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from The Technique of the
Mystery Story (1913)
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Close observation is one of the high
cards of the fiction detective's game. Dupin is often
described as scrutinizing with great minuteness of
attention everything in the vicinity of the scene of
the crime. We subjoin an account of the search for "The
Purloined Letter," as an example of what a thorough
search really means to the Transcendent Detective.
"Suppose you detail," said I, "the
particulars of your search."
"Why, the fact is, we took our time, and
we searched everywhere. I have had long experience in
these affairs. I took the entire building, room by
room; devoting the nights of a whole week to each. We
examined first, the furniture of each apartment, we
opened every possible drawer; and I presume that you
know that, to a properly trained police agent, such a
thing as a secret drawer is impossible. Any man is a
dolt who permits a 'secret' drawer to escape him in a
search of this kind. The thing is so plain. There is a
certain amount of bulk — of space — to be
accounted for in every cabinet. Then we have accurate
rules. The fiftieth part of a line could not escape us.
After the cabinets we took the chairs. The cushions we
probed with the fine long needles you have seen me
employ. From the tables we removed the tops."
"Why so?"
"Sometimes the top of a table, or other
similarly arranged piece of furniture, is removed by
the person wishing to conceal an article; then the leg
is excavated, the article deposited within the cavity,
and the top replaced. The bottoms and tops of bedposts
are employed in the same way."
"But could not the cavity be detected by
sounding?" I asked.
"By no means, if, when the article is
deposited, a sufficient wadding of cotton be placed around it. Besides, in our
case, we were obliged to proceed without noise."
"But you could not have removed —
you could not have taken to pieces all articles of
furniture in which it would have been possible to make
a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be
compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much
in shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle, and in
this form it might be inserted into the rung of a
chair, for example. You did not take to pieces all the
chairs?"
"Certainly not; but we did better —
we examined the rungs of every chair in the Hotel, and,
indeed, the jointings of every description of
furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope.
Had there been any traces of recent disturbance we
should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single
grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as
obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the gluing —
any unusual gaping in the joints — would have
sufficed to insure detection."
"I presume you looked to the mirrors,
between the boards and the plates, and you probed the
beds and the bed-clothes, as well as the curtains and
carpets."
"That, of course; and when we had
absolutely completed every particle of the furniture in
this way, then we examined the house itself. We divided
its entire surface into compartments, which we
numbered, so that none might be missed; then we
scrutinized each individual square inch throughout the
premises, including the two houses immediately
adjoining, with the microscope, as before."
"The two houses adjoining!" I exclaimed;
"you must have had a great deal of trouble."
"We had; but the reward offered is
prodigious."
"You include the grounds about the
houses?"
"All the grounds are paved with brick.
They gave us comparatively little trouble. We examined
the moss between the bricks, and found it undisturbed."
"You looked among D—'s papers, of
course, and into the books of the library?"
"Certainly; we opened every package and
parcel; we not only opened every book, but we turned
over every leaf in each volume, not contenting
ourselves with a mere shake, according to the fashion
of some of our police officers. We also measured the
thickness of
every bookcover, with the most accurate admeasurement,
and applied to each the most jealous scrutiny of the
microscope. Had any of the bindings been recently
meddled with, it would have been utterly impossible
that the fact should have escaped observation. Some
five or six volumes, just from the hands of the binder,
we carefully probed, longitudinally, with the needles."
"You explored the floors beneath the
carpets?"
"Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet,
and examined the boards with the microscope."
"And the paper on the walls?"
"Yes."
"You looked into the cellars?"
"We did."
"Then," I said, "you have been making a
miscalculation, and the letter is not upon the
premises, as you suppose."
"I fear you are right there," said the
Prefect. "And now, Dupin, what would you advise me to
do?"
"To make a thorough re-search of the
premises."
Lecoq pursues the same methods of close
scrutiny, and we find him in Gaboriau's "The Crime of
Orcival,"
". . . . lifting the fallen furniture,
As to Sherlock Holmes, it is not necessary to refer to his microscopic examinations. In fact, so addicted is he to the use of the lens, that it has become a by-word in connection with his methods.
