S01E04: Did the butler really do it?
"The butler did it." is a cliché that detective fiction is often accused of overusing. But is it based on fact?
Some years ago, I was sitting in a cafe reading a detective novel when a man passing my table quipped, “It’s the butler. The butler did it!” We both laughed.
In an early scene of the 2019 screwball comedy Murder Mystery, Adam Sandler says the same thing to Jennifer Aniston as she’s trying to read a mystery novel on the plane. Watch the first 10 seconds of this trailer to hear the exchange. 👇🏼
The notion that the butler is the culprit is a cliché about detective novels that has existed for nearly a hundred years. But in all my reading, I have never come across a book in which the butler is actually the murderer.
Welcome to episode1 four of About Murder, She Wrote, in which I try to trace the origin of this trope, whether it’s truly true, and how it has played out in detective fiction over the years.
The origin story.
The phrase ‘The butler did it.’ is most often attributed to Mary Roberts Rinehart, an American writer of thriller-mysteries. In her 1930 novel The Door, several brutal murders rock the quiet household of the elderly Elizabeth Bell and her many servants—including the butler—become the prime suspects.
Before The Door, there were no mainstream detective novels where the butler was a serious suspect. Rinehart was a bestselling author of her time and it’s reasonable to assume that her book did make the trope popular. However, the line ‘The butler did it’ doesn’t appear in the book at all.
Even more damningly, it’s been made fun of long before The Door was published, as Gareth Rees establishes in this excellent post. Take, for example, a September 1926 issue of Life magazine. It carries a review of a recently released mystery play called The Donovan Affair which refers to the butler cliché quite explicitly. This review appeared is four years before Rinehart’s book came out.
Two years later in 1928, mystery writer S. S. Van Dine wrote a credo that “every respectable and self-respecting concocter of literary mysteries” should live up to. It consisted of twenty “very definite laws — unwritten, perhaps, but none the less binding” to write fair play mystery stories. These rules are a bit stuffy and limiting (for instance, he says there must be only one detective, one culprit, no love interests, and no descriptive paragraphs or literary writing) and not many mystery writers followed them. However, his rule #11 is interesting.
A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person—one that wouldn’t ordinarily come under suspicion.
S. S. Van Dine, ‘Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories (1928)
As someone who falls into the serving class, the butler is automatically eliminated. Reading the rules, one gets the sense that Van Dine came up with them out of a certain frustration with the tropes going around at the time.
All this means that for the real source of ‘The butler did it.’, we have to look elsewhere.
Let’s go to the pictures.
Historically, detective fiction gripped public imagination through two mediums—books and cinema. In the early years of the 20th century, the moving pictures had become accessible and affordable to the general public. Between 1906 and 1914, there were over 1000 venues in London alone, where people could watch silent films (talkies came out only in 1927), a clear indicator of their rising popularity.
So were there any pre-1930 films that featured a criminal butler?
Hell, yes! Rees has done god’s work in putting together a list of these. Between 1915 and 1925, there were ten movies in which the butler turned out to have ‘dunnit’ and another six in which the butler was somewhat criminal or a serious suspect.
If you plan to watch any of these movies, the following table will be a SPOILER.
Sixteen movies in ten years is…a lot of criminal butlers. I think this is solid evidence that the butler trope emerged not from detective novels but from cinema.
Clichés and stereotypes, trite as they are, are rooted in an essential truth. But in this case, that’s not quite true. Though the butler is rarely the criminal in detective novels published in the early 20th century, it was overused in films and became irredeemably attached to the genre. With the result that in all the years since, hardly any authors have used it as a plot device.
Well, why shouldn’t the butler do it?
Let’s go back to Van Dine’s rule #11. What I find interesting is his last sentence: the culprit must be someone who wouldn’t ordinarily come under suspicion. The implication being that in the real world of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, if a crime happened in an upper class household, suspicion immediately fell on the servants. Because, of course, it could not be the gentry. Readers of that period were used to seeing the serving class as potential criminals (whether this is pure classism or based on actual crime statistics, I haven’t explored) in newspaper accounts.
In episode 1 of About Murder, She Wrote, I spoke about how the world of detective fiction lies at the intersection of the real and the imagined. The story has many elements of reality but also needs to be just sufficiently removed from it to become an escape. Thus, using the butler (or another servant) as the criminal felt disappointingly close to reality and was suitably frowned upon.
Personally, I like the why of detective stories and consider it as important as the who. Is the motive plausible? Is it in keeping with this character’s personality and circumstances? The reason it’s disappointing to have the butler as the murderer is because the butler is often written as a side or supporting character. Given the typical upper class household setting, it’s difficult for authors to reveal enough about the butler as a human being (outside of his role as the butler) without giving away too much.
That’s not to say that authors of this time did not use the butler at all. Never a true part of the dramatis personae, the butler is a near-invisible presence in many Golden Age Detective (GAD) stories written in the 1920s-40s period. With access to almost the entire house, he is invaluable as a witness, able to tell the police or the detective who ate what for dinner or who came to the house on the fatal night or when the windows on the ground floor were locked.
