There is another ‘point’, which is evident in the detective stories we have read. This is that the detective seems to be an amateur and someone who doesn’t like the Formal Police Service. Take Dupin for example. He said this about the Parisian Police: ‘The Parisian Police, so much extolled for acumen, are cunning, but no more.’ This gives the reader the impression that Dupin doesn’t like the Police and that Dupin thinks a lot of himself. This is also apparent with Holmes. There was a case in ‘The Speckled Band’ when Holmes criticised the Police because they did not search the room thoroughly. He said: ‘We will have to search the room with care to see what the Police have missed out.’ This clearly gives the reader the impression that Sherlock does not like the Police.
The detectives also seem to be in ‘a world of their own’ and often seem to have highly individual personalities. We can see that Dupin ‘waffles’ quite a lot, when he speaks. Lets look at when he starts to talk about the people who have heard the voice. He starts by saying: ‘That was the evidence itself . . . .’ and talks like this for the next four paragraphs. This tells me that, at times. Dupin can talk a load of nonsense and he can be quite tedious. We can also see the detective’s different personalities by the way they act and the way they are described by the authors.
There are six typical motifs that Sayers writes about, when describing ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ Three of these have already been mentioned. The other three are: the detectives drawing deductions which the police have overlooked; when you have eliminated all the possibilities, then whatever remains must be true and that the more outré the case may be, the easier it is to solve. Most of these motifs can repeatedly be found in detective most stories of the Pre 20th century, including the ones we have studied.
If we look at the sealed death chamber, we can see it is apparent in most of the stories we have read. We can see it in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ when Dupin says: ‘Both doors leading from the rooms into the passage were securely locked, with the key still inside.’ It is apparent in ‘The Speckled Band’ when Helen Stoner told Holmes: ‘It is impossible for any one to get in . . . . There are bars across the windows and all the doors are locked from the inside.’ This all adds to the creation of tension in the mind of the reader. However, we can see that in ‘The Great Pearl Mysteries’ by Baroness Orczy there is no sealed death chamber, but in ‘The Problem of Dressing Room A’ and ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ there is no sealed death chamber, as such, but we do have a situation where there is no means of escape for the criminal without getting noticed.
There is also a wrongly suspected man in the stories which we have read, apart from ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ when there is a wrongly but, he is the same man under a different name. In ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ there is a wrongly suspected man. It is said that: ‘A postscript however, mentioned that Adolphe Le Bon had been arrested and imprisoned although nothing appeared to criminate him.’ But it is obvious that ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ has a wrongly suspected man just for the sake of having one. Briefly, there is a wrongly suspected man in ‘The Problem of Dressing Room A.’ His name being ‘Langdon Mason.’ In ‘The Great Pearl Mysteries’ he goes by the name of ‘Major Gilroy Straker.’ He was thought to of taken the pearls. However, in ‘The Speckled Band’ there is not so much as a wrongly accused man, but wrongly accused people. The gypsies are thought to have had something to do with the murder of Miss Stoner.
Many of the detectives we have come across in our stories have all come to conclusions, and have solved the cases. They have all observed clues that have been overlooked by the police. They have also drawn deductions from this too. We repeatedly see Holmes discovering clues that the police have overlooked, especially in ‘The Speckled Band.’ When Holmes and Watson go to Stoak Moran to inspect the rooms, Holmes discovers many things that the police have overlooked. From this, we see Holmes drawing deductions to the obvious solution of the crime. In ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ we can see Dupin drawing deductions from clues that the police have overlooked. It is also evident in ‘The Problem of Dressing Room A’ and ‘The Great Pearl Mysteries.’
Throughout all of the stories which we have read, we can see that the detectives have been drawing deductions and finding clues that the police have missed, but one thin that we notice is that after all of the deductions, then whatever remains must be true. We see this, not only in the stories, but in real-life situations too. We can see the detectives asking after wrongly suspected man, and then they eliminate them from the case. They work through all the possible motifs, and then eliminate the motifs that are not true. We see this in ‘The Problem of Dressing room A’ when ‘The Thinking Machine’ asks the chocolatier if she had seen various men in a photograph which he presents to her.
One of the last things that Sayers writes about was that: ‘The more outré the case by be, the easier it is to solve.’ What Sayers says about this is most certainly true. There has been a most complex plot to all of our stories that we have read. This therefore makes it easier to solve the cases. This is because there are more motifs and wrongly suspected people for the more outré case. Once the detectives have eliminated all the wrong motifs and people, they are left with what happened. We can therefore see that the easiest way of solving a crime is to collect all possible suspects and motifs and work your way through them, and then remove them one by one, until you get the solution to the case.
By the end of the 19th century, detective stories began to change. They became more spy-related and involved international espionage. They became more thrilling for the reader. These kinds of stories, in turn, broke all the rules of the classic detective story, set by ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ The example of this kind of story, which we have read, is ‘The Bruce-Partington Plans’ by Arthur Conan Doyle. In this story, there is no sign of a locked room murder and we don’t see Holmes drawing deductions from clues that the police have overlooked. However, although this story doesn’t contain most of the classic rules, one or two still remain. For example, there was a wrongly suspected man for a short time. They thought that the man who was murdered, Cadogen West, had taken the papers.
In conclusion to this essay, we can see that throughout the stories that we have read, how often the writers have imitated Poe’s original six points. We can see that the writers have imitated the classic six points quite well. Some of the stories might not contain all of the six points, but the points they do contain have all added to the creation of suspense and tension in the mind of the reader. All of the writers we have looked at, in one way or another, have all tried, and successfully incorporated the basic character of Dupin into their own. It is evident that the most successful story that we have read has to be ‘The Problem of Dressing Room A.’ It has included all of the classic six points that Sayers mentioned about ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and the outré character of the detective.
