THE BUTLER DID IT...NOT LIKELY!
I’ve read lots and lots of mystery novels—hundreds of them and I have yet to encounter one in which the butler actually did it. Perhaps I have been remiss in my reading. Now that I’m writing my own mystery series, and the protagonist is filthy rich, I wondered about the origins and significance of that phrase. My heroine, Jessica Huntington, doesn’t have a butler. She does have her beloved Bernadette, household manager and confidant. There’s a pool boy, security consultant and sundry other ‘staff’ that come and go at her family’s Rancho Mirage estate, all under the watchful eye of Bernadette. Should my protagonist be worried? I set out to do a little snooping into the role of butlers in stories about murder most foul.
The possibility that “the butler did it,” or for that matter, that the butler was even a suspect, tells us something important about the kind of victims well-known sleuths were investigating when this phrase came into vogue. The cliché belies a preoccupation with the murder of rich people where the “help” might be on the list of those “whodunit.” Does this preoccupation reveal some dark side to the upper class, lower class distinction set out in series like Upstairs/Downstairs, or more recently, Downton Abbey?
Perhaps! Clearly, there is some pilfering by staff that goes on in both series. Sometimes there’s collusion among household staff members to hide or obfuscate who’s raiding the wine cellar or larder. Still, there’s no obvious intent by anyone on the staff to slaughter their rich employers. In Downton Abbey the valet, not the butler, is accused of murder. But he’s implicated in the death of his ex-wife, not a member of his employer Lord Grantham’s family.
Okay, so back to my snooping. As it turns out, the earliest reference to a misguided butler aiming to harm his employer is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, The Musgrave Ritual. The short story was published in 1893. Mind you, like the thievery in the series I just mentioned, the butler’s ill intentions were not to murder, but to rob his employer. In the process he managed to get himself killed.
Herbert Jenkins, another British mystery author, penned The Strange Case of Mr. Challoner in 1921. One of the many short stories in his book, Malcolm Sage, Detective, the butler was indeed the culprit. But this one story hardly constitutes a rash of murderous butlers, bent on class warfare against the wealthy. To be sure, there were plenty of mysteries being written at the time that involved troubles for the landed elite and other well-off members of society. Not just the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, but Agatha Christie’s legendary sleuths, Ms. Marple and Hercule Poirot, were called upon to solve murders of wealthy estate holders or their heirs.
Typically, by the time the case was resolved, the culprit turned out to be a member of the victim’s own family or another in their circle of peers, not a servant. The murderer might have been an heir, no longer willing to standby waiting for an inheritance takes matter into his [or less likely, her] own hand. Another similar archetype is that of the heir who wants it all and sets out do away with others who stand to get a piece of the pie. An old lover, a current or former business partner, or a vanquished rival are other common motifs used in these mystery stories involving the demise of the wealthy.
My point is, most often a peer or family member was nabbed as having done the deed, rather than a servant. Rich or poor, you’re still more likely to be murdered by someone you know—including a family member. Money, sometimes a surprisingly small amount of money, is often a motive for murder. "The nephew did it,” or “the long lost unacknowledged heir did it,” surely ought to be a more well-known cliché than “the butler did it.”
Whither the butler-as-culprit meme? Apparently, The Door by Mary Roberts Rinehart published in 1930, gets credit or blame for coining the phrase “the butler did it”. In The Door the butler is, indeed, a murderous thug. In point of fact, those actual words, “the butler did it,” are not to be found anywhere in the tale even though he did it.
So, how is it that one mystery novel came to have such disproportionate influence on our notions of whodunit? It must surely have something to do with Rinehart’s celebrity. She was a phenom in her day—novelist, war correspondent, playwright, founder of a publishing house that is still standing, although now called Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Sometimes referred to as the American Agatha Christie, she actually published years before Christie. The Circular Staircase, released in 1908, is regarded as a hallmark of the “had-I-but-known” school of mystery writing, where an older-but-wiser woman narrates a tale of perfidy in which she had become an unwitting participant.
Rinehart sold 10 million books in her lifetime, but her rise to prominence occurred during what has been termed the Golden Age of Mystery Writing. This era encompassed the period in which such well-known writers as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton and others established themselves as prolific and proficient storytellers of murder and mayhem. Perhaps they had something to do with the way in which the notion that the “butler did it” went from meme to trope around this time.
In 1930, the same year Rinehart published The Door, many of the British mystery authors of the day formed the Detection Club. Besides meeting for dinner to discuss their work they also, apparently, set about to promulgate rules for detective novel writing. This task was undertaken with tongue planted firmly in cheek, I presume, from the tone of the “oath” members took when they joined the club.
Among the rules proposed by one of their members, SS Van Dine [an alias for Willard Huntington Wright] in his Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories was the following:
Wow, that’s a loaded statement isn’t it? Apart from the obvious class bias in this slam at butlers and other servants, there is a point to be made here. Not that it’s too easy a solution to cast the lowly servant in the role of bad guy, but that it is a major oversight to fail to consider the well-heeled gent as the miscreant. Given who “dun it” in so many of their tales of murder and mayhem, and in real life, it is clear to see how they came up with such a pronouncement. And they might well have regarded the mystery author foolish, indeed, who failed to include “a decidedly worth-while person” as the likely suspect and eventual doer of the bad deed.
