A Theory: Eddie Dantes is the murderer
– the soup itself is a red herring, which he ate first
– “I don’t think he’s breathing”; “I can’t find a pulse”; “This wisp of a woman is right, he’s not breathing” – no one ever says he’s actually “dead” whereas the other’s are all confirmed as deceased; AND everyone has a relatively clear cause of death – Eddie is just face down in his soup but we don’t know *why* he “dies”
– he has a connection to everyone and therefore, potentially, a motive to kill each of them (and wasn’t the gentleman he pretended to be)
– several owed him money (Wells, Hemingway, Charlotte)
– he knew Eliot’s true identity
– had a professional/creative fight with Shelley
– was left alone in the dining room with ample time to plant the (poorly written) note and rig up Wells’ machine to the other door
– the note is addressed to “authors”, not “fellow authors”
– his character card was for Virgil the Orangutan, a reference to Poe’s actual short story, “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, wherein the culprit and murderer was an escaped orangutanThis – this allllllll the way.
Also consider:
– His name: Eddie Dantes. A literary character who fakes his own death to exact revenge (also note that the Count of Monte Cristo accomplishes a lot of his revenge by loaning money, something Eddie the banker also appears to be doing).
– All the authors are being killed off in ways they have authored (Dostoyevsky dies by an axe, like Raskolnikov kills the pawnbroker; Louisa May Alcott dies by a fit of coughing, Beth in Little Women dies of scarlet fever; Marry Shelley dies via electrocution – which, conversely is what brings the monster to life but the monster kills/results in Frankenstein’s death soo…). When I noticed the Crime and Punishment/Dostoyvesky parallel I was like “Oh that’s clever! Ohhhhhh… That’s cold. Oh that’s positively psychopathic… Which one of the authors would murder the other authors in ways they have written?!!?!? (answer: not an author)
– As @bookwormcathrin points out above, he had a professional/creative fight with Shelley. I’d like to take that a step further and point out that more specifically, he was trying to get credit for her work (co-authoring it). Also note that in this last episode we find out from H.G. Wells that Eddie had an interest in Wells time machine. Perhaps Wells isn’t the only one with an interest in seeing how books make profit in the future….. What better way to make money than to get all these famous authors in debt to you, kill them off, and gain access/rights to their books?
– Remember that Dostoyevsky knew Eddie from prison.
Predictions that follow from the above assumptions:
– I am willing to bet that every single author will be found to be someway connected to Eddie. Pen pal correspondent of Emily Dickinson perchance?
-The remaining authors will be killed off in ways similar to character deaths they have created (Charlotte Bronte suffers a mental breakdown a la Jane Eyre? Hemingway gets shot?).
Sean and Sinéad put all the theories into this rectangle. The authors just get murdered one right after the other!
Reposted from http://ift.tt/2cKTMiZ.
Tags: poeparty.
