MYSTERY MAN'S MOTIVE
Maria
Pichincha, Ecuador
I think most of us, at least for what I've seen in the threads, have found the 8 links and got who is the Mystery Man. Now we have to figure out the motive.
As I said in a previous thread, with the final twist around the last murder, we should go back and review all the testimonies of our original 8 suspects/victims. Henry's statement pops up. But what really intrigues me the most is WHY DID THE MYSTERY MAN DECIDED TO KILL JESSICA AND NOT FERN? What part did Mystic Margot play in this whole thing? I mean, why did she get involved in all this? What was she going to gain with all this? And finally, how did the Mystery Man know everything he/she did? Did his/her knowledge come from his/her position or from his/her relationship with one of the victims?
Comments
I think we should wait one more day before going on.
I'm having a problem deciding how to approach this last stage of the game. If I could ask two questions of the compilers of the game they would be:
1. Are they "playing fair" with us in the true sense of a Christie murder mystery, i.e. have we been given all the clues we need to work out the motive if we are sharp enough to see those clues?
or
2. Are we supposed to figure out a motive using guesswork, intuition and imagination?
At the moment I'm thinking it's the latter. I can see a motive but to make sense of the entire proceedings I need to tie up a lot (and I mean a lot) of loose ends, and so far I can't find sufficient information to do that.
I will also post my questions now. I did it yesterday, but decided it might be too early (but as Maria already commented on them before I can edit them, here is once again what bothers me):
Is the Mystery Man a man or a woman? This is driving me crazy!
I also think I have found a satisfactory motive and it answers the questions Maria has mentioned, but only one thing is still blur to me - the very first event which made the Myster Man do all this. I believe Margot was an accomplice and her death was planned from the beginning, without she knowing it. Jessica, however, was murdered, because she about to know what was going on. I also think Fern was planned to be the last one and blamed for all this. Why - this is what I still look for. But I have an idea, althought it does not seem to be the right one.
Anyway, my other question is did Fern have a past crime and what was it? Maria already commented on this, but the correct answer could only break my current theory...
@Delicious_Death: I used everything we know as of now to come up with my theory. However, only the very first event is slipping away. But I have noticed such things in Christie's works, too. You might know who is the murderer and why, but there is always one very first event you cannot come up with just by reading the book. These are usually found by the detectives via searching in records for the past and are revealed at the end of the book. Or they are known to the residents of the town, but here - we are not living in St Mary Mead (unfortunately).
Anyway, I do not think my theory is the correct one, but it satisfies me and I will post it at the end.
Personally, I think reporter N.K. is a real person, different than the other nine. After all, he/she has a job as a reporter - how could they have a secret identity... I'd rather believe that Margot could really see the future. :P
But, he/she could have a secret - either a relative to one of the nine other people, or an enemy, or something else.
*-:)
I couldn't connect the dots either. I can't wait to hear what the real reason was. Might even be right, who knows? Good luck to you too!
Hi Maria, don't be nervous at all. I am sure you worked hard and did the best you could! I will be the "lamb" and go first. Like I said yesterday my theory was a bit out there but very simple. Here goes.
Mystery Man: I took the letters from the clues and concluded that they meant NK Reporter and assumed it meant Unknown. I then suggested it was Justice Wargrave from "And then there were None."
Motive: All the victims in the mystery man game were killed because they had committed a crime that they got a away with. Therefore, Mr. Wargrave was using his own brand of justice to deal with these 'criminals.'
I am guessing there is much more to it, however I went with an answer that I felt reflected closely to an Agatha Christie story. Best of luck everyone. I am excited to hear your theories as well!!
The Mystery Man was N.K. Reporter.
His motive was to protect his job and promote his career to international status.
I think that he had discovered through the journalistic grapevine, or possibly Jessica had discovered and had told him, that the international news conglomerate was looking for small newspapers to add to its stable. He had to find a way to bring the Gazette to the attention of the conglomerate. He also knew that Jessica was the better reporter. (I concluded this because the spelling errors appeared only in his articles and not Jessica's, and it was later borne out by the fact that it was Jessica who became "the international face of the Gazette".) If the takeover happened he knew that his job would be in jeopardy.
His primary objective was to kill Jessica, but he needed to camouflage this fact and decided to make it look as if a serial murderer was at work. This would also serve as a good way to bring the Gazette to international attention. Rather than choose his victims at random, he hit on the idea of killing people who had committed a crime in the past. In the minds of the public and the police, this would appear to be a kind of justification for the murders and it could also create the impression that the victims had a common link, which actually they did not have, except that they all lived in St. Mary Mead and had all had their palms read at the village fete.
