The smell is that of Homer's rotting body. The story is not structured chronologically. It is told out of order, and this incident takes place prior to the section where Faulkner discusses Homer's disappearance. The reader can infer that Emily purchased the rat poison not to commit suicide, as the druggist suspected, but to keep Homer from shaming her further and totally abandoning her.
One can imagine that Emily could be driven to murder her one chance at love since her father drove away any love interests. When her father died, she was left all alone. So when Homer arrives, she has a chance at love again. However, while everyone in town seems to realize that he is just using her, Emily does not. So when it becomes clear to her that he is just using her and going to abandon her, one could see how she might be driven to poison him and keep him from leaving. Of course, it is Homer's corpse that the townspeople find in the upstairs bedroom when they finally breach the house after Emily's death. It is also Emily's gray hair they find on the pillow next to the corpse. Obviously, she kept Homer's body and slept next to it.
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