lying there, scared out of her wits. Well, she was wearing some jewelry, two rings — which
is one of the reasons why I’ve always discounted robbery as a motive — and a robe, and a white
nightgown, and white socks. Her mouth had been taped with adhesive, but she’d been shot pointblank in the side of the head, and the blast — the impact — had ripped the tape loose. Her eyes
were open. Wide open. As though she were still looking at the killer. Because she must have had
to watch him do it — aim the gun. Nobody said anything. We were too stunned. I remember the
sheriff searched around to see if he could find the discharged cartridge. But whoever had done it
was much too smart and cool to have left behind any clues like that.
«Naturally, we were wondering where was Mr. Clutter? And Kenyon? Sheriff said, ‘Let’s try
downstairs.’ The first place we tried was the master bedroom — the room where Mr. Clutter slept.
The bedcovers were drawn back, and lying there, toward the foot of the bed, was a billfold with a
mess of cards spilling out of it, like somebody had shuffled through them hunting something
particular — a note, an I.O.U., who knows? The fact that there wasn’t any money in it didn’t signify
one way or the other. It was Mr. Clutter’s billfold, and he never did carry cash. Even I knew that,
and I’d only been in Holcomb a little more than two months. Another thing I knew was that neither
Mr. Clutter nor Kenyon could see a darn without his glasses. And there were Mr. Clutter’s glasses
sitting on a bureau. So I figured, wherever they were, they weren’t there of their own accord. We
looked all over, and everything was just as it should be — no sign of a struggle, nothing disturbed.
Except the office, where the telephone was off the hook, and the wires cut, same as in the
kitchen. Sheriff Robinson, he found some shotguns in a closet, and sniffed them to see if they
had been fired recently. Said they hadn’t, and — I never saw a more bewildered man — said,
‘Where the devil can Herb be?’ About then we heard footsteps. Coming up the stairs from the
basement. ‘Who’s that?’ said the sheriff, like he was ready to shoot. And a voice said, ‘It’s me.
Wendle.’ Turned out to be Wendle Meier, the undersheriff. Seems he had come to the house and
hadn’t seen us, so he’d gone investigating down in the basement. The sheriff told him — and it was
sort of pitiful: ‘Wendle, I don’t know what to make of it. There’s two bodies upstairs. «Well,’ he
said, Wendle did, ‘there’s another one down here.’ So we followed him down to the basement. Or
playroom, I guess you’d call it. It wasn’t dark — there were windows that let in plenty of light.
Kenyon was over in a corner, lying on a couch. He was gagged with adhesive tape and bound
hand and foot, like the mother — the same intricate process of the cord leading from the hands to
the feet, and finally tied to an arm of the couch. Somehow he haunts me the most, Kenyon does. I
think it’s because he was the most recognizable, the one that looked the most like himself — even
though he’d been shot in the face, directly, head-on. He was wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans,
and he was barefoot — as though he’d dressed in a hurry, just put on the first thing that came to
hand. His head was propped by a couple of pillows, like they’d been stuffed under him to make an
easier target.
«Then the sheriff said, ‘Where’s this go to?’ Meaning another door there in the basement. Sheriff
led the way, but inside you couldn’t see your hand until Mr. Ewalt found the light switch. It was a
furnace room, and very warm. Around here, people just install a gas furnace and pump the gas
smack out of the ground. Doesn’t cost them a nickel — that’s why all the houses are over-heated.
Well, I took one look at Mr. Clutter, and it was hard to look again. I knew plain shooting couldn’t
account for that much blood. And I wasn’t wrong. He’d been shot, all right, the same as Kenyon with the gun held right in front of his face. But probably he was dead before he was shot. Or,
anyway, dying. Because his throat had been cut, too. He was wearing striped pajamas — nothing
else. His mouth was taped; the tape had been wound plumb around his head. His ankles were
tied together, but not his hands — or, rather, he’d managed, God knows how, maybe in rage or
pain, to break the cord binding his hands. He was sprawled in front of the furnace. On a big
cardboard box that looked as though it had been laid there specially. A mattress box. Sheriff said,
‘Look here, Wendle.’ What he was pointing at was a blood-stained footprint. On the mattress box.
