Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
Many of Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's short stories start with Sherlock Holmes's observations about
a client. In “The Adventure of
the Speckled Band,” the detective makes declarations about the
modes of transportation Helen Stoner used and about her truthfulness.
“You have come by train
this morning, I see,” he tells her. He adds that she also “had a
good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before [reaching] the
station.” Helen is “bewildered” by Holmes's performance, until
he explains how he deduced these facts: “I observe the second half
of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove,” he says,
adding, concerning her ride in the dog-cart, “the left arm of your
jacket is spattered with mud in no less [sic] than seven
places. There is no vehicle save a dog-cart which throws up mud in
that way, and then only when you sit on the left hand side of the
driver.”
Later, when he asks her
whether she has told him everything and she answers that she has,
Holmes says she has not; she is shielding her stepfather. The “five
little livid spots” on her hand, representing pressure from “four
fingers and a thumb” indicate that her stepfather has “cruelly
used” her. Holmes's display of such skills characterize him as an
astute detective, amazing readers, just as he has amazed Helen and as
he regularly amazes his friend and colleague, Dr. Watson.
Doyle was inspired in
employing this method of characterization by Dr. Joseph Bell, who
taught classes at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary, where he frequently
demonstrated the powers of observation and deduction to his students,
one of whom was Doyle. In “ From
Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an
Icon, Mattias Bostrom
includes four examples of Bell's prowess.
In
the first, Bell dips a finger into a “vial” filled with a “bitter
liquid” before tasting it. He then invites his students to do the
same, and they pass the container from one to the next. After all
have complied with his request, he expresses his disappointment at
their lack of observation, confessing to them, “While I placed my
index finger in the awful brew, it was the middle finger—aye—which
somehow found its way into my mouth” (7-8).
In
the presence of his students, Bell demonstrated the degree to which a
person can ascertain information concerning a patient's “history,
nationality, and occupation” simply by means of observation and
deduction. The doctor told the day's “first patient,” who wore
“civilian clothes,” that the man had “served in the army,” in
“a Highland regiment,” as a non-commissioned officer “stationed
at Barbados,” and had only recently been discharged (8-9). When the
patient confirmed the accuracy of Bell's statements, the doctor
explained to his students how he'd reached these conclusions:
“The
man was a respectful man but did not remove his hat. They do not in
the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he long been
discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish.
As to the Barbados, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West
Indian and nor British” (9).
The
third example of the powers of observation and deduction occurs as
Bell asks a woman at “another lecture” where her cutty pipe is,
causing her to produce the item from her handbag. He deduced that she
smoked such a pipe, he explains to his students, from the presence of
“the ulcer on her lower lip and the glossy scar on her left cheek,
indicating a superficial burn.” These marks were produced by the
“short-stemmed clay pipe [she] held close to the cheek while
smoking.”
Bostrom's
fourth example of Bell's skills in observation and deduction follow a
student's failed application of the doctor's method. Asked for his
diagnosis concerning “another patient,” the student ventures the
opinion that the patient suffers from “hip-joint disease.” Bell
corrects his pupil:
“The
man's limp isn't from his hip but from his foot. Were you to observe
closely, you would see there are slits, cut by a knife, in those
parts of the shoe where the pressure of the shoe is greater against
the foot. The man is a sufferer from corns . . . and has no hip
trouble at all. But he has not come here to be treated for corns . .
. . His trouble is of a much more serious nature. This is a case of
chronic alcoholism . . . . The rubicund nose, the puffed, bloated
face, the bloodshot eyes, the tremulous hands and twitching face
muscles, with the quick pulsating temporal arteries, all show this.
These deductions, gentlemen, must however be confirmed by absolute
and concrete evidence. In this instance my diagnosis is confirmed by
the fact of my seeing the neck of a whiskey bottle protruding from
the patient's right hand coat pocket. . . . Never neglect to ratify
your deductions” (9-10).
In
these examples, Holmes's own method, based on that of Bell, is summed
up nicely: observe, deduce, and verify one's deductions with
“absolute and concrete evidence.”
As
Bostrom points out, “Bell's assertions, which had first seemed
miraculous, appeared perfectly logical after his explanations” (9).
In this statement rests the method of the mystery story: present
effects, but withhold causes; show the what
and even the how, but
not the why. Without a
full context, readers will find it difficult, if not impossible, to
solve the mystery. Therefore, the cause should be provided only at
the end of the story, when the detective explains the case.
Interesting,
one may think, but what do the methods of detectives and the manner
of the mystery have to do with horror fiction? Horror writers do much
the same thing as authors of detective stories, except that the
explanation, which typically includes an account of the nature or
origin of the monster, provides the information the protagonist needs
to neutralize or eliminate the monster (or other threat), rather than
to solve a crime.
In
an interview, Doyle revealed that he normally started the writing
process by envisioning the story's end. “The art,” he said, “then
lay in writing his way to the end while managing to conceal the
finale from the reader” (Bostrom, 78). It's possible that Doyle
learned this approach from Edgar Allan Poe, whose own earlier
detective fiction Doyle admired; in explaining the process, in “The
Philosophy of Composition,” by which he wrote his poem The
Raven, Poe says he wrote the
poem backward, first devising the end and then making everything lead
toward this conclusion so that the story had unity of effect and the
end seemed inevitable.
