The Red Herring Exposed - A Clue Analysis (PART 9)

 THE EIGHTH MURDER - MR. BODDY

(Wadsworth, just prior to the reckoning)

The Situation: The supporting cast has fulfilled their roles yet the banshee wails still. After explaining to the cast the events of the entire evening, Wadsworth exposes himself (with ladies present) as the one who killed the Singing Telegram Girl and that he is in fact Mr. Boddy.

The Murder: The murder itself is straightforward. After Wadsworth nee Boddy gives his villain speech,  Mr. Green quick draws his service revolver and shoots Wadsworth directly in the heart. I think. Kind of unclear where the shot hits but Wadsworth dies almost instantly. Mr. Green reveals that he is an FBI Agent investigating the blackmail and that he is totally not gay and is going to celebrate solving the mystery by sleeping with his totally real wife. The religious beatnik makes his final appearance as he is actually the chief of the local police force, I assume. They call him chief and the cops there look like regular police and not other FBI Agents so I think Green had local backup on this one.

There are a number of problems that we'll get to in the loose threads portion of the series but one question to look at now is; "Why did Green shoot Wadsworth?"

Looking back at the evidence it seems like a pretty clear cut case of a bad shooting. At this point everybody in the house has been exposed as a murderer, been murdered or involved in a fairly elaborate blackmail scheme. It's true that Wadsworth had a gun but he has made it very clear that he is not going to kill anyone else at the party. The whole point of the night was to compromise the guests so that they can replace the cook, butler and Yvette as his informers so the blackmailing racket could continue. In addition to Wadsworth's lack of motivation, Mr. Green knows that the house is surrounded by police. Had Green simply waited and continued his ruse, they would have stacked the bodies in the cellar, left quietly one at a time and been subsequently arrested as they left. In a movie about a series of murders, the justice delivered at the end, was in fact, just another murder.

Conclusion: Wadsworth is very much a Macbethian figure. He too is the protagonist of this theater yet is ultimately the baddy. Also, Wadsworth only realizes at the very end that he has confused the message of the apparitions and that Macduff has stormed the gates and is approaching. Jonathan Lynn should've had Green cut off Wadsworth's head at the end. At least as an alternate ending.

Tortured historical metaphors aside, Wadsworth is ultimately an unimpressive mastermind. The plan itself is bizarre. Killing of proven informers just to replace them with people already rung out and on the hook? Why not keep both? Even if you accept the notion that the old informers had to be killed off to allow the Next Generation of informers to thrive, what kind of Umbrella Corp level nonsense is this? The Umbrella Corp for those not in the know is the evil corporation that unleashed the T-Virus on Raccoon City and other places in the Resident Evil oeuvre. The unanswered question in those games is how unleashing a virus that turns people into uncontrollable killing machines that spread the virus independently has any military application that couldn't be better achieved through a smart bomb, drone, robot soldier or just about anything else the military already has. For Wadsworth the question is how creating a tense pressure cooker situation that you hope will explode into chaos that will conveniently kill only the people you want is a better idea than hiring a hitman? Or killing them yourself? The explanations I thought of don't hold water. Getting the guests to kill the informers could potentially give Wadsworth more leverage over these people to continue the blackmail. But they're already being blackmailed effectively. No more leverage is needed, you run the risk of just making them desperate. Second, Wadsworth could've gotten the guests to do the killing so that he could keep his hands clean of any actual killing or hiring of hitmen. He blew that though when he stupidly killed the Telegram Girl. No matter how you look at it, the plan was odd.

Up Next:
Loose threads. Who was Mr. Green, the J. Edgar Hoover call and the beatnik interruption.

Recap:
Wadsworth: 1 murder
Peacock: 1 murder
Green: 1 murder
White: 1 murder
Mustard: 1 murder
Scarlett: 1 murder
Plum: 1 murder

Mr. Boddy: dead

The Cook: dead

Yvette: dead

Stranded Motorist: dead

Off Duty Cop: dead

Singing Telegram Girl: dead

Wadsworth: dead