Snobbery With Violence

by Colin Watson

  There is, in short, a very strong presumption of amateurism throughout almost the entire range of British fictional detectives and adventurers in crime. Only a handful of the investigators had any official status, although some of the others appeared to enjoy facilities at Scotland Yard. In a few cases, these clearly were of a special order. Nayland Smith, it will be remembered, had a pair of C.I.D. men dispatched to China as simply as another man might have ordered a pie from the staff canteen. He did have Foreign Office connections, though. Less easily accountable was the readiness of Chief Inspector Parker to work with Lord Peter Wimsey in preparing the defence of the Duke of Denver on the murder charge which one would have thought it was Parker’s duty to make stick. Dr Thorndyke was always able to order the local police force around wherever he set up his travelling microscope. His was a powerful personality, as was Dr Priestley’s, and in both cases the medical title must have carried some weight. Other detectives had to depend on a co-operative friend or relative in authority – Miss Marples’s nephew, for instance, or Poirot’s colleague Japp – if they were to be allowed a hand in the case.

  As crime fiction grew less crudely independent of probabilities, it became increasingly difficult to justify the presence of an interfering outsider on the scene of the crime. All kinds of device were used, but the object was the same as it had been from the days when Lestrade made his first heavily ironic remarks about the theorizing of the amateur Holmes. It was to secure the attendance of some gifted person with idiosyncracies that would be interesting to read about. Ideally, he would be unfettered by Judges’ Rules, able to adopt unorthodox methods, talk as much or as little as suited the author’s purpose, intervene physically if need be, and generally be at the core of the story in ways that could not logically be allowed even the most enterprising or eccentric policeman.

  Occupations supposedly offering some entitlement to the tolerance of the authorities have included from time to time insurance assessing, medicine, teaching, librarianship, footballing, vintnery and (most optimistically of all) journalism.

  None of these dually employed detectives has ever been really convincing. For a tale or two it did not matter greatly that the oceanographer, say, seemed to have an unreasonable amount of time away from work in order to solve the Mystery of the Scuttled Bullion Ship or the Case of the Drowned Diver. But when the author pleaded need for an expert on currents in order to secure his hero’s attendance at the investigation of The Brewery Vat Murders, even the most faithful readers had the uncomfortable feeling that the plot was being rigged. A writer of the calibre of G. K. Chesterton could get away with a great deal of unlikelihood and inconsistency because he was bold enough to pretend that he had introduced them deliberately in order to illustrate some deeper theological truth. Even so, it required considerable sympathy for Chestertonian views on paradox to accept the saintly Father Brown’s knack of always being around when a crime was about to be discovered. Less skilled authors, imagining that specialized or esoteric knowledge was enough to make a detective story intriguing, persisted in having their pet experts ‘called in’ until the whole thing became ridiculous.

  There were two ways of avoiding such difficulties without leaving the investigation exclusively to the police. One was to make the crime or crimes political, thus justifying their solution by a hero (most recently, an anti-hero) with no specified obligations or inhibitions other than the vaguest sort of patriotism. He was the spy, the special agent, the counter-espionage man: a Saint George in Vacuo, having to render no account of means so long as ends were achieved.

  The second and far more venerable method was to call on patronage. It dated from the old master himself. When Edgar Allan Poe was inventing and setting the form of the detective story in the early 1840s, he created for his purpose not a policeman, not an agent of government, but an eccentric gentleman of independent means, an aristocrat, le Chevalier D. Auguste Dupin, no less. Dupin had his conveniently available chronicler, who recorded the Chevalier’s habit of living behind closed shutters in a room illuminated dimly by perfumed tapers. Here, in chambers in the Faubourg Saint Germain, the pair ‘gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams’. Besides being a philosopher and something of a sensualist, Dupin displayed a notable grasp of psychology. This enabled him on one occasion to solve a murder – that of Marie Roget – without leaving his chambers. He studied newspaper reports of the crime and deduced the truth from what witnesses had said, in the light of his knowledge of the probabilities of human behaviour.

