The Little Friend question

I just finished this book yesterday and while I agree that knowing who killed Robin isn't necessarily important. I have a theory of who did it.
I think it was Pem...

Pem is never looked at as the potential killer, even though he was also Robin's "little friend" (Pem refers to this himself in the final pages of the book). So why is Danny a suspect and not Pem? Danny comes from a poor family with a criminal history, Pem comes from a respectable family. Tartt uses this to expose our prejudices. We, as the reader, fall into the same trap that Harriet does.

Allison was in the yard the day of Robin's murder and Pem becomes close to her after he notices her reclusive nature. I think Pem starts a relationship with Allison to find out if she remembers anything about that day. Pem is older than Allison and referred to as quite a catch. Even Harriet finds this relationship strange but never quetions it further.

Pem harrasses Harriet in the pool. Badgering her with questions about Allison. He wants to know why Harriet said that Allison wasn't available when he rang one evening. What Pem really wants to know is. Did Allison remember something? and did she tell Harriet about it?

The final few pages of the book are quite telling for me. Why focus on a conversation between Hely and Pem when so many major events happened with the other character's? I think Pem is hinting to Hely that he could also be a suspect in Robin's murder. Pem even points out that Hely is not bright enough to figure this out as he leaves the room.

Folks, you can't just sky off into plot lines that aren't presented in the book: the dad did it, one of the aunts did it, Ida did it, Roy Dial did it because he wanted money. Nothing in the book points to any of this - these ideas are OUTSIDE of the book, and have nothing to do with it. With a novel like this, take a look at the motifs and overall themes. We learn about how gossipy the town is about everything, and even at the end, are given a glimpse of more gossip and belief in flat-out incorrect information, ie. Harriet has asthma. Importantly, Robin's death is ASSUMED at the outset, by a gossipy town, to be a murder. We then follow Harriet as she accidentally causes a lot of mayhem for the Ratliffs, who ASSUME all kinds of conspiracy notions about who/ why someone is after them. Danny battles Harriet at the end, without ever knowing why she is after him. Harriet herself wonders at the end if maybe she was wrong. We learn who the Little Friend was: Danny. We learn the boys played together as flying Super Heroes without the family even knowing. Could Robin's death have been an ACCIDENT? That certainly fits in with the unclear motives of everyone in the book, and the accidental things that happen to everyone in the book.

I also agree that knowing the culprit isn't the most important part of the book...however,, just finished this a few days ago and I agree with one of the other posts here that it was Ida (possibly in collaboration with Chester and/or other members of the black community). I have more detailed thoughts on this in my review of the book, but in summary I think that Robin's murder was retaliation for Edie's insensitivity following the Ratliffs' attack on the church, which resulted in the death of a black woman and serious injuries for many others, including Ida.

To add to the thoughts presented in the other post:
- Ida tells Harriet that the church was burned down when Harriet was a baby - right around when Robin died.
- The reason why Charlotte is distracted at the exact moment that Robin dies is that Ida "can't find" the good napkins, which forces Charlotte to go looking for them.
- Ida seemed to me to be very bitter about the fact that Edie didn't care about the church fire and that she blamed the woman's death on a heart attack. Also, the scene when she talks to Harriet about the fire is also the same one in which she suggests that Danny is the culprit.
- Ida chased Danny off right before the killing. (He later wonders whether he could have saved Robin if she hadn't.)
- The fact that Robin is left hanging from a tree has racial symbology in my opinion...
- It would explain why Allison blocks out all memories of what happened - she loves Ida too much.

I think it was an accident - Robin played superhero that could fly (Danny's memories suggest that he had the phase for superheroes right then) and hung himself up a loop that was remaining from some previous game.

There were actually three witnesses - Danny, Allison and Harriet.

Danny pushed from his memory the fact that he had witnessed it and his conscious version is "it's a pity Ida chased me off and I couldn't save him", but he probably witnessed it from quite close, probably even tried to save him ("the breathless struggling thing" from his dreams).

Both Allison and Harriet subconsciously recreate Robin's accidental suicide - Allison by jumping off the top of the tree in order to fly, and Harriet by forcing Hely (who, by the way, is similar to Robin even in the eyes of Edie, for whom he was irreplaceable) to reenact Judas's suicide.

