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As Mrs. Hale sews and wonders about Minnie’s state of mind, Mrs. Peters notices an empty birdcage. Mrs. Hale recalls that a man selling canaries recently came around. She thinks the cat got the bird, but Minnie had recoiled fearfully at the Peters’ cat and wouldn’t likely have one. The cage’s door hangs from a twisted hinge.
Mrs. Hale says she should have visited Minnie. A songbird likely brought Minnie joy, but Wright was like “a raw wind that gets to the bone.” She suggests taking the quilting for Minnie to work on in jail. As they gather supplies, Mrs. Hale comes across a pretty box. Inside, wrapped in silk, is the bird, its neck crooked. The women regard each other, silently inferring what happened: Wright strangled the bird. Minnie strangled him.
Startled by the return of the sheriff and attorney, Mrs. Hale slips the box under quilt pieces in the sewing basket. When Mr. Henderson notices the empty birdcage, Mrs. Hale blames the cat, and Mrs. Peters notes that cats leave the house after a death. Ignoring them, Mr. Henderson comments that Wright’s own rope was used to strangle him. He and Mr. Peters go upstairs to recheck the crime scene.
The women fear to say aloud what they think. Then Mrs. Hale says that Minnie planned to bury the bird in the pretty box, and Mrs. Peters recalls a day from her childhood. A boy killed her kitten, and she wanted to hurt him. Mrs. Hale muses on Minnie’s lonely, childless days in the run-down kitchen. Wright wouldn’t have liked the songbird; he put an end to Minnie’s singing. Mrs. Peters objects, saying that they can’t know who killed the bird. But Mrs. Hale touches the birdcage and points out that Wright’s neck was wrung. Mrs. Peters recalls the terrible “stillness” after her first child died, then declares that crime deserves punishment.
Overwhelmed, Mrs. Hale blames herself for letting her friendship with Minnie lapse, a “crime” beyond legal reach. The women decide to tell Minnie that her fruit is fine and to give her the surviving jar as proof. Mrs. Peters imagines how the men would laugh if they knew the women were going on about a bird. As the men come downstairs, Mr. Henderson complains that while what happened is clear, there’s no compelling story to explain the “clumsy way” of killing. He’ll keep looking.
Sheriff Peters asks the attorney to inspect what the women will take to Minnie, but as he lifts a quilt piece from the basket, Mr. Henderson laughs that “a sheriff’s wife is married to the law.” Chuckling, the men go to check the windows, giving the women a moment to decide what to do about the bird. The box won’t fit in Mrs. Peters’ handbag, so Mrs. Hale hastily stuffs it in her coat pocket just in time. Mr. Henderson quips that, as far as the quilt is concerned, at least the men learned that Minnie planned to—he can’t think of the phrase, so Mrs. Hale supplies it: “knot it.”
