Supreme Moments in Detective Fiction
Supreme Moments in Detective Fiction is an article written byu Burton Egbert Stevenson published in The Strand Magazine in january 1917.
Supreme Moments in Detective Fiction
Edgar Allan Poe.
A. CONAN DOYLE
Photo Elliott & Fry.
1. — "The Speckled Band" — "the most outré of the Sherlock Holmes stories."
2. — "The Naval Treaty" — "the most ingenious."
3. — "The Red-Headed League" — "the one whose start the writer likes best."
4. — "The Man with the Twisted Lip" — "a close second to 'The Naval Treaty' in ingenuity."
5. — "Silver Blaze" — "Sherlock Holmes's greatest feat unquestionably is in 'Silver Blaze,' one of the best of the stories."
WILKIE COLLINS. Photo. Elliott & Fry.
By BURTON EGBERT STEVENSON,
Author of "The Marathon Mystery," "The Boule Cabinet," etc.
It is not difficult to account for the steady popularity of the detective story. The pleasure to be had from a good one is of a unique and satisfying kind. The reader is invited to take part in a mathematical demonstration, in which the symbols are men and women, with just enough of the background of life to give them reality. The problem to be solved is one of human conduct, and the solution is reached when one has found x, the unknown quantity — usually the criminal. The task which the author must accomplish is to give his readers all the data at the problem, and yet to solve it before do. All the data, mind you, or he is not playing the game.
The interest of a detective story is therefore intellectual and not emotional. There is no love interest — or, at most, a very slight one. For the problem is not to bring to bring two loving hearts together; but to land the guilty 312n in jail. To attempt a love interest is to ran every risk of failure.
So the detective story has always been add to be a man's story rather than a woman's. But times change; and women, certainly, are changing with them. They are still creatures of the emotions, and no doubt always will be, but they are coming to have their moments of intellectual detachment. Also, they no longer faint at the sight of blood. The writer has been in charge of a public library for twelve years, and one of the most interesting features of that work has been to watch the changes in the taste of the reading public. It has been full of surprises and contradictions, of almost unbelievable whims and vulgarities, but one thing can be said of it with confidence : interest in detective fiction has been steadily growing, among women even more than among men. To-day, in the library, leaving adolescents out of the question, there are almost as many women as men who ask to have a detective story recommended to them. Perhaps this is a symptom of their emancipation!
The fact of the matter is that the supply no longer equals the demand. Oh, yes, there are plenty of detective stories — but how few that one can recommend as entirely satisfying. The writer has read nearly all that have appeared during the past ten years, and yet not more than six or eight have left any abiding impression. Aside from the Sherlock Holmes stories, there are only three that provoked re-reading, and on the spur of the moment it is impossible to recall the name of the detective in any of them.
In short, among all the detectives, amateur and professional, who have appeared before the public and performed their little tricks, there are only four who are classic — C. Auguste Dupin (Poe), Tabaret and Lecoq (Gaboriau), and Sherlock Holmes. These abide. Beside them the others are mere shadows. And these four are memorable not because they never bungled, not because occasionally they struck home with a cleverness and certainty which makes us forgive their mistakes. Their supreme moments are moments to be remembered with delight.
What were their supreme moments?
With Dupin, it was undoubtedly the moment when, standing before the window of the house in the Rue Morgue, he told himself that the nail which seemed to secure it could not really do so. It was a question, you will remember, of how the assassin of the two women had escaped. He could not have gone by the door, since there were some people on the stair; nor by the chimney, since it was too narrow; nor by the front windows, since there was a crowd in the street outside. Careful search had failed to disclose a secret exit. Therefore, Dupin reasoned, the fugitive must have passed through one of the two windows in the back room. But each of them was apparently secured on the inside by a stout nail fitted into a gimlet-hole in the sash. Let Dupin tell the rest:—
- The murderers did escape from one of these windows. This being so, they could not have refastened the sashes from the inside as they were found fastened. Yet the sashes were fastened. They must then have the power of fastening themselves. There was no escape from this conclusion. I stepped to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with some difficulty, and attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all my efforts. A concealed spring must, I now knew, exist. A careful search soon brought it to light.
