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“Mr. Peters says—.” Footsteps were heard in the room above; she stopped, looked up, then went on in a lowered voice: “Mr. Peters says—it looks bad for her. Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech, and he’s going to make fun of her saying she didn’t—wake up.”
For a moment Mrs. Hale had no answer. Then, “Well, I guess John Wright didn’t wake up—when they was slippin’ that rope under his neck,” she muttered.
“No, it’s strange,” breathed Mrs. Peters. “They think it was such a—funny way to kill a man.”
She began to laugh; at sound of the laugh, abruptly stopped.
These lines occur before the women find the badly stitched quilt piece and long before they discover the strangled canary. Much has been made—mostly by the men—of the fact that Mrs. Peters is the sheriff’s wife, and she has been described as meek and compliant. Mrs. Hale is not sure how far to trust Mrs. Peters, whom she doesn’t know well, with her worries about Minnie. Yet even at this time in the story, it’s clear that the other characters’ assumption that Mrs. Peters is loyal to her husband and to the law is likely flawed. She speaks only when she is sure her husband can’t hear her, and she reveals privileged information he told her about the case. She knows that this isn’t information she should share, and she is clearly anxious that the men, and perhaps Mrs. Hale also, continue to see her as a dutiful wife. Her nervous laughter and hushed tones give away her fascination with the case while suggesting that she is not as “married to the law” as the men think.
“My!" she began, in a high, false voice, “it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a—dead canary.” She hurried over that. “As if that could have anything to do with—with—My, wouldn't they laugh?”
These lines occur when Mrs. Peters is wrapping the only unbroken jar of fruit to take to Minnie. By this time in the story, although neither she nor Mrs. Hale has explicitly spoken the words, the women know that Minnie strangled her husband because he strangled her bird. Mrs. Peters struggles with the idea and tries to talk herself out of it more than once. Here, she feigns not to understand, perhaps because the truth is so horrible that she can’t entertain it for long. Yet she speaks in a “high, false voice,” and the dashes elide the words she can’t bring herself to say. She seems to adopt the attitude the men have earlier expressed about the “trifles” that women care about. In fact, however, she is in all likelihood making an excuse to withhold this incriminating clue from the men, who, she claims, would surely just laugh at the women. Mrs. Hale’s “muttered” words—“maybe they wouldn’t”—express what both women fear would actually happen if the attorney and sheriff saw the bird’s wrenched neck.
