Curtain is the final Hercule Poirot novel by Agatha Christie. Given that Christie didn’t particularly like the character, it’s kind of no surprise that it ended the way it did. However, I’ve been thinking lately about the murderer in this story.
Stephen Norton seems to be a sympathetic and friendly, if somewhat weak, man, but he’s really a sadist and a psychopath. He kills, not by himself, but indirectly, by using his natural ability to create a rapport with people to break down the psychological barriers that keep people from killing others. He’s never direct — that would be too obvious and not work besides. But he’s very skilled at creating the proper stimuli to convince others that killing is their best/only way out.
Husband bullied by his wife? “Slip” by implying that such people are pathetic right in front of him. Father worried about his daughter? Tell him to just let go — accept that there’s nothing you can do! Etc. etc. Think Iago in Hamlet, if Iago survived the play, decided that he liked manipulating emotions and watching the agonies of others as they slowly fall to the forces of the law, and did it over and over and over again to random people he happened to meet.
The only reason Poirot figures him out is that he somehow manages to trace the fact that this one dude has had contact or some kind of relations with FIVE people who ended up murderers — and those are only the ones he knows about. Poirot ends up killing Norton because he can’t see any way to bring him to personal justice.
Is there any other way to deal with such a method — aboveboard, I mean? Obviously, Poirot’s method is a way, and there are others similarly illegal or morally shady, but is such a man truly untouchable by the actual law?
Probably not in the criminal court.
Because, though you call him ‘the killer’, he did NOT kill anyone, legally. About the most that could be done is for the prosecutor to charge him with conspiracy before the fact, and that might be pretty hard to prove when he doesn’t overtly conspire, just ‘stimulates’ others to kill on their own. A prosecutor might hesitate to bring a charge, when ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt’ is so tough to prove. And this might muddy the case against the actual killer.
But he might be liable in Civil Court. Relatives of one (or more) of the five victims killed by a person he stimulated could sue him for damages. They might win; the standard of proof required is less. And the publicity created by such a public trial would certainly cramp his style in the future – much of the bad publicity would stick to him, and much of the public would conclude he’s guilty, even if he wins the case. (Look at Fuhrman’s family suing OJ Simpson in Civil Court, and winning, even after the prosecutor lost in Criminal Court. Of course, the publicity was already there in that case; but in Curtain, it would be a new exposure of the villain.) But he still wouldn’t go to jail or hang, just have to pay damages.
In England & Wales, until recently there was Incitement, which as described there was inchoate, and thus a catch-all statute — not as bad as Article 58, but still allowing broad discretion.
And of course being part of English Law was subject to strict reading ( as when people successfully escaped court because their name or other things were wrong on the original warrant ):
Lord Justice Scarman: It is regrettable indeed that a man who importunes his daughter under the age of 16 to have sexual intercourse with him but does not go beyond incitement cannot be guilty of a crime.
Of course escaping justice didn’t mean the cops weren’t going to keep an eye on you and fit you up if possible.
And from there there’s also Soliciting to Murder (1861), which is still going, but which generally means hiring some random bloke in a pub to murder your wife who turns out to be a cop.
Neither would be remotely easy to prove, but with a silver-tongued barrister and a grumpy judge, it could just pass.
You may be familiar with this story; it’s had a lot of national coverage. While it isn’t exactly the same as the situation in Curtain, there are similarities. This is a real-life case in which an evildoer is being prosecuted for inciting another to commit a crime.
A 17-year-old girl, Michelle Carter, is presently on trial for manslaughter in Massachusetts. She sent a series of texts to her boyfriend, an emotionally vulnerable young man who had been diagnosed with major depression. In message after message she badgered him to commit suicide. He did.
The texts she sent can be read online. I’ve seen them and they are sickening. Her lawyer is arguing that urging another person to take their own life is protected speech.
Poirot had no means of bringing Norton to prosecution. I’m glad that Carter, a vile, conniving viper, has to face a court of law. I hope the judge and jury make sure that she doesn’t see daylight again until she’s 50. If she should walk out of the courtroom a free woman, I hope she’s shunned and reviled for the rest of her life. And if somebody in the dead boy’s family makes the same choice that Poirot did, I won’t be sorry.
Of course, Norton’s fig leaf in CURTAIN is that he wouldn’t urge someone to do that. He’d explain that it’s wrong to solve all of your problems that way. He’d beg you not to end all that pain and suffering, because, well, it’d be against the law, wouldn’t it? He’d mention having contemplated doing it himself – but add that he always realized he wasn’t brave enough to go through with it – and then he’d commiserate, by resignedly giving you a sympathetic we’re-both-pathetic-cowards look.
Carter, by contrast, didn’t seem to bother with reverse psychology.
Sure, but I wasn’t splitting that hair needlessly; the point is, while it’s maybe difficult to prosecute Carter for asking someone to promise to do stuff before telling him he needs to do it, that’s different from prosecuting a guy who – what, told you to do nothing, but made an unpersuasive case for it?
Without knowing an actual statute to point to, I imagine that in most jurisdictions there’s probably a charge that could be brought against you if you pressure into committing a crime someone who is not fully mentally capable. Giving a gun to a six year old or mentally disabled person and telling them to shoot someone is (assuming the facts are proved) going to land you in jail, I’d think.
I suppose it would be both a question of fact and law as to whether any of Norton’s ‘victims’/killers-by-proxy were in a state of incapability as defined by the particular statute.
The trouble is that there’s a kind of truth that exists in fiction that doesn’t exist in real life. The killer in the book is The Killer; it’s possible for that idea to be absolute. If we make that assumption, then there probably is a way to prosecute it. A jury that accepts that this guy 1. intended to have a murder be committed; 2. said certain things to another person in order to accomplish that intent, and 3. in fact caused a murder to happen thereby, is a jury that’s going to be able to convict on some form of incitement, I think. Whatever clever defense he might raise is irrelevant in the context of the fiction; we know he did it. That makes it easy.
But of course in the real world you’re never going to know those things are true, much less prove it so that others will believe it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Yes, yes, Othello, sorry for the brain fart.