Upon returning from handing in his letter of
resignation ZM73 {for want of a better name} returns home. He collects a ready
packed suitcase, his passport and airline ticket. On a side table under the
window is a brown attaché case into which he places two travel brochures.
Outside in the hallway an undertaker puts a gas gun to the keyhole of the study
door and pumps nerve gas into the room rendering ZM73 unconscious, if not paralyzed!
We can only speculate about the contents of the attaché case, whether or not they are files containing sensitive information, private papers, or something entirely different.
We can only speculate about the contents of the attaché case, whether or not they are files containing sensitive information, private papers, or something entirely different.
Eventually the Prisoner wakes up in what he
thinks is his own home, and when he gets up to look out of the window. The
brown attaché case can be seen on the side table beneath the window, because
the room has to be exactly the same when he wakes up to what it was when he was
rendered unconscious. However, after the Prisoner has been out and about in The
Village, at the café, attempting to make a telephone call, taking a scenic taxi
ride, and finds out about maps of the area, he leaves the General Store. If he
had gone straight back to his cottage instead of going round the other side of
the General Store and along the road, he would have encountered the housemaid
in his cottage. Instead he sees from the road, a housemaid standing on the
balcony flicking a yellow duster.
The Prisoner then rushes back to his cottage
not only to find his cottage now has a number, but the housemaid gone. He looks
out of the window to see her hurrying away down a set of steps, and the brown
attaché case which had lain upon the side table beneath the window has gone.
The housemaid didn’t take the attaché case, she’s not even carrying that yellow
duster, which she later goes back for.
It might well
be that when the Prisoner had been brought to The Village, both his suitcase
and the attaché case had already been searched before they had been placed in
the cottage, and anything of importance removed. As for the non-presence of the
attaché case, I can only suggest that in having dusted and tidied the cottage the
housemaid placed the attaché case, along with his suitcase in the wardrobe in
the bedroom. But just a minute, the Prisoner had only just moved in, the
cottage didn’t need dusting let alone tiding up. More than that, at that time
there was a dividing wall between the study and the rest of the cottage, making
it impossible for the housemaid to gain access to the rest of the cottage! So
both the suitcase and attaché case had to have been removed after the Prisoner
had left his cottage to take his first tentative steps in The Village by person
or persons unknown. After all he wouldn’t be needing either the clothes in the
suitcase, or the items in the attaché case, any important papers or files
removed and carefully filed away.
Be seeing you
Hi David,
ReplyDeleteThe maid that Number 6 saw going down the stairs did NOT look like the same maid that he found in the flat later...as her hair was much shorter.
When Number 6 later looked into his wardrobe, it was empty...no brief case.
Have you noticed that from episode to episode that the large picture on the wall behind the divan changes? The 2 small pictures are the same, but the large picture changes....and that detail is too much to blame on the continuity people! There must have been a reason to change the picture...or Patrick McGoohan approved the changes.
Number 6 asked why his clothes were destroyed in the hospital, but we are never shown that he asked about the briefcase...so perhaps it contained only the travel books and brochures? Surely if it had contained important papers, he would have been angry and wanting to know where it was????
BCNU
Hello Karen,
DeleteThat’s perfectly correct. The maid standing on the balcony of the Prisoner’s cottage, and later seen hurrying away, was a stand in for the maid {played by Stephanie Randall} the Prisoner later meets in his cottage, because Stephanie Randall didn’t go to Portmeirion.
No briefcase in the wardrobe, then other than the maid, person or persons unknown removed it!
It’s not only the pictures and carvings hanging on the walls in Number 6’s cottage that change, they also change in the study in his London home in later episodes from what they were in ‘Arrival.’ While Mrs. Butterworth is living there it’s understandable that slight changes would be made. But when Number 6 wakes up back in his house in London in ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling’ the study should be identical to what it was on the day of his abduction, but it isn’t.
Have you noticed that there is one thing missing from the Prisoner’s study on the day he was abducted? But perhaps that is because it was added later!
I think that at the time the Prisoner’s cloths were more important to him than an attaché case and its possible contents. After all the taking away of his cloths was the first step in taking away his identity!
David
Be seeing you