0:00:02 > 0:00:05LIGHT MUSIC PLAYS, WOMAN LAUGHS
0:00:05 > 0:00:07MUSIC DROWNS SPEECH
0:00:12 > 0:00:16Murder is the darkest and most despicable of crimes.
0:00:16 > 0:00:22And yet we're attracted to it, in real life and in fiction.
0:00:22 > 0:00:26And that's because every murder tells a good story.
0:00:26 > 0:00:29This was certainly true at the start of the 20th century,
0:00:29 > 0:00:32when Edwardian press barons were demanding a murder a day
0:00:32 > 0:00:35for the pleasure of their newspaper readers.
0:00:36 > 0:00:40And even more so in the two decades between the wars,
0:00:40 > 0:00:43when there was a great explosion of crime in the novels of
0:00:43 > 0:00:46the Golden Age of detective fiction,
0:00:46 > 0:00:48the very best of it written by women.
0:00:50 > 0:00:53These authors perfected the art of the whodunnit
0:00:53 > 0:00:56with all the usual cast of suspects.
0:00:56 > 0:01:00They turned the murder mystery into something cerebral, something
0:01:00 > 0:01:05tidy and domesticated, rather like solving a crossword puzzle.
0:01:05 > 0:01:09And they made armchair detectives out of all of us.
0:01:27 > 0:01:32My investigation into the Golden Age begins with a real crime -
0:01:32 > 0:01:35the first notorious killing of the 20th century.
0:01:38 > 0:01:43In July 1910, Britain was gripped by the progress of a huge manhunt.
0:01:43 > 0:01:45It was on a scale that hadn't been seen
0:01:45 > 0:01:48since the search for Jack the Ripper.
0:01:48 > 0:01:51The fugitive was Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen,
0:01:51 > 0:01:56and he was wanted for the murder and the mutilation of his wife Cora.
0:01:58 > 0:02:00Together with his mistress, Ethel Le Neve,
0:02:00 > 0:02:03Dr Crippen had fled from London.
0:02:03 > 0:02:06Handbills had been posted everywhere,
0:02:06 > 0:02:09and distributed to the police throughout the world.
0:02:10 > 0:02:13Everyone was talking about this case.
0:02:14 > 0:02:18The Home Secretary himself, a certain Winston Churchill,
0:02:18 > 0:02:22had authorised a reward - worth £20,000 in today's money -
0:02:22 > 0:02:24for their capture.
0:02:24 > 0:02:30So where were Dr Crippen and his lover Ethel Le Neve?
0:02:30 > 0:02:33In fact they'd already left the country.
0:02:33 > 0:02:36They were temporarily holed up in a hotel in Belgium,
0:02:36 > 0:02:38but they planned to head for North America.
0:02:49 > 0:02:51Henry Kendall was the captain of a steamship
0:02:51 > 0:02:53heading across the Atlantic to Canada,
0:02:53 > 0:02:57and a couple of his passengers had aroused his suspicions.
0:02:59 > 0:03:04The SS Montrose had only been at sea for one day when Captain Kendall
0:03:04 > 0:03:08noticed a father and son behaving strangely on deck.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11He thought it was very odd that they squeezed each other's hands
0:03:11 > 0:03:13"immoderately", as he put it,
0:03:13 > 0:03:17and that they would sometimes disappear behind the lifeboats.
0:03:17 > 0:03:20The two of them were travelling as Mr and Master Robinson.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24What happened next was just like a detective novel...
0:03:24 > 0:03:28with the Captain playing the part of Sherlock Holmes.
0:03:31 > 0:03:34Captain Kendall decided to carry out an experiment to try to confirm
0:03:34 > 0:03:37his suspicions that he had Dr Crippen on board.
0:03:37 > 0:03:40He took a newspaper photograph of Crippen
0:03:40 > 0:03:46and using chalk he whitened out the doctor's moustache,
0:03:46 > 0:03:51and then he blackened out the frames of his spectacles.
0:03:51 > 0:03:53And, yes, it was like a Photofit.
0:03:53 > 0:03:56Without his moustache and his spectacles,
0:03:56 > 0:04:01Dr Crippen clearly was the mysterious passenger Mr Robinson.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05Captain Kendall also had access to a piece of pioneering technology
0:04:05 > 0:04:08that would speed up the process of 20th-century
0:04:08 > 0:04:10crime investigation.
0:04:10 > 0:04:12It was the Marconi wireless.
0:04:12 > 0:04:17But the transmitter only had a range of 150 miles.
0:04:17 > 0:04:19When the Captain made his breakthrough,
0:04:19 > 0:04:23his ship was already 130 miles away from the nearest receiver.
0:04:23 > 0:04:27He had 20 miles left to get the message out.
0:04:27 > 0:04:31Rushing along the lower deck to the wireless room, Kendall handed
0:04:31 > 0:04:35the operator the message that would electrify the world.
0:04:36 > 0:04:39It read, "Have strong suspicions that Crippen,
0:04:39 > 0:04:41"London cellar murderer,
0:04:41 > 0:04:44"and accomplice are amongst saloon passengers.
0:04:44 > 0:04:49"Moustache taken off, wearing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53"Voice, manners and build undoubtedly a girl."
