And so it begins. The Murders storyline kicked off at Charles and Angie’s wedding reception last Monday and got into full swing with Stacey’s murder on Friday/Monday. Before discussing things in depth, let’s review how each day moved the story forward bit by bit:
July 10: The first appearance of the “Killer POV” as the killer walks through the reception
July 11: Tess makes a vaguely threatening comment about Stacey (“she’ll get hers”)
July 12: Curtis scares Stacey “to death” with his intense attention
July 13: The Killer prepares a package for Stacey
July 14: Stacey receives the powder puff, which she thinks is from Buck, and applies the powder to her body, which kills her. Buck finds her at the end of the episode
July 17: Stacey is pronounced dead
July 18: Charles and Angie learn that Stacey was poisoned; Alex finds a photo fragment in the box containing the powder puff and then hears the clicking noise over the phone
July 19: Jacob questions Tess about what she was up to the night of the murder
Our first and best clue (so far) about the killer’s identity comes on July 10th, as the killer’s attendance at the wedding reception places a limit on the possibilities. Absent from the festivities were Ava, Tess, Deborah, Trisha, Jocelyn, Danny, and Lorraine. That means the suspect pool consists of: Charles, Angie, Frankie, Buck, Alex, Kate, Ally, Cabot, Isabelle, Gwyneth, Clay, Jeremy, Curtis, Steffi, Tony, Bree, Jacob, and Neal.
Our second clue comes from the July 13th episode, when the killer is preparing the concoction for Stacey. Logically, any of the other characters who appear in that episode cannot be the killer, because they’re otherwise occupied while the killer is at work, so that immediately narrows the list of possibilities from the existing pool down: Charles, Angie, Frankie, Buck, Alex, Kate, Ally, Cabot, Isabelle, Gwyneth, Clay, Jeremy, Curtis, Steffi, Tony, Bree, Jacob, and Neal.
And then, on July 14th, the package is delivered to Stacey. The killer watches from the bushes when she receives the package so, once again, we can eliminate anyone who was otherwise occupied in that episode. The pool is now: Angie, Frankie, Kate, Ally, Gwyneth, Jeremy, Curtis, Bree, Jacob, and Neal.
The Explicit Suspects
Buck: A suspect due to his volatile relationship with Stacey and the fact that the powder puff appears to be a gift from him to Stacey.
Tess: Stacey’s rival for Buck, who has been making plenty of vaguely threatening statements about Stacey of late, and is known for being cutthroat when she feels that something stands in the way of what she wants.
Curtis: Stacey’s longtime friend who harbors unrequited feelings for her. His obsession with Stacey has left her on edge.
So right away, the show gives us a Fall Guy (Buck), who is the first person suspected by the police and quickly arrested, which means that he’s innocent because the killer is never the first person the police zero in on; a Red Herring (Tess), a plausible alternative who has motive and opportunity to be the killer; and the Obvious Killer (Curtis), on whom the show focuses and drops hints.
Of course, we know that Curtis isn’t the killer either, but at this point in the show we’re obviously meant to think that he is. After all, he has known mental health issues that have driven him to extreme acts in the past, he’s been depicted as obsessed with Stacey, on the July 12th episode he’s shown lurking outside of Stacey’s window, watching her and Buck, just as the killer will lurk outside on the July 14th episode, and on the July 17th episode he shows up late to the mansion, making vague statements about having been “taking care of business” and claims to have been at Dunellen.
But the other person who shows up late at the Alden mansion is Gwyneth, whose activities that day no one questions because they have no reason to, and who is offscreen during the episodes when the Killer is shown to be at work. Which makes Curtis himself a red herring, standing right there next to the real killer but distracting focus.
Gwyneth as the Killer
There aren’t many clues to Gwyneth’s guilt at this point, other than the fact that she’s still in the pool of possibilities after a couple of rounds of elimination. With hindsight, the scenes between Gwyneth and Stacey in the July 7th episode makes Gwyneth’s guilt somewhat obvious, with Gwyneth trying to give Stacey the locket, symbolically making her Trisha, and Stacey rejecting it and, in doing so, rejecting Gwyneth herself and sealing her own fate.
In between the scene of Stacey rejecting the locket and the first time we see the Killer POV, we see Gwyneth interacting with people normally and then she spots Curtis dancing with Stacey, which is the last we see of her until Stacey’s death. While the end of the storyline all comes down to Gwyneth’s relationship with Trisha, looking at the circumstances of the start, it seems to be driven just as much by Gwyneth’s feelings for Curtis.
Gwyneth sees Curtis acting obsessed with Stacey – even more so than he was with Dinah Lee, and she knows how far Curtis went when he was enthralled with Dinah Lee. Could it be that she kills Stacey as a means of preventing Curtis from doing so first, saving him from committing murder? And, in light of a recent conversation between Stacey and Gwyneth, could Gwyneth also be taking the opportunity to get a little bit of revenge against Buck in the process, either for how he treated her or how he treated Curtis, by making it look like the powder came from him? Stacey’s murder plays out slightly differently from the ones that follow in that the means of death come with note that explicitly attempts to frame someone else, so it could be that the motive behind the death is slightly different from the others, too.
Of course, along with the note that’s supposedly from Buck, Gwyneth also puts a photo fragment in the box, but that could be because, subconsciously, she just couldn’t help herself. Like the psychological profile she writes later and encourages her police colleagues to read, the photo fragments are a cry for help, a clue that begs for someone to figure it out and stop Gwyneth before she can do it again.
Coming up: evidence continues to mount against Buck, and Tess sets herself up to look like a suspect in the next murder
Loving (1983-1995) 