the faculty unable to find, or
afford, other quarters. Nevertheless, Susan Kidwell and her mother had managed to sugar the pill
and install a cozy atmosphere in their apartment — three rooms on the ground floor. The very
small living room incredibly contained — aside from things to sit on — an organ, a piano, a garden of
flowering flowerpots, and usually a darting little dog and a large, drowsy cat. Susan, on this
Sunday morning, stood at the window of this room watching the street. She is a tall, languid
young lady with a pallid, oval face and beautiful pale-blue-gray eyes; her hands are extraordinary

long-fingered, flexible, nervously elegant. She was dressed for church, and expected
momentarily to see the Clutters’ Chevrolet, for she too, always attended services chaperoned by
the Clutter family. Instead, the Ewalts arrived to tell their peculiar tale.
But Susan knew no explanation, nor did her mother, who said, if there was some change of plan,
why, I’m sure they would have telephoned. Susan, why don’t you call the house? They could be
asleep — I suppose.»
«So I did,» said Susan, in a statement made at a later date. «I called the house and let the phone
ring — at least, I had the impression it was ringing — oh, a minute or more. Nobody answered, so
(Mr. Ewalt suggested that we go to the house and try to ‘wake them up.’ But when we got there — I
didn’t want to do it. Go to the house. I was frightened, and I don’t know why, because it never
occurred to me — well, something like that just doesn’t. But the sun was so bright, everything
looked too bright and quiet. And then I saw that all the cars were there, even Kenyon’s old coyote
wagon. Mr. Ewalt was wearing work clothes; he had mud on his boots; he felt he wasn’t properly
dressed to go calling on Clutters. Especially since he never had. Been in the house, I mean.
Finally, Nancy said she would go with me. We went around to the kitchen door, and, of course, it
wasn’t locked; the only person who ever locked doors around there was Mrs. Helm, the family
never did. We walked in, and I saw right away that the Clutters hadn’t eaten breakfast; there were
no dishes, nothing on the stove. Then I noticed something funny: Nancy’s purse. It was lying on
the floor, sort of open. We passed on through the dining room, and stopped at the bottom of the
stairs. Nancy’s room is just at the top. I called her name, and started up the stairs, and Nancy
Ewalt followed. The sound of our footsteps frightened me more than anything, they were so loud
and everything else was so silent. Nancy’s door was open. The curtains hadn’t been drawn, and
the room was full of sunlight. I don’t remember screaming. Nancy Ewalt says I did — screamed and
screamed. I only remember Nancy’s Teddy bear staring at me. And Nancy. And running . . .»
In the interim, Mr. Ewalt had decided that perhaps he ought not to have allowed the girls to enter
the house alone. He was getting out of the car to go after them when he heard the screams, but
before he could reach the house, the girls were running toward him. His daughter shouted, «She’s
dead!» and flung herself into his arms. «It’s true, Daddy! Nancy’s dead!»
Susan turned on her. «No, she isn’t. And don’t you say it. Don’t you dare. It’s only a nosebleed.
She has them all the time, terrible nosebleed, and that’s all it is.»
«There’s too much blood. There’s blood on the walls. You didn’t really look.»
«I couldn’t make head nor tails,» Mr. Ewalt subsequently testified. «I thought maybe the child was
hurt. It seemed to me the first thing to do was call an ambulance. Miss Kidwell — Susan — she told
me there was a telephone in the kitchen. I found it, right where she said. But the receiver was off
the hook, and when I picked it up, I saw the line had been cut.»
Larry Hendricks, a teacher of English, aged twenty-seven, lived on the top floor of the Teacherage. He wanted to write, but his apartment was not the ideal lair for a would-be author. It
was smaller than the Kidwell’s, and, moreover, he shared it with a wife, three active children, and
a perpetually functioning television set. («It’s the only way we can keep the kids pacified.») Though
as yet unpublished, young Hendricks, a he-mannish ex-sailor from Oklahoma who smokes a pipe
and has a mustache and a crop of untamed black hair, at least looks literary — in fact, remarkably
like youthful photographs of the writer he most admires, Ernest Hemingway. To supplement this
teacher’s salary, he also drove a school bus.