In
Writing Monsters,
Philip Athans quotes Lynn Abbey as recommending a similar backward
approach to plotting horror fiction. She recommends determining how
the monster will be neutralized or eliminated and then dismantling
“the characters' knowledge and preparation” before developing the
“plot details that allow the characters to pick up the pieces [i.
e., the clues and other information] they're going to need.”
Such
an approach allows writers of both detective and horror fiction to
develop their plots since, at the heart of both genres, there is a
mystery: a crime in the former case and the nature or origin of a
monstrous menace in the latter instance.
Doyle
also wrote according to “template,” or formula, from which he
seldom varied, Bostrom observes: a client arrives for a consultation;
based on observations, Holmes makes and explains deductions about the
client; Holmes explains these deductions, identifying his
observations; the client presents the facts of his or her case;
Holmes investigates the case, sometimes in the company of Watson;
Holmes solves the case; the perpetrator is captured (or, we might
add, killed).
Applying
the writing-backward approach and using this template, Doyle's short
story, “The Adventure of the
Speckled Band,” might look like this:
The perpetrator is apprehended. | Dr. Grimesby Roylott is killed by a venomous snake. |
Holmes solves the case. | Holmes explains that, to prevent his stepdaughters from inheriting most of the fortune their late mother left in his charge when they wed, Roylott uses milk to train a venomous snake to return, at the sound of a whistle, to his room, through a ventilator between his bedroom and that of his first victim, Helen Stoner's sister, Julia. He would then slip a leather loose around the snake's body to return the reptile to the safe he kept in his bedroom. To provide the snake with access from the vent to the bed he'd bolted in place in Julia's bedroom, Roylott installed a bell-cord unconnected to a bell. After Julia's death, he ordered Helen to switch from her own bedroom to her sister's, under the pretext that construction was underway in the wing of the house in which Helen's bedroom is located. He would release the snake at the same time every night until it bit its victim. |
Holmes investigates the case. | Holmes, accompanied by Watson, travels to Roylott's house while Roylott is away from home. There, they determine that reliable shutters on the bedroom windows and its locked door are sufficient to have kept out both wild animals and gypsies roaming the estate. Holmes also discovers a vent that connects with the adjacent bedroom, that of Roylott, rather than emptying outdoors; a dummy bell cord; a bed bolted to the floor to make it immovable (a clue shared only at the end of the story); and, in Dr. Roylott's bedroom, a saucer of milk atop a safe (despite the absence of a house cat), a leather leash with a loop in it, and a chair beneath the vent leading to Julia's bedroom. |
The client presents the facts of the case. | Helen recounts the engagement of her sister Julia to be married and Julia's mysterious death; the sound of a whistle she hears every night; unnecessary construction on her stepfather's estate; the fortune her late mother left for them, in Dr. Roylott's care, payable to them upon their marriage; and the presence of wild animals and gypsies that freely roam the estate. |
Holmes makes and explains the deductions he makes about the client based on his observations. |
“You have come by
train this morning, I see,” Holmes tells Helen. He adds that she
also “had a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before
you reached the station.” Helen is “bewildered” by Holmes's
performance, until he explains how he deduced these facts: “I
observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your
left glove,” he says, adding, concerning her ride in the
dog-cart, “The left arm of your jacket is spattered with mud in
no less [sic] than seven places. There is no vehicle save a
dog-cart which throws up mud in that way, and then only when you
sit on the left hand side of the driver.”
|
A new client arrives to consult with Holmes. | Holmes's landlady and housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, announces the arrival of Helen Stoner to see him. |
Note:
The gypsies and the wild animals are introduced as possible suspects
in Julia's death.
Not
surprisingly, the same method can be used to plot a popular type of
horror story. However, the template, or formula,
for this type of story differs from the one Doyle used to write his
Sherlock Holmes stories. Typically, the template for this type of
horror story includes these phases:
- A series of bizarre incidents occurs.
- The protagonist learns the nature, origin, or cause of the bizarre incidents.
- The protagonist uses the knowledge of the nature, origin, or cause of the bizarre incidents to put an end to them.
Applied
to Them!,
backward plotting from this horror template might result in something
like this:
The protagonist uses the knowledge of the nature, origin, or cause of the bizarre incidents to put an end to them. | Army troops use flamethrowers to destroy two escaped queen ants and their brood. (By nature, queen ants are vital to the survival of their colony and, indeed, to the species itself, “producing thousands of eggs” over their lifetimes. |
The protagonist learns the nature, origin, or cause of the bizarre incidents. | FBI agents destroy a gigantic ant with their sub-machine guns. A scientist theorizes that a colony of ants became giants after atomic radiation from a nuclear test at Alamogordo caused them to mutate. |
A series of bizarre incidents occurs. | In shock, a girl wanders the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Her trailer appears to have been attacked and destroyed. Gramps Johnson, a store owner is found dead inside his ripped-open store. In an ambulance, the girl sits up when a high-pitched sound occurs. State Trooper Ed Blackburn screams as he goes outdoors to investigate a shrill sound. Since both Johnson, who died of a broken neck and whose body contains formic acid, and Blackburn were found with fired weapons, it seems unlikely their attackers were gunmen. The girl found wandering in the desert awakens from her catatonic state when exposed to formic acid and yells, “Them!” |