0:04:53 > 0:04:56But would the message get through in time?
0:04:56 > 0:04:58MORSE CODE
0:05:02 > 0:05:04So what exactly were the events
0:05:04 > 0:05:07that had led up to this extraordinary situation?
0:05:10 > 0:05:14Dr Crippen, an American who dabbled in cheap patent medicines
0:05:14 > 0:05:17and dentistry, had been living what seemed like
0:05:17 > 0:05:20a pretty conventional life in a North London villa.
0:05:22 > 0:05:26His wife, Cora, was a would-be music hall artiste.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30But the marriage was troubled,
0:05:30 > 0:05:35and Crippen had begun an affair with his young secretary, Ethel Le Neve.
0:05:37 > 0:05:43On 19th January 1910, Crippen visited the chemist to order
0:05:43 > 0:05:46five grains of hyoscine hydrobromide,
0:05:46 > 0:05:49an enormous dosage of a deadly poison.
0:05:51 > 0:05:54He signed the poison register, as he was required to,
0:05:54 > 0:05:57with the words "for homeopathic purposes".
0:05:59 > 0:06:04On 31st January, the Crippens held a little party at home.
0:06:04 > 0:06:06Later, Crippen would claim that
0:06:06 > 0:06:09it had been followed by a terrible row between him and his wife.
0:06:09 > 0:06:13Cora had said that she was leaving him the very next day.
0:06:13 > 0:06:16Whatever really happened that night, the guests at that party
0:06:16 > 0:06:19were the last people to see Cora Crippen alive.
0:06:25 > 0:06:28To explain Cora's absence, Crippen claimed that she'd gone back
0:06:28 > 0:06:32to America, and then he said that she'd died out there.
0:06:33 > 0:06:35Growing suspicious,
0:06:35 > 0:06:39Cora's friends now paid a visit to New Scotland Yard.
0:06:39 > 0:06:43The case was taken up by Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew,
0:06:43 > 0:06:45a veteran of the Ripper murders.
0:06:45 > 0:06:50He was a member of the Yard's newly formed murder squad.
0:06:50 > 0:06:52Its members prided themselves on their prowess
0:06:52 > 0:06:55and their skill in disguises - however unconvincing.
0:06:56 > 0:06:59Chief Inspector Dew searched Crippen's house,
0:06:59 > 0:07:01but everything seemed fine.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04Yet Dew wasn't quite satisfied.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07He came back three days later for another look,
0:07:07 > 0:07:10to discover that Crippen had disappeared.
0:07:10 > 0:07:12"My quarry had gone,"
0:07:12 > 0:07:16Dew said, "and the manner of his going pointed at guilt."
0:07:18 > 0:07:21The house, where this block of flats now stands,
0:07:21 > 0:07:23held a strange attraction for Dew.
0:07:26 > 0:07:30"That sinister cellar," he wrote, "seemed to draw me to it."
0:07:30 > 0:07:34With his sergeant, Dew began to work away at the brick floor
0:07:34 > 0:07:36and then to remove the earth beneath.
0:07:36 > 0:07:40Suddenly there came the most nauseating stench, so bad
0:07:40 > 0:07:44that Dew and his men had to rush out to the garden for fresh air.
0:07:45 > 0:07:49Fortifying themselves with brandy, they returned to the cellar
0:07:49 > 0:07:52and soon made a grim discovery.
0:07:54 > 0:07:58There, in a shallow grave, lay a limbless, headless torso.
0:08:04 > 0:08:08What kind of a person could have done this?
0:08:08 > 0:08:11Surely not the slight and seemingly gentle Dr Crippen?
0:08:17 > 0:08:20The story caused a frenzy of excitement,
0:08:20 > 0:08:23all stoked up by lurid headlines in the popular press.
0:08:28 > 0:08:33Inspector Dew was now under enormous pressure to catch the killer.
0:08:33 > 0:08:37And then that famous telegram arrived from the mid-Atlantic.
0:08:37 > 0:08:41Chief Inspector Dew now hatched an ingenious plan -
0:08:41 > 0:08:44to catch a faster ship to overtake the Montrose
0:08:44 > 0:08:48before it reached Canada, and to arrest Crippen on board.
0:08:50 > 0:08:52And the press were hard on his heels.
0:08:56 > 0:08:59Word had leaked about what was happening on the SS Montrose.
0:09:02 > 0:09:06Newspaper readers could now follow Dew's pursuit as he closed in
0:09:06 > 0:09:11on his suspects at the rate of three and a half miles per hour.
0:09:13 > 0:09:15This story had it all.
0:09:15 > 0:09:16As well as gruesome murder,
0:09:16 > 0:09:20there was illicit romance and a chase across the Atlantic.
0:09:20 > 0:09:22And, best of all, Crippen and Le Neve didn't even know
0:09:22 > 0:09:24that the police were on to them,
0:09:24 > 0:09:27although every newspaper reader in Britain did.
0:09:27 > 0:09:28Without his knowledge,
0:09:28 > 0:09:32Dr Crippen had become the most famous murderer in the world.
0:09:36 > 0:09:39Dew attempted to evade the journalists by disguising himself
0:09:39 > 0:09:44as a harbour pilot in order to board the Montrose.