In any case, it was not long after promulgation of the Twenty Rules that the “butler did it” became the object of derision and was relegated to the role of cliché. Not only the literati, but others in the public eye, like journalists and entertainers, soon dubbed it as a short cut and a hackneyed strategy for writing the finale of a whodunit. By the time P.G. Wodehouse published his own mystery novel entitled The Butler Did It, in 1957, the phrase had clearly been established as perfect fodder for this master humorist. By then, Wodehouse’s well-known character Jeeves had become something of a stereotype, if not a cliché of the butler. Actually “a personal gentleman’s gentleman,” more valet than butler, Jeeves was an archetype of the oft exasperated manservant, in the employ of a not-too-tightly wrapped, and not-too-bright, member of the upper crust.
Butlers do still exist, even though they are more likely nowadays to be called household managers, like Bernadette in my Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery series. Typically, the butler-cum-household manager is in service, but not a servant. And the post is one that is reasonably well-paid, earning around 50-60k, on average, per year. Some, like the beloved Bernadette in my mystery series, make much more—I’m talking six figures. [How much does Bernadette earn? Don’t ask her, if you want to stay on her good side, and believe me, you do!] Of course, more like the old model of household staff, she’s been at the job a long time and is more family member than staff.
Apparently, my current preoccupation with murder and mayhem in the life of the 1% is in keeping with a well-established tradition of mystery writing. Jessica Huntington’s predicaments have little to do with ill will borne by staff and she has little to worry about on that front. The scoundrels behind the evildoing that wreaks havoc in her life, including her own nefarious, philandering, ruthless money-mongering ex-husband, are well-heeled heels. So, “the butler did it?” Not likely!
What do you think? Have I missed something important here? Have you read books by Rinehart?
Drop by and visit me at http://www.desertcitiesmystery.com
Want to read more about topics covered in this post? Here are some links:
MORE ABOUT THE GOLDEN AGE OF MYSTERY FICTION, circa 1913-start of WWII http://www.sldirectory.com/libsf/book...
http://greyfalcon.us/restored/In%20wh... to see all 20 rules for detective story writing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rob... for more about Rinehart and work
PREVIOUS POSTS ABOUT “THE BUTLER DID IT”:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/r...
http://mentalfloss.com/article/50679/...
http://www.neatorama.com/2012/09/06/W...
http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...
http://www.butlersguild.com/index.php... to read about butler as an occupation
The possibility that “the butler did it,” or for that matter, that the butler was even a suspect, tells us something important about the kind of victims well-known sleuths were investigating when this phrase came into vogue. The cliché belies a preoccupation with the murder of rich people where the “help” might be on the list of those “whodunit.” Does this preoccupation reveal some dark side to the upper class, lower class distinction set out in series like Upstairs/Downstairs, or more recently, Downton Abbey?
Perhaps! Clearly, there is some pilfering by staff that goes on in both series. Sometimes there’s collusion among household staff members to hide or obfuscate who’s raiding the wine cellar or larder. Still, there’s no obvious intent by anyone on the staff to slaughter their rich employers. In Downton Abbey the valet, not the butler, is accused of murder. But he’s implicated in the death of his ex-wife, not a member of his employer Lord Grantham’s family.
Okay, so back to my snooping. As it turns out, the earliest reference to a misguided butler aiming to harm his employer is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, The Musgrave Ritual. The short story was published in 1893. Mind you, like the thievery in the series I just mentioned, the butler’s ill intentions were not to murder, but to rob his employer. In the process he managed to get himself killed.
Herbert Jenkins, another British mystery author, penned The Strange Case of Mr. Challoner in 1921. One of the many short stories in his book, Malcolm Sage, Detective, the butler was indeed the culprit. But this one story hardly constitutes a rash of murderous butlers, bent on class warfare against the wealthy. To be sure, there were plenty of mysteries being written at the time that involved troubles for the landed elite and other well-off members of society. Not just the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, but Agatha Christie’s legendary sleuths, Ms. Marple and Hercule Poirot, were called upon to solve murders of wealthy estate holders or their heirs.
Typically, by the time the case was resolved, the culprit turned out to be a member of the victim’s own family or another in their circle of peers, not a servant. The murderer might have been an heir, no longer willing to standby waiting for an inheritance takes matter into his [or less likely, her] own hand. Another similar archetype is that of the heir who wants it all and sets out do away with others who stand to get a piece of the pie. An old lover, a current or former business partner, or a vanquished rival are other common motifs used in these mystery stories involving the demise of the wealthy.
My point is, most often a peer or family member was nabbed as having done the deed, rather than a servant. Rich or poor, you’re still more likely to be murdered by someone you know—including a family member. Money, sometimes a surprisingly small amount of money, is often a motive for murder. "The nephew did it,” or “the long lost unacknowledged heir did it,” surely ought to be a more well-known cliché than “the butler did it.”
