Unidentified Older Man

A thinly sketched antagonist embedded within the Royale's pulp‑fiction subplot, he conspires with a younger woman to murder her husband and squander her inheritance. Presented as morally compromised and conspiratorial, he functions primarily as a plot device that exposes the story's hackneyed construction in Richey’s diary. His presence clarifies the novel's predictable stakes and offers the away team a rule‑bound target they can exploit while trapped inside the fabricated narrative.