{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3274", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3274, "subject": "Peace: Who killed Mr. Tilly?", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-05-22T09:42:50+00:00", "last": "2002-05-22T15:31:56+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-05-22T09:42:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Peace: Who killed Mr. Tilly?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello,\n\nDid Mrs. Tilly's ghost really poison Mr. TIlly? I haven't seen this question \ndiscussed in the mailing list, so I'm assuming that most people think the \nghost did it. I think it must be somebody else. I'm not quite sure who, so \nI'm going to list all the suspects I can come up with, and give my thoughts. \nMaybe someone can find more clues and unambiguously identify the real \nculprit. \n\nWhy do I suspect it wasn't the ghost? What made me suspicious in the first \nplace is that in two places, Wolfe has people suspect that it wasn't.\nJulius Smart says to Mr. Tilly \"Then I told him that when he'd said the ghost \nwas putting that stuff in his food I hadn't believed him; I'd heard of them \nplaying the piano and unlocking doors and all that--even pulling the covers \noff beds--but never of putting something in someone's food before.\"\nLater, Blaine says to Weer, who's seeing him about Gold's book, \"Anyway, I \nnever believed in the ghost. I think that woman was alive ...\" and proceeds \nto give an explanation of how somebody trying to peek out unobserved could \nmake a window curtain move and have it look like a ghost.\n\nOf course, Blaine is wrong about half the things he says. But I think Wolfe \nis giving us hints here, and that Julius is right about ghosts not being able \nto poison people. The one ghost we know best from this book, Weer, certainly \ncouldn't. So here's my list of suspects. \n\n1. Mrs. Tilly's ghost.\nPro: this is the most straightforward interpretation. She has a good motive: \nrevenge.\nCon: Mrs. Tilly's ghost would have to be a lot more together than Weer's \nghost for this. And it seems unlikely that a ghost could poison people if \nit's correct that ghosts are souls in Purgatory waiting for admission to \nHeaven when (or if) they accept Jesus and repent of their sins. Since I like \nthis interpretation, I don't want to believe that it was Mrs. Tilly's ghost, \neven if she was haunting the house.\n\n2. Mrs. Tilly, still alive.\nPro: this is what Blaine believes. If Mr. Tilly killed their son by \nexperimenting on him, she has a motive.\nCon: Blaine is wrong half the time. Furthermore, either Mrs. Tilly would \nhave to somehow have survived her immersion in a methanol-filled coffin, or \n(as Blaine has it) there's a methanol-filled coffin lying around for no \napparent reason which she accidentally tumbles into after Mr. Tilly dies. I \ndon't think there's any chance that this is correct.\n\n3. Mr. Tilly himself, in a Jekyll-and-Hyde act.\nPro: this is indeed a Wolfean thing to happen.\nCon: I don't see any clues that this is happening. Of course, Wolfe's clues \nare notoriously hard to find.\n\n4. One of Mr. Tilly's clients, or somebody else, from a carnival.\nPro: He (she) could have had access to the drug that killed Mr. Tilly, by \nstealing it from Mr. Litho or another client. He (she) could easily have a \nmotive. \nCon: The drug was administrated over a period of years. A stranger, \nespecially one of Mr. Tilly's carnie clients, would be fairly conspicuous \nhanging around a small town.\n\n5. Mrs. Tilly's relatives. There are three of them around--two aunts and an \nuncle. \nPro: Their motive would be revenge for Mrs. Tilly's death. If they had \nkeys, it's plausible that one of them could hide in the locked bedroom \ncontaining Mrs. Tilly's coffin, and sneak out at night to put the drug in Mr. \nTilly's food. Hearing her (I'm assuming it's an aunt, since Mr. Tilly says \nher footsteps sound like his wife's) Mr. Tilly and Julius think she's Mrs. \nTilly's ghost. After Mr. Tilly dies, the key to the locked bedroom is \nmissing; if one of Mrs. Tilly's relatives stole it, this explains why it's \ngone. Also, Mrs. Tilly's relatives take a number of valuables out of the \nhouse, but don't even ask to look in the locked bedroom containing Mrs. \nTilly's coffin. One explanation might be that they already know what's in \nthere. They also let Julius continue running the pharmacy at a very generous \nwage, and let him live rent-free in the house. Maybe they're trying to bribe \nhim just in case he suspects something.\nCon: They could be letting him live rent-free because the house has a \nreputation for being haunted, and there's nobody else who'd rent it. And \nthey could have continued letting him work at the pharmacy for the generous \nwages that Mr. Tilly gave him because they don't want the town's only \npharmacy closed, and they're either too nice to reduce his wages, or don't \nrealize how generous they're being. Also, you'd think it'd be a lot safer to \nsneak into Mr. Tilly's house in daytime when he was at the drugstore, and if \nfor some reason the aunt was surprised by Mr. Tilly coming home unexpectedly, \nyou'd think she'd hide in the locked bedroom until she could leave the house, \nand not pace up and down the hall like a ghost. Finally, I've been thinking \nabout Blaine's explanation about how somebody could look out a window and not \nbe seen by hiding under the window, twitching the curtain, and looking in a \nmirror on the opposite wall. It'd certainly work on the first floor (where \nBlaine presumably would have used it) but I'm not sure it'd work on the \nsecond, which is where Julius saw the window curtains twitch. \n\n6. Julius Smart.\nThis is the most interesting one.