Peace: Who killed Mr. Tilly?

StoneOx17 · 22 May 2002, 09:42 · from urth-v0205.mbox · original
This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.
From: StoneOx17 at aol.com
Subject: (urth) Peace: Who killed Mr. Tilly?
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 05:42:50 EDT
Message-ID: <urth-v0205-1043 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0205/1043.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hello,

Did Mrs. Tilly's ghost really poison Mr. TIlly? I haven't seen this questio=
n=20
discussed in the mailing list, so I'm assuming that most people think the=20
ghost did it.  I think it must be somebody else.  I'm not quite sure who, s=
o=20
I'm going to list all the suspects I can come up with, and give my thoughts=
. =20
Maybe someone can find more clues and unambiguously identify the real=20
culprit. =20

Why do I suspect it wasn't the ghost?  What made me suspicious in the first=20
place is that in two places, Wolfe has people suspect that it wasn't.
Julius Smart says to Mr. Tilly "Then I told him that when he'd said the gho=
st=20
was putting that stuff in his food I hadn't believed him; I'd heard of them=20
playing the piano and unlocking doors and all that--even pulling the covers=20
off beds--but never of putting something in someone's food before."
Later, Blaine says to Weer, who's seeing him about Gold's book, "Anyway, I=20
never believed in the ghost.  I think that woman was alive ..." and proceed=
s=20
to give an explanation of how somebody trying to peek out unobserved could=20
make a window curtain move and have it look like a ghost.

Of course, Blaine is wrong about half the things he says.  But I think Wolf=
e=20
is giving us hints here, and that Julius is right about ghosts not being ab=
le=20
to poison people.  The one ghost we know best from this book, Weer, certain=
ly=20
couldn't.  So here's my list of suspects. =20

1. Mrs. Tilly's ghost.
Pro: this is the most straightforward interpretation.  She has a good motiv=
e:=20
revenge.
Con: Mrs. Tilly's ghost would have to be a lot more together than Weer's=20
ghost for this.  And it seems unlikely that a ghost could poison people if=20
it's correct that ghosts are souls in Purgatory waiting for admission to=20
Heaven when (or if) they accept Jesus and repent of their sins.  Since I li=
ke=20
this interpretation, I don't want to believe that it was Mrs. Tilly's ghost=
,=20
even if she was haunting the house.

2. Mrs. Tilly, still alive.
Pro: this is what Blaine believes.  If Mr. Tilly killed their son by=20
experimenting on him, she has a motive.
Con: Blaine is wrong half the time.  Furthermore, either Mrs. Tilly would=20
have to somehow have survived her immersion in a methanol-filled coffin, or=20
(as Blaine has it) there's a methanol-filled coffin lying around for no=20
apparent reason which she accidentally tumbles into after Mr. Tilly dies.  =
I=20
don't think there's any chance that this is correct.

3. Mr. Tilly himself, in a Jekyll-and-Hyde act.
Pro: this is indeed a Wolfean thing to happen.
Con: I don't see any clues that this is happening.  Of course, Wolfe's clue=
s=20
are notoriously hard to find.

4. One of Mr. Tilly's clients, or somebody else, from a carnival.
Pro: He (she) could have had access to the drug that killed Mr. Tilly, by=20
stealing it from Mr. Litho or another client.  He (she) could easily have a=20
motive. =20
Con: The drug was administrated over a period of years.  A stranger,=20
especially one of Mr. Tilly's carnie clients, would be fairly conspicuous=20
hanging around a small town.

5. Mrs. Tilly's relatives.  There are three of them around--two aunts and a=
n=20
uncle.=20
Pro:  Their motive would be revenge for Mrs. Tilly's death.  If they had=20
keys, it's plausible that one of them could hide in the locked bedroom=20
containing Mrs. Tilly's coffin, and sneak out at night to put the drug in M=
r.=20
Tilly's food.  Hearing her (I'm assuming it's an aunt, since Mr. Tilly says=20
her footsteps sound like his wife's) Mr. Tilly and Julius think she's Mrs.=20
Tilly's ghost.  After Mr. Tilly dies, the key to the locked bedroom is=20
missing; if one of Mrs. Tilly's relatives stole it, this explains why it's=20
gone.  Also, Mrs. Tilly's relatives take a number of valuables out of the=20
house, but don't even ask to look in the locked bedroom containing Mrs.=20
Tilly's coffin.  One explanation might be that they already know what's in=20
there.  They also let Julius continue running the pharmacy at a very genero=
us=20
wage, and let him live rent-free in the house.  Maybe they're trying to bri=
be=20
him just in case he suspects something.
Con: They could be letting him live rent-free because the house has a=20
reputation for being haunted, and there's nobody else who'd rent it.  And=20
they could have continued letting him work at the pharmacy for the generous=20
wages that Mr. Tilly gave him because they don't want the town's only=20
pharmacy closed, and they're either too nice to reduce his wages, or don't=20
realize how generous they're being.  Also, you'd think it'd be a lot safer =
to=20
sneak into Mr. Tilly's house in daytime when he was at the drugstore, and i=
f=20
for some reason the aunt was surprised by Mr. Tilly coming home unexpectedl=
y,=20
you'd think she'd hide in the locked bedroom until she could leave the hous=
e,=20
and not pace up and down the hall like a ghost.  Finally, I've been thinkin=
g=20
about Blaine's explanation about how somebody could look out a window and n=
ot=20
be seen by hiding under the window, twitching the curtain, and looking in a=20
mirror on the opposite wall.  It'd certainly work on the first floor (where=20
Blaine presumably would have used it) but I'm not sure it'd work on the=20
second, which is where Julius saw the window curtains twitch. =20

