A married couple live in a house on one side of a river. The wife has a lover who lives on the other side. The only way to get across the river is to walk across the bridge or to pay the boatman.

The husband has to go on an overnight business trip to a faraway town. The wife pleads with him to take her with him. She knows if that he doesn't she will be unfaithful to him. The husband absolutely refuses to take her because she will only be in the way of his important business. So the husband goes alone.

That night, the wife goes over the bridge and stays with her lover. Dawn is almost up when the wife leaves because she must be back home before her husband returns. She starts walking across the bridge but sees an assassin waiting for her on the other side. She knows if she tries to cross, he will murder her. In terror, she runs up the side of the river and asks the boatman to take her across the river, but he wants too much money. She doesn't have enough, so he refuses to take her.

The wife runs back to the lover's house and explains her predicament and asks him to pay the boatman. The lover refuses, telling her it's her own fault for getting into this situation. As dawn comes up the wife decides to dash across the bridge. She comes face to face with the assassin and he kills her.

The five characters in the story are listed below in alphabetical order. List the names in the order in which you think they were most responsible for the wife's death.

• Assassin
• Boatman
• Husband
• Lover
• Wife