But this close observation must have something to observe; the magnifying glass must have something to magnify; and these things must be of vital importance as evidence.
This could rarely be compassed in real life, but it is, of course, easy for the author to provide the tiny clues necessary to his hero's microscope work.
And tiny clues are a favorite device of the detective story writer. There is a fascination about the solving of a big murder mystery by a bit of a broken cuff-link; or the tracing of a professional burglar by a speck of cigarette ash. Of course, the philosophy is that these dues are so small as to be unnoticed by the criminal who so conveniently leaves them behind him. Also they are unnoticed by the amateur or the Central Office sleuth, and so redound to the glory of the Transcendent Detective.
But most of all their use is to impress and astound the reader by a picturesque application of the truth that great oaks from little acorns grow. It is the dramatic contrast of the tiny indication that points the way to the enormous result of discovering the perpetrator of an atrocious crime.
But here again we have the great gulf fixed between the Real Detective and the Fiction Detective. Take the vital point in "File No. 113." Now really there is not one chance in a thousand that the particle of green paint would have been found adhering to that key, had the key been found. Green paint will adhere most annoyingly to clothing, or hands, or even keys when it is not desired, but if needed as criminal evidence it will in all probability be found wanting.
But the field of fiction is as a salted mine. What is searched for is found, and the detective triumphantly ferrets out the infinitesimal clues that have been most carefully put in place by the author.
When Sherlock Holmes looked for a burnt
match in "Silver "My dear Inspector, you surpass
yourself!" Holmes took the bag, and, descending into
the hollow, he pushed the matting into a more central
position. Then stretching himself upon his face and
leaning his chin upon his hands, he made a careful
study of the trampled mud in front of him. "Hullo!"
said he, suddenly. "What's this?" It was a wax vesta
half burned, which was so coated with mud that it
looked at first like a little chip of wood.
"I cannot think how I came to overlook
it," said the Inspector, with an expression of
annoyance.
"It was invisible, buried in the mud. I
only saw it because I was looking for it."
"What! you expected to find it?"
"I thought it not unlikely."
This is a fine instance of spectacular detective work. And this is what is demanded for the true technique of the Mystery Story. It is not real life; it is a stage, set with the furnishings and properties of the dramatic plot. The dropped handkerchiefs, the shreds of cloth or torn bits of paper, are carefully placed, and the detective has only to step along and pick them up.
Wilkie Collins' creation, Sergeant Cuff,
sanctions it emphatically:
"I made a private inquiry last week, Mr.
Superintendent," he said. "At one end of the inquiry
there was a murder, and at the other end there was a
spot of ink on a table-cloth that nobody could
account for. In all my experience along the dirtiest
ways of this dirty little world I have never met with
such a thing as a trifle yet."
A case in point, is this bit from "The
Whispering Man:"
"I turned to go. Just as I did so, my
eye caught a glint from the carpet, of what I took to
be a bent pin. Quite automatically — for by nature
I am an orderly and methodical person — I stooped
and picked it up. It was not a pin after all, but the
broken end of a curved needle. It made no particular
impression on my mind, and I was on the point of
dropping it into the waste-paper basket when something
stopped me. It was no very definite idea, probably just
a reminiscence from detective stories I had read, of
the immense importance of the most trivial things."
It was this that Lowell had in mind, when he said that Poe "combined in a very remarkable manner two faculties which are seldom found united, — a power of influencing the mind of the reader by the impalpable shadows of mystery, and a minuteness of detail which does not leave a pin or a button unnoticed. Both are, in truth, the natural results of the predominating quality of his mind, to which we have before alluded, — analysis." And the same principle is approved of in real life by Mr. Arthur C. Train's assertion: "The discovery and proper proof of minute facts which tend to demonstrate the guilt of an accused are the joy of the natural prosecutor, and he may in his enthusiasm spend many thousands of dollars on what seems, and often is, an immaterial matter."