6. Julius Smart.
This is the most interesting one.
Pro: He has a motive: money.  Charlie Turner (the dog-boy) shows up to visi=
t=20
when Weer was president.  We can assume that he is trying to visit Julius,=20
and hadn't heard about his death.  If he was visiting because he needed mor=
e=20
of the hair medicine, then it would seem that Julius took over Mr. Tilly's=20
carnie business.  In this case, you don't need to assume that Mr. Tilly's=20
wages were excessively generous to explain how Julius got enough money to b=
uy=20
Bledsoe's drugstore--Julius could be lying so as to have an acceptable=20
explanation for his money.  And if he killed Mr. Tilly, then he's lying abo=
ut=20
a lot more than that.  In this scenario, how much of Julius's story can we=20
trust?  From Charlie Turner's visit, we have independent evidence of Mr.=20
Tilly's hair medicine, which I think means we can trust the account of=20
Julius's visit to the carnival and of Janet Turner's visit to the drugstore=
. =20
And even if Julius poisoned him, I'd tend to believe that Mr. Tilly was=20
petrified by his own medicine.  But I don't know how much of the rest of th=
e=20
story to believe in this case.
Was there a ghost?  A locked room?  A methanol-filled zinc coffin?

If Julius did poison Mr. Tilly, you'd expect there to be clues.  I'd expect=20
Wolfe to have hidden several inconsistencies in Julius's account, so a read=
er=20
discovering them could deduce that Julius was lying.  And, of course, upon=20
looking for them, I picked up a couple of things that look like=20
inconsistencies.  It's hard to tell whether they're Julius Smart's mistakes=
,=20
or Gene Wolfe's mistakes, or even whether they're mistakes at all.  Here th=
ey=20
are.

a) The season.  When Julius Smart goes grocery shopping, he picks up orange=
s,=20
which must be in season since he says they were locally grown and cheap.  M=
y=20
grandparents lived in Florida, and had an orange (and lemon) tree in the=20
backyard; these gave fruit in the winter.  Looking on the web, I found a pa=
ge=20
saying that domestic oranges were in season (depending on the variety) main=
ly=20
from October through April, and Weer got oranges for Christmas as a special=20
treat when he was a kid. The season may be even shorter if you restrict=20
yourself to the gulf coast.  However, on the day Julius buys the oranges,=20
it's still 90 degrees after midnight, which one would expect only happens=20
closer to summer.  If Julius poisoned Mr. Tilly over a course of several=20
months or a year, and his story was put together from several incidents ove=
r=20
this course of time, one might expect this type of inconsistency. =20

b) Mr. Tilly is very careful about not putting salt and pepper on his food,=20
and on one of the mornings he has only coffee, apparently because he's scar=
ed=20
to eat anything else.  But you'd think it would be just as easy to put the=20
poison in coffee, and that he'd realize this (although if he's as much of a=20
caffeine addict as I am, he might drink it anyway).

Con: It's rather disturbing to have doubt cast on the truth of the story of=20
Mrs. Tilly's ghost, and Julius's discovery of her body in the coffin.  Also=
,=20
unless I'm missing some, the clues about the inconsistency of Julius's stor=
y=20
are pretty thin. =20

A few final comments.  If Mrs. Tilly's ghost didn't poison Mr. Tilly, this=20
gives a nice symmetry to the book, with five mysterious deaths or=20
disappearances, one for each of the five sections: Bobby Black, Aunt Vi, Mr=
.=20
Tilly, the librarian, and the coldhouse kid.  Of course, the case could be=20
made that this count is somewhat arbitrary, since we're leaving out Doris=20
Mason's and Sherry Gold's deaths ... .  I would counter that the most=20
mysterious thing about Doris's death is why she is in the book in the first=20
place, and that Sherry's death occured long after Weer's.  Secondly, if=20
Julius did poison Mr. Tilly, this helps explain Weer's comment that Julius=20
Smart is really the central character of this book.

Finally, I just reread Seven American Nights (many thanks to Robert Borski=20
for his brilliant deciphering of it).  The never-staling bread in that stor=
y,=20
and the imitation frozen orange juice factory in Peace, make me wonder what=20
Wolfe's feelings towards his former profession really are. =20

Many thanks,

Peter (Stone Ox)


--=20
An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net