“The note looked up almost accusingly at the group staring at it in shock. The Colonel’s first few words appeared to have been written in haste. Not in his clinically clean stylized handwriting. The last few words fell into an almost undecipherable scrawl which they could barely make out. It was almost illegible but it did look like the Colonel had written: “It can’t be you…”
This note, which triggered the title of the book, raises several possibilities to the mystery. Did the Colonel make sure this note was found as the proverbial red herring before killing himself ? Red herring, of course, being an idiom to describe a deliberate attempt to divert attention. To blame someone else and make his suicide appear to be a murder.
Did the Colonel write this in shock just before he was killed? Did someone write this as if the Colonel had done so? Did someone force the Colonel to write this note? Or, did someone kill him and leave this note to make you and me think it was a red herring?
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