so how did cary grant's character

Cary Grant's character passed himself off as Alexander Dyle, Carson Dyle's brother; it was one of his many "aliases" in the film. Carson Dyle was one of the five (along with Charles Lampert, Herman Scobie, Tex Panthollow and Leopold Gideon) who had buried the $250,000 in gold they were supposed to deliver to the French Resistance. Their plan was to return after the war was over, dig it up and divide it five ways. However, the five were ambushed by the Germans and Carson Dyle was wounded and left to die by the other four.

After the war ended, Charles beat the other three back to the gold, dug it up, and vanished. And as we see in the film's opening scene, the other three have finally caught up with Charles; we can only assume "Alexander" isn't involved with Charles' untimely demise on the train. But apparently "Alexander" convinced the other three he had the best chance of gaining Reggie's confidence - and finding out where the money had gone. And they decided he could be trusted (for a while, anyway).

what murph said. Ditto.

And I've often tried to repiece the logic of the film, and everything does work.

I still don't know, but I believe Crookshank was working with the police inspector. Otherwise, he would have been arrested.

The logistics of the deaths are a tough cookie.

When Scobie dies, it seems that Gideon and Tex should know they were never out of eachother's sights long enough for one of them to kill Scobie, so they still have a trust of each other, but don't tell the others this. At this point, they just don't know if the man claiming to be Dyle's brother did it on his own, or if he's working with Regina. They probably do figure that Scobie attacked him again, and the killing was in self defense.

The next killing. Does our killer make the phone call himself? Or does he leave a provoking message with someone else who relays the provoking call? It was something that drove the man into an unsafe situation.

Why do the lights go out? I'm not sure. It probably has something to do with the way elveators worked in Paris in that era.

At this point, the surviving member of the trio believes Grant's character is a killer, and maybe didn't act in self defense when he killed Scobie. He is on his own, and struggles to survive even more than he does to get the money. He has the confrontation with Crookshank.

That's where we really believe Crookshank is the killer. Regina comes in and finds a man dead, having written the word "Dyle".

What she doesn't know is that Crookshank left, while the killer watched from another room, then the killer entered the room and did the deed. The victim recognized him and wrote the word "Dyle". The killer may have even let him do this to further confuse Regina.

The final death scene has got to be the greatest "kill the killer" scene in Film History, in my opinion. Still not outdone. E4 D4 D3 C3 B3 B2 B4, where is he? A4????



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