A deep conviction of the Transcendent Detective is that a crime containing unusual or even bizarre characteristics is more easy of solution than a commonplace one. This is a somewhat disingenuous proposition; for the real reason that the bizarre crime is preferable, is because it offers greater dramatic and spectacular opportunities. But of course the author is not admitting this. No, he puts into the mouth of his detective such theories as these.
Thus Dupin speaks:
"It appears to me that this mystery is
considered insoluble, for the very reason which should
cause it to be regarded as easy of solution — I
mean, for the outré character of its
features. The police are confounded by seeming absence
of motive; not for the murder itself, but for the
atrocity of the murder. They are puzzled, too, by the
seeming impossibility of reconciling the voices heard
in contention, with the facts that no one was
discovered upstairs but the assassinated Mademoiselle
L'Espanaye, and that there were no means of egress
without the notice of the party ascending. The wild
disorder of the room; the corpse thrust, with the head
downward, up the chimney; the frightful mutilation of
the body of the old lady; these considerations, with
those just mentioned, and others which I need not
mention, have sufficed to paralyze the powers, by
putting completely at fault the boasted acumen of the
government agents. They have fallen into the gross but
common error of confounding the unusual with the
abstruse. But it is by these deviations from the plane
of the ordinary that reason feels its way, if at all in
its search for the true. In investigations such as we
are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked 'what
has occurred,' as 'what has occurred that has never
occurred before.' In fact, the facility with which I
shall arrive, or have arrived, at the solution of this
mystery, is in the direct ratio of its apparent
insolubility in the eyes of the police."
And again:
"This is a far more intricate case than
that of the Rue Morgue from which it differs in one
important respect. This is an ordinary although an
atrocious instance of crime. There is nothing
peculiarly outré about it. You will
observe that, for this reason, the mystery
has been considered easy, when, for this reason, it
should have been considered difficult of solution."
Sherlock Holmes remarks on this matter
thus:
"As a rule," said Holmes, "the more
bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be.
It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are
really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most
difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this
matter. — It seems, from what I gather, to be one
of those simple cases which are so extremely
difficult."
"That sounds a little paradoxical."
"But it is profoundly true. Singularity
is almost invariably a clew. The more featureless and
commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to
bring it home."
Indeed, so fond is Sherlock Holmes of
the bizarre that he prefers that characteristic to the
more culpable forms of crime. In one of his stories he
observes:
"Amid the action and reaction of so
dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination
of events may be expected to take place, and many a
little problem will be presented which may be striking
and bizarre without being criminal. We have
already had experience of such."
"So much so," I remarked, "that of the
last six cases which I have added to my notes, three
have been entirely free of any legal crime."
But in the following extract, perhaps
because he is in a disputatious mood, he acknowledges a
liking for trivial and lowly manifestations of his art:
"To the man who loves art for its own
sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the
advertisement sheet of the "And yet," said I, smiling "I cannot
quite hold myself absolved from the charge of
sensationalism which has been urged against my
records."
"You have erred, perhaps," he observed,
taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs, and lighting
with it the long cherrywood pipe which was wont to
replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather
than a meditative mood — "you have erred perhaps
in attempting to put color and life into each of your
statements, instead of confining yourself to the task
of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause
to effect which is really the only notable feature
about the thing."
"It seems to me that I have done you
full justice in the matter," I remarked, with some
coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I had
more than once observed to be a strong factor in my
friend's singular character.
"No, it is not selfishness or conceit,"
said he, answering, as was his wont, my thoughts rather
than my words. "If I claim full justice for my art, it
is because it is an impersonal thing — a thing
beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare.
Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the
crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what
should have been a course of lectures into a series of
tales."
