But that must be the best of writing a detective story,
that you can always make the lucky shots come off.
In no other form of fiction, I imagine, does the author
feel so certainly that he is the captain of the ship.
If he wants it so, he has it so. Is the solution
going to be too easy! Then he puts in an unexpected
footprint in the geranium bed, or a strange face at
the window, and makes it more difficult, Is the reader
being kept too much in the dark? Then a conversation
overheard in the library will make it easier for him.
The author’s only trouble is that he can never
be certain whether his plot is too obscure or too
obvious. He knows himself that the governess is
guilty, and, in consequence, she can hardly raise
her eyebrows without seeming to him to give the whole
thing away.
There was a time when I began to write a detective
story for myself. My murder, I thought, was rather
cleverly carried out. The villain sent a letter
to his victim, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope
for an answer. The gum of the envelope was poisoned.
I did not know, nor did I bother to find out, whether
it was possible, but this, as I said just now, is
the beauty of writing a detective story. If there
is no such quick-working poison, then you invent one.
If up to the moment when the doubt occurs to you,
your villain had been living in Brixton, you immediately
send him to Central Africa, where he extracts a poison
from a “deadly root” according to the prescription
of the chief medicine-man. ("It is the poison into
which the Swabiji dip their arrows,” you tell
the reader casually, as if he really ought to have
known it for himself.) Well, then, I invented my poison,
and my villain put it on the gum of a self-addressed
envelope, and enclosed it with a letter asking for
his victim’s autograph. He then posted the
letter, whereupon a very tragic thing happened.
What happened was that, having left the letter in
the post for some years while I formed fours and saluted,
I picked up a magazine in the Mess one day and began
to read a detective story. It was a very baffling
one, and I really didn’t see how the murderer
could possibly have committed his foul deed.
But the detective was on to it at once. He searched
the wastepaper basket, and, picking an envelope therefrom,
said “Ha!” It was just about then that
I said “Ha!” too, and also other things,
for my half-finished story was now useless. Somebody
else had thought of the same idea. But though
I was very sorry for this, I could not help feeling
proud that my idea made such a good story. Indeed,
since then I have fancied myself rather as a detective-story-writer,
and if only I could think of something which nobody
else would think of while I was thinking of it, I would
try again.
