# The Butler Did It **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [September 26, 2003, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980 "2003-09-26T14:56:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2003, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/21 "2003-09-29T01:16:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fifteen Iguana \* > \*\*I just want to congratulate Exapno Mapcase on her name. \*\* “Her”? :dubious: **samclem**. Yes, I know that the story first appeared in 1933. My point is that it may have become known in England due to the appearance in the hardback collection of stories - something that might have attracted the attention of the Punch cartoonist. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2003, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/22 "2003-09-29T04:50:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Actually, I believe that much of what we think of as quintissential Holmes - the cape and deeerstalker cap, “the game’s afoot”, etc., owes more to William Gillette than Conan Doyle. Gillette starred as Holmes in plays all over the world, and in one of the earliest Holmes films. Sidney Paget, the original _Strand_ illustrator, drew Holmes wearing a deerstalker cap in _The Boscombe Valley Mystery_: [http://www.geocities.com/upabob/bosc-01sp.jpg](http://www.geocities.com/upabob/bosc-01sp.jpg) I’ll acknowledge, however, that Gillette certainly popularized that image over Holmes’s more usual hatless state. ---
**Author:** ![paperbackwriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@paperbackwriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paperbackwriter)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2003, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/23 "2003-09-29T15:57:16Z")
Apologies, you are correct. _The Boscombe Valley Mystery_ was published by [The Strand in October, 1891](http://holmes.crispen.org/Canon.php?sortby=whenPublished). William Gillette began playing [Holmes in 1899.](http://www.sherlock-holmes.org.uk/Theatre/william_gillette.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Cobweb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7c8e57/32.png) [@Dr.Cobweb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Cobweb)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2003, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/24 "2003-09-29T19:54:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ToddAllenShaw \* > \*\*You blew part of this one Cecil. “One of the earliest was the writer who largely created the genre, Arthur Conan Doyle.” I’ve found Doyle to be an amusing author of pulp fiction. But any schoolboy could tell you, the father of the modern detective was Edgar Allan Poe. \*\* Cecil did not say that Doyle invented the modern detective. He said that Doyle “largely created the genre” of the whodunit. And Cecil was entirely correct. Poe may have invented the detective story but neither M. Dupin nor M. Legrande appeared in very many stories, and Poe’s detective stories did not establish the myriad clichés that define the whodunit, nor did they become entrenched in the public’s psyche the way the Holmes stories did. Poe may have planted the first seed, but it was Doyle who harvested the entire field. That Poe was a better writer is certainly true, but for better or worse it was in fact Arthur Conan Doyle who “largely created the genre” of the whodunit, as anyone who got past the schoolboy stage could tell you. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2003, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/25 "2003-09-30T02:22:55Z")
And Poe certainly wasn’t the first, by a couple thousand years. Get a complete Bible and read _Susannah and the Elders_ and _Bel and the Dragon_. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2003, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/26 "2003-09-30T05:44:53Z")
{b]Exapno\*\* (nice frock you got there 🙂 ) I went to the library, read Runyon’s story in Collier’s(1933). The phrase wasn’t there but it went like this: ``` "But," I say to ambrose Hammes, "You do not pin the foul deed on any of these parties, but on the butler, because this is the way these things are done in all the murder-mystery movies and plays I ever see, and also in all the murder-mystery books I ever read." ``` Note: at the end of the short story, it is concluded by the ‘accidental’ murderer being a butler. So the cliche was probably around by 1933. Maybe not the _exact_ phrase, but the substance was there. ---
**Author:** ![John\_M.Burt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_M.Burt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_M.Burt)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2003, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/27 "2003-09-30T06:51:24Z")
Just wanted to note that Mary Roberts Rinehart’s novel _The Spiral Staircase_ was dramatized as _The Bat_. The 1930 film version _The Bat Whispers_ was one of Bob Kane’s inspirations for a comic strip character he was working on. Thus, Mary Roberts Rinehart is Batman’s grandmother. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2003, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/28 "2003-09-30T15:30:42Z")
Frock you, **samclem**. 🙂 The mention of plays brings up a point we haven’t considered. Mystery plays were extremely popular in those days. And the sheer number of new plays introduced just on Broadway in the 1920s was staggering - perhaps as many as 500 a year. The London stage surely had just as many, most of which did not cross over to the U.S. I wouldn’t be surprised if in many mysteries - especially comic mysteries - the butler was pulled in as a last minute surprise murderer. Plays were necessarily seen by a smaller and more elite audience than read books, and that audience was also busy making quips to one another with every breath. (Hello, Algonquin Round Table.) “The butler did it” is exactly the sort of quip that would make the rounds of the in-groups of the day. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2003, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/29 "2003-10-01T01:09:27Z")
Back when I was a student at Rice University in Houston, Texas, I used to give campus tours to prospective students and their families. I used to always pause at the statue of William Marsh Rice, the founder of the university, and remark, “He was murdered, you know.” \ _“The butler did it.”_ Which is true enough. William Marsh Rice was murdered by his valet, Charlie Jones, at the behest of Rice’s unscrupulous New York lawyer, Albert Patrick, in an attempt to get his fortune. (Patrick’s downfall began when he forged a check made out to himself, and mispelled his own name.) The plot was foiled by Rice’s Houston lawyer, Captain James Baker. The events of Rice’s murder were dramatized in a play and a movie entitled [_The Trust_](http://www.dougkillgore.com/trust.htm). Here’s another cite: [http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~instresr/ricefacts1996/fbhistr.html](http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~instresr/ricefacts1996/fbhistr.html) ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2003, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/30 "2003-10-01T16:26:40Z")
I think most butlers would not be best pleased to be confused with a mere valet. 😉 I was surprised that Cecil didn’t mention that classic of the small screen, **Police Squad!** , specifically the episode “The Butler Did It.” –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2003, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/31 "2003-10-03T01:53:57Z")
Here’s a rather famous story, featuring an invisible, unnoticed, unsuspected servant. The clever detective comments on how nobody notices the butler. I believe it was written somewhere around 1910, but I can’t find the exact date. [http://eserver.org/fiction/innocence/invisibleman.html](http://eserver.org/fiction/innocence/invisibleman.html) I suspect that this is the true origin of the cliché ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2003, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/32 "2003-10-03T03:51:25Z")
Well, probably not, since the point of that quote about how nobody notices servants is as a lead-in to the announcement of the real murderer, who is not at all a butler. Now, it’s quite likely that some of those anonymous lesser writers we’ve been speaking of used this truly famous story as the source of their ideas for using a butler as the murderer. But in this story the butler didn’t do it. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2003, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/33 "2003-10-03T21:14:05Z")
No, but the butler is listed as one of invisible people. ---
**Author:** ![johnndc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7c8e57/32.png) [@johnndc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnndc)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2003, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980/34 "2003-10-07T17:05:55Z")
I just wanted to comment on Cecil’s comment that Arthur Conan Doyle was the writer who largely created the genre. It was Edger Allen Poe with his hero Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin who started the modern Murder Mystery. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-butler-did-it/203980.md?page=1)