Some things that bother me

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 134197

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, momy424 at a... wrote:

Momy424:
> I was almost 99% sure in GoF, in the opening chapters when they are 
at the Riddle house that the information on the deaths of the 
Riddle's included the son (Tom) whose body was not found or something 
to that effect, however in HBP, Riddle finds out about his father 
from his uncle and kills them that same night and it is quite clear 
that no one knew about Tom before that.  Am I imagining this?

Geoff:
This has been discussed in past posts - probably buried deep in the 
bowels of the Yahoomort archive. The relevant canon is: 

"Fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning, when,the 
Riddle house had still been well kept and impressive... a maid 
entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead...

..Elderly Mr and Mrs Riddle had been rich, snobbish and rude and 
their grown-up son, Tom, had been even more so."

(GOF "The Riddle House" pp.7/8 UK edition)

"Frank was stubbornly repeating, again and again, that he was 
innocent and that the only person he had seen near the house on the 
day of the Riddles' deaths had been a teenage boy, a stranger, dark-
haired and pale."

(ibid. p.9)

So the victims were Tom's father and paternal grandparents many 
people take the text to imply that the stranger was Tom himself.