It’s all in the detail
There is a wonderful moment in Agatha Christie’s novel, The Body in the Library, where Miss Marple, the elderly spinster sleuth, is revealing to three gentlemen her ‘methods’ for deducing the identity of the murderer. She talks them – and us – through what she observed and what must, therefore, have happened. Crucial to the case is the dead body which everyone believed at first was that of Ruby Keane, a glamorous nightclub dancer. Miss Marple had been bothered from the outset by the state of the young woman’s fingernails, which were bitten – unlikely in one whose appearance was so important. She opines to the company:
‘Bitten nails and close cut nails are quite different! Nobody could mistake them who knew anything about girls’ nails – very ugly, bitten nails, as I always tell the girls in my class. Those nails, you see, were a fact. And they could mean only one thing. The body in Colonel Bantry’s Library wasn’t Ruby Keane at all.’
It would be easy to dismiss this as Christie’s sleuth revealing herself to be something of a busybody. Marple’s tone is perhaps a little unhelpful and she can often come across as rather sharp. But in fact, this comment reveals in perfect miniature a truism about every ‘sleuth’ character: they pay attention to the details.
As a writer of historical crime fiction, I am aware of the need for details when I’m building the ‘world’ that my characters inhabit. For the Lizzie Hardwicke series, set in 1759, this has meant spending time in libraries, reading books and journal articles about eighteenth century London life, or examining paintings from the period. Part of the novelist’s task is to create a context that is authentic and, without overburdening the text with too much ornate description, much of this will happen with small details. So, in Death and the Harlot, there is reference to hair curlers that draws on a Hogarth painting. For The Corpse Played Dead, I incorporated descriptions of theatre design I’d read about into the plot, and in my latest novel, Viper in the Nest, a book about the history of gambling enabled me to add some real-life outrageous wagers into my story along with a couple that I invented.
But, more importantly, and regardless of the period, the protagonist needs to be attentive to details in a different way. Mine, Lizzie Hardwicke, doesn’t need to know about the particulars of eighteenth-century life because she inhabits it. Instead, she needs to be attentive and curious about details in a person’s conversation, or clothing, or habits, so that she can spot the anomalies and, when she realises the significance of what she’s seen, point them out to the reader.
Of course, as the writer, it’s also my job to throw in a few details to misdirect the reader. Perhaps I might quietly draw attention to something that could be easily overlooked, or have a character do so, so that the reader notices and believes themself to be particularly clever – only to make sure that later, it’s either completely innocuous, or else it obscures the deeper truth.
But ultimately, it is the protagonist who needs to work out the puzzle, solve the crime, discover the reality of what’s going on. And this will only happen if the character is naturally curious about life. Miss Marple was as curious about the goings on in her little village, St Mary Mead, as she was about murder. Lizzie Hardwicke is as intrigued by the lives of pie-sellers, servants, and undertakers, as she is by her high-born customers. And, ultimately, it is precisely that keen and attentive interest in the minutiae of human life that leads to the greater discovery.
Georgina Clarke’s latest novel Viper in the Nest is published by VERVE Books
