The Real Reality
In fact, Uncle S. announces his intention to change his will and invites his whole family to his house for his seventy-fifth birthday party. The family includes Wanda's ne'er-do-well brother Waldo, who always has his hand out for Uncle's money, her flighty sister Winnie, who wants a thousand pounds to open a dress shop, and her mother Wilhelmina, who depends upon Sebastian's generous allowance to maintain her home in Torquay. So the house is nicely stocked with suspects and we're not even counting the butler and cook, who have plans for their inheritances as well.
Uncle S. likes his port. No one else in the house drinks port. Uncle is sure to pour a glass for himself on the night of his birthday, so Wanda takes four buses to a village where she isn't known and buys a bottle of poison containing cyanide. (That means: now Wanda has what it takes to commit the murder, and she's concealed the fact that she bought it by going where she wasn't known and signing a fake name in the chemist's poison book.)
Now she has to get into Uncle Sebastian's private study, a room he keeps locked. Only the housekeeper, Mrs. Strange, has a key; she unlocks the room every Thursday for a quick dusting. So how is Wanda going to get into the room to put the poison into the port?
Answer: maybe she isn't. Maybe the port itself isn't really poisoned, but the inability of anyone to get into the study becomes a red herring. Maybe she doctors the glass Uncle Sebastian uses instead; she has access to that pretty readily. She can then divert the police by adding more poison to the decanter afterwards to make it look as if the poison was there all along.
Let's say she does get into the study by diverting Mrs. Strange after she's opened the door on Thursday. Mrs. Strange's later recollection that a salesman called at the door and asked to speak to her will explain how the room was unguarded for a short time. That the young man looks a lot like Hosmer Angel will eventually put the noose around both their necks—and you developed the clue by realizing you had to figure out a way to get Wanda into that study.
Now Wanda has not only means but opportunity as well. She's done a nice job of concealing her motive; no one else in the house knows she's seeing Hosmer Angel and wants money so she can marry him.
The False Reality
That's the real reality. Now she has to create the false reality that someone else in the house also has means and opportunity. Motive is pretty well out there already, and it looks to Inspector Dim like everyone in the house except Wanda had reasons for wanting the old boy dead (which, if he were an experienced mystery reader, would be a giant clue right there, but that's why we need Lord Bright on the case).
How does Wanda do this? Here are a few possibilities:
• She hides the bottle of cyanide in sister Winnie's sponge bag.
• She tells the inspector she saw her mother outside Uncle Sebastian's study late one night. What she doesn't say is that her mother received a note, purporting to be from Uncle S., asking her to meet him there. When Wilhelmina is asked to produce the note, she can't—because Wanda urged her to toss it into the fire.
• She mentions that brother Waldo is an amateur photographer. When the inspector checks out his darkroom, he finds cyanide.
• She points out, helpfully, that the butler's pantry contains a nice big jar of silver polish—containing cyanide. It will also appear that the butler desperately needs money because he lost a bundle on the horses.
Now she's given everyone else means and/or opportunity. She's created her false reality (of course, she'd have been better off concentrating on one suspect and putting him firmly in the frame, which is what you'll do in your straight-line narrative).
Getting a Clue_
Mystery writing is a sadistic little craft. First we create clues for our readers to pick up, and then we do our best to obscure those clues. As Golden Age guru S.S. Van Dine said, "The really good detective story is a kind of literary game. It is more—it is a sporting event. And the author must play lair with the reader."
The play-fair mystery allows the reader to investigate along with the detective, learning exactly what the detective learns when he learns it. To quote Van Dine again, "No wilful (sic) tricks or deceptions maybe played on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself!" Playing fair adds the pleasure of solving a puzzle to the other joys of reading fiction, such as identifying with great characters and visiting an exciting setting.
A suspense novel, as we'll see in Part Two of this book, is a different matter. While mini-mysteries and puzzles are often included in suspense reads, the writer doesn't have to play fair in order to enchant the reader. The main character in a suspense novel can keep secrets from the reader, while we expect the detective in a mystery to share with us every single clue she comes upon.
Hide in Plain Sight
When is a clue not a clue? When it is exposed to the reader before the crime is committed. This is a great way to convey a big fat piece of information that would have the reader saying, "It must have been Henry!" if the reader learned it after the body was discovered. But learning on page 20 that some guy named Henry once worked for a chemical company means nothing; it's only after someone is found dead of toxic fumes 70 pages later that this information becomes important.
Other great ways to hide clues:
• Toss the clue in as a throwaway line during an argument. "And that's another thing, George, you've been away three weekends in a row!" will, with luck, have us focused on George's shortcomings as a husband, not on the fact that he wasn't with Alice on the day Bruce was killed.
• Humor is another good hiding place. That reference to Henry's working for the chemical company might be inserted into a joke, and the reader will assume the information isn't meant seriously.
• One of Dame Agatha Christie's favorite methods of clue concealment was the Unreliable Narrator. Put the vital clue in the mouth of someone we know is a liar or a dolt and we're likely to discount it. But once in a while, a liar tells the truth and a dolt gets an insight.
