Singer - Block Elements in Christie

The Whodunit as Riddle: Block Elements in Agatha Christie Author(s): Eliot A. Singer Source: Western Folklore, Vol.
43, No. 3 (Jul., 1984), pp. 157-171 Published by: Western States Folklore Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1499897 . Accessed: 24/12/2013 10:56
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as Riddle: The Whodunit

Block Elementsin Agatha Christie
ELIOT A. SINGER
To my utteramazementand, I must admit, somewhatto my Poirotbegan suddenly to shakewith He shookand disgust, laughter. he shook. Something was evidently him the most causing exquisite mirth. "What thedevilare you laughingat?" I said sharply. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" gaspedPoirot."It is nothing. It is thatI think of a riddle I heartheother I will tell it to What is that has it two day. you. and barkslikea dog?" legs, feathers, "A chicken,of course," I said wearily. "I knew that in the nursery." "You are too wellinformed, Hastings.You shouldsay, 'I do not know.' And thenme, I say, 'A chicken,'and thenyou say, 'But a chicken does notbarklikea dog,' and I say, 'Ah! I just putthatin to makeit moredifficult.' we have the Supposing,Hastings,thatthere
explanation . . .1
In calling attention to a shared enigmatic quality, the analogy whodunit to riddleis such a commonplace that it is almost more a foranalysis, synonymthan a cliche. Yet analogy is never a substitute and the veryobviousness of thisequation has seemed to mask the extentto which the riddle can provide real clues to the structure of the whodunit.Many traditional of funspeech genrespresentdistillations damental literarydevices.2 In more complex literaryconstructions, even in a popular culture formlike the mystery, the combination of such devices oftencovers up the simplicity of the devices themselves. of folkloric Thus, by carefullyconsideringthe construction forms,it
An earlier version of this paper was read at the 1983 Meeting of the American Folklore Society in Nashville. 1. Agatha Christie, Thirteen at Dinner(New York, 1933). The quote is taken fromthe Dell paperback edition (1982), pp. 198-199. 2. For an extensive discussion of speech genre structuresas paradigms forliterarydevices, see Susan Stewart, Nonsense: in Folklore and Literature Aspects ofIntertextuality (Baltimore, 1979).
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often becomes possibleto uncoverdevicesthatare essentialto literature but concealed in it. This essay suggeststhat by taking seriouslythe notion of the whodunit as riddle, that is by applying those devices to thistypeof mystery, it becomes both utilized in riddlingstrategies possible and necessary to reconsider the basic nature of whodunit construction. thatinvolvesan asymmetric Riddling is a formof social interaction The poser ofthe enigma maintainstheright to impower relationship. solution.Alternative solutions,even ifcleverer pose a pre-determined than that of the poser, are automaticallyrejected as incorrect.Likewise, in the whodunit, the writeris the authoritativesource. The murderer is whomeverthe author,not the reader,chooses it to be. But thisasymmetry is not institutionalized; it is a productofchoice within The heareror reader also retainsa degree the social interaction itself. walk of power, albeit of a higherlogical type. He or she may interupt, a livelihood refusthrow into the ruin the author's book fire, away, by even murderthe perpetrator for ing to buy another,or hypothetically, a particularly of The the is solution. poser enigma omnipoannoying tentat the whim of the posee, and thatwhim lasts only so long as the is that of rasolutions are satisfying.The aestheticsof the mystery than or rather of as tionality morality sentiment; Roger Caillois has said, "What the reader demands is that [someone] with believable human motives pull offa crime that seems to defyreason but that reason can eventuallyuncover."3 Thus, a satisfactory solution to a must be as to those alternatives mystery, acceptable rationally superior that the reader has conceived. The dominant conception among both criticsand otherreaders is that reading a whodunit is an almost pure hermeneuticexercise in whichbitsofconflicting information are giventhereaderto enable him or her to arriveat a solutionthrough systematic analysis.4(This is why the genre is a favored paradigm for much recent reader-centered literarytheory.) In Kermode's words, "The narrativeis ideally reeds. GlennW. Most and WilliamW. Stowe(New York, 1983), p. 9. See also Literary Theory, Michael Holquist,"Whodunitand OtherQuestions:Metaphysical in PostDetective Stories War Fiction,"NewLiterary 3 (1971): 135-156. History 4. A number ofrecent haveusedthemystery for authors as a metaphor thehermeneutic proin general, cessofreading a topicofconsiderable interest in contemporary See, literary theory. for Frank "Novel and Narrative" W. Stowe,"FromSemiotics and William instance, Kermode, " bothin ThePoetics to Hermeneutics: Modes ofDetection in Doyle and Chandler, ofMurder, pp. 175-196 and pp. 366-384.
