Spoilers below.
In The Residence, solving the murder of A.B. Wynter is not as simple as a game of Clue. While there was only one killer in the end, multiple people were involved with the crime… in multiple rooms… and with multiple weapons. I guess that’s the kind of convoluted scheme you’d expect to take place in the White House during the night of a glitzy state dinner (with Kylie Minogue!), right? It’s also the kind of “unsolvable” mystery that Detective Cornelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) is equipped to crack. Here’s what she discovers.
The Victim
A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito) is the chief usher of the White House, meaning he’s in charge of all the staff at the storied building, from the chefs to the electrical technicians. During the night of a U.S. state dinner hosted for Australia, he was found dead in the game room with his wrists cut and an alleged suicide note in his pocket. But upon further inspection, Detective Cupp finds evidence of poison, smaller cuts on his face, head trauma, and blood on the shirt he’s wearing, which doesn’t appear to be his.
The Killer
While Detective Cupp’s investigation begins that night in the White House, it ends unfinished, and she returns months later to resume her questioning. She finds out the killer was Lilly Schumacher (Molly Griggs), the White House social secretary, who was in charge of throwing events. Although other members of the staff had their issues with A.B., Lilly especially butted heads with him as she tried to modernize the White House and he refused to abandon tradition. She aimed to change holiday decorations, furniture throughout the building, and menus, all of which A.B. opposed.
The Motive
Workplace tensions weren’t enough to drive Lilly to murder. The final straw came when A.B. discovered she had been misappropriating funds, breaking ethical codes, and violating contracts when it came to the projects, vendors, and people she welcomed to the White House. That included an “energy healer” named St. Pierre (Taran Killam) who somehow got involved with the seating arrangements at the state dinner.
A.B. threatened to come forward with the information (which he kept written in his journal). In fear of her misdeeds coming to light, she plotted to kill him. They got in an altercation in his office that led to her reaching to grab his journal to remove the evidence of her shady business dealings, but she only got away with a ripped page. When she noticed the contents of that page could easily double as a suicide note, she hatched a plan.
The Murder
According to Detective Cupp, Lilly stole some poison—paraquat, a toxic herbicide—from the on-site nursery, which she stashed in a small pot, to bring back into the White House. She invited A.B. to meet in the Yellow Oval Room, seemingly to make amends, when in fact she was doing the complete opposite. She even ordered the Secret Service to clear the second floor, disguising her voice as the First Gentleman Elliot Morgan’s (Barrett Foa) with a passable impression.
She mixed the paraquat with scotch in a glass for A.B. and waited from the next room as A.B. and housekeeper Elsyie (Julieth Restrepo) got into their own disagreement. Once Elsyie left, Lilly entered the Yellow Oval Room and gave A.B. his poisonous drink. It didn’t take long after his first sip for him to realize he’d been tricked. He poured the rest of his drink onto the pot of roses, but she continued to try to kill him in other ways. She threw a vase at him and missed, then she turned to a heavy clock on the mantle, which she used to beat him to death. To hide the evidence, she stashed the clock in a secret passageway in one of the Yellow Oval Room walls.
Months later, she would seal that door shut to keep the clock hidden and say she did it to protect Elsyie and White House engineer Bruce (Mel Rodriguez), whom she claims killed A.B. But Lilly lets it slip that she knew where the suicide note was on A.B.’s person even though she wasn’t present when Detective Cupp found the body; she also said she saw Elsyie and A.B. fighting in the Yellow Oval Room when, in reality, they argued behind closed doors (and she was watching from the family room through a crack in the door). These little slip-ups confirm to Detective Cupp that Lilly is indeed the killer.
The Body’s Location(s)
This is where things get really complicated. A.B. was killed in the Yellow Oval Room, so why was his body discovered in the game room? That’s because not one, but two people moved his remains even after he was dead. This sounds so ridiculous to me; why wouldn’t you report it if you found your boss or a member of your staff dead!? Why would you touch the body, let alone move it, and then not tell anyone?!?!?!
Regardless, the body movers in The Residence had their reasons, though they’re not very convincing. First, Bruce moved the body from the Yellow Oval Room to the Lincoln Bedroom and then to Room 301. He suspected that Elsyie, the woman he loves, killed A.B., but he didn’t want her to get in trouble. Moving the body was his way of protecting her.
Then, Tripp Morgan (Jason Lee), the president’s misfit brother, passed out in Room 301 and awoke to find A.B.’s body on the floor beside him. Instead of running away in terror like a normal person, he worried that he might’ve killed A.B. while he was drunk, and moved the corpse again to eliminate suspicion. He placed A.B. in the game room, found the note in his pocket, and used the pastry chef’s knife to slit A.B.’s wrists to make the presumed suicide look more convincing. He covered up any blood stains in Room 301, too. Does no one in the White House know what to do with a dead body?
As for the bloody shirt, that belonged to Foreign Minister David Rylance (Brett Tucker). He was hooking up with the White House chef outside, and she got a bloody nose, but they kept going. Upon his return to the dinner, A.B. found him and his stained shirt, and offered to swap with him. That’s perhaps the most unfortunate thing about this whole ordeal: that after everything he and his corpse went through the night of his death, A.B. was the type of man who would give the literal shirt off his back for the people under his roof.