0:09:44 > 0:09:45But it was no good.
0:09:47 > 0:09:51Reporters were there to capture the moment when Dew finally
0:09:51 > 0:09:56greeted his suspect with the words "Good morning, Dr Crippen."
0:10:05 > 0:10:09Press photographers caught everything that happened next.
0:10:09 > 0:10:12The crowds waiting at Liverpool docks,
0:10:12 > 0:10:14Dew escorting Crippen off the boat,
0:10:14 > 0:10:19the anticipation outside Bow Street's Magistrates' Court
0:10:19 > 0:10:21for the committal of Crippen and Le Neve.
0:10:24 > 0:10:26Some journalists found ingenious ways
0:10:26 > 0:10:30of taking prohibited photographs in the court.
0:10:42 > 0:10:46The press had made the couple into a highly marketable commodity.
0:10:47 > 0:10:49This was a very modern murder.
0:10:57 > 0:11:00Bizarre offers now began to come in.
0:11:00 > 0:11:01If they were acquitted,
0:11:01 > 0:11:05Crippen would get £1,000 a week for a 20-week tour.
0:11:06 > 0:11:10Le Neve would receive £200 a week for a performance including
0:11:10 > 0:11:14a music-hall sketch entitled Caught By Wireless.
0:11:15 > 0:11:19On 18th October, the trial of Dr Crippen began
0:11:19 > 0:11:20here at the Old Bailey.
0:11:20 > 0:11:24From the start it was clear this was going to be a huge spectacle.
0:11:24 > 0:11:264,000 people applied for tickets.
0:11:26 > 0:11:29The court had to issue special half-day passes
0:11:29 > 0:11:31so that double the normal number could get in.
0:11:35 > 0:11:38In the words of the Daily Mail's reporter, the crowds "begged,
0:11:38 > 0:11:43"pleaded, wheedled and argued" for seats in the public gallery.
0:11:43 > 0:11:46Inside, there was even more chaos.
0:11:46 > 0:11:49There was a rowdy atmosphere, like a music hall.
0:11:49 > 0:11:53People were shouting, "Blue tickets that way, red tickets up here."
0:11:55 > 0:11:59The trial ended on Saturday 22nd October.
0:11:59 > 0:12:02The jury took only 27 minutes
0:12:02 > 0:12:06to find Crippen guilty of wilful murder.
0:12:06 > 0:12:07He was sentenced to death.
0:12:10 > 0:12:14Le Neve, at a separate trial, was acquitted.
0:12:14 > 0:12:18And she lost no time in selling her side of the story.
0:12:20 > 0:12:24A publicity shot showed her infamous disguise as a boy.
0:12:29 > 0:12:32But Le Neve's fame was short-lived.
0:12:32 > 0:12:36It was Crippen himself who would be immortalised.
0:12:36 > 0:12:40Even during his trial, sculptors at Madame Tussauds had been
0:12:40 > 0:12:45preparing a wax figure based on those snatched court photographs.
0:12:45 > 0:12:49Now, within days of the passing of Crippen's death sentence,
0:12:49 > 0:12:54Tussauds unveiled their new addition to the Chamber of Horrors.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05And over 100 years later, he's still on show.
0:13:22 > 0:13:24So here is Dr Crippen,
0:13:24 > 0:13:28on display to the public before he's even met the hangman.
0:13:28 > 0:13:32And in the 1912 catalogue to the Chamber of Horrors
0:13:32 > 0:13:34he takes his place amongst the greats.
0:13:34 > 0:13:40He's on the same page as his fellow doctor William Palmer, the poisoner,
0:13:40 > 0:13:45and opposite the 19th century's most famous murderess, Maria Manning.
0:13:45 > 0:13:47But he's also placed above them,
0:13:47 > 0:13:50because all the rest have a description of their crimes.
0:13:50 > 0:13:54Not Dr Crippen. Everyone knows exactly who he is.
0:13:54 > 0:13:57And a contemporary journalist described this place,
0:13:57 > 0:14:02the Chamber of Horrors, as being the holiest of holies.
0:14:02 > 0:14:05These are the people that everyone wanted to see.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08What does that say about the Edwardians?
0:14:20 > 0:14:22Six years after Crippen's death,
0:14:22 > 0:14:26a young woman was beginning her own lifelong fascination with poison.
0:14:28 > 0:14:29During the Great War,
0:14:29 > 0:14:33she was doing her bit by training as a hospital drug dispenser.
0:14:36 > 0:14:39At a chemist's shop in her native Torquay,
0:14:39 > 0:14:43she watched the head pharmacist skilfully mixing medicines.
0:14:44 > 0:14:48She was transfixed as he added the final ingredient -
0:14:48 > 0:14:50a substance that could be poisonous.
0:14:54 > 0:14:57The young woman's name was Agatha Christie.
0:15:00 > 0:15:03One day, the head pharmacist showed her something that he always
0:15:03 > 0:15:05carried in his pocket.
0:15:05 > 0:15:09It was a black lump of curare - poison.
0:15:09 > 0:15:12"If that gets into your bloodstream,"
0:15:12 > 0:15:15he said, "it will paralyse you and kill you."
