Poor Carl – truer words were never said than what he said to Trask “People I think I can trust, it turns out I can’t.” That in a nutshell seems to be the problem of everyone in the family: Quentin trusts Evan and doesn’t trust Beth. Judith distrusts her brothers and trusts Trask. Carl doesn’t trust anyone else but trusts Trask. Edward trusts Barnabas but doesn’t believe either of his brothers. It goes on and on.
I liked this.
I think we're underestimating how horrific the murder of Carl is though. More and more, unfortunately, this one incident undermines the image I've had for forty years of Barnabas as an heroic figure. It changes everything. He's not just messing with history (which is something he eventually came to see as his prrpose there), he's committing murder, of a relative, an innocent, who only happened to find out his secret. Certainly I identify with the panic and desperation, but at this point in the story Barnabas falls apart, lying less and less convincingly, making stupid mistakes right and left, leading to the murder of a cousin.... It was a spectacularly disastrous and hasty move too, since it was taken without knowing if Carl had talked yet. Barnabas is falling apart, in his senses and in his morals.
I'm not saying it was bad drama, it wasn't. It was daring I suppose. I've often said that the only pleasure Barnabas takes from life is when he destroys an enemy. He even does it with Carl, who only became an enemy by finding out his secret.