  Much has been written, especially by Americans, pointing out similarities between Dupin and Sherlock Holmes and thus implying that Conan Doyle based his detective on the creation of Edgar Allan Poe. Apart from the question of national kudos, the relationship is not of much importance. Both Dupin and Holmes were portrayed as intellectuals with highly developed powers of observation and logic. Both were aristocratic in manner and outlook, although only the Frenchman could boast an actual title. They shared a taste for nocturnal expeditions and were commonly antipathetic to domestic ventilation. So far can they be said to resemble each other. The essential difference – the division between a classical original, familiar now mainly to scholars, and a character, however derivative, that has become a part of international mythology – is due to Doyle’s possession of a quality the American author lacked. He was able to make Holmes a live, palpable, human being and invest him with faults and virtues which, though not altogether credible, were unfailingly intriguing. Holmes was a crisp and intelligible talker; his air of infallibility was not only impressive but curiously endearing; and he got on with things. Dupin was unconscionably wordy, affected and static.

  Poe had few direct imitators. Conan Doyle had many. The most painful results were the books of those admirers who tried most diligently to reproduce Holmes’s eccentricities and scientific showmanship. Wiser were those who were content to borrow only general shapes of construction and presentation within which individual style and inventiveness might be freely developed. One such shape was the conception of the detective as a consultant, independent of authority yet in himself authoritative; less a practitioner in, than a patron of, criminology. It was this conception that had paramount influence upon the intellectual half of crime fiction – the whodunnit as distinct from the thriller – from the turn of the century onwards.

  Into the Baker Street set-up may be read quite easily Doyle’s own professional background and ideals. The fact of Watson’s being a doctor is not the point; it is the manner, method and way of thought of Holmes which derive from the training of a medical man. His clients are like patients: after being duly amazed and gratified by the Holmesian conjuring trick of snap deduction, they proceed to describe the mysterious circumstances that trouble them, much as if they were illness symptoms. Holmes is sympathetic – save when he suspects fraud – and prompts and probes either kindly or with sharpness in order to draw out the data he needs for diagnosis. If he can see a likely solution, he does not commit himself yet nevertheless sends away his caller with the firm feeling that Mr Holmes has the measure of the problem and will put all right in good time. If, on the other hand, he is hopelessly flummoxed, he remains looking gravely confident until the patient/client has been shown out by receptionist/landlady Mrs Hudson before expressing apprehension that ‘these are deep waters, Watson’. Doyle certainly knew the tricks of the medical profession.

  He was also aware of the veneration in which doctors are held by ordinary people, and it is noticeable that Holmes is treated with respect, not to say awe, by all who come in contact with him except the most brutalized criminals and the occasional irascible lord (whom he is sure to humble sooner or later, anyway). Holmes has authority. It is his most noteworthy characteristic. Perhaps it is the most important feature of any detective who is to prove a success with the reading public. For if anything distinguishes crime fiction from other forms of story-telling, it is the hero’s implicit in
strumentality in restoring the rule of right over wrong. He is not concerned, as are the heroes of novels of romance or adventure, with such personal and trivial objectives as winning the girl or making a fortune or escaping from his enemy. Establishment of the truth, vindication of the innocent, exposure and punishment of the guilty: to ends no less formidable than these is he dedicated. The task demands authority and at the same time confers it, and it ought to be seen to do so if the book is to satisfy convention.

  How does an author set about the investment of his hero with qualities that the majority of readers will see as admirable and consistent with high moral purpose and yet keep him human enough to retain their sympathy? The balance is by no means easy to achieve. People enjoy being impressed by the acrobatics of giant intellects, but once an argument becomes too complicated or a display of knowledge too recondite they lose interest. Championship of law and order commands support up to a certain point: a grain too much zeal arouses suspicion of officiousness or worse. The over-clever detective grows as tiresome in the long run as the most uninspired plodder.

