Dany’s murder

Dany’s murder enters the play not as a staged killing but as a revelation in the papers left in Édouard’s black briefcase. A diary connects the Killer’s method of attracting victims to Bérenger’s fiancée, Dany, turning a private loss into evidence of a wider pattern of preventable violence.

Discovery of the Evidence

When the briefcase draws both men’s attention, Édouard tries to take it for himself. Bérenger offers to help, then notices photographs among its contents and holds on to one despite Édouard’s efforts to hide the others. The struggle over the photographs changes the encounter: what had been an attempt to manage the briefcase becomes an investigation into its contents.

Bérenger subsequently opens a small box and lays out more documents, including a notebook. Its entries record the Killer’s intention to kill, describe an earlier victim pushed into a lake, and note periods when he had found no one to target. The objects that Édouard tries to reclaim thus make a written record of the killings and the process by which victims were selected.

The Diary’s Link to Dany

The decisive connection appears in the diary’s account of persuading two people to look at the Colonel’s photograph near the pool, followed by a plan to persuade a young blonde woman to look at it. Bérenger recognizes the description as Dany, his fiancée. The text establishes her identification through his response; it does not describe the murder itself or give a date for it.

The diary places the reference to the young woman amid practical notes about finding potential victims, including entries about having no one to kill. Dany’s fate is therefore connected to the Killer’s deliberate, repeated method of approach rather than presented as an isolated or unexplained attack. The record makes the photograph part of that method: people are persuaded to look at it, and Bérenger understands the intended young woman to be Dany.

Consequences of the Revelation

Bérenger declares that Dany will be avenged and treats the documents as sufficient proof to have the Killer arrested. His response shifts the scene from recognition and shock toward possible legal action. The evidence also prompts him to confront Édouard with the human cost of the failure to act: he says that many lives could have been saved.

The murder’s dramatic force lies in this reversal. Dany is first encountered through Bérenger’s grief and then named within the Killer’s own written account of his plans. The diary offers a route from personal loss to proof, while Bérenger’s accusation makes the discovery carry a second consequence: the documents suggest not only who was responsible, but how other deaths might have been prevented.