
The meaning of this word, according to Encarta is
performing tasks in a way that is not organized or fails to make the best use of something, especially time.
The men start to waste time when they accepted the drink of whiskey. Rather than focusing on hard and circumstantial evidence, they limit themselves to ask a few questions, make some observations, and then yielded to the invitation to have a drink. That is a major waste of time and resources because, once alcohol is involved, any professional activity should immediately cease, as alcohol consumption during work hours is against work ethics.
It's not strictly allowed, but I might take just a drop to keep me going.
Therefore, in a typical investigation, the drinking and eating would have taken time and efforts away from the investigation, and so this would be a failure that shows inefficiency.
Imagine for one moment that Patrick Maloney was actually killed at the hands of a stranger, while his heavily-pregnant wife, who could be any woman, was away at the market. Imagine being that wife. Imagine finding out that, during the search of the crime scene that holds the key to what happened to your husband, the investigators sat down to have dinner and drink whiskey right there where the crime took place. This is crassly unprofessional, whether they were persuaded to do it or not.
Doing this type of procedure could potentially ruin an entire investigation, especially if the weapon is still around the house. It was worse in this case: the policemen ate the leg of lamb, at the request of Mrs. Maloney, not knowing that the leg of lamb is the murder weapon! It is no wonder that Mary is giggling away in the room next door as she heard them speculating what could have happened to Patrick.
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