  Doyle’s formula was an almost perfect solution of all the difficulties. He gave Holmes a dozen enviable attributes, including personal independence, financial sufficiency, an intelligence of moderately high order that was combined with a flair for showmanship and just enough wit to flatter but not to tax the average reader’s sense of humour. He made him as loyal to God, Queen and country as any parson or any patriot could have desired, but allowed him pride and an occasional flash of bloody-mindedness that would appeal to the gallery as surely as would his skill at fisticuffs. At the same time, readers were invited to watch this extraordinarily strong-minded man surrender to vices as disparate as the smoking of ounce upon ounce of homely black shag and his self-injection with shots of cocaine. Here was the great detective, confidant of Royalty, at one minute as slavishly devoted to a dirty old pipe as any plumber or cabman, at the next dabbling in a drug of exotic association and fiendish potentiality. Holmes was unmarried. This alone would have made him attractive to women in times when a good ‘match’ was the preoccupation of millions because of sharp economic inequalities. In addition he was handsome and of gallant but not flowery manners. To balance these qualities, which male readers might have resented, Doyle emphasized the irrevocability of Holmes’s bachelorhood. There was a shadow of some lost love, some great sacrifice in the best tradition of Victorian rectitude. Hence, mayhap, the moodiness, the cocaine, even the violin. Sufferers from unrequited love who behaved oddly were not yet in danger of being saddled with the unromantic label of manic-depressive. Nor, it must be added, was the habit of cohabiting with a male companion in adventure who doubled as biographer regarded as a manifestation of homosexuality.

  Doyle’s final touch of genius in the creation of the ideal detective hero was to put the finished article into the safety of the past. Provided that anachronism was guarded against – and this was not too difficult for a writer whose own earlier lifetime had embraced the period chosen – adventures related as reminiscence, as history, could have an air of authenticity that would impress younger readers and appeal nostalgically to the older ones. It is unlikely that Doyle looked further beyond his next royalty cheque than any other popular author, but even if he had planned consciously to dominate the whodunnit market for the next hundred years, he could scarcely have picked a setting of more abiding fascination than late nineteenth-century London, that curious compound of the homely and the sinister, of sentimentality and terror. It haunts us still, as its most fearful criminal, Jack the Ripper, is still capable of affrighting a generation that has seen murder put on a production line basis. The Ripper was a reality that stayed in the shadows and became myth; but for millions the world over, the vision of Victorian London is dominated by a myth that became real – the figure in cape and deerstalker, the great autocratic patron of criminology.

  Doyle died in 1930. By that time other autocrats of crime fiction had been established and were showing promise of making their authors’ reputations. They were so different in temperamental behaviour from Sherlock Holmes as to seem utterly unrelated. This, though, was possibly the result of determination to forestall suspicion of plagiarism; the basic line of resemblance was there, the identity of loyalties and beliefs, and a shared doggedness in following clues.

  There was one marked deviation from the Holmesian model. Doyle’s hero had dealt with the great and had moved in elevated circles, but only professionally. He himself was a commoner, and it was by sheer power of personality and of intellect that he established parity with, if not superiority over, the Dukes of Holdernesse and Kings of Bohemia who sought his aid. No such feats of character exertion were demanded of the heroes of Buchan and Dornford Yates, of Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham, Wallace and Horler, of H. C. Bailey and Anthony Berkeley Cox. That the embattler of crime should enjoy private means was an assumption convenient to authors and apparently acceptable to their readers. In the majority of the standard run of thrillers and detective stories between the wars heroes were depicted as not merely independent financially but what most people would have called rich. They lived, as a rule, in bachelor apartments in the most expensive residential areas of London. Baker Street, most decidedly, did not qualify. They were served not by a landlady but by ‘a man’. All were men of influence in useful quarters, many had aristocratic connections, some were directly related to the nobility, a few actually sported titles of their own.