The hat on Libby's bed can be explained together with the loop, as a remainder of some game of cowboys, sheriffs and gangsters.

I think Robin's death had been an accident, and his pet cat, Weenie played an important part in it.

In the prologue, we are told that Allison had been sitting on the front steps of her house, playing with the cat.

But, by the time we find Robin dead, hanging from the tree, the cat was "sprawled barrel-legged on his stomach atop a branch, batting, with a deft, fainting paw, at Robin's copper-red hair...".

So, is it possible that the cat might have ran away from Allison and climed to the low branch of the tree?

Now, we know from Danny how he and Robin loved playing heroes, and it was Robin's cat. So, maybe Robin assumed the cat had been stuck on the low branch, and wanted to bring it safely down to the ground, like a hero?

Now, Danny and Pem may or may not have been present when this was happening. Maybe Pem helped tie that knot. Maybe the three of them, or just Danny and Robin, used that cable to haul Robin up, so that the cat could be rescued. But in the process Robin somehow got strangulated with the cable.

And seeing Robin that way, scared Danny ( and Pem, if he was present ) and he ( they ) ran away in fright, instead of calling for help from the adults. Maybe that is why Danny felt guilty about not being able to save him all those years later.

This also explains why Pem said with certainty that Danny didn't kill Robin any more than he, himself, did it.

It was DEFINITELY not Ida. One theme of the book is that the black folks in town are vulnerable all the time. Ida was devastated by being fired, and her firing was for almost no reason at all. If she had hurt Robin at all, her life would be in danger, but also she cared about the kids.

Regarding the possible motive for Ida: she was burned in a church fire and there were no consequences for the perpetrators of that crime. I think the point of the church fire was to expose the racism of Edie. Also, Ida didn't take Allison's parting gifts - maybe to be cold - but more likely because she follows the rules about being servile, submissive, and never ever taking advantage of (non-poor) white people.

I don't think its Roy Dial, but the Stetson and the will are pretty compelling. I can believe he was snooping in her stuff, but it seems like a stretch that if Robin was gone, Roy Dial could move in on her money.

I thought it was so strange that in the conversation about the Ratliffs someone mentioned that a toothless Ratliff had once worked for the Cleve family - is that the Ratliff father? I thought he might have been a suspect when he was mentioned.

Or was it just someone passing through town?

The idea that it's Pem is kind of compelling. It is strange that the book ends with that conversation, but I wonder if its just to point out that Hely's big mouth won't be a threat to Harriet - that Harriet is off the hook for her crime.

I'm going to re-read the prologue and see if I believe the perpetrators are revealed.

I think, it has something to do with Houdini and reenacting an escape act.

A website WILD ABOUT HARRY has an article "Hanging Houdini", in which we read:

...This begs the question; did Houdini ever do a stunt that involved his own hanging? Programs do show Houdini performing something called the "Jesse James Hanging Trick"...

In Walter B. Gibson's Houdini's Escapes (1931) there are notes for what Houdini called "The Gallows Restraint." This did not involve actual hanging, but it evoked it, etc.

The New Yorker in its article on Houdini ("Harry Houdini and the Art of Escape") calls him 'a little (sic) guy who always escaped'.

The mysterious black hat could have had something to do with the Houdini project.

Danny (and possibly Pem) could have agreed to perform the reenactment with Robin but were chased away by Ida. And Robin decided to proceed without them.

The fact that the cat was acting in a playful manner, in my opinion, also hints at it having been a game that went wrong.

I think it was Chester. He was some kind of predator who tried to molest Robin and things got out of hand. I don't have the book in front of me right now, so I can't be specific, but here are my suspicions:

• Lasharon Odum had Harriet's red gloves, which Harriet had hidden in Chester's garden shed. When Harriet confronts Lasharon about them, Lasharon says "her gave them to me". I think Lasharon was actually trying to say "Chester", not "her". How would Lasharon have got the gloves, other than Chester giving them to her? I think he gave them to her as some kind of gift to make her more amenable to his predation. I also think it's possible that she is "the little friend" .

• There's a scene towards the end of the book when Harriet encounters Chester in a garden where she hadn't expected him to be. It says something like "Harriet knew Chester did work for different people, but she didn't know he worked this far away." So what was he doing there? Maybe he was hiding something (see next point).