Fiction and 3. Roger Caillois, "The Detective Novel as Game," in Poetics ofMurder:Detective
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quired to provide,by variousenigmaticclues, all theevidenceconcerning the true character of [the murder] that the investigatorand the reader require to reconstruct [it].''5 The reader and the storydetecare to follow the same hermeneuticprocedure, tive, then, expected sortingthroughtrueand falseclues and eschewing"red herrings" in order to discover a coherentpattern. Riddle scholars oftenreferto solutions as being "arbitrary," and as any experienced reader can attest, in reading a whodunit, it is almostalways possibleto conceiveof severalrationalsolutionsthataccountforat least themostcrucialdisparateclues. Most whodunits sugsolutionsin thecourseofthetelling, and while gestnumerousincorrect theseare rejectedbecause of incongruouselements,it takeslittle imagination to by-pass these incongruities. As parodies like the filmSleuth alternative solutions without even implyby givingand thendismissing to falsify them,in many whodunitsthe reason whya subsebothering quent solution takes precedence over an earlier one has to do with its temporal placement, not its superior logic; the final solution is But whodunmerelythe last one. Such solutionsare indeed arbitrary. itswhose murderersare arbitrary choices no betterthan the reader's suspects do not provide satisfactory reading experiences, and their authors cannot expect to achieve consistentpopularity unless, like for Dorothy Sayers or Peter Dickinson, their writingis satisfying reasons other than the mystery. Of all the authors of the true whodunit,6Agatha Christie, as is evidenced by her popularityin volume and over time, has had the her readership. The key to this success greatestsuccess in satisfying lies in the non-arbitrariness of most of her solutions. Contraryto the common practiceof whodunitwriters, which,as Haycraftpointsout, goes back to Poe, Agatha Christie's murderers are not "the least thelistofsuspects.Rather, "7 Nor are theytakenat randomfrom likely. more oftenthan not, theyare the most likely-husbands,wives, lovers, relatives,or otherswithclear cut motivesof gain or vengeance-that is, murderersmuch like those in real life. As Miss Marple explains in TheMovingFinger, "Most crimes, you see, are so absurdly simple
5. Kermode,p. 180. 6. Todorovdistinguishes thetruewhodunit from otherforms ofdetective fiction in thatit thestory ofthecrimeand thestory oftheinvestigation. In "containsnotone buttwostories: their form these twostories haveno point in common."See TzvetanTodorov,The Poetics purest translated ofProse, by RichardHoward (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), p. 44. 1941), p. 9.
7. Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Timesof theDetective Story (New York,
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. . Quite sane and straightforward-andquite understandable-in an unpleasant way of course."8 Given the straightforwardness ofher murders,whythenare Agatha Christie's whodunits so difficult to solve? The answer lies in the reader's mistakenpresumptionthatthe mystery is complex and that the textsare hermeneutically structured to enable a reader to imitate the detectiveor alter-egoin sortingthroughclues to discover a pattern.Agatha Christie's hermeneutic, however,is a negatingone, one thattakes a relatively the reading process simplemurderand through controverts the reader's reason. To quote again thatsourceofwisdom, Miss Marple, "The greatestthingin these cases is to keep an absolutelyopen mind."9 What Dame Agatha consciouslyand insidiously does is closethereader's mind.The clues themselves,then, become inand the solution lies not in untanglingtheirpattern,but significant, in discoveringthe mechanism by which the reader's mind is closed. A riddle is enigmatic because there is an obstructionbetween the the riddlee is supposed to guess. In image it presentsand the referent this obstruction, Petsch,is usuallycalled riddlingscholarship following theblock element.'0 Roger Abrahams has elaborated upon thisconcept by delineating fourdifferent, though not always distinct,block elements(or riddlingstrategies):toolittle toomuch information, information, and A close examinationof the construction contradiction, falsegestalt."1 of Agatha Christie's whodunits shows that, at one time or another, she makes use of each oftheseblockelementsto detourthereaderfrom the solution. While most Agatha Christie mysteries utilize a multiplicity of riddling strategies,it is usually possible to single out one block element as dominant.The 1939 Hercule Poirotnovel,Sad Cypress, forinstance, is unsolvable because there is too little In this storya information.'2 poisoning takes place in the presence of two women, one of whom,
8. Agatha Christie, TheMovingFinger(New York, 1942). The quote is taken fromthe Dell Paperback edition (1968), p. 180. 9. Ibid. 10. The term "block element" originates with Robert Petsch, Neue Beitrage zur Kenntnis des Volkstratsels in PalaestraIV (Berlin, 1899). It has become common usage withinfolkloristics since Robert A. Georges and Alan Dundes, "Toward a Structural Definition of the Riddle," Journal ofAmerican Folklore 76 (1963): 111-118 11. Roger Abrahams, "Introductory Remarks to A Rhetorical Theory of Folklore, " Journal ofAmerican Folklore 81 (1968): 143-158, and Roger Abrahams and Alan Dundes, "Riddles," in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, ed. Richard Dorson (Chicago, 1972), pp. 129-144. I prefer the term "contradiction" to Abrahams' "opposition." 12. Agatha Christie, Sad Cypress (New York, 1939).
