You're pretty observant. I like that in a movie-lover.
"First, whether it was the lady who attempted to kill her husband wasn't established. It could be the Lodger who did it. Also, it could also be the Lodger who wanted to slash the detective's daughter. He could have run away after being noticed, and the lady taking the rap for him (by holding on to his knife, etc.)."
Who kills the husband is unimportant, as is who attacks the daughter except to keep the audience guessing. The question of who kills the husband is a climactic point because it's telling, it leads to further revelations. At first, we, or I do anyway, assume that the wife kills the husband since we have just been shown her holding the knife. By then the director and story-teller have done an expert job of suggesting we believe the wife indeed imagining things (indeed she does - her son at the kitchen table), so that when we see her holding the knife we have the whole story. Or think we do...
"Second, if you noticed the scene when her son was having breakfast in the kitchen, when his dad came in, the kitchen table later showed nobody. So the lady seeing his son is indeed a delusion. But at the end when she said her son was dead 7 years ago, it shows some form of incoherence. She should have said thank you instead to let the plot to be more plausible."
Important correction: The wife says that her son died eight years prior, not seven. This is important because the wife had been listening to the conversation the others were having about her believing that she is out of touch with reality, and the lady psychiatrist or whatever she is, I don't recall, says it had been eight years. The wife says what she says because the director wants the audience to question whether of not she is truly delusional. So, if she isn't, what does that suggest? I say it suggests as did when in the kitchen the wife reaches for the lodger's black bag which he is holding that she has developed a plan to get rid of her husband, and is able to blackmail or come to a mutual agreement with him. This suggests that the wife is the husband's killer, and that the lodger, the killer of the prostitutes, lets her have the knife before he leaves for good. The wife decides that life in an asylum for the criminally insane is superior to the one she's been living. The lodger can continue killing without fear of being reported by the only person who knows who the real killer is because everybody thinks she's insane and because they're already convinced she's the serial killer.
"Third, when the husband took her to the guest room to prove that no one was there, it really showed an empty room as though no one has ever used it for a very long time. But surely he should be finding items that show that someone is living there - the lodger's clothes, bag, accessories, paintings, etc. It does not make sense for him to remove ALL HIS STUFF when he is away on a DAILY BASIS."
The director has the husband and wife open the guest room door only slightly, hardly enough to see much of anything, and not to actually enter the place. Plus it is dark in there, hard to see. But, by now the audience is suspicious of the wife's sanity having heard on two occasions the husband mention her pills and then gets fed up with what he's decided are her delusions.
I have a question: When the husband goes back to check on what the wife is doing (we know she is making out with the lodger) and she exits the guest house carrying those boots, why doesn't the husband wonder where the boots came from if he doesn't believe there is a lodger back there unless he knows that the boots are either his or hers? It's not believable that the boots could legitimately be hers because there's no way they can fit her. Also, if he has never seen them he would ask her where or why she has them. Was the story-teller saying that the husband has seen those boots before? If they are his own boots he might ask her why she is cleaning them and why back in the guest room?
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