<Li> John Wright--The murdered man and owner of the house </Li> <Li> Mrs. Minnie Wright--John Wright's wife and his murderer </Li> <P> The play begins as the men, followed by the women, enter the Wright's empty farm house . On command from the county attorney, Mr. Hale recounts his visit to the house the previous day, when he found Mrs. Wright behaving strangely and her husband upstairs with a rope around his neck, dead . Mr. Hale notes that when he questioned her, Mrs. Wright claimed that she was asleep when someone strangled her husband . While the county attorney, Mr. Hale, and Mr. Peters are searching the house for evidence, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find clues in the kitchen and hallway to this unsolved mystery . The men find no clues upstairs in the Wright house that would prove Mrs. Wright guilty, but the women find a dead canary that cracks the case wide open . The wives realize Mr. Wright killed the bird, and that led to Mrs. Wright killing her husband . The wives piece together that Minnie was being abused by her husband, and they understand how it feels to be oppressed by men . Because they feel bad for Minnie, they hide the evidence against her and she is spared the punishment for killing her husband . </P> <P> The play is loosely based on the murder of John Hossack, which Glaspell reported on while working as a news journalist for the Des Moines Daily News . Hossack's wife, Margaret, was accused of killing her husband . However, Margaret argued that an intruder had killed John with an axe . She was convicted but it was overturned on appeal . </P>

Who is suspected of having killed the owner of the farmhouse in trifles