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as the reader learns at the outset, is on trial formurder, and hence The fortheProsecution).'3 may be presumed innocent(despite Witness otherwoman, Nurse Hopkins, not only has the opportunity to commit the murder,but having "misplaced" the precisepoison used, has the means as well. Moreover, she is seen urgingthe murderedgirlto make a will leaving everything (which turnsout to be a considerable a her in Australia. The block occurs to aunt not legacy pittance) because Nurse Hopkins has no apparent motive. There is too little sincetheonly information to connectNurse Hopkins to theinheritance hintthe readerreceivesis an aside thattheunseen aunt is a nurse. The crucial fact,thatNurse Hopkins and the Australianaunt are one and the same, is revealed only in a Perry Mason styleending. For a satisfying reading experience, as Van Dine insists, "The reader must have an equal opportunity withthe detectiveforsolving All clues must be plainly stated and described."'4 And the mystery. since a reader cannot reason out a solutionforwhichthereis too little but can only guess at it, this mystery information, riddlingstrategy is the least fair. It is one, however, to which Christie rarelyresorts, even the slightest and in Sad Cypress hintwould make it trivialto arriveat the solution.(For otherwriters, Conan Doyle, forinstance,givtoo little is is foreversending off information essential-Holmes ing telegramsor utilizing arcane knowledge.) A more reasonable block element is the opposite one, too much There is a sense in whichall "red herrings"are too much information. extraneousfactsthatlead the readerastray.With writers information, like Chandler and Hammett, as Jameson points out, entiresubplots filledwith gangland murdersare too much information, which is irrelevantto the enigma of the centralmurder.'5Agatha Christie,too, uses many "red herrings"'-the embezzlinglawyerin Deathonthe Nile, or the imposterarchaelogistin Murder at theVicarage are examplesbut theyare usually introducedlate in the text,and are easily identifiableby the attentivereader.'6 Sometimes, however, too much information becomes the dominant strategy formisleading the reader.
13. Agatha Christie, Witness for theProsecution (New York, 1924). In this storythe startling revelationis thatthe defendant,cleared throughdramaticlast minute testimony, is, in fact,guilty. 14. S.S. Van Dine, "Twenty Rules forWriting Detective Stories," in TheArtofthe Mystery ed. Howard Haycraft (New York, 1956), pp. 189-193. Originally published in American Story, Magazine, September, 1928. Review6 (1970): 624-650. 15. F.R. Jameson, "On Raymond Chandler," Southern 16. Agatha Christie, Death on theNile (New York, 1938); Murderat theVicarage (New York, 1930).