0:15:15 > 0:15:18She asked him why he carried it around,
0:15:18 > 0:15:21and he gave a very striking answer.
0:15:21 > 0:15:26"Well, my dear," he said, "it makes me feel powerful."
0:15:30 > 0:15:33With the pharmacist's rather sinister boast in her mind,
0:15:33 > 0:15:39Christie began to conceive of the idea of writing a detective story.
0:15:41 > 0:15:44Naturally it would involve a death by poisoning.
0:15:44 > 0:15:49But she had to decide who would die, and who would do it,
0:15:49 > 0:15:50and where,
0:15:50 > 0:15:52and why.
0:15:56 > 0:15:59Agatha's sister Madge had challenged her
0:15:59 > 0:16:03to compose a murder mystery in which the clever reader,
0:16:03 > 0:16:07armed with all the same clues as the detective, could spot the murderer.
0:16:09 > 0:16:13Christie spent four years polishing what would become her first novel,
0:16:13 > 0:16:16tweaking the plot and the characters.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20Finally, to finish it off, she came back to her home county of Devon
0:16:20 > 0:16:23and she spent two weeks all by herself, staying at
0:16:23 > 0:16:26this remote country-house hotel in Dartmoor.
0:16:26 > 0:16:29The result would be The Mysterious Affair At Styles.
0:16:39 > 0:16:43In what was to become her lifelong habit, Christie took herself off
0:16:43 > 0:16:48on long and solitary walks to think up the dialogue.
0:16:54 > 0:16:58The Mysterious Affair At Styles wasn't exactly an overnight success.
0:16:58 > 0:17:01Numerous publishers turned it down - imagine them
0:17:01 > 0:17:04kicking themselves later on - but it did sell respectably,
0:17:04 > 0:17:08and it set the mould for the Golden Age to follow.
0:17:08 > 0:17:11It had everything - a country house setting, a closed circle
0:17:11 > 0:17:15of suspects, there were things like maps to help you, there was even
0:17:15 > 0:17:20a reproduced fragment of somebody's will, and most importantly,
0:17:20 > 0:17:22it introduced a new detective,
0:17:22 > 0:17:25who was the antithesis of Sherlock Holmes.
0:17:25 > 0:17:29He was a fastidious little Belgian called Hercule Poirot.
0:17:30 > 0:17:35As a foreigner, Poirot stood outside the rigid British class structure
0:17:35 > 0:17:39which most of the Golden Age detectives belonged to.
0:17:39 > 0:17:43This made him a disinterested observer,
0:17:43 > 0:17:45but also a trusted confidante.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51He'd go on to utilise his "little grey cells" in 33 novels,
0:17:51 > 0:17:55one play and over 50 short stories.
0:17:57 > 0:17:59And Christie would follow Poirot
0:17:59 > 0:18:02with another seemingly harmless amateur detective,
0:18:02 > 0:18:05the village busybody Miss Jane Marple.
0:18:09 > 0:18:13The puzzles that Christie invented for her two best-loved sleuths
0:18:13 > 0:18:17were fiendishly difficult to solve.
0:18:17 > 0:18:20To find out how she devised her plots, I've come to meet
0:18:20 > 0:18:25her grandson Mathew Pritchard at Christie's rural retreat
0:18:25 > 0:18:27on the Dart Estuary in Devon.
0:18:28 > 0:18:32First of all, there's a family heirloom to discover.
0:18:33 > 0:18:37Tell me about this ancient-looking machine you've got here.
0:18:37 > 0:18:39Some years in fact after she died,
0:18:39 > 0:18:43we came across that machine in an old box.
0:18:43 > 0:18:48She used to dictate her work in the 1960s to a Dictaphone
0:18:48 > 0:18:52and then send it away to be... to be typed.
0:18:52 > 0:18:54So can we hear the actual voice of Agatha Christie?
0:18:54 > 0:18:56We'll do our best.
0:19:53 > 0:19:54This one's a school story.
0:19:54 > 0:19:58"Likely opening gambit, first day of summer term."
0:19:58 > 0:20:00That's right, that's Cat Among The Pigeons.
0:20:00 > 0:20:04Who's going to get it - the girl, the games mistress or the maid?
0:20:04 > 0:20:07I think the games mistress got it, as far as I remember.
0:20:07 > 0:20:10Prussic acid. And what does that say?
0:20:10 > 0:20:12"Stabbed through eye with hat pin."
0:20:12 > 0:20:14HE CHUCKLES Well, there you go.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17- Here's a genuine doodle. - That's right.
0:20:17 > 0:20:21Here, for instance, is probably the most concise
0:20:21 > 0:20:24and accurate description of what a detective story is like.
0:20:24 > 0:20:26Who, why, when, how, where, which?
0:20:26 > 0:20:29Can't get simpler than that, can you?
0:20:29 > 0:20:30It's easy, anyone could do this!
0:20:33 > 0:20:38In 1926 Agatha Christie brought out what many regard as her most
0:20:38 > 0:20:42audacious detective novel, The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47This is her description of how the body is discovered.
0:20:47 > 0:20:52Ackroyd was sitting as I had left him in the armchair before the fire.