• Half truths are still lies—but the reader is likely to think he's received the whole truth and forget to question what was left unsaid.
• Second cousin to the Unreliable Narrator is the Prattler, a character whose mouth is always open and always dispensing trivial talk that no one listens to. After a while, the reader stops paying attention, too—and that's the point at which you put something important into that character's mouth.
• A personal favorite: give the reader one nice big clue and then shove another one in after it. Let the first clue shine brightly, so that it attracts the reader, who picks it up, pats him/herself on the back, and assumes that nothing else in that sentence or paragraph is a clue because they've already sucked the meat out of that walnut.
• Along the same lines, how about giving the reader a clue that the detective immediately recognizes as such, and then coming up with a secondary meaning for that clue, which now makes it point in a completely different direction. A word that seems to have one meaning suddenly takes on a new connotation and points the detective in a different direction.
The Dog in the Night-Time
The absence of a clue can become a clue, as in "the dog in the nighttime." The reference is from "Silver Blaze," in which Sherlock Holmes refers to "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." Watson objects, "But the dog did nothing in the night-time!" and Holmes replies, "That was the curious incident." A dog that should have barked because a stranger entered the horse's stall didn't bark, and therefore the person entering that stall wasn't a stranger. The absence of a clue became the clue that pointed to a suspect.
This is a truly wonderful device in that the reader is usually going to elide over the missing clue without catching on to its absence until your detective points out that something should have happened that didn't happen. First, however, the writer must establish that the thing that should have happened should have happened. Doyle has several witnesses telling Holmes about the dog's usefulness as
a watchdog, and the animal barks at Holmes and Watson when they approach the stall. Even though Holmes doesn't ask point blank whether the dog barked during the night, no one mentions hearing it bark when they recount the incident.
What Is a Clue?
Old-school mystery writers centered their clues in the realm of the physical. We're talking time of death, distances and times and alibis, things left at the scene and things taken from the scene. They knew what a lot of moderns seem not to know: motive is not a clue.
Motive is "suggestive" in the words of Sherlock Holmes, but it is not an element of the crime in a court of law. Face it, many innocent people have what someone might see as a motive to kill another person, and if that motive is all they have, no charges will be brought against them.
Clues are:
• Objects found at the scene of the crime
• Fingerprints, fibers, hairs, blood
• Footprints, tire treads
• Bullet holes, stab wounds, poison in the body
• Financial records
• Eyewitness accounts
• Condition of the body
• Location of the body
• Physical evidence pointing to a particular suspect
Not clues but suggestive:
• Lies
• Discrepancies
• Phony alibis (a form of lying, after all)
• Fleeing the scene
• Refusal to answer questions
• Lies of omission, half truths
• Confessions
• Hitherto unrevealed connections between parties
Where Do You Get Your Clues?
Let's go back to the straight-line narrative, the step-by-step account of the murder. Let's divide the straight-line narrative into sections, and see how each section creates its own set of clues. The murderer will create witnesses to her actions somewhere along the line, she will leave traces of herself behind at the scene, she will make mistakes—and it is from these that your clues will emerge.
Preparation for the Crime Sweet, shy, mousy Wanda wants to kill her Uncle Sebastian before he can disinherit her. To this end, she decides to buy poison. Not being stupid, she doesn't go into her own village, but instead makes a long, arduous trip to a place where she isn't known. Even with this precaution, however, there are going to be witnesses who can tell the detective something about this journey.
First, she took buses. Someone on the bus, a driver or another passenger, will be able to recall a woman of about Wanda's age asking about the connecting bus to Market Finsbury. "She was that nervous, me Lord, she kept wringing her hands and all I could think was, you're in trouble, you are," the witness says, and Lord Bright immediately recognizes Wanda's nervous habit of wringing her hands.
Second, she entered a chemist's shop and bought cyanide. In Britain, this meant signing a book so there would be a record of all poison sales. Again, Wanda wasn't dumb enough to sign her real name, but she still left clues.
Lord Bright took out his pocket magnifying glass and examined the signature. The name "Maud Silver" rang a very faint bell in his mind (he will later remember that Wanda, Winnie, and Waldo once had a governess by that name). Lord Bright studied the swirls and loops and concluded that the signature was that of a woman over thirty-five, for that particular style had been replaced twenty years ago by the Palmer method. The ink was blue-black and the pen nib very fine; Lord Bright smiled as he remembered the grocery list he'd seen in the cook's hand. It was written in just such ink with just such a fine tip. The person who gave orders to the cook was the daughter who lived in the house; it appeared that Wanda had some explaining to do.
Actually, it would be better if Lord Bright didn't realize all of these things at once; he could see the cook's note later on and connect it with the chemist's book. The point is that Wanda left clues to her identity behind even as she tried to conceal that identity. And even if she'd been smart enough to use her brother's thick-nibbed pen instead of her own, something in that handwriting could give her away.
At the Crime Scene It's a truism in real detective work that every killer takes something away from the crime scene and also leaves something behind. In today's hightech investigations, what is taken and what is left can be as small as a microscopic flake of skin containing all the DNA the cops will need to nail their killer.
