Brody wakes the morning after the dinner party to find the bed beside him empty. Ellen - already decided on her course of action - sits by the window, her mood reflected by the weather. Even the "[rain]drops sliding down the glass" seem to have a lachrymal quality about them. Although her husband is aware of her "subdued sad" mood, he does not suspect the cause of it, and their brief exchange threatens to start another fight between them.
As soon as she is alone in the house, Ellen begins to make her elaborate preparations. In these there are interesting parallels with the details of Marion Crane's flight from Phoenix in Psycho. Both women are exposed to the observer (i.e. reader/viewer): Ellen showers and then stands naked before the mirror to assess her looks; Marion - no doubt fresh too from a shower that we can see in the background - has changed into black bra and panties. Once dressed, she too contemplates herself in the mirror in an attempt to stare down her own conscience. For both women there is a moment of doubt before the final decision. We get inside Ellen's head as she asks herself: "Were the goods good? Would the offer be accepted?". Marion says nothing, but Hitchcock's camera work and Bernard Herrmann's nagging score tell us all we need to know. On Marion's bed - beside the envelope of stolen money - is an open suitcase full of clothes. Ellen packs a plastic shopping bag with the items she will need to carry out her deception.
Marion has already got off early from work by pleading a migraine. Ellen tells her supervisor that "her thyroid was acting up again ... and she was getting her period." She sneaks out of the hospital and drives to a gas station in Sag Harbor, where she asks to use the ladies' room. Here she guiltily changes from her work clothes into a lavender summer dress, "looking at her reflection in the mirror above the sink." In a similar scene in Psycho Marion Crane counts out the money to buy a used car in a futile attempt to allay the suspicions of a highway patrolman.
Both women eventually arrive at cheap roadside motels although the respective fates they meet after having a meal are, of course, quite different. There is, nevertheless, something violent about the way Hooper climaxes. There's even a sentence that seems to echo the iconic music that underscores Marion Crane's death: "From his voice there came a gurgling whine, whose tone rose higher and higher with each frenzied thrust."
The key difference between these two parallel journeys is that Ellen Brody goes through with her 'crime' whereas Marion Crane resolves to pull herself out of the private trap she has created. Her conscience, however, comes too late to save her. Despite a brief "twinge of shame" that strikes Ellen on page 154, she remains unrepentant.
It's extremely unlikely that Peter Benchley actually modelled his chapter on the early structure of Hitchcock's film, but the duplication of imagery - like guilty reflections in a mirror - is intriguing.
