To quote the late William Goldman, nobody knows anything. The last twenty-four hours are proof enough of that. Whatever is going on behind the scenes between Jody Wilson-Raybould, Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a clown car.

We can attempt, however, to draw reasoned inferences from the known facts.

On Monday, several generations ago, Butts, the prime minister’s principal secretary, closest adviser and best friend, resigned, without apology or explanation, insisting he had done nothing wrong but did not wish to be a distraction. Speculation immediately turned to why: was it because of what had already happened, or what was about to happen?

The first seemed unlikely: as badly as the prime minister and his staff have handled the SNC-Lavalin affair, the crisis had not yet reached the level that would require jettisoning someone so central to the government and so close to its leader. There had been no public calls from within the party for Butts to quit before he did, and few outside it.

So it must have been something yet to come — something dreadful — something, to judge from his letter of resignation, that involved Butts. Three lines in the letter stood out in this regard.

The first was his declaration that he had personally been accused by “anonymous sources” of having pressured Wilson-Raybould, when she was attorney-general, to lean on prosecutors to settle out of court with SNC-Lavalin rather than pursue criminal charges. This was news. To my knowledge there had until then been no specific allegation about him: rather, unnamed officials in the prime minister’s office were said to be involved.

Was there, as some speculated, a deal — Butts’s head, in return for Wilson-Raybould’s silence?

Second, he went out of his way to mention his respectful and supportive relationship with Wilson-Raybould. This, too, was noteworthy, as there has been no specific evidence that she was the source of the allegations, even if it seems logical to assume it must have been her, or someone close to her.

Third, he categorically denied the allegation against him — the one that until then had not been made — and said that he intends to defend his reputation.

From which it would seem reasonable to conclude that he anticipated being named by Wilson-Raybould as one of the officials who had pressured her, notwithstanding his protestations of innocence.

But why quit, even then, if he is as guiltless as he claims? Suppose that’s true: that nothing at all improper happened between them. For the former attorney general to say it did, then — if in fact she did — would mean she was either hallucinating or lying; and not only that, but willing to resign from cabinet in support of this wholly invented account.

To call this unlikely vastly understates matters. And yet that is what the prime minister, in particular, has seemed at times to imply. After first denying that he or his staff “directed” her (avoiding the question of whether they pressured her), he later added that he had told her the decision was “hers alone” to make, albeit (as he admitted still later) in response to her asking him point-blank whether he was directing her.

He further suggested her continued presence in cabinet, even after her unexplained demotion to Veterans Affair, was proof that she was onside with his version of events; when she resigned the next day, he professed himself at a loss to explain why. If she had felt pressured, he elaborated, it was “her responsibility” to tell him, which he said she had not. Which, if it does not quite come out and say she made it up, at least implies she was negligent in not reporting her “feeling.”

Which in turn keeps open the possibility that the whole thing was just a misunderstanding: someone in the prime minister’s office said something that was not improper, in its intended meaning, but that she mistakenly understood to mean something improper.

That’s certainly possible — that is, it’s possible she could have been mistaken, at the time. But it’s implausible that she would persist in this mistaken belief, months later — to the point of leaving cabinet over it — even after the prime minister and his officials had explained that that was not what they meant.

So if it’s hard to believe she made the whole thing up, and equally hard to believe that she could be labouring, even now, under a misunderstanding, that would seem to leave only one option: that she was indeed pressured, and that this, notwithstanding Trudeau’s professed befuddlement, was the reason she resigned. The refusal of the Liberal majority on the Commons Justice committee to call Wilson-Raybould or any other relevant witness, coupled with Trudeau’s refusal to release her from whatever remaining constraints might be imposed by solicitor-client privilege, seemed to confirm the thesis — with Butts’s resignation as the clincher.

Of course this analysis, which seemed so clearcut on Monday, was thrown somewhat into doubt by Tuesday’s extraordinary performance: Wilson-Raybould’s attendance at a meeting of the cabinet she had just left, the decision of the Liberal Justice committee members to call her as a witness after all (though not Butts or anyone else in thje PMO) and the rest.

What on earth could be going on? Was there, as some speculated, a deal — Butts’s head, in return for Wilson-Raybould’s silence? Had she reassured cabinet that, whatever she said about Butts, she did not intend to implicate the prime minister personally?

She is, after all, a partisan Liberal. Having personally refused to intervene on SNC-Lavalin’s behalf, and paid the price for it, she may be satisfied with the opportunity to state her case, without destroying the government in the process.

As for Butts, was he merely taking one for the team, as others have speculated, so as to divert attention from, or even absolve, the prime minister? But how, given he insists he did nothing wrong? And who believes, whatever he did or did not do, he would have acted without the prime minister’s knowledge?

Who knows? Goldman was talking about Hollywood. But Hollywood’s got nothing on this story.