The Second Shot Read Free

detective-story authors is that they begin their narratives in almost all cases with the discovery of the crime itself. This is palpably absurd. It is the preceding circumstances which make the crime. Why not, instead of allowing these circumstances to be laboriously brought out in the body of the story, show the puppets in action before the criminal offence instead of merely after it? That, I submit, is not only more fair to the reader (which I understand is one of the main points by which these authors are judged), but is surely more likely to make a better novel.
    I had privately determined, then, that one day I would write such a model detective story from the point of view of the criminal himself, showing his hopes and terrors as the process of detection progresses, the painful anxiety with which he would watch to see whether this or that fact, known only to himself, would be laid bare by the trackers on his trail, and his desperate attempts to extricate himself from the closing trap by laying new, false, and exonerating evidence. In the right hands such a book might be made a really outstanding piece of work; and I saw no reason why the hands should not be mine.
    Such was the academic theory I had formed at leisure. And now I have an opportunity of carrying it out in grim practice. For at the very moment while I am penning these words I am actually (it would be affectation to disguise the fact, even from myself) suspected of having murdered a fellow creature. I!
    Somebody (probably Voltaire, who seems to have said most of these things) once said that the last thing a man should lose is his head. I am determined to keep mine.
    In view of what I have just written this may strike the reader (assuming that this manuscript is ever given to the world) as a somewhat grim jest. That, however, is the mood in which I feel myself. For strangely enough I do not seem particularly frightened, although – again it would be affectation to deny it – I am perhaps actually facing death, and that in its most ignominious form. I am evidently braver than I imagined. (The reader will see that even still I am capable of perfectly detached self-analysis.)
    One way in which I am determined to indulge this grim humour of mine is in this very manuscript.
    I explained above that I had long intended to write just such an imaginary story as I am now living in deadly reality. Well, why should I boggle at it because I am the victim of the narrative instead of its master? The story is here, and I
shall
write it. In cynical detachment I mean to set down, calmly and impartially, the exact circumstances which have led to my present predicament, omitting (with one single exception, which would bring pain to another) nothing at all, exaggerating nothing, minimizing nothing. In short, I shall endeavour not merely to rise superior to my unfortunate situation but actually to employ it, in the attempt to compile a document which, should it ever be given to the world, might be regarded of real value to literature alike as to life.
    I shall not offer to show my manuscript to the police. It is possible that the careful recapitulation of events and reconstruction of the last few days might prove of real value to them in their attempts to discover how Eric Scott-Davies met his death; but I can quite well guess what their attitude would be if I did so. They would look on the action, in their unimaginative way, as an attempt on my part to remove their suspicion from myself; they would realize nothing of the feeling of artistic fitness which almost compels me to pen and paper. No, I shall on the other hand take effective steps to conceal it from them altogether. Not in my bedroom, among my personal belongings. These, I know, have already been ransacked by some clumsy-fingered officer in absurd search for ‘evidence’, and doubtless they will be again. I have a better plan than that.
    One last word. I am not a professional writer. I have never before attempted to