chapter 5

eventually take place. The Rupp family were Roman

Catholics, the Clutters, Methodist—a fact that should initself be sufficient to terminate whatever fancies she and

this boy might have of some day marrying. Nancy had been

reasonable—at any rate, she had not argued—and now,

before saying good night, Mr. Clutter secured from her a

promise to begin a gradual breaking off with Bobby.

Still, the incident had lamentably put off his retiring time,

which was ordinarily eleven o’clock. As a consequence, it

was well after seven when he awakened on Saturday,

November 14, 1959. His wife always slept as late as

possible. However, while Mr. Clutter was shaving,

showering, and outfitting himself in whipcord trousers, a

cattleman’s leather jacket, and soft stirrup boots, he had no

fear of disturbing her; they did not share the same

bedroom. For several years he had slept alone in the

master bedroom, on the ground floor of the house—a two-

story, fourteen-room frame-and-brick structure. Though Mrs.

Clutter stored her clothes in the closets of this room, and

kept her few cosmetics and her myriad medicines in the

blue-tile-and-glass-brick bathroom adjoining it, she had

taken for serious occupancy Eveanna’s former bedroom,

which, like Nancy’s and Kenyon’s rooms, was on the

second floor.

The house—for the most part designed by Mr. Clutter, who

thereby proved himself a sensible and sedate, if not notably

decorative, architect—had been built in 1948 for forty

thousand dollars. (The resale value was now sixty thousand

dollars.) Situated at the end of a long, lanelike drivewayshaded by rows of Chinese elms, the handsome white

house, standing on an ample lawn of groomed Bermuda

grass, impressed Holcomb; it was a place people pointed

out. As for the interior, there were spongy displays of liver-

colored carpet intermittently abolishing the glare of

varnished, resounding floors; an immense modernistic

living-room couch covered in nubby fabric interwoven with

glittery strands of silver metal; a breakfast alcove featuring

a banquette upholstered in blue-and-white plastic. This sort

of furnishing was what Mr. and Mrs. Clutter liked, as did the

majority of their acquaintances, whose homes, by and

large, were similarly furnished.

Other than a housekeeper who came in on weekdays, the

Clutters employed no household help, so since his wife’s

illness and the departure of the elder daughters, Mr. Clutter

had of necessity learned to cook; either he or Nancy, but

principally Nancy, prepared the family meals. Mr. Clutter

enjoyed the chore, and was excellent at it—no woman in

Kansas baked a better loaf of salt-rising bread, and his

celebrated coconut cookies were the first item to go at

charity cake sales—but he was not a hearty eater; unlike

his fellow-ranchers, he even preferred Spartan breakfasts.

That morning an apple and a glass of milk were enough for

him; because he touched neither coffee or tea, he was

accustomed to begin the day on a cold stomach. The truth

was he opposed all stimulants, however gentle. He did not

smoke, and of course he did not drink; indeed, he had

never tasted spirits, and was inclined to avoid people who

continued ~

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