- I now replaced the nail and regarded it attentively. A person passing out through the window might have re-closed it, and the spring would have caught ; but the nail could not have been replaced. The assassin must, then, have escaped through the other window. Supposing the springs upon each sash to be the same, as was probable, there must be found a difference between the nails, or at least between the modes of their fixture. Getting upon the sacking of the bed-stead, I looked over the headboard minutely at the second casement. 'Passing my hand down behind the board, I readily discovered and pressed the spring, which was, as I had supposed, identical in character with its neighbour. I now looked at the nail. It was as stout as the other, and apparently fitted in the same manner, driven in nearly up to the head.
- You will say that I was puzzled; but if you think so, you must have misunderstood the nature of the inductions. To use a sporting phrase, 1 had not once been "at fault." The scent had never for an instant been lost. There was no flaw in any link of the chain. I had traced the secret to its ultimate result; and that result was the nail. It had, I say, in every respect the appearance of its fellow in the other window; but this fact was an absolute nullity (conclusive as it might seem to be) when compared with the consideration that here at this point terminated the clue. "There mast be something wrong," I said, "about the nail." I touched it, and the head, with about a quarter of an inch of the shank, came off in my fingers. The rest of the shank was in the gimlet-hole, where it had been broken off.
The quotation has been made at length because this bit of reasoning is as coherent and closely knit as any detective story can show. In fact, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is in many ways the most satisfactory of all detective stories. The device of the newspaper advertisement to discover the identity of the criminal is one which Sherlock Holmes used many times.
And yet there are weak points even in this classic. In the first place, there are too many clues. The strange voice of the assassin and the unusual method of the murders should have been clues enough. When Dupin finds a tuft of hair between the fingers of one of the victims and afterwards picks up a piece of greasy ribbon at the foot of the lightning-rod by which the murderer escaped, the sense of fair play rebels. Furthermore, when Dupin goes on to explain that the knot tied in this ribbon is one peculiar to Maltese sailors, one becomes utterly incredulous. It is unlikely that there is a knot peculiar to Maltese sailors: and even if there were, why should Dupin happen to know it? In a word, the incident is most improbable.
For, mind you, the writer of detective stories, in developing his plot, most keep within the probable — indeed, he should keep within the very probable. In life everything is possible, no coincidence is incredible, and chance is always to be reckoned with. But in fiction coincidence must be used most sparingly, nothing may be left to chance, and to say that, in its working out, a detective story is possible but not probable is to damn it. This does not refer to the initial situation; the more unusual that is the better, provided the explanation is adequate ; but its development must impress the reader as inevitable, and the dénouement must be the only one which fits all the circumstances.
There is one other particular in which Dupin strains the reader's faith. It is not easy to believe that he could have followed the train of thought passing through his companion's mind, as Poe makes him do in the first part of the Rue Morgue story.
One point more. It must be confessed that the psychology of "The Purloined Letter" does not entirely convince; but admitting that it is so — admitting that, in order to conceal the letter which the police sought, the thief would resort to " the com-prehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all" — it is certain that he would not have proceeded as Poe makes him do. The letter, it will be remembered, had been thrust into a card-rack, where it remained within full view of everyone entering the thief's library. But, before being placed there, it had been put in a soiled and crumpled envelope, torn nearly in two, bearing a large black seal and addressed in a woman's hand to the thief. Surely it is evident that this soiled, crumpled, and torn envelope, so out of place in a well-ordered apartment, would have attracted attention and awakened curiosity, and that a smooth, unsoiled, untorn envelope would have been far less likely to do so. "The Purloined Letter," however, gives us for the first time what has since become one of the stock situations of the detective story — that of the regular police, baffled and mystified, seeking the advice and assistance of the astute amateur.
