Rear Window

Cornell Woolrich’s short story “Rear Window” first appeared under the title “It Had To Be Murder” in Dime Detective Magazine in 1942. The tale follows protagonist Hal “Jeff” Jeffries who is confined to his New York apartment by a broken leg during an oppressive summer heatwave. The back of his apartment looks toward the backs of the apartments on a parallel street, and Jeff routinely peeps from his rear window into theirs. He eventually becomes convinced that one of his neighbors murdered his wife. Woolrich was considered one of the finest crime authors of his era, and several movies have been adapted from his work including Alfred Hitchcock’s celebrated 1954 film Rear Window.

This guide refers to the version published in the recent collection of Woolrich’s fiction Rear Window and Other Murderous Tales (Renaissance Library, 2022).

“Rear Window” is narrated in the first person. Hal Jeffries begins by telling the reader how he passes his convalescence spying on his neighbors through their windows. One couple, in particular, catches his eye—they live below ongoing renovations on a floor above and seem to be struggling. The wife appears sickly, while the husband is jobless and spends his nights tending to her needs. Jeff becomes invested in their story and dynamic.

One sleepless night, Jeff notices their bedroom light left on with the shade closed. The next morning, he senses the husband’s nervousness and assumes it’s due to his wife’s insomnia. When the husband goes out and returns later in the day, however, Jeff notices something odd. The man doesn’t enter the bedroom to check on his wife as usual.

A cricket chirps that evening. The noise unsettles Jeff’s housekeeper, Sam, and he warns Jeff that the sound is an omen of imminent death. As the night progresses, Jeff watches his neighbor pack his wife’s clothing into a large trunk. The husband spends the night in the living room rather than the bedroom, which baffles Jeff, and Jeff also remarks on the man’s increased alcohol intake.

The next day, the husband admits two men into the apartment who take away the trunk. After their departure, he drinks again. When the husband finally ventures into the bedroom and raises the shade, Jeff sees that the bed is empty.

Jeff’s suspicion grows, and he enlists Sam to investigate the couple. Sam learns their names is Lars Thorwald and Anna Thorwald. Jeff continues to ponder the man’s curious behavior. Why did he avoid the bedroom until the trunk was gone? He decides to call his detective friend, Boyne. Despite some initial reluctance, Boyne agrees to investigate only to discover that the neighbors and building superintendent all say that Mrs. Thorwald was sent away for her health.

While Thorwald is out, Boyne and his crew snoop around the apartment. They discover a postcard from Mrs. Thorwald in the mailbox, but the date is illegible. Jeff suggests that it could be an old postcard planted to reinforce Thorwald’s story. He advises Boyne to track the mysterious trunk, which he believes to contain the wife’s body.

An irate Boyne later returns to Jeff with an update: his men have located the trunk and the living Mrs. Thorwald. He urges Jeff to forget the matter and leaves. Instead, Jeff pens a note asking, “What have you done with her?” He sends Sam to slip it under Thorwald’s door while he retrieves a spyglass and looks through the window. He watches Thorwald read the note and sees fear in the man’s expression.

Jeff observes the landlord showing a prospective tenant the apartment directly above Thorwald. For a moment, the movements of Thorwald and the people above him become synchronous as they move between windows. Jeff detects a slight difference between the two otherwise identical acts but is unable to explain or even describe it.

Jeff calls the suspect on the telephone, telling him he knows the man’s secret. He demands a bribe, and they set up a meeting in a park. As Thorwald leaves, he retrieves a gun, presumably planning to murder his extortioner. Jeff then asks Sam to enter Thorwald’s home and subtly disturb the scene, making it look as though someone searched the place. Jeff watches as Sam enters Thorwald’s apartment, leaving only moments before the man returns. Jeff calls Thorwald again. This time he claims to have found “it” and watches carefully in the hope that Thorwald will betray the body’s location. Instead, Thorwald quickly surveys his apartment, deduces that Jeff is lying, and hangs up.

Jeff’s mind turns to the strange moment earlier in which Thorwald mirrored the movements of the prospective tenants in the apartment above him. His phone rings, breaking into his thoughts. Believing it to be Boyne, he answers with “Hello,” but no one responds. The light flickers on in Thorwald’s apartment. Suddenly, he seems to look directly at Jeff’s window before shutting off the light and leaving. Jeff worries that the short phone call allowed the murderer to confirm both the identity of his extortioner and his location. A cricket again pierces the silence. Jeff then hears someone trying to open his door and thinks it’s Sam returning.

At this moment, Jeff has a revelation about the odd hitch in the movement he observed before. He tries to call Boyne but fails to reach them, and then the call goes dead as Thorwald cuts his telephone wire. Jeff realizes his danger, and before his adversary enters, he grabs a bust of a philosopher and poses in such a way that Thorwald shoots at it, mistaking it for Jeff’s head. A new disturbance at the door sends Thorwald fleeing. He scales his own building to the roof, and the new arrival, Boyne, shoots him from Jeff’s window. Thorwald falls to the courtyard below.

Jeff tells Boyne where the body is. He believes the apartment above Thorwald has a raised kitchen and dropped living room. It was this change in level that created the earlier discrepancy. Thorwald buried the body in the fresh cement of the apartment undergoing renovation. Boyne confirms this theory and explains his appearance at Jeff’s apartment. The descriptions of Mrs. Thorwald in the country didn’t match the tenants’ depiction of her, leading Boyne to realize that the woman going by her name was Thorwald’s accomplice rather than his wife.

Jeff and Boyne conclude that Thorwald’s financial troubles and exhaustion from caring for his wife led him to a devious plan. He insured his wife and then slowly poisoned her. When Mrs. Thorwald caught on, he accelerated his scheme and killed her directly. The story ends with the doctor arriving to remove Jeff’s cast.