After Miss Emily's funeral, the people of Jefferson discover an old, rotted corpse in a closed room in Emily's house. This corpse belonged to Homer Barron, a character who died almost forty years before the day his body was found. The corpse was found lying in a bed with a deep impression beside him on the pillow, where it is implied that Emily would lay beside him.
The discovery of Homer's body ties together several loose ends in Emily's history. It proves that the arsenic that she purchased was used to poison Homer. She was in love with him, but the story implies he was gay—at the very least, he was disinterested in marrying her. It also proves that the terrible smell that townspeople had chosen to cover up with lime was actually the smell of Homer's rotting body. Finally, this discover leaves the reader wondering if the townspeople really never put all this together for themselves.
Following Miss Emily's funeral, the citizens of Jefferson explore her home and enter the mysterious room on the top floor: a dust-filled bridal suite that has (supposedly) remained untouched for decades. On the bed are the skeletal remains of Miss Emily's former lover, Homer Barron. Homer had disappeared decades ago, while he was still courting Miss Emily. Miss Emily discovered that Homer had no plans of marrying her, which motivated her to purchase arsenic and kill him.
In addition to finding Homer Barron's remains, the townspeople are also shocked to discover a thin strand of iron-gray hair on the pillow next to his skeleton. The iron-gray hair reveals that Miss Emily was sleeping with his corpse and suggests that she engaged in necrophilia, which is a highly disturbing discovery.
Miss Emily Grierson has always been a respected figure in the town, not least because she constitutes a living relic of a romanticized, ante bellum past. She's very rude and rather eccentric, but she gets a pass from the townsfolk on account of her coming from a good family. (She's even exempt from paying local taxes). But the signs are there that she's more than just a tad eccentric. The persistent stench emanating from her house should be a clue that there's something wrong. Yet everyone turns a blind eye; they convince themselves it's probably just the smell of a dead animal, a snake or a rat, perhaps.
It's only after Emily's death that the true source of that revolting stench is finally determined. The locked door of an upstairs room is broken down, and inside is a scene of unimaginable horror. In what looks just like an old-fashioned bridal room, complete with faded rose curtains and lamps with rose-colored shades, there lies upon the bed the rotting corpse of Homer Barron, the man that Emily wanted to marry, but was forbidden to do so by her father. On the pillow next to Homer's corpse is the indentation of a head as well as one of Emily's long gray hairs.
As the narrator foreshadows throughout William Faulkner’s short story, the townspeople of Jefferson discover what they expected to in the closed-up portion of Miss Emily Grierson’s home.
The speaker states that the people at the funeral wait until Emily’s body is buried to open the room, because they think it is improper or rude to do so beforehand. When they open the room, the narrator describes a bridal parlor of sorts: fancy decor, an engraved men’s toilet set, and clothes.
“The man himself” lies in the bed—the skeletal remains of Homer Barron, Emily’s long-ago maybe-lover who had jilted her on and off throughout their relationship. On the pillow next to Barron, the people find a single strand of “iron-gray” hair, which the reader infers is Miss Emily’s, based on earlier descriptions of her.
Thus, the final paragraphs of the story reveal that Miss Emily murdered and entombed Homer Barron, and even slept next to his decaying body.
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