• Harriet rummages around in the shed of the garden where she comes across Chester. He seems concerned, as if he's worried she might find something. He says something like "You didn't move anything around back there, did you?" There is mention of some fibreglass being in the shed. Robin was hanged with fibre cable. I know, fibreglass and fibre cable are not the same thing. But still.

Just finished the book and just living for all you guys' theories! Thanks so much

i really like how in this novel tartt did the complete opposite of the secert history - instead of classy rich students we have rural poverty, instead of revealing the murderer at the start she never reveals who it is. the only thing that remains constant is the murder itself. the comments on this thread are all valid; it could have been anyone from danny to chester, ida and even roy dial or pemberton. even while most of us wish to have a canon conclusion to close the story, sometimes there is a lot of beauty in things left ambiguously written, a little bit like the interpretation of art itself.

I adore Donna Tartt's writing- it shows you what excellent literature looks like and makes many other books I have read seem flimsy in comparison. I can remember reading the theory that Pem did it the first time I read this book couple of years ago, and I have just finished re-reading it to see if I could find anything to support this theory. Firstly, I noticed that Pem gave an inordinate amount of money and items (assumed stolen) when they were collecting for Robin's family. Perhaps this was out of guilt? Secondly, when he was talking about how to catch a snake he showed them how to make a snare using wire and a pipe- hooking it around the snake's neck and pulling it tight until the snake was strangled. I agree that he might also be spending a lot of time with Allison to see if she remembers anything. Additionally, he is very intimidating towards Harriet in the swimming pool, which shows us another side to his character, which initially seems pretty laid back.
Anyway, I completely agree that it doesn't matter who did it: it's all about the journey and not the destination. A stupendous book. I love that not knowing what happened to Robin in the end made me want to read it all over again.

I think, Curtis killed Robin. Closer to the end of the story, when Danny tries to remember how he knew E. Cleve, he mentions that on the day Robin was killed, Ida chased after him and also that back then he and Curtis spend all the days together. So where was Curtis when Ida chased Danny?

Correction: the gossip beginning about Harriet having epilepsy (not asthma).

I think it was Dix, the dad. He wanted out, he was ready to reestablish and Robin's death was his out. Look how quickly he exited after his death. Now did he hire someone to actually do the dirty work? Not sure.

We're not really meant to know though, I'm just totally speculating.

Donna Tartt lays down hints, suggestions and dead-ends as a device. It basically gets the reader to hypothesize and suspect characters in the same way the community has done for generations, employing our in-built prejudices to outline one from another. Cleverly done - we only need to look at the comments and theories on here.

I also thought it was Pem. But the point is, like life, we will never really know what lies beneath every complex mask. There is no certified killer - to reveal that person would undermine the point of the tale, albeit reneging on the premise.

Also the old estate is called Tribulation. The book is all about trial by assumption, by community standing, hence why Robin's 'little friend' became the main suspect in the first place -by dint of his poverty and family history, that he slowly had to emulate regardless of his humanity.

I left the novel believing it might have been himself. Child suicide possibly and also opened the philosophy of good vs. evil, how life can eat away at us. Thy symbolism with the snakes, the humdrum of the day, the underbelly of civil society........ Maybe I'm overreaching, but it was a prickly book. Either that or we aren't meant to know, just left with the possibilities, which in a way preserves hope.

I believe that Pem did it.
In the book, these a point in which Hely mentions that he’s jealous of Harriet.
It’s probable that this was the same as Pem and Robin and so Pem, like Harriet who decided to kill Danny Ratcliff without thinking about the consequences, decided to kill Robin the only way he knew which was the way he used to kill snakes.
Pem then gets close to Allison to try and see if she remembers anything.

all these comments omg wow. goosebumps

For what it is worth, I think it was Carl Odum. The way he treats his daughter in the pool hall seems creepy to and inappropriate and the way his daughter showed up up on the front step of Harriet's house like she wanted to say something important but no one will listen. Second suspect is Danny's father, who seemed violent enough and hated his son hanging with Robin.

Maybe Charlotte had an affair with Odum, and Harriet is his illegitimate child. And he killed Robin in retaliation. Harriet is mentioned as having a striking resemblance to Odum and his children. That part never gets resolved.

It could have been Farrish too; he's quite panicked by how much he seems to recognize her.