The ‘old retainers’ who’ve been with the family for decades sometimes play a bigger role in offering insights into the character of some of the suspects. The family considers them absolutely trustworthy but given their loyalty to the family, the police/detective looks at their testimony with a raised eye. My favourite butlers of this type, who offer valuable clues or muddy the waters further, include the ageing Lanscombe in After the Funeral, the ‘Greek God of a butler’ Alton in Lord Edgware Dies and the faithful Gudgeon in The Hollow.
Christie plays by Van Dine’s rule #11 while also mocking it in her fantastic Three Act Tragedy. In Georgette Heyer’s 1933 novel Why Shoot a Butler? the butler ends up being the victim.
With the second world war, this world of sprawling country house estates with dozens of servants crumbled. The serving class went to war and when they returned, stopped serving. By the 1950s, the settings and tone of detective fiction began to shift towards urban and working class settings, police procedurals, city crime and political or gang-instigated crime. And the butler, along with the particulae milieu he belonged to, disappeared.
Show of the Week
There are a number of Indian films and TV shows inspired by Agatha Christie’s works, but very few credit her. Vishal Bharadwaj’s 2023 series Charlie Chopra & The Mystery of Solang Valley is the only one (as far as I know) that was produced with the blessings of Agatha Christie Ltd., the official body that owns commercial rights to her works.
This one doesn’t get much love on the internet, alas. But I think it’s a pretty good watch for many reasons. One, it is the adaptation of Christie’s The Sittaford Mystery, a book with one of my favourite motives in the Christie canon and fascinating characters. Especially the lead—spunky Emily Trefusis who is determined to prove her mopey fiance’s innocence. Two, it is a remarkably faithful adaption of the book and has been beautifully translated to make sense the Indian context. Very hard to pull off and I tip my hat to Mr.Bharadwaj. Three, the wintry, snow-clad beauty of Manali, Solang and Kothi in Himachal Pradesh, where the entire show has been filmed. Four, Wamiqa Gabbi who plays Charlie Chopra (desi Emily Trefusis) with great style.
Rating: 🩸🩸🩸🩸💧
Trivia of the Week
Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of the popular legal thrillers featuring the brilliant lawyer Perry Mason, is one of the most prolific authors in the world. In his lifetime, he wrote a whopping 146 novels under 10+ pseudonyms. This, in addition to practicing as a trial lawyer and running The Court of Last Resort, a civil rights organisation that helped those who were wrongfully convicted.
He set himself a target of writing 12 million words every year—that’s 3300 words a day. One of the tools he used to fuel his abundant output was the plot wheel.
Early on, Gardner realised that his chosen genre had certain foundational elements that came together in different permutations. So he created a number of round cardboard wheels on which were written ideas for each of them. These wheels had a brass spinner in the middle, which he would spin to arrive at a combination that became the basic plot for his new book.
Writer Karen Woodward has transcribed four of his plot wheels from the Gardner archives at the University of Texas.
The Wheel Of Hostile Minor Characters whose job is to create problems for the hero (hick detective, newspaper reporter, gossip, thickheaded policemen, business rival, hostile dog, etc.)
The Wheel of Complicating Circumstances (witness mistakes hero for villain, hero violates the law and is sought, heroine’s mind has been poisoned against the hero, some character is not as represented, etc.)
The Wheel of Blind Trials consists of elements that mislead or confuse the hero (witness lies, witness is planted, a client conceals something, planted clues, etc.)
Solution Wheel is how the hero sorts out everything (gets villain to betray himself, tricks the hero's accomplice into confessing, turns villains against each other, etc.)
Let’s put some of that together. A young man shows up in Mason’s office, saying that the police suspect him of murdering his aunt for money. The aunt’s faithful servant swears that she saw him leave the old lady’s bedroom late at night (complicating circumstance). The lead inspector is convinced that it’s the young man and doesn’t want to investigate further (hostile minor character). Things are further messy because to protect someone, the young man hasn’t told the full truth to Mason (blind trial). And so on.
That’s a pretty solid outline, right? If you are a writer stuck for ideas, perhaps a plot wheel could be just the thing to help you put words onto a blank page. And if you think this leads to mostly junk output, you’re judging too soon. :)
The Perry Mason novels are crisp, well-written, and rich in legal detail and thrills. Sure, they’re formulaic but they make damn good reads. Give them a try—if you enjoy them, you’ll have dozens more to read!
I should probably call this an issue but I like the idea of naming my newsletters the way TV shows are named—with series and episode numbers. So, episode it is.
This is a PhD piece... the level of detail is really remarkable. As a long-time reader of Perry Mason (and a few more pulp fiction novels that Gardner wrote under his pseudonym AA Fair), I thought I knew much about him. Turns out I hadn't known about the plot wheel... but now I do. Thank you! 😊