Headscratchers / The Last of Sheila

• "The French word for "key" is C-L-E-F". What kind of a hint is that, exactly?
  • Well, she's wrong. She's barking up the wrong tree. She ends up in a bar with "Clef" in the name that's unconnected to Clinton's game.
    • But then he must have understood the hint in yet another way since he went somewhere else...
    • He did. After Anthony meets up with her again, she runs off at the mouth and says that she's been stopping strangers on the street who thought she was "Offering them the key to her hotel room." Anthony then says, "HOTEL..." He realizes that the key is to a room at a hotel with Sterling in its name, and ends up getting there, albeit too late.
• What would have Tom done if Lee hadn't "exploded"? She would still presumably confess the killing of Sheila, but obviously not that of Clinton, which, in turn, would have made her "suicide" that less convincing...
  • And if Tom didn't actually count on Lee trying to kill Clinton, why did she even have to find the false card at all? It would have spared Tom unnecessary trouble of having to get to Clinton before Lee did. And, by the way, I can't recall Philip being "boastful enough to hint that he'd figured out the clue".
    • All Tom was interested in doing was killing Clinton and getting his wife out of the picture. If she's in jail, she's not spending her personal money either. He intends to kill Clinton and, since he knows that she was responsible for Sheila's death, he assumes if he murders Clinton with an icepick, "The classic woman's weapon," in his cabin, she'll be ultimately suspected as she has the only motive strong enough to commit a murder to hide. When Philip notes him in the hallway, he puts off the murder and takes the time to further incriminate Lee by creating a card that "calls her out" as Sheila's killer, to further make it look to the eventual police investigators that she HAD to be the one who murdered Clinton. Tom lets Lee see the card to play a psychological game with her. And don't forget, he had every intention of simply murdering Clinton in the priest's box and leaving the body for others to find. Unfortunately for him, Christine prevents him from leaving, and dawdles enough during Tom's Clinton impersonation that Lee ends up getting there as well.
    • But rather than Lee finding him before he can leave being a detriment, she plays into his hand by "murdering" Clinton's already dead body after Tom has killed him, and being a writer, he uses this immensely to his advantage, "accidentally" outing her as Clinton's killer among the other members of the party during the faux investigation, before further taking advantage of her drinking meltdown and self-isolation from everyone to murder her and stage a convincing suicide scene. Tom's initial plan would have potentially worked, but since Lee does everything wrong after Clinton's murder, he uses fully to his advantage to not only get rid of her, but to murder her, and would have gotten away clean if not for Philip's dogged determination.
    • When Anthony reads the brochure for the church, he reads the sentence, "The Isle of the Church..." Philip immediately lets out a barking laugh, and if you watch Tom, he immediately looks intently at Philip. That's how Philip was boastful enough to indicate he'd figured out the clue. Philip's laugh signals to Tom that Philip immediately picked up on "The Isle of the Church" meaning "The aisle of one of the locations of the church," and so that's immediately where he goes once the game begins, and razzes Clinton for leaving such an obvious clue for him. And since Tom knows Philip has a lead on Clinton's location, all he has to do is follow him and he'll be led to Clinton himself.