James Carew’s death enters the investigation as an apparent suicide, but its carefully composed details make the scene feel less like a simple explanation than a message. His note addresses suffering and right and wrong in terms John Rebus feels directed at him, and a later diary entry links Carew to Hyde, drawing the death into the case’s unresolved pattern of concealment and threat.

The Bedroom and the Apparent Suicide

Rebus reads the note in Carew’s bedroom, within a flat furnished like a museum: art deco pieces, modern prints, and valuable first editions kept behind glass. The note is written on thick, watermarked paper with a proper nib pen. Its elegant script falters in places, the letters trembling and words crossed out before being tried again. The contrast between the controlled presentation and those visible signs of fear gives the note a distinct tension.

The bedroom supplies the apparent physical account of the death. The sheets are rumpled, and three empty pill bottles stand neatly in a line on the bedside table; an empty cognac bottle lies on the floor. Anthony McCall remarks that Carew had gone out in style. Rebus has also seen wine bottles in the living room, including Lafite from 1961, which he calls the stuff of a very special occasion. Together, the bottles make the scene look deliberate in its excess, though they do not by themselves establish whether the death was suicide or something made to resemble it.

A Note Addressed to Rebus

Carew’s note declares, “If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.” Rebus wonders whether the line is a quotation and observes that it is unusually prolix for a suicide note. He imagines Carew revising it until every word was exact, so that it would stand as his monument. The writing’s laborious polish turns the note into more than a report of despair: it is also a carefully shaped final statement.

Another sentence says, “Some day you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this.” Rebus has the uneasy sense that Carew is speaking straight to him, and that the words carry a meaning only he could fully understand. Anthony McCall calls it a funny sort of note; Rebus agrees. The exchange leaves the note’s intended meaning unsettled, while making Rebus himself part of the question the death raises.

The Hyde Clue and the Wider Mystery

The significance of Carew’s death develops through the case’s later examination of his diary. Rebus finds the brief entry “Hyde, 10pm.” The name recalls Ronnie McGrath’s warning to Tracy—whether Ronnie meant “Hide” or a person named Hyde—and Rebus recognizes that James Carew had also given him the name, spelled H-y-d-e. The diary entry therefore connects Carew to a clue already present in the investigation, rather than resolving what happened in the bedroom.

The scene’s force lies in that gap between apparent explanation and accumulating significance. The pills and alcohol support the immediate appearance of suicide; the note’s pointed address to Rebus and the diary’s Hyde entry complicate it. Carew’s death becomes both a possible final message and a link in the larger mystery, without the details presented here settling the precise circumstances or responsibility.