Why did the townspeople say that it was probably best that Miss Emily just kill herself with the arsenic she purchased?

Simile is used to imply a macabre tone. For example, in the first description the reader has of Miss Emily, when the aldermen visit her house to ask for her taxes, she is described as "bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue." This comparison of Miss Emily to a drowned body suggests that she has been dead inside for a time now. The "motionless water" is the house around her, which remains frozen in a time past as the world outside changes. When the door is forced open to the deserted room in Part V, the narrator reports that "a thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room..." The diction choice of "tomb" hints to the reader what he or she is soon to discover: this room is, in fact, a tomb for Homer Barron.