But Watson himself confesses to the dangers of this literary Scylla and Charybdis with which Conan Doyle has seen fit to disturb him:
"In glancing over the somewhat incoherent series of Memoirs with which I have endeavored to illustrate a few of the mental peculiarities of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have been struck by the difficulty which I have experienced in picking out examples which shall in every way answer my purpose. For in those cases in which Holmes has performed some tour de force of analytical reasoning, and has demonstrated the value of his peculiar methods of investigation, the facts themselves have often been so slight or so commonplace that I could not feel justified in laying them before the public. On the other hand, it has frequently happened that he has been concerned in some research where the facts have been of the most remarkable and dramatic character, but where the share which he has himself taken in determining their causes has been less pronounced than I, as his biographer, could wish. The small matter which I have chronicled under the heading of 'A Study in Scarlet,' and that other later one connected with the loss of the Gloria Scott, may serve as examples of this Scylla and Charybdis which are forever threatening the historian. It may be that in the business of which I am now about to write the part which my friend played is not sufficiently accentuated; and yet the whole train of circumstances is so remarkable that I cannot bring myself to omit it entirely from this series."
These tricks of the trade are of course
faithfully copied by the imitators and successors of
these great authors. An example in point is this from
Jacques Futrelle's "The Thinking Machine;"
"Now, Mr. Hatch," said The Thinking
Machine in his perpetually crabbed voice, "we have a
most remarkable riddle. It gains this remarkable aspect
from its very simplicity. It is not, however, necessary
to go into that now. I will make it clear to you when
we know the motives."
The following paragraph of philosophy
has proved of immense use as a model:
"All this seems strange to you,"
continued Holmes, "because you failed at the beginning
of the inquiry to grasp the importance of the single
real clew which was presented to you. I had the good
fortune to seize upon that, and everything which has
occurred since then has served to confirm my original
supposition, and, indeed, was the logical sequence of
it. Hence things which have perplexed you and made the
case more obscure have served to enlighten me and to
strengthen my conclusions. It is a mistake to confound
strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is
often the most mysterious because it presents no new or
special features from which deductions may be drawn.
This murder would have been infinitely more difficult
to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found
lying in the roadway without any of those
outré and sensational accompaniments
which have rendered it remarkable. These strange
details, far from making the case more difficult, have
really had the effect of making it less so."
Its principles are embodied in this
quotation from Gordon Holmes' "A Mysterious
Disappearance:"
"The greater the apparent mystery," he
communed, "the less it is in reality. We now have two
tracks to follow. They are both hidden, it is true, but
when we find one, it will probably intersect the other.
"You are not to blame, White," he said,
"for having failed to note many things which I have now
told you. You are the slave of a system. Your method
works admirably for the detection of commonplace crime,
but as soon as the higher region of romance is reached
it is as much out of place as a steam-roller in a
lady's boudoir. Look at the remarkable series of crimes
the English police have failed to solve of late, merely
because some bizarre element had intruded itself at the
outset. Have you ever read any of the works of Edgar
Allan Poe?"
The detective answered in the
affirmative. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The
Mystery of Marie Roget" were familiar to him.
"Well," went on Bruce, "there you have
the accurate samples of my meaning. Poe would not have
been puzzled for an hour by the vagaries of Jack the
Ripper. He would have said at once — most
certainly after the third or fourth in the series of
murders — 'This is the work of an athletic
lunatic, with a morbid love of anatomy and a morbid
hatred of a certain class of women. Seek
for him among young men who have pestered doctors with
outrageous theories, and who possess weak-minded or
imbecile relatives.' Then, again, take the murder on
the South-Western Railway. Do you think Poe would have
gone questioning bartenders or inquiring into abortive
love affairs? Not he! Jealous swains do not carry
pistols about with them to slay their sweethearts, nor
do they choose a four-minutes' interval between
suburban stations for frenzied avowals of their
passion. Here you have the clear trail of a clever
lunatic, dropping from the skies, as it were, and
disappearing in the same erratic manner."
In "The Master of Mysteries," Mr. Gelett
Burgess puts this principle into the mouth of his
psychic detective, Astro:
"It will probably be easy and
interesting," he remarked to his assistant, Valeska,
who had been present at the interview with McGraw. "It
is these cases which are apparently so extraordinary
that are most easily solved. Given any remarkable
variation in the aspect of a crime, and you know
immediately where to begin. This will be only play, I
fancy."
(End of Chapter XI)