Twenty years after Poe's death Emile Gaboriau began that series of detective stories which still remain, on the whole, the best of their class. There is probably no scene more satisfying than that in which Tabaret arrives at the place of the murder in "The Lerouge Case," and, after a short investigation, proceeds to reconstruct the crime. And it is in this story that Tabaret reaches his supreme moment — the moment when, after having bound his chain about his victim, assured that there is not a single weak link in it, he sees it shiver to pieces. The accused man has been arrested, has been taken before a magistrate, and, although stunned and incoherent, has doggedly asserted his innocence, but has as doggedly refused to say where he was on the night of the crime. Finally he is led away arid Tabaret enters.
"I have come," he says, "to know if any investigations are necessary to demolish the alibi pleaded by the prisoner."
"He pleaded no alibi," the magistrate replies.
"What? No alibi!" cries the detective. "He has, of course, then, confessed everything?"
"No, he has confessed nothing. Ile acknowledges has the proofs are decisive he cannot give an account of how he spent his time, but he protests his innocence."
Tabaret is thunderstruck — and reaches his supreme moment.
"Not an alibi!" he murmurs. "No explanations! It is inconceivable! We must then be mistaken; he cannot be the criminal. That is certain!"
The magistrate laughs at him, and Tabaret explains that the man who committed this crime, so carefully planned, so cleverly carried out, so audacious and yet so prudent, would, under no circumstances, have failed to provide himself with a convincing alibi, and that a man who has no alibi cannot possibly be the criminal. Still the magistrate laughs, and Tabaret proceeds to lay down a principle which all writers of detective fiction would do well to learn by heart:—
- Given a crime, with all the circumstances and details, I construct, his by bit, a plan of accusation, which I do not guarantee until it is entire and perfect. If a man is found to whom this plan applies exactly in every particular, the author of the crime is found; otherwise one has laid hands upon an innocent person. It is not sufficient that such and such particulars seem to point to him ; it must be all or nothing.
Those six words sum up the whole science of. detection : it must be all or nothing. The writer himself dreams of some day writing a story in which the edifice of conviction is slowly and carefully built, four-square, like the frame of a sky-scraper, with every beam tested and every bolt riveted, formidable and apparently impregnable, yet with a tiny hidden defect which, just as the last bolt is being placed, brings the whole structure smashing to the ground. That would be worth doing!
In the Lerouge case Tabaret builded such an edifice : but Gaboriau carries coincidence too far. It is admissible that both the real murderer and the man suspected of the crime should, on that particular evening, have been carrying an umbrella and wearing a high hat; perhaps it is admissible, sinch they are the same age and about the same build, that their shoes should be of the same size and shape ; but when the author equips them both with lavender kid gloves he adds one coincidence too many. In his desire to strengthen the chain of evidence he over-leaps himself and loses the confidence of the reader.
The question of clues is a most difficult one, for every writer of detective fiction is faced by this dilemma The really astute, competent, and thoughtful criminal should leave no clues, and yet, if none are left, it is impossible to apprehend him. A most instructive paper could be written upon this subject, for there are legitimate and illegitimate clues — clues subtle and convincing, and Clues absurd and illogical. To pause only to state one axiom: In fiction, at least. the name on the card found beside the murdered man is never that of the murderer, and the writer who seeks to fool the reader by any such clumsy device is many, many years behind the times.
Tabaret has a worthy pupil in M. Lecoq, although it should not be forgotten that he remains a pupil, with many things unlearned, to the end of the chapter. Probably his greatest moment occurs in "The Mystery of Orcival." A murder has been committed and a house ransacked, the furniture upset, the clock thrown from the mantel. It has stopped at twenty minutes past three, and to everyone it seems evident that it was at that hour the crime occurred. Lecoq replaces the clock on the mantel, and slowly pushes forward the minute-hand to half-past three, The clock strikes eleven.