I agree with Annadell's comment (2020) that this isn't a case of a typical whodunnit, which we could solve by just by finding someone who fits the clues. It's about what cause of death fits the themes of the book - one that Tartt spent a decade polishing, so nothing there is surely trivial or unintentional.

Accidental death caused by other kids (as suggested by e.g. Ritwika (2021)) would fit the themes of lost innocence; of how something that starts small (like child's play) could end up ruining so many lives, etc.

On the other hand, I remember it was stated that cause of death was specifically strangling (not hanging), which wouldn't be accidental.

I can't help thinking Tartt must've chosen past time (60's-70's US South) for a reason, and the most obvious reason would be to be able to study the social realities of the time. Racism and segregation is visibly tackled in the book - even though the story is told through a white girl.

The black housekeeper Ida Rhew is one of the book's central characters. It's significant for a book that tackles the theme of families that Ida is at the same time an integral part of the family - yet also can never really part of it: in the end she's just the "help", easily discarded.

Since strangling is a very intimate way to kill someone, it doesn't sound like a premeditated killing, but maybe done in a fit of rage. What if the killing was motivated by awful injustices witnessed and experienced by Ida, which culminated in her snapping when even her charge Robin turned out to be "one of them"?

I remember that that the daugher Allison dreams of sheets, and the protagonist Harriet organises weird, religious plays with other kids, in which they walk to the murder tree wearing sheets - looking like KKK, as I think someone in the book comments. So: what if Robin and his little friends organised something similar, Ida saw this, thought/realised they are being racist, chased the other kid(s) away (minutes before the murder!).

Robin appeared to be a handful. It could mean the situation escalated so that Ida ended up strangling Robin - and then symbolically lynched him. And if Danny was there and maybe instigated the play (maybe something he'd seen at home?), maybe this prompted Ida to later say to Harriet that Danny was in a way responsible for Robin's death?

None of this would justify killing the child, but it would explain the sorry circumstances - which Tartt does depict throughout hte book - that led to it.

In a sense, I am glad that I read this book knowing that Donna didn't (at least explicitly) reveal the murderer, because I could focus to her prose instead, but I think the murderers were those hippies.

So many red herrings, but after reading this book for the second time I think I knew who did it. The killer is mentioned, but it is so subtle that you could easily miss it.

I guess the marvelous thing about this book is that any of the possibilities above could be true. I finished the book and couldn’t believe there where no more pages, no conclusion, but then I understood that the point was to reflect back on all the characters. She is a genius!
I can’t leave without my own theory. I think that when Ida comes and tells the story about the fire in her church to Edie, (Harriet and Edie being so similar) she has to do something about it, probably goes to the police and search for the Ratcliffs who are in accord and part of a white supremacist group. They warn her more than once to let it go and then retaliate with what she loves the most. Maybe the older Ratcliffs use Danny and Pem as a bait to get to Robin that day but I don’t see them murdering him. Eugene feels guilty and turns out to God and Farish was always a devil. Edie is silenced when they threaten to hurt someone else in her family.

She wasn’t diagnosed as having epilepsy. She had a seizure when she had a high fever.
There are no reliable narrators in the book.

I just finished this book, and I agree with Steve. Tartt's point is that we get fixated on our idea about an event - in this case Harriett gets completely focused on her idea that Danny Ratcliff did it - and we become closed to other possibilities and we can do the other person a grave injustice (not that Danny Ratcliffe is a nice person, but does he deserve to almost drown in the water tower?). This isn't supposed to be a mystery where we get a nice clean ending. We're supposed to be questioning our conclusions about people, since they can lead us to do such awful things like dumping cobras in their cars. Danny, likewise, misunderstands Farish and winds up killing him because he does.

While I can't quite remember who did it (there's another discussion thread on this very same subject that offers a few solutions), I can remember that the solution to the "mystery" doesn't matter one bit to the story. It's not about mysteries or solution, rather it's a re-telling of children's adventure stories. This is compounded by the final scene, in which the kids force their own narrative into the reality of the situation. The stories they tell themselves become more important than the novel's story.