\nPro: He has a motive: money. Charlie Turner (the dog-boy) shows up to visit \nwhen Weer was president. We can assume that he is trying to visit Julius, \nand hadn't heard about his death. If he was visiting because he needed more \nof the hair medicine, then it would seem that Julius took over Mr. Tilly's \ncarnie business. In this case, you don't need to assume that Mr. Tilly's \nwages were excessively generous to explain how Julius got enough money to buy \nBledsoe's drugstore--Julius could be lying so as to have an acceptable \nexplanation for his money. And if he killed Mr. Tilly, then he's lying about \na lot more than that. In this scenario, how much of Julius's story can we \ntrust? From Charlie Turner's visit, we have independent evidence of Mr. \nTilly's hair medicine, which I think means we can trust the account of \nJulius's visit to the carnival and of Janet Turner's visit to the drugstore. \nAnd even if Julius poisoned him, I'd tend to believe that Mr. Tilly was \npetrified by his own medicine. But I don't know how much of the rest of the \nstory to believe in this case.\nWas there a ghost? A locked room? A methanol-filled zinc coffin?\n\nIf Julius did poison Mr. Tilly, you'd expect there to be clues. I'd expect \nWolfe to have hidden several inconsistencies in Julius's account, so a reader \ndiscovering them could deduce that Julius was lying. And, of course, upon \nlooking for them, I picked up a couple of things that look like \ninconsistencies. It's hard to tell whether they're Julius Smart's mistakes, \nor Gene Wolfe's mistakes, or even whether they're mistakes at all. Here they \nare.\n\na) The season. When Julius Smart goes grocery shopping, he picks up oranges, \nwhich must be in season since he says they were locally grown and cheap. My \ngrandparents lived in Florida, and had an orange (and lemon) tree in the \nbackyard; these gave fruit in the winter. Looking on the web, I found a page \nsaying that domestic oranges were in season (depending on the variety) mainly \nfrom October through April, and Weer got oranges for Christmas as a special \ntreat when he was a kid. The season may be even shorter if you restrict \nyourself to the gulf coast. However, on the day Julius buys the oranges, \nit's still 90 degrees after midnight, which one would expect only happens \ncloser to summer. If Julius poisoned Mr. Tilly over a course of several \nmonths or a year, and his story was put together from several incidents over \nthis course of time, one might expect this type of inconsistency. \n\nb) Mr. Tilly is very careful about not putting salt and pepper on his food, \nand on one of the mornings he has only coffee, apparently because he's scared \nto eat anything else. But you'd think it would be just as easy to put the \npoison in coffee, and that he'd realize this (although if he's as much of a \ncaffeine addict as I am, he might drink it anyway).\n\nCon: It's rather disturbing to have doubt cast on the truth of the story of \nMrs. Tilly's ghost, and Julius's discovery of her body in the coffin. Also, \nunless I'm missing some, the clues about the inconsistency of Julius's story \nare pretty thin. \n\nA few final comments. If Mrs. Tilly's ghost didn't poison Mr. Tilly, this \ngives a nice symmetry to the book, with five mysterious deaths or \ndisappearances, one for each of the five sections: Bobby Black, Aunt Vi, Mr. \nTilly, the librarian, and the coldhouse kid. Of course, the case could be \nmade that this count is somewhat arbitrary, since we're leaving out Doris \nMason's and Sherry Gold's deaths ... . I would counter that the most \nmysterious thing about Doris's death is why she is in the book in the first \nplace, and that Sherry's death occured long after Weer's. Secondly, if \nJulius did poison Mr. Tilly, this helps explain Weer's comment that Julius \nSmart is really the central character of this book.\n\nFinally, I just reread Seven American Nights (many thanks to Robert Borski \nfor his brilliant deciphering of it). The never-staling bread in that story, \nand the imitation frozen orange juice factory in Peace, make me wonder what \nWolfe's feelings towards his former profession really are. \n\nMany thanks,\n\nPeter (Stone Ox)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-05-22T15:31:56+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Peace: Who killed Mr. Tilly?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Stone Ox wrote in detail about the death of Mr. Tilly in PEACE.\n\nInstead of addressing the whole, which looks quite sound, I only have a few\ntidbits at the moment." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "About Sherry Gold, Stone Ox wrote:\nI would counter that the most mysterious thing about Doris's death is why\nshe is in the book in the first place, and that Sherry's death occured\nlong after Weer's." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, my understanding is that Sherry died and then Weer had a stroke the day\nafter. This stroke may or may not have been fatal.\n\nWith regard to the whole Tilly story, I recall talking around here (iirc)\nwith Robert Borski. We were wondering if the story was a displaced\nautobiography, like Weer's \"fairy tale\" version of Olivia's suitors as \"The\nPrincess and Her Three Suitors.\" More pointedly, it might be congruent to\nWeer's \"Arabian Nights\" version of his past/future in \"Ben Yahya and the\nMarid\" story: both have ties to the Arabian Nights (\"Marid\" in surface;\n\"Tilly\" in plot and image of the husband slowly turning to stone); both are\nambiguously about the teller's past or future, et cetera.\n\nThat is, \"Tilly\" might be Smart himself (\"Julius T. Smart,\" after all).\nWhich in a way combines Stone Ox's #3 and #6 (3. Mr. Tilly himself, in a\nJekyll-and-Hyde act. 6. Julius Smart.).\n\nOur thinking on this became more noodly. Looking for a true past event for\nthe story becomes problematic (there might not be a real murder), but\nlooking for a true future event is all too easy: Tilly's wife is maltreated\nby Tilly (Olivia's appetites are not met by Smart); Tilly's wife turns into\na monster (Olivia becomes monstrously large); Tilly's wife dies (Olivia\nkilled); Tilly is haunted by her; Tilly dies and is replaced by an outsider\n(Smart dies and is replaced by Weer).\n\nAdd to the mix that recurrant thread about how ghostly visions come from\nthe future as well as from the past; as well as the Wolfe theme about how\neven tall tales somehow can come true.\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }