Characters Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide Rupert Holmes

Doria Maye (Dulcie Mown): Hollywood Star’s Dark Education at McMasters

Overview

Doria Maye, known on the McMasters campus as Dulcie Mown, is a fading Hollywood star who enrolls at the secret conservatory to delete studio head Leonid Kosta. Her alias allows her to train undetected while maintaining her public persona. The narrative presents her as a quick study, a natural performer, and a woman driven by a precise, vengeful purpose. By the time she graduates, she executes her thesis in a manner that blends theatrical flair with ruthless efficiency.

Plot Role and Chronological Arc

Doria first appears as Dulcie Mown in Chapter IV, introduced to new student Cliff Iverson by Dean Harrow. She is wearing an evening gown with opera gloves, fresh from a firing-range exercise, and demonstrates her understanding of McMasters principles. The narrator notes that she is unrecognizable on campus due to cropped hair, no makeup, and a modified accent. Her progress report, written by Professor Graves in Michaelmas term, describes her as an exemplary student who is single-minded in her dedication to helping someone “back in California.” Captain Dobson reveals he recognized her true identity immediately.

Returning to the studio after training (Chapter XXV), Doria regains her bungalow by threatening Kosta with a fabricated farewell interview in Collier’s. She then strategically interacts with Laddie Graham, the studio’s new head of production, to plant misdirection and maintain cover. In Chapter XLIII, she executes a critical intermediate step in her plan at a bar called Dolly Winslow’s, using a men’s room stall to acquire materials for framing Kosta’s death as an accident. The climax comes in Chapter XLVI at Kosta’s Torrey Pines retreat, where she bludgeons him with a heavy Oscar statuette she has kept for the purpose. She cleans the scene, plants evidence, and escapes using a decoy dog and a series of pre-arranged transport swaps.

The story does not follow her after the deletion, but she is not among the characters seen at McMasters in the later chapters. It is implied by her successful execution that she either returns to civilian life or disappears into her new identity.

Motivations and Personality

Doria’s primary motive is self-preservation and retribution. Kosta has systematically dismantled her career, humiliated her, and attempted to coerce sexual favors. The text shows that she researched her “executive” thoroughly and was fully convinced of the necessity of the deletion. Her internal dialogue confirms she gave Kosta “every last chance to redeem themselves” (the second of the Four Enquiries).

Her personality is a blend of discipline and theatricality. At McMasters, she is serious, asks sensible questions, and turns in exemplary work—yet she also adds a dramatic flourish to her exercises, as when she wears an evening gown to the firing range. Outside the school, she deftly switches between vulnerability (feigning tears to Laddie Graham) and steeliness (confronting Kosta). The narrative emphasizes her ability to compartmentalize; she treats the men’s room scene as a clinical necessity, reminding herself that she is “just trying to commit a murder,” not doing anything immoral.

Key Relationships

Leonid Kosta: He is her target and abuser. He denies her the bungalow, threatens her career, and mocks her—calling her “Oink” for the pig voice role she is forced to take. Doria plays along, bargaining with feigned deference while secretly planning his deletion. Their power dynamic shifts as she uses McMasters lessons to outmaneuver him.

Laddie Graham: A young production executive who admires her work and wishes to offer her substantive roles. Doria uses him as a prop for her cover, walking with him to the bungalow to be seen by the guard. She also plants a script as a red herring. The relationship is cordial but instrumental; she treats him with polite distance.

Finton “Finny” Flood: The security guard who reports on her activities to Kosta. Doria knows of his surveillance and intentionally waves to him while entering the bungalow with Laddie, ensuring the report will misdirect suspicion. She and Finny exchange pleasantries, but both understand he is not her ally.

Cliff Iverson: They meet only briefly at McMasters. Cliff observes her as a model student. The relationship is one of passing acquaintance, not a plot partnership.

Key Decisions and Consequences

  1. Adopting the alias Dulcie Mown and altering her appearance. This allows her to study at McMasters without discovery, at the cost of temporarily losing her star identity. The decision is essential to her survival and success.

  2. Using the Collier’s interview bluff to regain the bungalow. This decision secures the staging ground for her plan and buys her time. The risk is that Kosta might call her bluff; she counts on his vanity.

  3. Soliciting the “helping hand” in the men’s room. This is the most desperate and degrading step. Doria wrestles with it internally, but knows her preparation at McMasters, including lessons from Vesta Thripper, has equipped her. The consequence is that she acquires a critical material (a specimen jar) that allows her to frame the death as an accident.

  4. Choosing the Oscar statuette as her weapon. She selects a heavy wartime-era statuette (not plaster), which she has kept from the pre-war years. This decision is both symbolic (destroying Kosta with the very emblem of her former glory) and practical (the weight ensures a single blow).

  5. Leaving the scene via decoy dog and rental car. This elaborate exit plan relies on multiple layers of misdirection. Her successful extraction highlights the thoroughness of her McMasters training. One consequence is that she must forgo her own car and rely on public transport; another is that she leaves behind the “loan-out” Packard to be stolen, erasing a trace.

Themes and Symbolism

Deception and Identity: Doria’s entire arc is a study in layered deception. At McMasters, she becomes Dulcie Mown, a fiction so convincing that Professor Graves is completely taken in. After graduation, she shifts back to Doria Maye, using the alias only when needed. The text explicitly notes that she could go unrecognized on campus simply by cropping her hair and changing her accent—a commentary on the fragility of celebrity identity. The theme is explored in depth on the deception and identity page.

Abuse of Power and Retribution: Kosta’s systemic abuse of actresses (sexual coercion, career destruction) mirrors the broader power imbalance of Hollywood. Doria’s plan is not just personal revenge but a correction of injustice. The novel’s moral calculus, established in the epigraphs, asks whether such killing can be justified. Doria is portrayed as one of the “deserving” deletists—the reader is meant to root for her. This theme is central to the story’s examination of abuse and retribution.

The Price of Revenge: Although Doria succeeds, she pays a steep psychological toll. The men’s room scene is described with clinical detachment, but the narrative notes her apprehension and self-justification. After the killing, she is efficient but not triumphant. Her future is left ambiguous—she may continue living as Doria Maye or disappear into a new life. The ambiguity suggests that deletion, even when justified, leaves permanent scars. This is addressed on the price of revenge theme page.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does Doria go by the name Dulcie Mown at McMasters? She adopts the alias to hide her celebrity identity. By cropping and dyeing her hair, avoiding makeup, modifying her accent, and using a false name, she becomes unrecognizable on campus. This allows her to study without the attention or suspicion that would arise if a famous actress were spotted at a school for assassins.

2. How does Doria secure the bungalow she needs for her plan? She threatens Kosta with a fictional farewell interview with Collier’s magazine. She says she will portray him as a heartless studio head unless he lets her keep the bungalow for a few more weeks. Dean Harrow’s teaching on timing allows her to promise a future event that Kosta will not live to see disproven.

3. What is the significance of the Oscar statuette she uses as a weapon? The Oscar is both a practical tool (heavy enough to kill with one blow) and a symbol. Doria has owned it since before the wartime plaster shortage, so it is solid metal. Using the award that represents the pinnacle of her career to destroy the man who wrecked that career gives the act a poetic irony. It also reinforces the theme of turning a symbol of success into an instrument of retribution.

4. Why does Doria take the risk of entering the men’s room at Dolly Winslow’s? She needs a specific material—a specimen jar acquired during an anonymous sexual transaction—to plant at the crime scene. This step creates a false narrative of an accident involving a “villain” who would have been humiliated by discovery. Her preparation in the Eroticide class at McMasters taught her how to carry out such a scenario without losing control.

5. Does Doria ever express remorse or guilt about the killing? After the deletion, the narrative focuses on her methodical cleanup and escape. Her inner thoughts show relief and satisfaction, but she also acknowledges that the act was “harsh comportment by McMasters standards” and that she had to talk herself through the men’s room task by framing it as clinical. Interpretation: the lack of overt remorse may indicate she has fully accepted the necessity, or it may be a defensive compartmentalization. The text leaves room for either reading.

Further Reading