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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'><div>Marc Aramini wrote on October 7, 2014: </div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">"Off topic, your input on volksweapon from a few months ago .. It is very</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">suspicious that the hero wants to leave the dead girl alone, and the</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">alleged killer wants to stay with her body or bring it. I feel that as a</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">nonrealistic meta mystery your solution would work ... But with any degree</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">of realism, the proper authorities would have the "hero" if he were at all</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">related to the dead girl or her husband. He wouldn't get away with it as</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">his motive would be obvious to authorities. "Oh wait... You are her</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">husband?"</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">However, the image of blinding the deer with a flashlight also seems as if</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">it could describe the murder of the girl if the person who presents our</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">solution is not trustworthy.</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 12pt;">I don't know. Maybe it should be revisited."</span></div><div><br></div>Yeah, I am pretty sure you are right that Smythe can't have been the husband. It was an hypothesis too far, especially<br>given that the third-person narrator specifically identifies him as, "game warden", which I think we have to trust. However, <br>if you forget that ill-considered bit of speculation and make a different assumption (that does have plausible<br>textual support) it remains narratively sound. Assume that Smythe was the person <br>the moon-faced boy claims initially confronted he and Judy, and that his name is indeed an indication of<br>his character. I generally associate smiting with Old Testament-style justice from on high and if Smythe<br>knew that Judy was married and was committing adultery, he may have taken justice into his own hands<br>and killed her for the transgression. Leviticus 20:10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, <br>both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." This would also help explain why he<br>disposes of the old hunter's derringer rather than allowing the judicial process to proceed. It is an example of<br>justice like that exhibited by Solomon, though thankfully no babies were harmed in the making of that reference.<br><br>This of course fails to explain two ambiguous statements from Smythe:<br>The last line of the story, "I wish I could have given it to her"<br>and <br>“I suppose she and that fellow were driving out to one of the summer<br> cottages on the lake – maybe not for the reasons you would think.”<br><br>Yeah, I want to believe the jacklighting bit is relevant beyond implicating the hunters, but I can't seem to<br>make it fit the narrative. Smythe couldn't have used the technique to kill the girl as the MFB would have mentioned<div>something about a bright light coming out of nowhere. The description of <br>jacklighting given by Smythe on pg. 49:<br><br>"The jacklighter shines a lamp or the headlights of a car into the woods and kind of hypnotizes the deer. Since the deer's<br>eyes reflect the light, your poacher has a perfect target; the range is short and the deer's not moving. Usually your jacklighter<br>uses a car and you can stop him on the road with the carcass in his trunk."<br><br>Any ideas?<br><br>For those interested, the discussion of this story started with Marc's post on March 29, 2012. <a href="http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2012-March/026740.html" target="_blank">http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2012-March/026740.html</a><br>My follow-up was on July 2, 2014. <a href="http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2014-July/054877.html" target="_blank">http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2014-July/054877.html</a><br><br><br> </div> </div></body>
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