0:20:52 > 0:20:57His head had fallen sideways, and clearly visible, just below
0:20:57 > 0:21:01the collar of his coat, was a shining piece of twisted metalwork.
0:21:02 > 0:21:07Parker and I advanced till we stood over the recumbent figure.
0:21:07 > 0:21:11I heard the butler draw in his breath with a sharp hiss.
0:21:12 > 0:21:16"Stabbed from be'ind," he murmured. "'Orrible!"
0:21:19 > 0:21:20Now, there are a couple of reasons
0:21:20 > 0:21:24why this is absolute classic Agatha Christie.
0:21:24 > 0:21:26Firstly, there's the bloodlessness of it.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29We have a dead body, we have a murder weapon,
0:21:29 > 0:21:33but a man is just sitting in a chair, and the dagger itself
0:21:33 > 0:21:37is described as just a shining piece of twisted metalwork.
0:21:39 > 0:21:44And, secondly, it's utterly, utterly simple and straightforward
0:21:44 > 0:21:47but at the same time very, very clever indeed,
0:21:47 > 0:21:51because really we have here an unreliable narrator,
0:21:51 > 0:21:54and he goes on to tell us about a little something that he does.
0:21:54 > 0:21:57"I did what little had to be done."
0:21:57 > 0:22:00And only at the very end of the book do you discover
0:22:00 > 0:22:02that at that point he was hiding a Dictaphone in his bag,
0:22:02 > 0:22:06he was getting rid of a vital clue, a clue that would reveal
0:22:06 > 0:22:10that in this case the narrator is the murderer.
0:22:12 > 0:22:16The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd was a genuine tour de force
0:22:16 > 0:22:19as far as detective stories were concerned.
0:22:19 > 0:22:24She was accused of cheating, too, but I think the important thing
0:22:24 > 0:22:28was that it was original and people loved talking about it,
0:22:28 > 0:22:32and I think that was probably the moment when she stopped being
0:22:32 > 0:22:38an ordinary crime writer and became one that was universally recognised.
0:22:40 > 0:22:42Although she was an intensely private woman,
0:22:42 > 0:22:45Christie knew her readers very well.
0:22:47 > 0:22:51This is an essay that Agatha Christie wrote in the 1930s,
0:22:51 > 0:22:54answering the question, "What kind of people read detective stories
0:22:54 > 0:22:56"and why?"
0:22:56 > 0:23:00And she says, "It's the busy people, the workers of the world."
0:23:00 > 0:23:03That's because a detective story gives them
0:23:03 > 0:23:09"complete relaxation, an escape from the realism of everyday life."
0:23:09 > 0:23:12She says, "It has the tonic value of a puzzle,
0:23:12 > 0:23:17"it sharpens your wits, it makes you mentally alert."
0:23:17 > 0:23:19And the ethical background, she says,
0:23:19 > 0:23:23"is usually sound. Rarely is the criminal the hero of the book.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27"Society unites to hunt him down, and the reader can have
0:23:27 > 0:23:32"all the fun of the chase without moving from a comfortable armchair."
0:23:34 > 0:23:38These "busy people", these "workers of the world" as Christie calls them
0:23:38 > 0:23:42were keen to devour detective stories in all sorts of formats.
0:23:44 > 0:23:48Railway stations with their branches of WH Smith's
0:23:48 > 0:23:52sold cheap mystery magazines as well as the latest whodunnits.
0:23:53 > 0:23:57These novels were formulaic, they were often very snobbish,
0:23:57 > 0:23:59but they were a cracking good read.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12The easy appeal of Christie's books quickly made her
0:24:12 > 0:24:18the Queen of Crime in this emerging Golden Age of detective fiction.
0:24:20 > 0:24:25To understand the popularity of Christie and her fellow writers,
0:24:25 > 0:24:31I've come to meet our current reigning queen, PD James.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34Can I ask you specifically about the 1920s and '30s, then,
0:24:34 > 0:24:36this inter-war period?
0:24:36 > 0:24:39What was it about that time that allowed these very commercially
0:24:39 > 0:24:43successful crime writers to come forward for the first time?
0:24:43 > 0:24:46It was an England which was grieving.
0:24:46 > 0:24:51There was hardly a house which hadn't lost somebody in that war,
0:24:51 > 0:24:56and one was brought up feeling that this can't possibly
0:24:56 > 0:25:00happen again, it just cannot, a whole generation destroyed.
0:25:00 > 0:25:04And, you see, what the detective story does, it takes death,
0:25:04 > 0:25:08and sometimes in its most horrible form, and it sort of sanitises it,
0:25:08 > 0:25:10it makes it into an intellectual puzzle.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14We don't grieve, we don't grieve at all about the person who's dead,
0:25:14 > 0:25:18we don't worry about what will happen to the person who did it.
0:25:18 > 0:25:22We have a puzzle and we can apply our little grey cells
0:25:22 > 0:25:25to seeing if we can do better than Poirot or Miss Marple,
0:25:25 > 0:25:28and on the whole, you know, we are satisfied whatever.
0:25:28 > 0:25:31If we do it we feel satisfied and if we don't we think, "It must have
0:25:31 > 0:25:34"been a very clever puzzle, I couldn't see it for one moment."
