If We Were Villains: Act 3, Scene 2 Summary & Analysis

Two hours later, the students sit in a line outside a room where Meredith is giving her statement to the police. She emerges from the room, and Oliver stands up to go in—everyone else has already gone, and it’s his turn now. Gwendolyn, Frederick, Dean Holinshed, and Colborne are inside. Colborne invites Oliver to sit, begins recording, and starts to ask him questions about what happened last night. As the students agreed, Oliver tells him that he slept in his own room with James and went to bed around two or two thirty. He says that Richard was drinking alone upstairs during the party, but that he didn’t know why.

Oliver tells Colborne in vague terms about Richard’s fight with Meredith and the cellist. He admits to following Meredith to her room, but he insists that they merely talked before Oliver went upstairs to bed. Colborne asks him about getting in the water earlier in the morning, and Oliver tells him that someone had to check whether Richard was alive. Colborne looks at him in a way that makes him think he’s hiding his reaction, but the expression disappears as he asks Oliver if Richard had been acting strangely in the last few weeks. Oliver tells him that he wasn’t.