I think Acton maybe feels a little bit guilty and is very paranoid about the whole murder unlike in 'The Tell Tale Heart' where the murder is very confident about what he had done and planned the whole murder whereas Acton didn't really plan to kill Huxley, but Acton in his mind thought that Huxley knew all along that he was going to get murdered
Acton thought that Huxley planned to get murdered and so told Acton to touch a lot of stuff in the house for example on page 83 Huxley said: 'There's a bottle of burgundy, Acton. Mind fetching it from that cabinet?.
Yes, fetch it. Handle it. Touch it. He did.'.
Than Acton thought that Huxley was basically setting him up. Once Acton strangled Huxley he had started to clean the house of fingerprints. That was all fine and well but Acton didn't clean only the door knobs, glasses, cup and things like that which he touched he cleaned the whole house the walls, the couch absolutely everything which was a sign of big paranoia from Acton.
The character in 'The Tell Tale Heart' had a lot of conversations throughout the story but all the conversations were to himself. The things that the character talked about were very strange. He talked about how every night at midnight for the last week he came to check on the old man to see the 'evil eye' and to look up on the old man. The character talked about how cautiously he opened the door so the old man wouldn't here him. He would open the door 'just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye'-as in paragraph one on page 94 whereas in the 'Fruit at the bottom of the bowl' Acton the main character had conversations with himself using flashbacks like on page 83 in the first paragraph were he looked back just before he killed Huxley and the things that happened. As Acton looked back he realised that Huxley was telling him to touch everything in the room the books, the bottle of burgundy, the burgundy glasses etc.
