Montgomery’s novel portrays truth as a malleable construct, easily distorted by those with the power to craft a convincing narrative. From the Viscount’s fabricated predictions of apocalypse to Inspector Jarvis’s prejudiced theories and the murderers’ elaborate locked-room deception, characters from all social classes work to build false realities, suggesting that power lies in the ability to control the story. Genuine truth, Montgomery implies, can only be found through rigorous, evidence-based logic.

The contrast Montgomery sets up between the Viscount and Miss Decima emphasizes the power dynamics that elevate his fantasies and obscure her legitimate research. Lord Stockingham-Welt uses his aristocratic authority to legitimize his paranoid delusions as fact. Using his money and position to establish the Cometary Cataclysm Society, he reframes his personal fantasies as scientific fact, creating a narrative of impending doom that he forces his household to accept. Later, Miss Decima reveals the gendered prejudice that undergirds the Viscount’s reputation as “one of the finest scientific minds in the country” (15)—a reputation she claims is stolen valor from her legitimate research and achievements: “You could fill a warehouse with what that man doesn't know, and what he does know, he stole from me! […] My work, ignored! My talents, squandered! My ambitions, sacrificed at the altar of mediocre men! (54-56). Despite Miss Decima’s intellectual prowess, the Viscount benefits from patriarchal systems of power that indulge his unfounded theories, while Miss Decima must enlist Stephen’s help to sneak outside and study the comet in secret.

Inspector Jarvis’s manipulation of the truth is rooted in prejudice rather than delusion. Even before Jarvis arrives at Tithe Hall, Lowen articulates the class bias that will influence his view of the scene: “They won't question gentry, though, will they? It'll be the staff in the firing line for this, mark my words […] Doesn't matter that we were all in the East Wing together, does it? They're not going to arrest his family over this. They'll pin it on one of us!” (74-75). Jarvis’s prejudice is confirmed when he ignores physical evidence, such as the study door being sealed from the inside, and immediately accuses Stephen of the murder. As each of Jarvis’s theories is debunked by Miss Decima, he continues to construct elaborate, dramatic stories of guilt that consistently target the lower classes. As Miss Decima tells Stephen, “His methods stand in stark contrast to those of Miss Decima Stockingham, who insists on fighting “chaos with clarity” (86). She represents the novel’s counterargument that truth can be found by dismantling false narratives through logic, observation, and scientific reasoning.

Mr. Stokes and Temperance’s locked-room murder is itself a piece of narrative misdirection designed to create maximum confusion. By firing a crossbow from outside the study door, they plant a central clue that is actually a red herring, sending the investigation in the wrong direction. Their goal, as Miss Decima intuits, is to elicit “so much chaos and confusion that the truth would become occluded” (86). Their conspiracy relies on a series of nested fictions, from a feigned phone call to a staged discovery of the body. Mr. Stokes’s final confession letter is his last act of narrative control—he crafts a story that assigns himself sole guilt, protecting Temperance, and providing a neat, albeit false, resolution. This final deception solidifies the novel’s argument that the most potent power is the ability to write the ending.