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AreFatal, forexample, Aunt Cora, who is known forher In Funerals blurtsout at her tendencyto stateawkwardand embarrassingtruths, brother'sfuneral,"But he was murderedwasn't he?'""17When she in turn is murdered, the police and reader alike assume that her death is a result of knowledge about that of her brother. This awkward "truth," however, turns out to be extraneous information; the in fact,had died an innocentdeath,and themurderer ofAunt brother, Cora is the only person it could be, her companion and legatee, Miss Gilchrist,who had impersonatedthe victimin order to produce the misdirectingclue. An even more elaborate use of toomuchinformation is The A.B. C. Murders.18 In this novel there are three murders forwhich the only and last initialscoincide apparent connectionis thatthe victims' first with the firstletter of the town where the murders take place in alphabetical order. This coincidence, along with otherclues such as the presence of the Britishtraintime table known as the ABC, insists that an alphabetical patternbe deciphered. The block elementis that there is no pattern,or, rather,that the patternis the murderer's artifice. The real victim is the third one, Sir Carmichael Clarke of Churston (the only wealthyvictim), and the murdereris simplyhis avaricious brother, Frank, who committed the other murders to establisha falsepatternto throwthe police, and of course the reader, offthe scent. A similarblock elementis used in A Pocket Full ofRyein which the elaborate patterncoincidingwiththe nurseryrhymeis the fabricationof the murderer,the black sheep son of the victim.'9 Perhaps even more basic to the whodunitthan the "red herring" is the block element contradiction. Locked rooms, iron clad alibis, falsified timesof death, lettersfromthe already dead, and otherconclues oftime,place, and manner usuallymustbe explained tradictory away beforea murdercan be deciphered. But such empiricalcontradictions, favoritesof writersas diverse as Poe, Conan Doyle, and John Dickson Carr, shouldnot bothertheexperiencedreader,and are usually only used by Christie as secondary devices. (One exception is Murder inMesopotamia wherethe principleblock involvesfiguring out how "Dr. Lerdnercould murderhis wifefrom theroofwithout leaving
17. AgathaChristie, are Funerals Fatal(New York,1953). The quoteis from thePocket Book edition(1975), p. 12. 18. AgathaChristie,TheA.B.C. Murders (New York, 1936). 19. AgathaChristie, A Pocket FullofRye(New York, 1953).
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it," a murderwhichis easily accomplishedby thedroppingof a heavy quern attached to a rope.)20 More subtleare contradictions in character,murderousstrategems thatseem implausible because theyrequire more physicalstrength or more intelligence than a givencharacter would seem to possess. In The Hollow, for instance, the philandering murdered husband's wife is found standing over the body with a gun in her hand, but is easily cleared since this gun turnsout not to be the murderweapon.21The contradictionoccurs because to throwinitial suspicion on oneselfin order to be eliminated as a suspect is a stratagemthat requires more and intelligence thanthewife,"poor Gerda," who is conimagination sistently portrayedas a simpleton,would seem to possess. But she is not so simpleas all that,as the attentive reader shouldrememberfrom whenearlyin thebook she muses, "It was amusingto knowmore than theythoughtyou knew. To be able to do a thing,but not let anyone know that you could do it.'"22 An even better illustration of contradiction occurs in one of Christie's classics, And ThenThereWere In this book one fact None.23 all contradicts solution others,renderingany totally impossible. All of the suspectsare dead, and the last to die could not have committed suicide. The reader, of course, assumes that the dead must remain dead, so whenJusticeHargrave (the notorious"hanging judge" and the only character not guilty of the death of an innocent, except themost obvious suspect perhapsin his official capacity,and therefore in these execution stylekillings)becomes the sixthvictim, he is immediately presumed innocent. But the reader learns of his death 24As through the statementof Dr. Armstrong,"He's been shot."" Christie insists time and information and Agatha again, interpretation provided by charactersis oftenaccidentallyor deliberately false. The reader, however, is usually too littlewary of prevarication.One can recognizethatDame Agatha in her last pronouncementis speaking to the reader as well as to Hastings when Poirot says, "But perhaps, afterall, you have suspected the truth?Perhaps when you read this,you alreadyknow. But somehow I do not thinkso . . . No,
20. AgathaChristie, inMesopotamia Murder (New York, 1936). 21. AgathaChristie,TheHollow(New York, 1946). 22. Ibid. The quoteis taken from theDell paperback Murder Hours retitled edition, After (1976), pp. 42-43. 23. AgathaChristie, AndThenThere Were None(New York, 1939). 24. Ibid. The quoteis takenfrom theWashington edition Squarepaperback (1964), p. 136.
