For literary inspiration, he attempts to put himself in a murderer's mindset and, early the morning after Alicia leaves, carries an empty carpet to his car, imagining its weight and how he might struggle with it if her body was actually in it.

Sydney, meanwhile, is becoming more seriously implicated after flippant jokes he makes to Alex are taken seriously, and police find a notebook in which he hypothetically details Alicia's murder.

Police locate and dig up the empty carpet, but things become worse when Sydney goes to tell Mrs. Lilybanks this apparent good news and, when he enters her living room, she is suffering a fatal heart attack.

Instead, after the sale of his and Alex's serial is postponed due to Sydney's notoriety - he experiences a similar setback with his novel - he sends her a letter imploring her to give herself up.

During the subsequent police appointment, it is fairly clear they are leaning toward believing that Alicia killed herself; the call comes that Tilbury has been found unresponsive.

Due to lack of evidence that he had menaced or harmed Tilbury and, in spite of the lead investigator's heavy suspicion, Sydney is cleared.

[3] Highsmith's biographer Andrew Wilson calls this work "the author's most postmodern novel" and describes it as "a literary hall of mirrors in which reality and fiction are constantly reflected and, ultimately, confused".