The real crime scene in Uncle Sebastian's murder is not the dining room table at which he ingested the poisoned port, but the study in which the port was kept and where Wanda had to go to put the poison into the decanter.
What did she take from the scene?
She walked across the rug—could she have a minute thread from the rug on her house slippers? Since she adamantly denies having been in the room, how would a thread from a genuine Persian rug—the only Persian rug in the house—get on her slipper?
What did she leave at the scene?
She picked up the glass decanter, took off its top, and poured poison into it. She touched the glass and left fingerprints.
But she wiped those off, of course.
Did she? Did she wipe the decanter itself but forget to wipe the stopper? Did she wipe the glass but fail to realize that she'd rested her hand for a moment on the corner of the desk?
How did she get into a locked room in the first place? We decided in the straight-line narrative that she diverted the housekeeper's attention by having her boyfriend pose as a salesman. That gives us a witness; when the housekeeper sees a photograph of Hosmer Angel she recognizes the "salesman" even though he was wearing a phony mustache.
Perhaps there's a second witness as well. The gardener might have caught a glimpse of her through the window while she was in the study (she made a big mistake wearing that orange sweater).
The Body Itself
Since this is a poison case, that's the main clue the body can give us. Uncle Sebastian didn't die, as his relatives might first have assumed, from a stroke. Their second assumption—that eating oysters in a month that didn't end with R polished him off—is also disproved by the presence of cyanide in his body.
It is the cyanide that leads Lord Bright to make the rounds of chemists' shops within a fifty-mile radius.
Other bodies give us even more scope for clues, not all of them directly related to the cause of death. A death by drowning yields bruises that didn't come from immersion in water, a stabbing victim has traces of narcotics in his system, a body killed by a gunshot also shows signs of defensive wounds on her hands. Perhaps the killer did both—or perhaps a second perpetrator caused a second set of injuries. Either way, the detective has a line of inquiry to pursue, which will lead either to the killer or to a fine fat red herring.
Each particular means of death yields its own special clues. Gunshots give us bullets or fragments inside the body; ballistics can tell us the make of gun. Powder burns determine how close the shooter was to his victim. Knives have edges—and those edges are straight or serrated, single- or double-edged, belong to a short or long blade.
Your detective, whether police or private, needs to make use of forensic clues. In Chinatown, the discovery that a man who supposedly drowned in a freshwater reservoir had salt water in his lungs leads Jake Gittes to the truth that the man really died in a pond filled with salt water.
Acts of Concealment Wanda worked hard to conceal her motive, her access to the means of death, and her opportunity to commit the murder. But she didn't stop there: she decided to go one step further and implicate her family in the crime, planting evidence that will incriminate her brother, sister, and mother. For example:
When Wanda slips into the study to poison the port, she takes with her a diamond comb belonging to her sister,Winnie. She drops this comb under her uncle's desk, where it will be found by Inspector Dim, who will immediately accuse the money-hungry Winnie of the crime.
But how did she get that comb in the first place? Did she steal it from her sister's bedroom, and, if so, what else did she take and what did she leave beh
ind? Winnie's room becomes a secondary crime scene, and another opportunity for clue-creation.
She took strands of hair. Winnie's comb had a few stray strands remaining in it, and they came along with the comb. Then Wanda put the comb in the pocket of her tweed skirt. When she pulled the comb out to plant it in the study, a stray hair stayed behind. When Lord Bright gets the gardener's evidence that he saw something orange in the study on the afternoon the port was poisoned, his lordship remembers that Wanda wore her orange jumper (that's British for sweater) with a brown tweed skirt. He checks the pocket of that skirt and finds a peroxided blond hair that could only belong to sister Winnie. He deduces that Wanda stole and planted Winnie's comb.
Now take each of the other suspects and play the same game. Everywhere Wanda went and everything Wanda did to a) commit the crime, and b) cover up the crime by implicating others, become a fertile source of clues.
Clues in the Private Eye Novel
The classic whodunit involves murder within a small circle of suspects. The private eye novel, set in "the great wrong place" that is the city, theoretically involves a much larger world in which anyone could have committed the crime. If we were dealing in reality, any citizen of Los Angeles could have killed our victim, for any reason or for no reason at all. It's Chinatown, Jake.
But the private eye novel isn't any more real than the country-house cozy. It's an "existential romance," a pseudo-realistic vision that is considerably more stylized than truly authentic. We readers love the illusion of looking upon naked, gritty urban reality while at the same time we are comforted by the presence of a detective who carries a banner of honor into the moral swamp.
The private eye combs the city for clues and suspects, and often hops a plane to New Jersey or drives to Vegas to track down a lead. This helps us believe the notion that we are reading realism, that the murderer could be anybody anywhere. Yet when the murderer is revealed, he'd better not be a faceless hit man from Detroit or a passing wino. He'd better be someone we've met or at least heard about before. He'd better be someone we suspected or should have suspected all along and not a bolt from the blue.
How to rite Killer Fiction Page 4