«Sometimes I cover sixty miles a day,» he said to an acquaintance. «Which doesn’t leave much
time for writing. Except Sundays. Now, that Sunday, November fifteenth, I was sitting up here in
the apartment going through the papers. Most of my ideas for stories, I get them out of the
newspapers — you know? Well, the TV was on and the kids were kind of lively, but even so I could
hear voices. From downstairs. Down at Mrs. Kidwell’s. But I didn’t figure it was my concern, since
I was new here — only came to Holcomb when school began. But then Shirley — she’d been out
hanging up some clothes — my wife, Shirley, rushed in and said, ‘Honey, you better go downstairs.
They’re all hysterical.’ The two girls — now, they really were hysterical. Susan never has got over
it. Never will, ask me. And poor Mrs. Kidwell. Her health’s not too good, she’s high-strung to begin
with. She kept saying — but it was only later I understood what she meant — she kept saying, «Oh,
Bonnie, Bonnie, what happened? You were so happy, you told me it was all over, you said you’d
never be sick again.’ Words to that effect. Even Mr. Ewalt, he was about as worked up as a man
like that ever gets. He had the sheriff’s office on the phone — the Garden City sheriff — and he was
telling him that there was ‘something radically wrong over at the Clutter place.’ The sheriff
promised to come straight out, and Mr. Ewalt said fine, he’d meet him on the highway. Shirley
came downstairs to sit with the women, try and calm them — as if anybody could. And I went with
Mr. Ewalt — drove with him out to the highway to wait for Sheriff Robinson. On the way, he told me
what had happened. When he came to the part about finding the wires cut, right then I thought,
Uh-uh, and decided I’d better keep my eyes open. Make a note of every detail. In case I was ever
called on to testify in court.
«The sheriff arrived; it was nine thirty-five — I looked at my watch. Mr. Ewalt waved at him to follow
our car, and we drove out to the Clutters’. I’d never been there before, only seen it from a
distance. Of course, I knew the family. Kenyon was in my sophomore English class, and I’d
directed Nancy in the ‘Tom Sawyer’ play. But they were such exceptional, unassuming kids you
wouldn’t have known they were rich or lived in such a big house — and the trees, the lawn,
everything so tended and cared for. After we got there, and the sheriff had heard Mr. Ewalt’s
story, he radioed his office and told them to send reinforcements, and an ambulance. Said,
‘There’s been some kind of accident.’ Then we went in the house, the three of us. Went through
the kitchen and saw a lady’s purse lying on the floor, and the phone where the wires had been
cut. The sheriff was wearing a hip pistol, and when we started up the stairs, going to Nancy’s
room, I noticed he kept his hand on it, ready to draw.
«Well, it was pretty bad. That wonderful girl — but you would never have known her. She’d been
shot in the back of the head with a shotgun held maybe two inches away. She was lying on her
side, facing the wall, and the wall was covered with blood. The bedcovers were drawn up to her
shoulders. Sheriff Robinson, he pulled them back, and we saw that she was wearing a bathrobe,
pajamas, socks, and slippers — like, whenever it happened, she hadn’t gone to bed yet. Her hands
were tied behind her, and her ankles were roped together with the kind of cord you see on
Venetian blinds. Sheriff said, ‘Is this Nancy Clutter?’ — he’d never seen the child before. And I said,
‘Yes. Yes, that’s Nancy.’
«We stepped back into the hall, and looked around. All the other doors were closed. We opened
one, and that turned out to be the bathroom. Something about it seemed wrong. I decided it was
because of the chair — a sort of dining-room chair, that looked out of place in a bathroom. The
next door — we all agreed it must be Kenyon’s room. A lot of boy-stuff scattered around. And I
recognized Kenyon’s glasses — saw them on a bookshelf beside the bed. But the bed was empty,
though it looked as if it had been slept in. So we walked to the end of the hall, the last door, in
there, on her bed, that’s where we found Mrs. Clutter. She’d been tied, too. But differently — with
her hands in front of her, in that she looked as though she were praying — and in one hand she
was holding, gripping, a handkerchief. Or was it Kleenex? The cord around her wrists ran down to
her ankles, which were bound together, and then ran on down to the bottom of the bed, where it was tied to the footboard — a very complicated, artful piece of work. Think how long it took to do!
And her