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you are too trusting... You have too beautiful a nature.'"25 That which is the productof a character's discourseis not necessarilytrue, and so theonce and future murdered JusticeHargrave may reasonably rise fromthe dead to stalk his final victims. Sklovskij, in an early Russian formalist study,has pointed to the false gestaltas a general analogy forthe whodunit. "These mysteries at first presentfalse solutions . . . ," he writes,as in the Russian folk riddle, " 'It hangs dangling. Everybody grabs forit.' The solution: 'A towel.' "26 This analogy is, however,a littlebroad, and the notion of false gestaltis betterlimited to those textsthat allow not only for alternative solutions, but for general misconceptions. (It should be noted that, while for the riddle false gestalt involves instantaneous recognitionof a solution, usually an obscene one, which turnsout to be false, forthe whodunit this block element is not distinctbut is a result of too much informationor of a contradictionthat leads the reader into forminga false pictureof the whole circumstancesof the murder, not just of its details.) One such false gestaltoccurs in The where the reader assumes that the body is who it is Library Bodyin the only when the witness supposed to be." This gestaltis reconstituted who identifies the body is shown to be an accomplice. Anotherfalse gestaltthat Christie induces is a misconceptionas to victim. In Peril at End House the reader assumes that, unlike Hastings who tends to he or she jump to conclusions, Poirot is infallable, and therefore, followsthe detectivein believingthatquiet Maggie Buckleyhas been mistakenlydone in instead of her lively cousin, Nick, whose potential assassinationPoirot has cleverlydeduced.28In TheMirror Cracked, when a harmless busybody, Mrs. Badcock, is killed by an overdose, Dame Agatha hits the reader over the head with an epigraph from crack'd fromside to side; 'The doom has come Tennyson, "the mirror " alteredform, upon me' criedthelady of Shallot, repeated,in slightly a reliable to describe the actress Marina witness by Gregg's reaction is that the the upon learning busybody probable cause ofher unhappy Yet charactersand readers alike are led astray because infertility.29 the rest of the novel provokes the false gestaltthat the murder is a
Curtain theDell Paperback 25. AgathaChristie, (New York,1975). The quoteis takenfrom edition(1977), pp. 277-278. "The Mystery in Readings Novel: Dickens' Little in Russian 26. ViktorSklovskij, Dorrit", eds. LadislavMatejkaand Krystyna Pomorska Mass., 1971),pp. 220-226. Poetics, (Cambridge, in the 27. AgathaChristie,TheBody Library (New York, 1942). at End House(New York, 1931). 28. AgathaChristie, Peril 29. AgathaChristie,TheMirror Cracked (New York, 1963).
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theintended victim is the that for whose mistake, herself, jaded actress, In wouldbe manypossible cases deaththere both the reader, suspects. likePoirot,failsto consider "K," "a personwho shouldhave been includedin theoriginal list,but who was overlooked."30 One need remember that are usually notthoseofmistaken victims corpses only Nick Buckley and Marina to realizethatit is the assumedtargets, theguilty in Murders, parties. Gregg,whoare actually (TheCaribbean is a in whichthere mistaken albeit late the murder, book,is, I really one of Christie's believe, failures.)31 blockelements Most scholars as legitimate acceptanyofthesefour devices to the riddle." Much less "true riddling appropriate accepted are thoseriddles thatplaywiththeriddleform whatare usuitself, In riddle "riddle allycalled,somewhat disdainfully, parodies." parodies whatprevents from theriddlee theanswer is certain guessing assumptions aboutthenature ofriddling. Thesemaybe termed blockers. generic All genressetup certain normsand expectations-inriddling, that thequestion is an enigmatic one, and thattheinformation provided is valid-whichhelpinform thelistener's or reader's interpretation.32 The generic norms and expectations for theriddleand thewhodunit are quitedifferent, so while thefour basicblock for elements theriddle are directly to thewhodunit, thisis notthecase for applicable generic blockers. conceiveofmysteries One can certainly thatuse theriddle thereader,in which, parodydeviceofhavingno enigmato confuse as in theriddlein theepigraph, information is givennot misleading a character such cases the is too much by strategy simply (in information orfalse butbytheauthor, or in which, as in many"neckgestalt) is wholly in"too little riddles,"thesolution idiosyncratic (carrying to theextreme).33 formation" Suchmysteries involve would, however, in form, radicaltransformations dominant of changesin thegeneric thesortI have elsewhere termed Certainpost"breakinggenre.""34
Peril at End House.The quote is takenfrom thePocketBook Edition(1942), 30. Christie, p. 167. A Caribbean 31. AgathaChristie, Mystery (New York, 1964). 32. It is myviewthatthe "parodyriddle" sharestheessential features, generic especially blockers socialinteractional ones,ofthe"true riddle"(withgeneric simply beinga different, itis better ofblockelement) and probably understood newer,form and, therefore, historically as riddlethanas joke. ofthe"neck-riddle" as a distinct 33. The importance riddle was pointed out parody strategy to me byan anonymous ofthisessay.See JohnDorst,"Neck-riddle as a Dialogue of reviewer Genres:Applying 96 (1983): 413-422. Bakhtin's GenreTheory,"Journal Folklore ofAmeerican 34. On theconcept ofbreaking see EliotA. Singer, Genre:'Big Fish,Little genre, "Breaking Fish' as a VaikunthaPlay" (unpublished manuscript, 1983).
