I think this story is told in a witty an interesting way since it started where it should have finished with the funeral of the main character to create intrigue. Emily was somehow weird when the story said that there was hair on the pillow which meant that she slept next to him when he was dead.
A loaded word is a word that not only informs but also caries some emotion with it, such as condemning, exciting, praising.
In the statement above the loaded word is "crushing" - it makes a qualitative statement about the defeat: it was a very definite defeat.
Swallowtail it has a s at the end of wings so no s on swallowtail