That was a great idea — so great that no one will ever dare use it again without acknowledging its source. Sherlock Holmes came near it, once, when he solved a mystery by re-winding a watch. And for another thing the Frenchman deserves all praise. He recognized the fact that, to hold the interest, it is not enough that a crime should be committed and the criminal in the end discovered. There must be something more than that. There must be a war of intellect, a clash of theories. There must be confronting investigators, one seeking to establish a man's guilt, the other to establish his innocence. For the reader, the real pleasure is in following, step by step, this contest.
In so far as detective work goes, Gaboriau tried to do too much. He sought to add a love interest, and in that respect he failed. Every one of his tales is built upon the thread-bare formula, cherchez la femme; every one turns back for its motive to an illicit love affair. The writer avows that he has no patience with a plot which, for its explanation, must go back two or three generations; so these portions of Gaboriau's stories are to be skimmed rapidly, until Tabaret or Lecoq appears again upon the scene. Then not a word is to be missed.
Which brings one to Sherlock Holmes. His greatest feat, unquestionably, is in "Silver Blaze," one of the best of the stories. Silver Blaze, the favourite for the Wessex Cup, has disappeared, having been taken from his stable at night, while the boy on guard is sleeping off the effects of a dose of opium. His trainer has been found in a depression in the moor near by with his skull smashed in and a peculiar thin-bladed knife in his hand, such a knife as is used in the very delicate operation for cataract. Here is the great moment:—
- As we stepped into the carriage, one of the stable-lads held the door open for us. A sudden idea seemed to occur to Holmes, for he leaned forward and touched the lad upon the sleeve. "You have a few sheep in the paddock," he said. "Who attends to them?"
- "I do, sir."
- "Have you noticed anything amiss with them of late?"
- "Well, sir, not of much account; but three of them have gone lame, sir."
It was, as Holmes afterwards remarks, a long shot, but it hit the bull's-eye, for Silver Blaze's trainer, before trying to nick the tendon which was to lame him, had been practising. on the sheep.
The writer has re-read the Sherlock Holmes stories recently. In one respect a re-reading has caused a modification of the estimate of the relative merits of these stories. The writer had always believed that the earlier ones were the best, but now it seems that the stories grouped under "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" are as good as any, and better than most. "The Norwood Builder," "[SIXN|The Six Napoleons]]," and "The Golden Pince-Nez" are all first-rate. Indeed, in the last named, Holmes touches a height but little short of "Silver Blaze." A man has been killed and a pair of gold-framed glasses are found in. his hand. They are of unusual strength, so that it is evident that their owner's eyes are very defective. In entering and in leaving the house the assassin is supposed by the police to have walked along a narrow grass border between a path and a flower-bed in order to leave no footprints. Holmes, coming upon the scene, remarks that this is most extraordinary. On entering the house. he perceives that the floor of the corridor leading to the room where the crime was committed is covered with cocoanut matting. There is 'another corridor, of similar width, leading on into the house.
- "I understand," says Holmes, "that this other passage leads only to the Professor's room. There is no exit that way?"
- "No, sir," replies the police officer, Hopkins.
- "We shall go down it," Holmes proceeds, "and make the acquaintance of the Professor. Halloa, Hopkins! this is very important, very important, indeed! The Professor's corridor is also lined with cocoanut matting."
- "Well, sir, what of that?" Hopkins wits.
Holmes refuses to explain at the time, but it had occurred to him at once that the assassin, fleeing from the room, half-blinded by the loss of the glasses, might very easily have taken the wrong corridor and gone on into the house, instead of escaping from it. Which, of course, proves to be the case.
Of all the stories, the one whose start the writer likes best is "The Red-Headed League." The most ingenious is "The Naval Treaty," with "The Man with the Twisted Lip" a close second. The most outré is "The Speckled Band."