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novelists modern Feiffer, playBerger, Brautigan), (e.g., Sorrentino, have the indeed broken with form, genre, transforming mystery ing
such thedominantfrom"Who done it?" to more existential mysteries as "Who am I?" or "What is fiction?" But the whodunitas a more normsand exof less fundamental complex formalso has a multitude in the and these used to create be not riddle, may present pectations genericblockerswithoutcalling into question the verynature of the form. Van Dine's have been made to codify themystery. Various attempts rulesproclaims,among otherthings,"The detecfamoussetof twenty should never turnout tivehimself, or one of the official investigators, to be the culprit . . . there may be but one culprit . . . the culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story. . . [and] the method of the murder, and the means of detectingit, must be rationaland scientific."35 Members of the British"Detective Club" must swear That yourdetectives shallwelland truly detectthecrimes presented to them, and not uponthem usingthewitsitmaypleaseyoutobestow on normaking Feminine Inreliance use ofDivineRevelation, placing Coincidence or the Act of tuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, God . . . To observe a seemly in theuse ofGangs,Conmoderation Ghosts,Hypnotism, spiracies, Death-Rays, Trap-Doors,Chinamen, everto foreswear and Lunatics,and utterly and for Super-Criminals, Poisonsunknown to Science.36 Mysterious But such codifications invariablyconfuseexpectationswithnorms. It is absolutelyessentialto thewhodunitthattherebe an apparentcrime (usually a murder), that someone seek to solve that crime, and that the reader not learn of the solutionuntilthe finalepiphany. All other conventions,while presentinga certain aestheticand insistingupon fairnessto the reader, are merelyexpectations. Agatha Christie's genius lies most of all in her abilityto preyupon the reader's tendencyto confuse expectationswith norms to invent blockers forher mysteries. For thisskill,she was reviledby some generic ofher contemporaries: Van Dine dismissedone ofher devicesas "bald on the par withoffering some one a brightpenny fora fivetrickery,
35. Van Dine, pp. 190-191. Art 36. "The Detective Club Oath," in Haycraft, ed., The ofthe Story, pp. 197-199. Mystery
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and Chandler said thatanotherwas "guaranteed dollar gold piece,""37 to knockthe keenestmind fora loop. Only a halfwit could guess it.38 But, as Dorothy Sayers argued, "I fancy . .. this opinion merely representsa natural resentmentat having been ingeniously bamboozled. All the necessarydata are given. The readeroughtto be able to guess the criminal, ifhe is sharp enough, and nobody can ask for more than this. It is, afterall, the reader's job to keep his witsabout detective,to suspecteverybody.'""Certainly him, and, like the perfect readers do not seem to feel cheated by Agatha Christie's whodunits with generic blockers, which include some of her most famous and best-sellingworks. While she could probably not get away with essolutions(rationalityis too against fantastic chewingthe interdiction centralto the whodunit) or withoveruse of the same genericblocker (aftera while the reader's expectationswould change), she has clearly can be constructedby testing shown thathighlysatisfying mysteries the limits of generic expectations. As Revzin has pointed out, the solutionsto whodunitsinvolve the equation of otherdramatis personae withthe murderer,but what he failsto note is thatcertaindramatispersonae, the conventionalroles of Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade, are expected to be immune from thisequation.40Christiehas systematically brokenthisexpectation.4 Her mostfamouscase is, of course, TheMurder Here ofRoger Ackroyd.42 the murderer,again the most obvious, is Dr. Sheppard, who, unforfair, tunatelyforthe reader, is also the narrator.Christieis eminently in that she it clear makes that the role of narrator is Dr. of here, Sheppard's own choosing, that he is not a particular friendof Hercule Poirot. But the genericblock is so powerful thatthismystery is almost A for to In reader solve. it is the inMurder, impossible any for Holiday who commits the vestigating policeman, Superintendent Sugden,
37. Van Dine, p. 189. ArtofMurder,"in Haycraft, "The Simple Art 38. Raymond Chandler, the ed., The of Mystery was published in TheAtlantic December,1944. p. 230. The essayoriginally Story, Monthly, 39. Dorothy Art ed., The Sayers,"The OmnibusofCrime," in Haycraft, ofthe Mystery Story, as her introduction to Omnibus p. 98, originally published ofCrime (New York, 1929). 40. I.I. Revzin,"Notes on theSemiotic ofDetective Novels:WithExamples from Analysis theNovelsofAgathaChristie,"NewLiterary 9 (1978): 385-388. History 41. Christie is certainly nottheonlymystery nornecessarily thefirst, tomakegeneriwriter, characters themurderer. IsraelZangwell, in The callyproscribed Amongothers, BigBowMystery themurderer, NicholasBlake(C. Day Lewis) effectively (London, 1892) makeshisdetective Must has "Watson" do itin The Beast Die (London,1938),and Raymond in The Chandler, Lady in the Lake(New York, 1946), uses a hard-boiled cop.
