How funny! I wonder if I misread a detail, but honestly, it all happens "off screen." There's a few lines describing the way she's found, and then a single line describing the boy who hangs. Someone skimming would probably miss it completely, aside from the discussions after. I'm finding the "off screen" rape in Hangsaman much, much more terrible. I also found the mistreatment of the children by one another, and some of the parents' casual dismissal, worse than the dead toddler. I wonder, too, if it is something of the literary canon going, well, yes, all of the scholars agree she was bludgeoned, therefore she was bludgeoned. If I'd read that detail before, I would probably assume it was true.

As someone who also (tries to) writes, and it being Jackson's first novel, I wonder if she was trying to gear up for something much longer and involved, because all of the 'action' at the end--the bludgeoning, the titular road through the wall, it doesn't happen until the end.