The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [370]
Where the Mystery began
The writer normally credited with having written the first modern detective story was Edgar Allan Poe, for his The Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in 1841. In fact the earliest example of a detective story based on the Mystery plot had already appeared two decades earlier, as one of the tales of the celebrated German earlyRomantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann. His Fraulein de Scudery was published as one of the Serapionsbruder between 1819 and 1821. Hoffmann's story is set in Paris in the reign of Louis XIV, and opens with the arrival at midnight of a mysterious, distraught young man at the house of the venerable Mlle de Scudery, a favourite of the king. He wants the great lady to accept a casket. But the servant is reluctant to let him in because all Paris has recently been shocked and terrified by a series of horrible murders, They all involve the theft of jewellery made by the most celebrated goldsmith of the day, Rene Cardillac.
The police, under Desgrais, are at their wits end. Several times a murder has even been witnessed, but each time the murderer has seemed just to melt away into the wall of a house, to the point where it is popularly believed that only the devil himself could be responsible. The plot which follows is complex, just as the mystery behind the thefts and murders remains complete, until the story approaches its climax. This begins when Cardillac, the universally respected jeweller, is himself found murdered, in the presence of his apprentice Olivier Brusson, who is also in love with Cardillac's pure and beautiful daughter, Madelon. Since everything seems to point to Brusson as the murderer, he is arrested. But then Madelon comes to Mlle de Scudery, pleading her lover's innocence. From this moment, the shrewd old lady assumes a detective-like role, as she seeks to unravel the truth of this murky business (thus becoming the prototype for Agatha Christie's spinsterdetective Miss Marple). Furthermore, in a fashion which was to become familiar from countless later detective stories, as where Sherlock Holmes was always several jumps ahead of Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, she does this in defiance of Degrais and the police, who persist in their conviction that Brusson is guilty and cannot wait to hurry him to the scaffold.
The horrifying truth the old lady finally uncovers is that the serial-killer responsible for all the murders around Paris had been none other than Cardillac himself. Like Dr Jekyll, the respectable jeweller had developed a dark Alter-Ego, emerging at night like Mr Hyde to commit these fearful crimes. As for his own killer, it turns out the culprit was not Bresson but a captain of the royal guard, who had identified the murderer but wanted to keep his own identity secret. Eventually he comes forward to explain. All is resolved, the hapless Brusson is released to marry the lovely Madelon, and the happy pair go off to start their new life together in another land.
Although Mlle de Scudery's solution of this mystery depends more on a fortuitous series of confessions than on her interpretation of clues, in other respects this story might have provided a model for the vast majority of detective stories which have appeared since. Above all, it is a crucial part of such stories that, as in the tale of Susanna, the suspicions of the authorities should initially be directed at someone who is innocent; and then that the detective should be the only character shrewd enough to `see whole' in identifying the true criminal.
This was the plot made famous 20 years later by Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which was almost certainly inspired by Hoffmann's tale. The story is narrated by a kind of Doctor Watson-figure, whose role is to be an admiring foil to the genius of his friend Dupuin, the detective. The story begins with a dazzling demonstration of Dupuin's uncanny ability to reconstruct his friend's train