Clare Quilty="Clearly
guilty." Another topic that has fascinated me over the years is a
question that, in my opinion, has never been definitively answered: Is
Quilty real, or just another "invention within the invention,"
Humbert's doppelganger, a figment of HH's imagination, if you
will? Priscilla Meyer, among others, has noted that "the murder of
Quilty is ambiguous;" she points out the fact that John Ray, Jr. does
not even mention the murder, along with the timeline discrepancy (53
days versus 56) indicating that it would leave no room for Humbert to
go to Pavor Manor and kill him. All this leaves open the possibility
that the murder itself is figurative in the sense of HH psychologically
exorcising his own demon, Mr "Clearly Guilty."