Anyone else think at first that Blanche and George were confidence tricksters?

It was noted at the time(1976) by some critics that Hitchcock had joined a trend where "instead of the good guys versus the bad guys, it was now the bad guys versus the WORSE guys." Examples include two 1973 movies -- The Sting and Charley Varrick, in which our heroes are crooks, but WORSE crooks(the Irish mob, the Mafia) are coming after them.

So it would seem that Blanche and George are "bad guys versus WORSE guys" -- Adamson is both currently a kidnapper and previously a murderer -- and prepared to murder again.

Except: we see that Blanche and George may be "con artists"(Blanche isn't a REAL medium, she can't REALLY communicate with the dead) but they do honest work to try to earn their $10,000. George does research(at the Bureau of Births and Death) and interviews(as a fake lawyer) and quite legitimate investigative work to try to trace Edward Shoebridge. You wonder what would happen if Blanche and George simply offered their services as private investgators and "tracers of missing heirs." Oh, well, the fake medium seances give Blanche additional work "on the side."

So no, I don't really see Blanche and George as confidence tricksters or crooks. I don't think they are smart enough to create a fake Edward Shoebridge and it would be too hard to keep the lie going.

To the extent that Blanche IS a "confidence trickster," it is in her little shows she does talking to "Henry" in her fake seances. But her female customers seem to buy it, so no harm, no foul.

AND: though the final scene has George declaring to Blanche: "You really ARE psychic!"...she's not. She winks at us. The movie poster said "the movie you must see twice," and if you saw it a second time, you learn how Blanche knew the diamond was in the chandelier...