Neville Griffin

Neville Griffin is the protagonist of the Inside No. 9 episode "Misdirection".

He is portrayed by Reece Shearsmith, who also played Ray, Tom, Hector, Mr. Warren, George, Dr. Jacob Tyler and Viktor in the same show, Mr. Jelly, Maureen Sowerbutts, Jeremy Goode and the Silent Singer in Psychoville, Edward Tattsyrup, Ross Gaines, Papa Lazarou, Geoff Tipps, Bernice Woodall, Judee Levinson, Oliver Plimsoles, Cathy Carter-Smith and Father Halfhearte in the League of Gentlemen, Gagan Rassmussen in Doctor Who, Malcolm Webster in The Widower and one of the Vogons in the 2005 film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Biography[]

In the episode's first scene, Neville, a student of magic, arranges a meeting with magician Willy Wondo in his storage container to demonstrate his new "chair-raising experience" trick where he levitates out of a chair while wearing a bedsheet. Neville offers to buy the trick, but Willy refuses, explaining that he's content with just performing on cruise ships and at his grandson's birthday party. Seeing the trick's potential for achieving global fame, Neville tricks Willy into putting the bedsheet on to do the trick one more time before bashing him over the head and decapitating him with a stage guillotine. He then steals his notes so that he can do the trick himself.

Nine years later, Neville has become a world-famous stage magician using the tricks he stole from Willy and is married to his assistant Jennie. He agrees to an interview with student journalist Gabriel, who attempts to impress him by stealing his ring while shaking his hand, which Neville immediately notices. During the interview, Neville states his belief that stealing a trick is worse than murder, which he claims is the view of most of the magic community. He also shows Gabriel some card tricks, including one involving tarot cards which appears to show that Gabriel is seeking to avenge a wrong in his past and predict a death in his future, although Neville insists it's just a trick.

Gabriel offers to show Neville a trick of his own: he gets him to write down a series of numbers on a piece of paper, fold the paper up in his left hand without telling him the numbers and get him a piece of fruit from across the room. He then cuts the fruit in half with a straight razor in order to demonstrate how sharp it is, before slicing his palm open with the razor and bleeding onto a nearby pad of paper, revealing the numbers Neville thought of written in blood. Neville immediately guesses how he did it; he gave him a pen fitted with a tracking chip which relays his hand movements to Gabriel's phone, which he checked during the demonstration, allowing him to write the numbers on the paper with a small wax candle while Neville was away getting fruit. He then swapped out the razor while pretending to put it in his pocket after cutting the fruit with a fake rigged with blood which revealed the numbers written in wax when dripped onto the paper. He explains that Gabriel's big mistake was that he put the real razor back in the wrong pocket, taking it out to demonstrate.

Gabriel explains that his interest in the magic arts comes from his grandfather, a magician who disappeared nine years ago. His will stated that when Gabriel reached a certain age he was to be given his notebook which contained a detailed explanation of all his tricks, but this notebook appears to be missing. Gabriel then asks Neville for an autographed copy of his book, and when Neville goes to get a copy he attempts to open his safe with the combination he wrote down during the number trick. Neville catches him and explains that he worked out Gabriel was subtly trying to psychologically nudge him into writing down the combination and changes the combination to the safe every week. Gabriel reveals that his grandfather was Willy Wondo and his personal effects included a list of all the magic tricks he'd performed, including "a chair-raising experience", which was what made Neville famous. Neville denies killing Willy and smugly points out that there is no proof he didn't come up with the trick on his own, prompting Gabriel to leave after threatening to come back with a search warrant.

After Gabriel leaves, Neville realizes that he wrote something down on the piece of paper above the one with the numbers on it before tearing it out. By shading it with a pencil, he discovers that Gabriel wrote the word "MOUNTWEAZEL". Later, he gets a call from Jennie, who tells him that someone claiming to be him has been calling the front desk of her hotel and leaving abusive messages for her. Neville asks her what a Mountweazel is, and she explains that it's a copyright trap: a deliberate piece of false information included in a work so that a plagiarist will copy it and inadvertently expose themselves. Realizing that Gabriel believes there to be Mountweazel in Willy's notes, Neville unlocks the safe and burns the notebook, deleting all his security camera's footage from that night to cover it up.

The next day, Neville is practicing his next performance when a police detective arrives to speak to him and asks him about the abusive phone calls to the hotel, which he denies making. He is then informed that Jennie was murdered the previous night. Neville claims that CCTV will prove he was at his storage unit all night, only to remember that he deleted the footage. The detective then asks Neville to open his safe after confirming that he's the only person who could possibly know the combination, explaining that an anonymous person told them there might be evidence inside. Just as he enters the combination, Neville realizes too late what must have happened: Gabriel planted a tracking chip in his ring when he stole it during the interview, then left the "Mountweazel" clue so that he would open the safe to destroy evidence, giving Gabriel the combination and forcing Neville to delete his CCTV footage in order to cover up his crimes. He also made the abusive phone calls to Jennie after the interview in order to make Neville look suspicious, then murdered Jennie, returned to the storage unit and planted evidence in the safe. Sure enough, Neville opens the safe to find Gabriel's straight razor, which he had handled during the interview while explaining how Gabriel did the number trick, now covered in Jennie's blood. Unable to explain what happened without admitting to his actual crimes, Neville offers no resistance as he is arrested for Jennie's murder.

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