0:25:37 > 0:25:41PD James belongs to a long tradition of female detective writers
0:25:41 > 0:25:44that began in the 1920s.
0:25:44 > 0:25:49But why exactly do women make such good crime novelists?
0:25:49 > 0:25:52Our strength is that we're very interested in motive.
0:25:52 > 0:25:54We're interested in the people,
0:25:54 > 0:25:57we're interested in the lives they live,
0:25:57 > 0:26:02and so much of crime writing and so much
0:26:02 > 0:26:09of fabrication of clues depends on daily living, small things
0:26:09 > 0:26:13that are noticed, and women notice them, men just don't notice them.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21By the late 1920s, the writers of the Golden Age,
0:26:21 > 0:26:22both male and female,
0:26:22 > 0:26:26had begun to meet up for informal dinners together.
0:26:26 > 0:26:29This led to what would become known as the Detection Club,
0:26:29 > 0:26:31still going strong today.
0:26:31 > 0:26:36It had some arcane and amusing rules and regulations.
0:26:36 > 0:26:40To join, you have to undergo a curious initiation.
0:26:40 > 0:26:44The current master of ceremonies is Simon Brett.
0:26:44 > 0:26:49What mean these lights, these reminders of our mortality?
0:26:50 > 0:26:52Lucy Worsley,
0:26:52 > 0:26:57is it your firm desire to become a member of the Detection Club?
0:26:57 > 0:26:59That is my desire.
0:26:59 > 0:27:05You seek a great honour, but must also accept a great responsibility.
0:27:05 > 0:27:07For I must charge you that in all your writings,
0:27:07 > 0:27:10henceforward and forever, your characters will
0:27:10 > 0:27:15well and truly try to resolve the many issues with which you may
0:27:15 > 0:27:20be pleased to confront them, using only their native wits
0:27:20 > 0:27:25and not resorting to divine revelation, excessive sanguinity,
0:27:25 > 0:27:32lucky guesses, mumbo jumbo, jiggery pokery, coincidence or Act of God.
0:27:32 > 0:27:34Do you so promise?
0:27:34 > 0:27:38- I do. - Will you honour the Queen's English?
0:27:38 > 0:27:39I will!
0:27:39 > 0:27:44Lucy Worsley, will you place your hand upon Eric the Skull?
0:27:44 > 0:27:47Oh, yes, please! Can I?
0:27:47 > 0:27:50Well... Lucy Worsley,
0:27:50 > 0:27:55do you solemnly swear to observe faithfully those promises
0:27:55 > 0:27:59which you have made for as long as you are a member of this club?
0:27:59 > 0:28:00I do!
0:28:00 > 0:28:03And I'm afraid that's as far as we can go,
0:28:03 > 0:28:05because you're basically not a crime writer.
0:28:05 > 0:28:08- Very fine writer... - I'm touching Eric, though. - I know you're touching Eric,
0:28:08 > 0:28:11you've done some lovely historical stuff, but it doesn't count.
0:28:11 > 0:28:13That is very disappointing.
0:28:13 > 0:28:14Well, there you go.
0:28:14 > 0:28:18I shall switch Eric off in a fit of pique.
0:28:18 > 0:28:19Take that, Eric.
0:28:19 > 0:28:22I think there's always been an element of playfulness
0:28:22 > 0:28:26in crime writing. I mean, certainly, you know, the famous examples
0:28:26 > 0:28:30of the 1930s, and 1920s, indeed, Agatha Christie and all those,
0:28:30 > 0:28:32they were kind of playing a game, you know,
0:28:32 > 0:28:38this murder mystery game really, and in a sense the murder was
0:28:38 > 0:28:42the first thing that happened, but a murder in Agatha Christie Land
0:28:42 > 0:28:45is not, you know... It's not like brains and blood
0:28:45 > 0:28:49splattered all over the walls, it's quite decorously done,
0:28:49 > 0:28:52and so it does become almost like a parlour game really
0:28:52 > 0:28:54to guess who was the murderer.
0:28:54 > 0:28:58But I think there was something in the zeitgeist. I think it's no coincidence
0:28:58 > 0:29:02that that was also the period when the crossword developed, you know,
0:29:02 > 0:29:05that was just the period that people got interested in crosswords,
0:29:05 > 0:29:11and a lot of crime novels of the Golden Age are quite like crosswords.
0:29:11 > 0:29:15Before I left, Simon agreed to share one final secret
0:29:15 > 0:29:17about the club's most treasured artefact.
0:29:17 > 0:29:21There is one secret about Eric which I will tell you -
0:29:21 > 0:29:25that he has been examined by medical experts,
0:29:25 > 0:29:29and there is a strong belief that actually it's Erica.
0:29:29 > 0:29:33- No way.- Yes, apparently it's a female skull, but don't tell anyone!
0:29:37 > 0:29:40The person who dreamt up Eric, or Erica, and one of
0:29:40 > 0:29:46the founding members of the Detection Club was Dorothy L Sayers.
0:29:46 > 0:29:51Of all the Golden Age novelists, she is my absolute favourite.
