[graviton]

AngelicaDeAlquezar (Incidentally—what immortal hand could frame, the lilting symmetry of your name? with apologies to William Blake):

Let me begin with something you'll thoroughly enjoy Angelica—a confession of a bit of negligence. You assumed--and reasonably so—that the quote whose meaning is so fiercely in dispute was from 'just some mystery'. So, quite understandably, you said, “I think you are overinterpreting a simple situation.” If the quote were in fact from 'just some mystery' it is certainly possible that the author would never have intended the reader to laboriously extract what I was claiming to have extracted from the quote when I placed that quote in the context that gave it its true meaning. My negligence came from not realizing how my reading over my lifetime of many of the classic mysteries (while avoiding just about every 'just some mystery') has conditioned me to always think in that deeply inferential way, and made me forget that the ordinary reader of the ordinary mystery would never[/I] think that way (or need to think that way), and in fact would consider such analysis preposterous, as you did. Angelica, the delightfully complicated but utterly “fair” classic mysteries (“fair” in the sense of not violating the laws of logic, nature, or human nature), for example, the Anthony Berkeley series or the Ellery Queen series, do truly require exceptionally careful and profound analysis of every bit of action, and every bit of psychology, if you want to beat Ellery to the murderer (for example, noticing and remembering that a character picked up his spoon with his left hand on page 23 may enable you, when you add it to four other tiny observations, to eliminate him as a suspect on page 141, with nine logical steps from spoon to exoneration).

So now, the question is: is the book from which I extracted the quote, El Club Dumas, 'just another mystery' or potentially a classic? If the former, then your way of interpreting the sentence could well be correct, if the latter, then mine would probably be.

Well, in fact I have every reason to believe that this book is something quite special. I chose to read it for that very reason.
When I decided to refresh my once-proficient Spanish I carefully sought out compelling works of all sorts (that were originally written in Spanish), and, in the mystery genre, it appeared to be the leading candidate—at least the critics feel the author has produced a masterpiece; I haven't read enough to form an opinion. But the author is evidently considered a major literary talent who uses conventional genres like 'mystery' and 'adventure' for his own much more sophisticated purposes, and like many such talents since Joyce, he achieves his effects by implication, suggestion, subtlety, allusion. He's never simple or straightforward; he enjoys frustrating you with ambiguity; he requires you to infer what he deliberately obscures or leaves unsaid—in short, he demands a great deal from his readers—even more than Anthony Berkeley or Ellery Queen.

So, Angelica, accepting that this author writes in this way, where he deliberately leaves so much to be done by the reader, let's re-examine my inferences. And also, let me flesh out that opening scene, when the policeman, judge and all the forensics people converge upon the hanging man, to give you more crucial context.


When you read the sentences that immediately follow the one I quoted, it's clear that the policeman had to have smiled and that the judge would not have had the impulse to smile.

Why do I say that? Let's look at the very first remark the judge makes to the policeman (after the policeman's milk comment)--it indicates that the judge has deduced that the policeman has decided it was a suicide. The judge says, “Hay homicidios que se disfrazan de suicidios.” He has inferred (correctly, as we'll soon learn) that the policeman considers it a suicide, and so the judge immediately presents the contrary notion of “There are homicides that are disguised as suicides”. The judge (as we observe moments later) strongly believes that this case is an example of exactly that.


So, Angelica, let's logically analyze these facts (and some additional facts that I'll get to) and see how they bear on the milk comment and who's smiling. 1)If the milk comment itself (without the smile) was enough for the judge to infer that the policeman believed it was a suicide, then the judge would most certainly NOT have the impulse to smile—on the contrary, he would be realizing that he and the highest-ranking policeman assigned to the case had diametrically opposed views of what had happened. 2)But, in any event, it seems quite a stretch that the milk comment alone would have been enough for the judge to infer the policeman's belief that it was a suicide. So then, what did enable him to conclude that the policeman believed it was a suicide? Surely it could not have been the facts at the scene. The dead man's hands were tightly bound!! While the policeman offers an explanation as to how this is still consistent with his suicide theory [the policeman says “A veces temen arrepentirse a última hora”, “Sometimes, they are afraid they will regret it at the last minute” (just to make clear—the policeman is suggesting that they tie their own hands to prevent their acting on any last minute regrets they may feel about choosing suicide)], still, given ONLY the facts at the scene, the judge surely could not have inferred that the policeman would have believed it a suicide. So we're left with 3)It must be the smile on the policeman's face that enabled the judge to decipher the otherwise cryptic words of the policeman. And there's still more context that you need to know to understand why I say that. The judge and the policeman were clearly well acquainted—that's conveyed in sentences I haven't quoted. Therefore, the judge would know how the policeman behaves when he's facing a routine suicide, and how he acts when dealing with a grave matter like murder, which in Europe is a rare event. So the judge must know that if the policeman is smiling while making an otherwise cryptic comment about milk it must mean he's taking the situation lightly—therefore a suicide.


Angelica, a reporter once approached the iconic economist John Meynard Keynes and pointed out that he'd said X in 1926, and the opposite of X in 1934, and he upbraided Keynes for inconsistency. Keynes responded, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Well, Angelica, the facts have, I think, changed..........