The butler didn’t do it 
Bee Wilson
- The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale Buy this book
‘The word “clue”,’ Kate Summerscale writes, ‘derives from “clew” meaning a ball of thread or yarn.’ In mid-Victorian England, clues were satisfying objects to be grasped, then unknotted or unravelled. Clues pointed the way to go. On his way into the Minotaur’s labyrinth, Theseus unravels a ball of red thread given him by Ariadne, so that he can find his way out again, gathering the thread as he goes. By the 19th century, it was thought desirable to untangle a clue – separate out the thread from the ball – rather than gather it up as Theseus had done. In David Copperfield, Mr Wickfield tells David he will ‘unravel’ a clue. In Great Expectations, Dickens refers to a napkin being wielded like a ‘magic clew’, leading ‘the way upstairs’. In The Moonstone, Gabriel Betteredge laments ‘a clue that had broken in our hands’. If there were clues, there were also pseudo clues, leading down blind alleys, pointing away from the truth.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article and the back issue are also available for purchase online. Buy this article / Buy this back issue
Bee Wilson is the author of Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee.
Other articles by this contributor:
Boudoir Politics · Lola Montez
The Eerie One · Peter Lorre
print layout
tell a friend