According to the 2002 NYT review of the book, the reviewer wrote "...the crime and its perpetrators (note the plural) are given away in the prologue...". I went back to read the prologue, and have to conclude that the perpetrators were Danny Ratliff and Pem Hull. There are clues that point to this throughout the book: Ida chasing the kids away, Pem's strong interest in Allison, the hanging was done on a low branch with an amateur knot...most telling is Pem's conversation with Hely at the end of the book. Hely tells his & Harriet's theories of how Robin was murdered, and Pem tells Hely that Harriet is indeed a genius "...compared to you". Also, several places in the book make note of the fact that the Hull boys are very spoiled, and that the parents have little control over them. And Pem--even though he's over 21--has never done anything more serious in his life than work as a lifeguard. I believe that the hanging was a game gone bad--not intentional--done by the two boys.

I agree somewhat with Anne (6/16/14) and while I believe it was accidental, I remember the part in the book where Danny remembers playing with Robin and how they both liked superheros. When I read that part I remembered the prologue and I immediately thought that Danny may have suggested to Robin, or they both cooked up a scheme to fly. I really thought Tartt would end the book with explaining that Robin tried to fly and accidentally killed himself. Somehow this made sense to me as that would implicate Danny and at some point he would figure out that his suggestion may have caused Robin's death. Oh, well, that may be stretching it, I guess!!!

This is really interesting to read everyone's theories. I read this book several years ago, and now I'm ready to reread it and see how these theories work out. I'll definitely pay more attention this time, although I didn't mind not finding out who the killer it. I just got so wrapped up in the descriptions - the meth, the snakes, the water tower. As I wrote in a post about The Goldfinch, no one can create a world in my head as well as Donna Tartt!

Roy Dial killed Robin. The only tangible evidence was the black dress hat on Libby's bed. Size eight. Roy Dial was described as having a large bulbous forehead. He is the only major character who would have worn and expensive Stetson dress hat. Dial was in Libby's bedroom checking out her will in her cedar chest which would leave most of her property to Robin the sole male heir. Dial's Bible quote was about having a plan. Robin was in the way of his plan. He strangled Robin and then hung him in the tree.

I don't think Tartt thinks finding the murderer is the point. The point I think she is making, and the lesson Harriet learns, is that she was wrong, and that even though she is smarter than everyone else in this wonderful novel, she was wrong about this and it almost got her and others in a lot of trouble. Harriet learns that she has to take into account doubt, that she only has a partial picture of things and her perceptions may be incorrect, no matter how smart she is.

After obsessing with this all night, my first suspect is Ida. She was outside with the kids most of the time when Robin died, she was the one with the radio turned up really loudly (thus covering his screams) and she had an "armload of white shirts" in her arms at one point. Alison talks about "white sheets" in her dreams later on. Maybe it was her only memory of the trauma.
Ida was described as having "a foul mood" the day of the party, because she was unable to go home that afternoon like she usually does.
Maybe she was sick of being underpaid and so she went crazy with all the kids to watch and the work to do.
ALSO! Wasn't she upset about being burned or something from a fire and she sounded kind of mad at Edie, because Edie didn't seem to believe her about that fire or whatever? Maybe she was really annoyed and decided to take Robin away from her, because Edie adored him?
So she got a piece of rope out of the shed and maybe convinced Robin to go up and get the cat in the tree, and followed him up and told him to hold on to her rope. Then she tied it around him and pushed him off!
She mentioned the "trashy little boys" that were around the house when Charlotte was looking for Robin, saying that she'd just seen them. And when Harriet asks her about Danny later, she makes him out to be a bad kid. She didn't like the Ratliffs at all, for a long time! Maybe she wanted to frame them?
Also, when Charlotte sees the body, you read: "Where had Ida been when she got there? Where was Edie?" Then, the next sentence talks about Edie and Mrs. Fountain screaming. But Ida is never mentioned. Maybe she didn't want to see their faces when they saw him, so she stayed back!
She felt bad for killing him and so she kept working for them, despite being underpaid. This also made her less suspicious than if she had suddenly quit.
Then, she leaves because Harriet is starting to try and figure things out, and acts very defensive about her pay and her reasons to leave. She goes away and they never hear from her again!

I dunno where the damn black hat fits in anywhere though. Maybe it's a fake clue and Mr. Sumner creeped in and left it for Libby because he loved her or whatever.

There are still a lot of holes in my theory but it's the one that I find fits the most...

