So, I’ve always been rather enamoured with old school detective stories. I’ve no time for this CSI stuff where everyone just farts about with magic computers until some implausibly handsome detective finds a stray hair or something. Poirot. Holmes. Ellery Queen. That’s more my thing. Old fashioned detective work, where the sleuth has to break down false alibis and wade through a jumble of clues and red herrings, and where the reader has a fair shake at figuring out the killer for himself.
The problem, from the perspectives of both the writer and the reader, is that, in order to be truly satisfying, an old fashioned detective story must contain two key ingredients:
(a) It must contain some clever sleight or misdirection, ideally for the purpose of establishing a false alibi for the killer.
(b) This misdirection must be original. It’s no fun writing (or reading) a story only to find out that Agatha Christie did the same thing fifty years ago.
I’ve been trying to think of an original gimmick for a murder story for a long time and, until today, I’ve been unsuccessful. This afternoon, I had an idea that might work, but, since my knowledge of old fashioned murder mysteries isn’t encyclopaedic, I don’t know beyond a reasonable doubt that it’s an original gimmick. I don’t want to waste my time writing a story if someone else has already done something too similar, so I turn to the armchair detectives of the SDMB.
Here’s the idea:
The story is set in 1940s post-war Britain (no particular reason, I just have an affinity for the period). Adam and Eve are unhappily married. Eve (for reasons I haven’t quite figured out yet) wants to bump poor old Adam off, and shack up with her new fella, Cad McHandsome.
One night, when Adam is away on business, a man breaks into Eve’s home. Eve is spending a quiet night in with her sister, Polly Plotdevice.
This man, wearing a mask and holding a gun, demands to see Adam. ‘Clearly’, thinks Polly, 'this is a man with a terrible grudge. Eve distracts the intruder (Somehow. Maybe she throws something at him. I don’t know) and she and Polly run upstairs and into the master bedroom, locking the door behind them. The masked killer tries to break the door down but Eve retrieves Adam’s pistol from her bedside cabinet. Hands-a-tremble, she empties the gun through the door. After a couple of minutes, they poke their heads out, but the man is gone.
However, when the police come to investigate they notice a blood trail leading out of the house. Eve has evidently wounded the man, and even though the shot was clearly not fatal, it was enough to get him to leave.
Two days later, Adam is found brutally murrrderred. Eve, has the perfect alibi. She was hosting a charity benefit and spent the entire night entertaining a room full of rich and respectable prospective donors.
Cad, has no alibi whatsoever, and, indeed, when word of their affair reaches the police, he is arrested. He is let go, however, when a physical examination shows that he doesn’t have any bullet wounds. The police conclude that the mystery assassin is still on the loose.
That’s the set-up. What really happened is that Cad and Eve staged the break-in, using Polly as a witness. Eve, it transpires, works closely with local hospitals and, at some point in the past, has managed to procure a small vial of a random patient’s blood. After banging on the master bedroom door a couple of times, Cad stepped aside and allowed Eve to fire harmlessly through it. He left and made his way home.
A couple of minutes passed. Eve told Polly to phone the police from the phone in the master bedroom. As Polly was calling the police, Eve went downstairs and scattered the random patient’s blood throughout the house, making it look like she’d wounded the intruder.
Thus, when Adam is finally murdered (by Cad) they both have alibis. Eve was at a benefit, and the police dismiss Cad as a suspect because they’re looking for a man with a bullet wound, which Cad doesn’t have.
That’s basically it. Of course, there are a whole load of other details to be worked out but it’s all window dressing, really. I think this idea is quite neat and, if it turns out to be as original as I currently think it is, I’ll turn it into a short story, maybe 10-15,000 words.
However, before I do any of that I need you to help answer the most crucial question of all: Has this idea been done before?
Thanks in advance!