42. Agatha Christie, The MurderofRogerAckroyd (New York, 1926).
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murder.43 Again the narrativediscourse provides ample clues-Sugbeforethe murdertakesplace, coincidentally den is introduced arrives on the scene as the body is being discovered,and is around altogether too much for someone in the Lestrade role-but the generic block even Poirot becomes preventshim frombeing suspected. In Curtain a murderer." As he insistsin a letterto Hastings, the solutionshould be obvious, giventheexecutionstyle ofthekilling ("the markofCain" made by a bullet in the center of the the forehead), the presence of lesser details such as thatonly Poirot was shorter than the victim,and the fact that Poirot had demonstrated thatthe vicespecially already tim was an unconvictablemurderer.And Curtain after is, all, a posthumous book. But who could be more above suspicion than the hero of most of Dame Agatha's greatestworks. Christie also systematically breaks other generic expectations. In several books she uses Van Dine's onlyone culprit rule as a generic blocker.In Deathonthe Nile,forinstance,threemurdersare committed, and everyonehas an inviolatealibi forat least one ofthem.45 The solution would be obvious in real life: the primary victim's husband, Simon Doyle, and his apparently estranged lover, Jacqueline de to inherita richwife's wealth. Bellefort,are conspiratorsattempting But whodunitconventionsso frownupon accomplices thatChristie's use of themis surprising and effective. onthe Murder Calais Coach(better known as Murder on theOrient Express)takes this genericblocker even The wounds on the body seem to have been made by a further.46 dozen different all of the passengers on the train have and people, fabricatedtheiridentities to cover up connectionsto the victim.As in so many whodunits,everyonelooks guilty.What makes thisnovel so original and unsolvable is that everyone is guilty. Another generic blocker is the expectation that characters who are suspected by the police are automaticallyinnocent. In Christie's first at Styles, thevictim'shusband AlfredInglenovel, TheMysterious Affair is under the of thorp heavy suspicion thepolice untilPoirot,withgreat show and effort, uncovers an alibi, which because of its scandalous nature, the suspect is apparentlyunwillingto use.47 Since, conventionally,the detectiveand not the police must be correct,the reader
43. AgathaChristie, Murder ForChristmas (New York, 1938). 44. Christie, Curtain.
45. Christie, Death on theNile. 46. Agatha Christie, Murderon theCalais Coach (New York, 1934). 47. Agatha Christie, The Mysterious at Styes Affair (New York, 1920).