Other theories:
I also read somewhere that maybe it was Tat, because she has a dislike of children and she was outside playing with the kids just before it happened. And there's her creepy doll story suggesting that she is kinda weird. She and Addie were very hostile towards Harriet when she questioned them about Robin's death. Maybe they both killed him. But why?
Or Pem.. There may be something at the end of the book that I don't understand.
The father was also "gone hunting" on the day of his death..

Anyway.. just throwing all my ideas out there. I'm really going crazy over this. I've been trying to figure it out nonstop. I'm going insane.

I am reeling at the ending of this book not giving me some definite sense of who did it. I agree with the above suggestions about Pem (as in, that theory makes sense to me and the fact that the book ended on the conversation between Pem and Hely gives it weight too). Also, the suggestion (again, above) that Pem and Danny did it - perhaps Danny freaked out and left, or it was accidental but they were both there. This is given weight by Pem saying at the end of the book, "Danny didn't kill Robin any more than I did", which surely connects the two of them to the murder - either in innocence or guilt, but both the same as each other. I think Alison knew too, but possibly repressed the memories as it was suggested through the book that she was in some kind of denial about what she remembered and couldnt quite call it to mind, but there was some familiarity there. Especially in light of her relationship with Pem. My God, what a book this was.

I tend to agree with Steve and Valerie that Who did it is less important than Harriet's voyage of discovery that appearances are deceptive and doubt is essential. Although the ending is unexpected in so far as there is no revelation of a murderer, I think that is part of the author's intention to emphasize that mysteries cannot always be solved but that the very process of trying to do so can also help to solve surrounding issues. In this case, it appears that Harriet's mother finally becomes aware of the damage her neglect has been doing to her surviving children and this, together with Harriet's new understanding of her fallibility, provides a note of optimism.

I felt that it was Farish - perhaps a game gone wrong following on from his little brother being chased from the yard. He was clearly deeply troubled by some event in his past that could have led to the shooting attempt. Hi s crying near the end could also be related - ie the recognition of who Harriet is brings it all back. He also had an aversion to cats - perhaps a reminder of the day it happened and Robins cat. Also he almost seems to passively accept his fate - turns away and gives Danny every opportunity to end him........of course this is still clutching at straws

Utterly frustrating but brilliantly written book. I'm feeling very mad and dissatisfied that it was unconcluded. I hate books where the meaning is ambiguous and this was not only so, but unforgivably meandering and self-indulgent. A 'fail' on the part of Ms Tartt, winding up her own loyal readers. Now that's mean.

It is mentioned when Hely sees the Ratliffs shooting at the african american people at the creek that Farish is wearing a stetson. I wonder if that connects to the hat on the bed?

The ending was entirely purposely unfulfilling, and should be appreciated for just that! Unexpected? well yes, unanswered questions, not a satisfying conclusion? basically not what you wanted? this is precisely the endings genius!

The more comments I see on this thread the more I admire the novel. There are so many different theories and none can be proved right or wrong.....

I blame Obama. Sorry.

Who knows? Certainly not us, since the author didn't bother telling us. Terrible storytelling: I am surprised her publishers let her get away with that.

Robin is the Little Friend, kept alive in the stories told by his family.

Harriet’s epilepsy appears to be a recent development at age 12. Hely’s parents weren’t surprised implying there was family history. “And Allison saw the whole thing.” P. 554 Perhaps Robin, at age 9, had an epileptic seizure when he was in the tree.

Ida might hate white boys because they were a painful reminder of Robin.

What secret did Libby and Odean share? P. 408 Was blackmail involved? Edie seemed to know something of it.

well, burn my biscuits ! just finished the tome after scrapping it once. i am sorry..an author owes it to the reader to have clarity, especially after 640 pp. AND it is set up as a mystery,so don't give mt the bs that it was never promised...so many theories ! why not the MOTHER..explains her going crazy

It surely couldn't have been Allison, she was only 4 years old!

I was also very, very disappointed by the ending of an otherwise great read. So many interesting characters and wonderful character development. I don't mind an ending that doesn't reveal all, but there was no ending. It seemed that the author just tired of the book and stopped writing,leaving too many loose ends.

I suspected that Allison either participated in Robin's death somehow (childhood play gone wrong?) or witnessed it.