In Cold Blood

 "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 ru

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 banda

 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 speak of their post office as "the Fed Building," which seems rather too substantial a title to confer on a drafty and dusty shed. The ceiling leaks, the floor boards wobble, the mailboxes won't shut, the light bulbs are broken, the clock has stopped. "Yes, it's a disgrace," agrees the caustic, some-what original, and entirely imposing lady who presides over this "But the stamps work, don't they? Anyhow, what do I care? Back here in my part is real cozy. I've got my rocker, and a nice wood stove, and a coffee pot, and plenty to read."

 Mrs. Clare is a famous figure in Fi

 In fact, on that Sunday morning Mrs. Clare had just poured herself a cup of coffee from a freshly brewed pot when Mother Truitt returned. "Myrt!" she said, but could say no more until she had caught her breath. "Myrt, there's two ambulances gone to the Clutters'. "Her daughter said, "Where's the ten-thirty-two?"

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