A half-sole footprint with circles — two holes in the center like a pair of eyes. Then one of us — Mr.
Ewalt? I don’t recall — pointed out something else. A thing I can’t get out of my mind. There was a
steam pipe overhead, and knotted to it, dangling from it, was a piece of cord — the kind of cord the
killer had used. Obviously, at some point Mr. Clutter had been tied there, strung up by his hands,
and then cut down. But why? To torture him? I don’t guess we’ll never know. Ever know who did
it, or why, or what went on in that house that night. »After a bit, the house began to fill up. Ambulances arrived, and the coroner, and the Methodist
minister, a police photographer, state troopers, fellows from the radio and the newspaper. Oh, a
bunch. Most of them had been called out of church, and acted as though they were still there.
Very quiet. Whispery. It was like nobody could believe it. A state trooper asked me did I have any
official business there, and said if not, then I’d better leave. Outside, on the lawn, I saw the
undersheriff talking to a man — Alfred Stoecklein, the hired man. Seems Stoecklein lived not a
hundred yards from the Clutter house, with nothing between his place and theirs except a barn.
But he was saying as to how he hadn’t heard a sound — said, ‘I didn’t know a thing about it till five
minutes ago, when one of my kids come running in and told us the sheriff was here. The Missis
and me, we didn’t sleep two hours last night, was up and down the whole time, on account of we
got a sick baby. But the only thing we heard, about ten-thirty, quarter to eleven, I heard a car
drive away, and I made the remark to Missis, «There goes Bob Rupp.» ‘ I started walking home,
and on the way, about halfway down the lane, I saw Kenyon’s old collie and that dog was scared.
Stood there with its tail between its legs, didn’t bark or move. And seeing the dog — somehow that
made me feel again. I’d been too dazed, too numb, to feel the full viciousness of it. The suffering.
The horror. They were dead. A whole family. Gentle, kindly people, people I knew — murdered.
You had to believe it, because it was really true.»
Eight non-stop passenger trains hurry through Holcomb every twenty-four hours. Of these, two
pick up and deposit mail — an operation that, as the person in charge of it fervently explains, has
its tricky side. «Yessir, you’ve got to keep on your toes. Them trains come through here,
sometimes they’re going a hundred miles an hour. The breeze alone, why, it’s enough to knock
you down. And when those mail sacks come flying out — sakes alive! It’s like playing tackle on a
football team: Wham! Wham! WHAM! Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s honest work,
government work, and it keeps me young.» Holcomb’s mail messenger, Mrs. Sadie Truitt — or
Mother Truitt, as the townspeople call her — does seem younger than her years, which amount to
seventy-five. A stocky, weathered widow who wears babushka bandannas and cowboy boots
(«Most comfortable things you can put on your feet, soft as a loon feather»), Mother Truitt is the
oldest native-born Holcombite. «Time was wasn’t anybody here wasn’t my kin. Them days, we
called this place Sherlock. Then along came this stranger. By the name Holcomb. A hog raiser,
he was. Made money, and decided the town ought to be called after him. Soon as it was, what
did he do? Sold out. Moved to California. Not us. I was born here, my children was born here.
And! Here! We! Are!» One of her children is Mrs. Myrtle Clare, who happens to be the local
postmistress. «Only, don’t go thinking that’s how I got this position with the government. Myrt
didn’t even want me to have it. But it’s a job you bid for. Goes to whoever puts in the lowest bid.
And I always do — so low a caterpillar could peek over it. Ha-ha! That sure does rile the boys. Lots
of boys would like to be mail messenger, yessir. But I don’t know how much they’d like it when the
snow’s high as old Mr. Primo Camera, and the wind’s blowing blue-hard, and those sacks come
sailing — Ugh! Wham!»
In Mother Truitt’s profession, Sunday is a workday like any other. On November 15, while she
was waiting for the west bound ten-thirty-two, she was astonished to see two ambulances cross
the railroad tracks and turn toward the Clutter property. The incident provoked her into doing what
she had never done before — abandon her duties. Let the mail fall where it may, this was news.
that Myrt must hear at once.
The people of Holcomb