In "The Invalid's Story ," the narrator and the expressman, Thompson, believe they are smelling the stench of a decaying corpse in its coffin. The narrator's friend, John B. Hackett, had died the day before and the narrator was transporting his remains to his mother and father in Wisconsin....
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Although Hackett has only been dead a day (and in the depths of winter), the narrator detects "a most evil and searching odor stealing about on the frozen air." This, he thinks, must be the body of his friend. The majority of the story is taken up with his efforts and those of the expressman to cover the terrible smell by such means as smoking cigars and sprinkling carbolic acid over the coffin. They even burn other foul-smelling objects, all to no avail. The odor destroys the narrator's health, hence the title of the story.
In fact, as the reader learns near the beginning of the story, the coffin was mixed up at the station with another man's luggage, a similar-looking pine box containing some guns. The smell which seems to the occupants of the carriage so like that of a decomposing corpse was caused by a parcel of ripe Limburger cheese (a food and a smell with which the narrator was unfamiliar) placed on one end of the box before the train began to move.