Trophies and mementos

The Phantom’s trophies and mementos are a hidden collection of bodily remains and personal effects taken from his victims. They are not merely keepsakes: fingers, hair, an ear, a tongue and Felicity Wanless’s tattoo are preserved, sorted and revisited as the killer plans what to take next. Their discovery in the dining room exposes the physical reality of his crimes and makes the private collection evidence against him.

Contents and arrangement

The collection is divided between drawers in a sideboard. In the top drawer, The Phantom keeps vials containing fingertips. In the drawer below are other mementos: an ear and a tongue, each with its piercing, stored in formalin; Louise Usher’s blonde hair, dried, combed, plaited, wound into a coil and placed in a cellophane bag; and, later, a square of plywood bearing a patch of tattooed skin. The separate compartments give the trophies an orderly place in the room, even as their contents reveal the violence that produced them.

The collection’s arrangement also records different ways of keeping a remnant. Fingers and other body parts are immersed in liquid, while Louise’s hair is treated as something that can be cleaned, shaped and packaged. Felicity’s tattoo requires another method: The Phantom dries the skin on plywood, fastening it with pegs. Each object has been removed from a person and converted into a specimen or keepsake, but the varied methods show that he adapts his handling to what he wants to retain.

Taking and preserving the trophies

After Jill Richards is returned to the cage, The Phantom goes to the kitchen to deal with objects taken from his previous captive, whom he thinks of as a doll. He has put a finger and a patch of skin in a Tupperware box. A vial is already prepared for the finger, with formalin inside and a narrow label bearing Felicity Wanless’s name and the date of her death. He lifts the finger with tweezers and puts it into the vial, then turns to the tattooed skin, which he has never preserved before.

He dries the patch carefully on kitchen paper, admires the ink and pins the skin face down to a piece of plywood. Later, he places the vial with the other fingertips in the top drawer. He hesitates before putting the tattoo in the drawer below, concerned that an enclosed space might interfere with drying. He decides the mementos should remain together and accepts the risk. The small practical decisions—preparing a labeled container, choosing how to dry the skin, and weighing storage conditions—make the collection seem methodical without making its contents any less brutal.

A private collection and an ongoing threat

The sideboard stands in a dining room that still bears the mark of The Phantom’s mother. Its polished furniture, heavy drapes and lace-covered window distinguish it from the secret things that are his: those possessions are hidden away, treasured and looked at only occasionally. The trophies thus occupy a domestic interior whose visible order belongs largely to someone else. Their concealment is part of their significance: they are kept out of ordinary sight, yet deliberately gathered in one place for his private attention.

The collection is not finished. After adding Felicity’s finger and tattoo, The Phantom recognizes that he cannot use the cab again now that footage has appeared on the news, and considers how to approach another victim. Later, while the tattoo dries, he checks the tokens and thinks about what to take from the captive in the cage. He considers removing an organ, possibly a kidney, and plans around killing her first and dealing with the blood in the bath. His attention shifts as well to a younger woman with nicer eyes, whom he has decided he wants for his collection. The trophies therefore connect past crimes to an immediate danger: each preserved remnant is evidence of what has been done, while his thoughts about taking more point toward what he intends to do next.

Discovery and evidentiary force

When police enter the dining room, the top drawer is open. Eve Strong lifts a vial and sees a fingertip inside; its label identifies Louise Usher and gives the date 18.2.18. The vial explains what happened to the fingertips and links the hidden collection to a named victim. In the drawer beneath, Eve finds the plywood square and recognizes the tattoo as Felicity Wanless’s. Under it are a coiled blonde plait in cellophane and other containers holding remains in liquid.

The discovery assembles objects that had been encountered separately into a material record of The Phantom’s crimes. Louise’s labeled fingertip and hair, Felicity’s recognizable tattoo and the other preserved body parts are no longer private tokens: together they expose the scale and specificity of the collection. What The Phantom had kept ordered and hidden becomes something the investigators can examine, identify and use against him. The drawers preserve his effort to possess fragments of his victims; their opening turns those fragments into testimony about the violence he had tried to conceal.