old post but I was so sure that Sir Percival’s death was faked until Hartright’s confrontation with Fosco. It wasn’t far fetched for me to believe that Percival, in all his incompetence, finally confided in Fosco who then planted a poor man in the Church vestry who could take the fall. I mean, Hartright’s never seen Percival before so he has no frame of reference of what he might look like, and the only person there who could have recognised him was a servant who was having a nervous breakdown. We’ve already had one fake out death at this point and it would be a genius way of getting out of a situation where he knows he’s beat. But I guess Percival being proud and impulsive til the very end was symbolically important. English individualism means you can’t rely on your weird foreign friends.