To Mr. Stevenson's very interesting article we should like to add a note. He has made no reference to one great writer of detective fiction who we do not think can be omitted — Wilkie Collins. It is true that he created no detective whose name, like that of Sherlock Holmes, has passed into the language. But, in the extreme ingenuity of his mysteries, he has great moments — very great. It is not easy to surpass, for instance, the situation in "The Moonstone" in which the hero, acting as his own detective, comes upon the solution of the crime, the identity of the thief who stole the moonstone. This is the situation. A nightdress worn by the criminal, to be identified by a smear of wet paint, has been buried in a quicksand in a tin box attached to a chain, and the hero-detective is about is pull it up.
- I took up the stick, and knelt down on the brink of the South Spit.
- In this position my face was within a few feet of the surface of the quicksand. The sight of it so near me, still disturbed at intervals by its hideous, shivering fit, shook my nerves for the moment. A horrible fancy that the dead woman might appear on the scene of her suicide to assist my search —an unutterable dread of seeing her rise through the heaving surface of the sand, and point to the place—forced itself into my mind, and turned me cold in the warm sunlight. I own I closed my eyes at the moment when the point of the stick first entered the quicksand. The instant afterwards, before the stick could have been submerged more than a few inches, I was free from the hold of my own superstitious terror, and was throbbing with excitement from head to foot. Sounding blindfold, at my first attempt — at that first attempt I had sounded right ! The stick struck the chain.
- Taking a firm hold of the roots of the seaweed with my left hand, I laid myself down over the brink. and felt with my right hand under the over-hanging edges of the rock. My right hand found the chain.
- I drew it up without the slightest difficulty, and there was the japanned tin case fastened to the end of it.
- The action of the water had so rusted the chain that it was impossible for me to unfasten it from the limp which attached it to the case. Putting the case between my knees, and exerting my utmost strength, I contrived to draw off the cover. Some white substance filled the whole interior when I looked in. I put in my hand, and found it to be linen.
- In drawing out the linen, I also drew out a letter crumpled up with it. After looking at the direction, and discovering that it bore my name, I put the letter in my pocket, and completely removed the linen. It came out in a thick roll, moulded, of course, to the shape of the case in which it had been so long confined, and perfectly preserved from any injury by the sea.
- I carried the linen to the dry sand of the beach, and there unrolled and smoothed it out. There was no mistaking it as an article of dress. It was a night-gown.
- The uppermost side, when I spread it out, presented to view innumerable folds and creases, and nothing more. I tried the undermost side next — and instantly discovered the smear of the paint from the door of Rachel's boudoir!
- My eyes remained riveted on the stain, and my mind took me back at a leap from present to past. The very words of Sergeant Cuff recurred to me, as if the man himself was at my side again, pointing to the unanswerable inference which he drew from the smear on the door.
- "Find out whether there is any article of dress in this house with the stain of paint on it. Find out who that dress belongs to. Find out how the person can account for having been in the room, and smeared the paint, between midnight and three in the morning. If the person can't satisfy you, you haven't far to look for the hand that took the Diamond." ...
- I had discovered the smear on the nightgown. To whom did the nightgown belong?
- My first impulse was to consult the letter in my pocket — the letter which I had found in the case.
- As I raised my hand to take it out, I remembered that there was a shorter way to discovery than this. The nightgown itself would reveal the truth ; for, in all probability, the nightgown was marked with owner's name.
- I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark.
- I found the mark, and read—
- MY OWN NAME.
- There were the familiar letters which told not that the nightgown was mine. I looked up from them. There was the sun; there were the glittering waters of the bay; there was old Betteredge, advanci, nearer and nearer to me. I looked back again at the letters. My own name. Plainly confronting me, my own name.
- "If time, pains, and money can do it, I will lay my hand on the thief who took the Moonstone." I had left London with those words on my lips. I had penetrated the secret which the quicksand had kept from every other living creature. And, on the un-answerable evidence of the paint-stain, I had discovered Myself as the Thief.
The detective comes upon the criminal and finds — himself ! Surely one of the greatest of the supreme moments of detective fiction. No, Wilkie Collins ought not to be left out.