0:29:55 > 0:29:57In my opinion, Dorothy L Sayers
0:29:57 > 0:30:01isn't just the best of the Golden Age detective story writers,
0:30:01 > 0:30:04she's a great novelist full stop.
0:30:04 > 0:30:05She had a very big brain.
0:30:05 > 0:30:07She did well at Somerville College in Oxford,
0:30:07 > 0:30:11and then she moved to London and in the 1920s
0:30:11 > 0:30:15she was working as a copywriter at an advertising agency.
0:30:15 > 0:30:19She came up with famous jingles like "Guinness is good for you"
0:30:19 > 0:30:23and later she recreated this competitive world of the office
0:30:23 > 0:30:26in one of her detective stories, Murder Must Advertise.
0:30:28 > 0:30:32Hers was a very different life to Agatha Christie's.
0:30:32 > 0:30:34She was a brilliant young Oxford scholar,
0:30:34 > 0:30:38and then a struggling writer in Bohemian London.
0:30:38 > 0:30:42She fell in love with a man who refused to marry her.
0:30:42 > 0:30:44Then, by a different relationship,
0:30:44 > 0:30:48she gave birth in secret to an illegitimate child.
0:30:48 > 0:30:51She never felt able publicly to acknowledge her son.
0:30:51 > 0:30:54And yet out of these troubled years
0:30:54 > 0:30:57would come great literary success.
0:30:57 > 0:30:59In her debut novel, Whose Body?,
0:30:59 > 0:31:02Sayers introduced Lord Peter Wimsey,
0:31:02 > 0:31:05a dashing aristocratic detective,
0:31:05 > 0:31:07and, like Dorothy herself, an Oxford graduate.
0:31:12 > 0:31:15She gave Lord Peter all the money and assurance
0:31:15 > 0:31:19and easy success that she would have liked for herself.
0:31:19 > 0:31:23It was Lord Peter, though, who would lead her out of her difficulties
0:31:23 > 0:31:27into financial security and a career as a full-time novelist.
0:31:28 > 0:31:33At Somerville, which is Sayers' old college in Oxford, I met the critic
0:31:33 > 0:31:37and my fellow Sayers fan Charlotte Higgins, to talk about Lord Peter.
0:31:39 > 0:31:42Now then, here we have the first appearance,
0:31:42 > 0:31:45in a short-story magazine,
0:31:45 > 0:31:49of a rather foolish-looking gentleman called Lord Peter Wimsey.
0:31:49 > 0:31:54I mean, he looks like your typical aristocratic goofy fool
0:31:54 > 0:31:57with a monocle, upper-class twit really,
0:31:57 > 0:32:02but of course behind that it becomes very clear that Lord Peter Wimsey...
0:32:02 > 0:32:06that's just the sort of surface of him, he's actually
0:32:06 > 0:32:10a much deeper character than that, and you get strongly running through
0:32:10 > 0:32:15all the books this sense of damage that happened because of the war.
0:32:15 > 0:32:18So, in modern terms we would say that he had
0:32:18 > 0:32:21post-traumatic stress injury.
0:32:21 > 0:32:23We have glancing accounts of him somehow
0:32:23 > 0:32:27having had a nervous breakdown in the past, of him still going
0:32:27 > 0:32:31through periods when he wakes in the night and screams, he has these
0:32:31 > 0:32:34appalling nightmares, and that's one of the reasons he has this extremely
0:32:34 > 0:32:41close relationship with his valet, Bunter, the estimable Bunter.
0:32:41 > 0:32:44- Who was his batman from the Trenches.- Exactly so, exactly so.
0:32:44 > 0:32:47It makes him bearable, doesn't it, because a lot of people think
0:32:47 > 0:32:50"Oh, Lord Peter Wimsey, ridiculous snob, we don't like this story,"
0:32:50 > 0:32:54but, as it says here, "He's not nearly so foolish as he looks."
0:32:54 > 0:32:56- Yeah.- That's what makes her different
0:32:56 > 0:32:58and in my opinion better than Agatha Christie,
0:32:58 > 0:33:01because you don't see any of that in Agatha Christie,
0:33:01 > 0:33:03there everything in the garden is lovely.
0:33:03 > 0:33:06This is really good-quality stuff, this is proper prose.
0:33:06 > 0:33:10A lot of the other writers of the Golden Age are quite...
0:33:10 > 0:33:14sort of coy about describing actual scenes of violence and blood,
0:33:14 > 0:33:16but Dorothy L Sayers never holds back, does she?
0:33:16 > 0:33:20No, it's all done with chilling detail, frankly.
0:33:20 > 0:33:22She doesn't hold back,
0:33:22 > 0:33:26and I think, for me, part of that is just this sort of
0:33:26 > 0:33:30intellectual honesty of it, there is a sort of sense that
0:33:30 > 0:33:33if we take part in the detection as a reader
0:33:33 > 0:33:36we're going to play that game along with the characters,
0:33:36 > 0:33:39and, just as they have to look death in the face, so do we.
0:33:39 > 0:33:44"Harriet's luck was in. It WAS a corpse. Indubitably a corpse."