As a reporter he had access to information in police and court records, newspaper archives and so on and this enabled him to compile his list of victims.
Now we come to Mystic Margot, and this is where I come unstuck. The Mystery Man must have approached her before the village fete and somehow persuaded her to tell everyone on his list that she foresaw their murders. He succeeded in getting her to do it but for the life of me I can't see why she agreed. There doesn't seem to have been any benefit to her other than a bit of publicity. Her later statement that "I don't know what is truth or what is fiction any more" seems to indicate that she believed some of the future events would be reported honestly and others not, or possibly she was told that only some people on the list would actually be killed and not others, based on the seriousness of their crimes, perhaps. Even if the whole enterprise was presented to her as an elaborate hoax, I still can't see what was in it for her. There are only two possibilities that I can think of. Either Mystery Man was able to blackmail her into taking part, or she did it because she believed it would help someone who was extremely important to her. I can't find anything to support either of those theories though and I couldn't come up with another theory that explained everything else.
The only link I found between Margot and any of the other characters came from some external research which informed me that the name Greer means "watchful" or "vigilant" and the name Jessica means "watchful" or "foresight". It's a tenuous link at best, and requires one to suspend one's disbelief in the occult, but perhaps Jessica and Margot were blood relatives (sharing the gift of second sight etc.) and Margot thought she would be helping Jessica in her career. Even though Agatha Christie did write seriously about the occult, I don't like this as a theory and I don't like using something that wasn't presented to us in the game.
So there you are, I considered myself checkmated by the compilers and did not submit an entry. My congratulations to them and many thanks for a most enjoyable game. Roll on next year!
- The sixth murder (Stephen Barron), his crime was "A_S_N", arson, gave us two letters, an R and an O
@Delicious_Death, @ Maria, @ Anamaria Ciop: such great work, great intuition and attention do detail, one of you will probably win.
=D>
As for my theory, I could not see any connection between the victims (apart from Mystic Margot's palm reading). I've probably spent two days turning the fact in and out. I see now that some facts I left out and should have taken them into consideration (I've read, but totally left out the fact that the newspaper was having financial difficulties).
oh, well, good for you all, for using this important piece of info.
My solution follows. And I must thank my husband for his cool and detached point of view.
B-)
The clues lead me to believe that The Mystery Man is “REPORTER NK”. (YAY, I got this bit right)
Who is he? I believe he is Re-Porter NK, RE-lated to (sister Fern) Porter, NK standing for Not-Known (relation not known to us) or Natural-Killer. Either Sister Fern Porter’s brother or her son (the age of some of the characters is hard to guess), but I would incline to believe “Reporter NK” is Sister Porter’s son. This is why he did not kill her.
Why were the others killed? Maybe the Reporter NK is obsessed with the seven deadly sins and so he observed the small community of St. Mary Mead and thought he found seven people who committed what he deemed are the seven deadly sins. He then took the divine law into his own hands and executed them, one by one. (Now here I tried my best to match the victims with the seven deadly sins; not a piece of cake).
1. Henry Birtwistle, who was found to have committed acts of extortion in his life, was found guilty of GREED.
2. Patrick Noakes, artist, who was found to have committed acts of fraud, overconfident, was found guilty of PRIDE.
3. Guto Fernandes, gardener, who was found to have committed acts of shoplifting, stealing, was found guilty of GLUTTONY (over-indulgence). Maybe this is why he left his monastery in the first place.
4. Ted Anderson, Retired MP, who was found to have committed acts of battery (violence), was found guilty of WRATH (rage).
5. Roberta Greatrex, married 5 times, who was found to have committed acts of perjury, was found guilty of LUST. (maybe where she killed her husbands in order to be able to marry again and again, thus breaking her sacred wedding vows).
6. Stephen Barron, hotelier, who was found to have committed acts of pyromania, arson, was found guilty of ENVY (maybe whatever he burned down was because he could not have what others had so then nobody else was allowed to possess something he could not own).
7. Margot Greer, who was found to have committed acts of conspiracy, of “dancing with the evil”, of not telling what she has seen and heard, was found guilty of SLOTH (avoidance of work of any kind, e.g. telling the truth).
8. Reporter JS probably found out the truth about Reporter NK and so was killed so that the secret won’t come out. The spelling mistakes were just a coincidence – or were planted there by Reporter NK - after all, a reporter should know his spelling?
Good luck to all and to all a good night!
#:-S
PS Anyone else entered for the 1st chapter of "write your own Christie"?
;;)