Whither the butler-as-culprit meme? Apparently, The Door by Mary Roberts Rinehart published in 1930, gets credit or blame for coining the phrase “the butler did it”. In The Door the butler is, indeed, a murderous thug. In point of fact, those actual words, “the butler did it,” are not to be found anywhere in the tale even though he did it.
So, how is it that one mystery novel came to have such disproportionate influence on our notions of whodunit? It must surely have something to do with Rinehart’s celebrity. She was a phenom in her day—novelist, war correspondent, playwright, founder of a publishing house that is still standing, although now called Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Sometimes referred to as the American Agatha Christie, she actually published years before Christie. The Circular Staircase, released in 1908, is regarded as a hallmark of the “had-I-but-known” school of mystery writing, where an older-but-wiser woman narrates a tale of perfidy in which she had become an unwitting participant.
Rinehart sold 10 million books in her lifetime, but her rise to prominence occurred during what has been termed the Golden Age of Mystery Writing. This era encompassed the period in which such well-known writers as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton and others established themselves as prolific and proficient storytellers of murder and mayhem. Perhaps they had something to do with the way in which the notion that the “butler did it” went from meme to trope around this time.
In 1930, the same year Rinehart published The Door, many of the British mystery authors of the day formed the Detection Club. Besides meeting for dinner to discuss their work they also, apparently, set about to promulgate rules for detective novel writing. This task was undertaken with tongue planted firmly in cheek, I presume, from the tone of the “oath” members took when they joined the club.
Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?
Among the rules proposed by one of their members, SS Van Dine [an alias for Willard Huntington Wright] in his Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories was the following:
#11. 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.
Wow, that’s a loaded statement isn’t it? Apart from the obvious class bias in this slam at butlers and other servants, there is a point to be made here. Not that it’s too easy a solution to cast the lowly servant in the role of bad guy, but that it is a major oversight to fail to consider the well-heeled gent as the miscreant. Given who “dun it” in so many of their tales of murder and mayhem, and in real life, it is clear to see how they came up with such a pronouncement. And they might well have regarded the mystery author foolish, indeed, who failed to include “a decidedly worth-while person” as the likely suspect and eventual doer of the bad deed.
In any case, it was not long after promulgation of the Twenty Rules that the “butler did it” became the object of derision and was relegated to the role of cliché. Not only the literati, but others in the public eye, like journalists and entertainers, soon dubbed it as a short cut and a hackneyed strategy for writing the finale of a whodunit. By the time P.G. Wodehouse published his own mystery novel entitled The Butler Did It, in 1957, the phrase had clearly been established as perfect fodder for this master humorist. By then, Wodehouse’s well-known character Jeeves had become something of a stereotype, if not a cliché of the butler. Actually “a personal gentleman’s gentleman,” more valet than butler, Jeeves was an archetype of the oft exasperated manservant, in the employ of a not-too-tightly wrapped, and not-too-bright, member of the upper crust.
Butlers do still exist, even though they are more likely nowadays to be called household managers, like Bernadette in my Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery series. Typically, the butler-cum-household manager is in service, but not a servant. And the post is one that is reasonably well-paid, earning around 50-60k, on average, per year. Some, like the beloved Bernadette in my mystery series, make much more—I’m talking six figures. [How much does Bernadette earn? Don’t ask her, if you want to stay on her good side, and believe me, you do!] Of course, more like the old model of household staff, she’s been at the job a long time and is more family member than staff.
Apparently, my current preoccupation with murder and mayhem in the life of the 1% is in keeping with a well-established tradition of mystery writing. Jessica Huntington’s predicaments have little to do with ill will borne by staff and she has little to worry about on that front. The scoundrels behind the evildoing that wreaks havoc in her life, including her own nefarious, philandering, ruthless money-mongering ex-husband, are well-heeled heels. So, “the butler did it?” Not likely!
What do you think? Have I missed something important here? Have you read books by Rinehart?
Drop by and visit me at http://www.desertcitiesmystery.com
Want to read more about topics covered in this post? Here are some links:
MORE ABOUT THE GOLDEN AGE OF MYSTERY FICTION, circa 1913-start of WWII http://www.sldirectory.com/libsf/book...
http://greyfalcon.us/restored/In%20wh... to see all 20 rules for detective story writing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rob... for more about Rinehart and work
PREVIOUS POSTS ABOUT “THE BUTLER DID IT”:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/r...
http://mentalfloss.com/article/50679/...
http://www.neatorama.com/2012/09/06/W...
http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...
http://www.butlersguild.com/index.php... to read about butler as an occupation
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Barbara
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Aug 19, 2014 07:51AM
I believe it started with the British writers. I vaguely remember one Dorothy L Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey stories where the butler did it.
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I've read Dorothy L Sayers but not Peter Wimsey. I will now! I just downloaded, for free, Rinehart's book the Circular Staircase...the American Agatha Christie,hmm, I'll have to see that for myself. Cheers!
I know what you mean. I've not yet found an American Agatha Christie. Please let me know how that is.