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is induced to check thehusband offthelistof real suspects.But by using a readilydiscoverablealibi to clear thehusband earlierratherthan an alternative solulater in the text,Poirot is thenfreeto demonstrate tion with Inglethorpas the murderer. In the more mature Murder at wife's theVicarage, Lawrence Redding, the victim's lover, actually is arrested." He is, however, quickly cleared on evidence supplied by none otherthan Miss Marple. But since his innocence is established early in the book, it thenbecomes possible forChristieto re-establish him as the murdererat the end. murder must Probably the mostbasic whodunitexpectationis thatthe in is for the murderer. But as Christie's becommitted Curtain, appropriate by even this expectation is broken.4"Stephen terminalPoirot mystery, Norton does not murder anyone; yet as a catalysthe is themurderer. Dame Agatha gives the reader no less a clue than Othello, but the whodunit genre is not Shakespearean drama, so recognitionof this blocked. Iago's culpabilityis firmly Most textswithholdkey bits of information necessary to theirinIn for of the crucial the revelation terpretation. TomJones, instance, identityof Tom's motheris saved forthe end (and thereare similar 's Wakeis so hermeticthatthe lesser revelationsthroughout.)Finnegan words themselvesmust be deciphered. But it is in the whodunit that what Barthes calls the "hermeneutic code" becomes dominant; the pleasure of the textlies principallyin its enigma, and in "the expectation and desire forits solution." 50 whileall whodunits Nevertheless, may be dominatedby thehermeneuticcode, not all entailthe same hermeneutic process. "Classic detective storiesrelyon a simplepatternof interpretation, treating sensory data (clues) as signs forhidden factsabout eventsin the past and hidden truths about characters'personalities.'"51 Holmes' "method," for instance, "is a practical semiotics: his goal is to consider data of all kinds of potentialsignifiers and to link them,however disparate and incoherentthey seem, to a coherent set of signifieds,that is to turn theminto signsof a hidden order behind the manifest confusion,ofthe solution to the mystery, of thetruth."'52 The conventional wisdom is that the whodunitreader, like the detective,startswitha blank slate, and
48. Christie, Murderat the Vicarage.
49. 50. 51. 52.
Curtain. Christie, Roland Barthes, translated S/Z:AnEssay, by RichardMiller(New York, 1974), p. 75. Stowe,p. 366. Ibid., pp. 367-368.
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WESTERN
FOLKLORE
then receives a series of clues, each of which must be deciphered and arrangedon the slate untila completepatterncan be formed. properly is gradual, and the reading,like the The process of patternformation playing of the board game Clue, is progressive;presumably,the furtheralong the narrativeand the more clues available, the more complete the pattern. structure most resemblesa puzzle, hermeneutic Such a progressive and the author an encoding cryptographer. But, as Symons argues, "The deception in . . . Christie stories is much more like the conjurer's sleightof hand. She shows us the ace of spades face up. Then she turns it over, but we still know where it is, so how has it been into the five of diamonds?"53 Or more accurately, we transformed assume thatthe card will no longerbe the ace of spades, and yetit is. Following a progressiveseriesof Agatha Christie's clues onlyleads to total confusion: the significanceof each is veryobscure, and it is immay, in fact,have emptysignifieds. possible to decide whichsignifiers from The reader is no nearer the solution and indeed is oftenfurther it,just beforetheepiphanythan at thebeginningof the book; the only characterswho have reallybeen eliminated as suspects are the dead, and even these not absolutely. (My own experience has been that I have been most successfulin guessing the murdererbefore the first murderoccurs, or by choosing froma list of the "cast of characters" beforeeven startingto read.) When it comes, the revelation is sudden and surprising.And it is not built up to by a series of clues; it is obstructed. systematically When most critics use the terms "puzzle" and "riddle" interchangeablyas synonymsforthe whodunit,theyare missinga crucial structural difference. Puzzles are reallysolved throughthe accumulation of clues. Riddles can almost never be solved deductively;the key to theirhermeneutic structure is the block element. It is the block elementthatAgatha Christiehas elevated to the prominent hermenuetic device forthewhodunit.While she is not theonly mystery writer who structures her plotsaround theblockelement(nor is it invariably present in her books), she certainly has made the mostsystematic and best use of it. One text or another of hers has incorporated all of the available kinds of blockers,and even when she has repeated herself,
A History Mortal Detective tothe Crime 53. JulianSymons, Novel Consequences: fomthe (New Story York, 1972), p. 130.
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as is inevitable given the paucity of riddlingstrategiesand her prolific output, there is a sufficient freshnessto minimize the sense of the reader into overlookingthe most obvious And by fooling dejd-vu. rather than suspects, by selectingsome clues and ignoringothersin an choosing arbitrarymurderer,Agatha Christie, almost uniquely, has consistently been able to produce whodunitswhose finalsolutions are the most reasonable and, therefore, the most satisfying.

Singer - Block Elements in Christie

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The Whodunit as Riddle: Block Elements in Agatha Christie Author(s): Eliot A. Singer Source: Western Folklore, Vol.

as Riddle: The Whodunit

THE WHODUNIT AS RIDDLE

49. 50. 51. 52.

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