  By no means new in 1920 was the device of presenting an apparently foolish, irresponsible young man to readers or audience and then surprising them by revealing his unsuspected depths of intellect or courage. It was a trick that had served authors and playwrights from the earliest times. The fop with the heart of a lion, the bored epicure who became valiant overnight, the cynic who embraced true love: these had been working hard for the livings of Jane Austen, Sheridan, Shakespeare, and others long before them. There continued to exist after the turn of the century a lively desire on the part of readers and theatre-goers to be fooled by appearances – or, rather, not to be fooled, for it was not long after Baroness Orczy’s debut in 1904 that everyone knew that the weak, lisping Sir Percy Blakeney was really the indomitable and infinitely resourceful Scarlet Pimpernel. The double-living hero was a convention of musical comedy, and the more effete was his ostensible character, the better was everyone pleased when he turned into the Red Shadow or something of the kind in the last act. Crime fiction naturally had its schizophrenic element too. Reputed ne’er-do-wells worked under cover for Scotland Yard, for instance, while young men dismissed by one and all as mental deficients with large bank accounts proved to have been languidly but brilliantly assembling the case for the prosecution.

  ‘He came down in Anne Edgeware’s car, and the first thing he did when he was introduced to me was to show me a conjuring trick with a two-headed penny – he’s quite inoffensive, just a silly ass.’ Abbershaw nodded and stared covertly at the fresh-faced young man with the tow-coloured hair and the foolish, pale-blue eyes behind tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles … The slightly receding chin and mouth so unnecessarily full of teeth were distinctly familiar.

  (The Crime at Black Dudley)

  As they should have been, for Albert Campion came of some of the bluest-blooded stock in England. But whose is this disarming chatter?

  ‘Why ask, dear old thing? Always a pleasure to assist a fellow-sleuth, don’t you know. Trackin’ down murderers – all in the same way of business and all that. All finished? Good egg!’

  It is the voice of Wimbles, of course, as the chaps at the Foreign Office call Lord Peter Wimsey – or did in 1928 in the days of Trotters, Bungo the cypher man, and old Clumps. And just as Britain’s enemies would have paid dearly for underestimating dear old Trotters, it was an unwise murderer who failed to reckon with the hunting instinct of the young man with ‘the sleek, straw-coloured hair, brushed flat back from a rather sloping forehead, the ugly, lean, arched nose, and the faintly foolish s
mile’.

  The Silly Ass convention was extraordinarily pervasive in the 1920s and 1930s. It had developed into something quite different from the old dramatic device of dissembling, and was almost a celebration of inanity as such. A universally familiar figure on stage and cinema screen was that of a young man in smart clothes, sickly grin and monocle, whose vocabulary was as limited as his means and expectations were supposed to be substantial. He was generally depicted as having difficulty in understanding the import of what other people said to him. When making his own laboured but idiotically affable contribution to dialogue, he would repeatedly squawk ‘eh, what?’ and ‘don’t y’know’ and address his companion as ‘old bean’. That the public continued to consider this sort of thing enormous fun is proved by the sustained success of the Aldwych farces, in which Ralph Lynn was the perennial embodiment of Silly-Assery; by the popularity of P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster stories; and, not least, by the politic sense of fashion that prompted writers such as Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham and even Anthony Berkeley Cox to endow their detective with an air of fatuity.

  It was an American, characteristically, who worked hardest at reproducing the kind of language that precious young Englishmen were believed to employ. S. S. Van Dine used almost as many words to convey the rich, bored and supercilious nature of his investigator, Philo Vance, as to describe the cases he so effortlessly solved. Vance never speaks when he can drawl and his painfully esoteric witticisms are sometimes accompanied by a ‘japish smile’. He calls people ‘old dear’ and expresses his always restrained surprise with ‘’Pon my word’. He chops the G off present participles – maybe to help compensate Currie, his ‘rare old English servant’ for missin’ the huntin’ back home – and eh-whats even New York district attorneys into respectful concurrence. In Vance’s manner, Van Dine wrote, ‘was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds’.