The deceased is the latest victim of the so-called "necktie murderer", a serial rapist-killer whose identity is eventually revealed to the audience as Bob Rusk, a psychotic Covent Garden greengrocer brilliantly played by Barry Foster. Rusk seems a prototype of the "nice guy" villain trope. His suave, affable, and stylish exterior merely conceals a violent misogyny beneath. "I think villains should be very attractive men. Otherwise they’d never get near their victims," Hitchcock told an audience at the University of Columbia Film School in June 1972. "If you look at most of your cultural murderers, they're rather gentlemanly sort of fellows."