0:33:44 > 0:33:47"Indeed, if the head did not come off in Harriet's hands,
0:33:47 > 0:33:51"it was only because the spine was intact, for the larynx
0:33:51 > 0:33:53"and all the great vessels of the neck had been severed
0:33:53 > 0:33:59"to the bone, and a frightful stream, bright red and glistening,
0:33:59 > 0:34:01"was running over the surface of the rock
0:34:01 > 0:34:04"and dripping into a little hollow below.
0:34:04 > 0:34:07"Harriet put the head down again and felt suddenly sick."
0:34:09 > 0:34:14The "Harriet" in this story is the bold and brilliant Harriet Vane.
0:34:14 > 0:34:18She's almost the alter ego of her creator, Dorothy L Sayers.
0:34:18 > 0:34:20Both of them studied at Oxford, both of them
0:34:20 > 0:34:24became detective novelists, and I love Harriet Vane.
0:34:24 > 0:34:27When I was growing up she made me want to be a girl detective,
0:34:27 > 0:34:30solving crimes and righting wrongs
0:34:30 > 0:34:33and forging a very independent furrow through life.
0:34:39 > 0:34:42Harriet first appears in the novel Strong Poison,
0:34:42 > 0:34:44and she's in the dock.
0:34:44 > 0:34:48She's been accused of murder, and who's going to save her
0:34:48 > 0:34:50but Lord Peter Wimsey.
0:34:50 > 0:34:53During the course of his investigation
0:34:53 > 0:34:57he falls in love with her, and Sayers spends the next few novels
0:34:57 > 0:34:59building up and teasing us with their on-off,
0:34:59 > 0:35:01will-they-won't-they relationship.
0:35:01 > 0:35:04The whole thing culminates in her best book of all,
0:35:04 > 0:35:06which is Gaudy Night.
0:35:08 > 0:35:11I think it's her best because it's not just a detective story,
0:35:11 > 0:35:15but also a remarkable manifesto for women's education
0:35:15 > 0:35:19and a commentary on the difficulties that women faced in the 1930s.
0:35:20 > 0:35:23In this book, Sayers said herself that she'd expressed
0:35:23 > 0:35:28"the things that I had been wanting to say all my life."
0:35:28 > 0:35:32The story begins with Harriet Vane attending the annual
0:35:32 > 0:35:35"gaudy" celebrations at her old Oxford college.
0:35:35 > 0:35:37But the female scholars there
0:35:37 > 0:35:40are under persecution from a mystery misogynist.
0:35:42 > 0:35:45And then we get 400 pages of the mystery itself,
0:35:45 > 0:35:46all set in this women's college,
0:35:46 > 0:35:50but the book isn't really about the mystery, it's about the women.
0:35:50 > 0:35:54Whether it's possible for them to combine independence and work
0:35:54 > 0:35:56with married life and husbands.
0:35:56 > 0:35:59At the end of it all Harriet decides to take the chance,
0:35:59 > 0:36:01to agree to marry Lord Peter Wimsey.
0:36:01 > 0:36:03She realises that he's a good man
0:36:03 > 0:36:06who won't stifle her or cramp her style,
0:36:06 > 0:36:09and on the very last page they have their first kiss,
0:36:09 > 0:36:11here in New College Lane,
0:36:11 > 0:36:16and we see them "closely and passionately embracing".
0:36:16 > 0:36:19As a reader, if you've followed them through thousands of pages,
0:36:19 > 0:36:21you want to go, "Yes! What took you so long?"
0:36:24 > 0:36:27With Gaudy Night, Sayers thought that she'd exhausted
0:36:27 > 0:36:30the possibilities of the detective novel.
0:36:30 > 0:36:34She now returned to more scholarly pursuits.
0:36:34 > 0:36:37But even without Lord Peter and Harriet,
0:36:37 > 0:36:40the Golden Age would still continue.
0:36:40 > 0:36:43Detective novels were now being published at the rate of
0:36:43 > 0:36:451,000 every year.
0:36:46 > 0:36:49Yet nothing could beat a real-life whodunnit.
0:36:56 > 0:37:00In 1931, a new murder mystery got everybody talking,
0:37:00 > 0:37:02wanting to know the solution.
0:37:03 > 0:37:06There were alibis and clues and red herrings.
0:37:08 > 0:37:09But this time it wasn't fiction.
0:37:09 > 0:37:12It happened in real life, here in Liverpool.
0:37:14 > 0:37:17The central character in the story was tall, cerebral
0:37:17 > 0:37:20and habitually dressed in black.
0:37:22 > 0:37:26He liked to recite Marcus Aurelius, to conduct chemistry experiments
0:37:26 > 0:37:30in a back bedroom, and to practise his violin at the window.
0:37:34 > 0:37:36This may all sound rather familiar,
0:37:36 > 0:37:39but we're not talking about Sherlock Holmes.
0:37:39 > 0:37:44He was a 52-year-old insurance agent named William Herbert Wallace.
0:37:46 > 0:37:48It all began in a chess club.
0:37:50 > 0:37:54On the evening of Monday 19th January 1931,
0:37:54 > 0:37:58the mild-mannered Wallace had just arrived at the Liverpool Central Club
0:37:58 > 0:38:02when he was handed what would be our first clue.
0:38:05 > 0:38:07It was a telephone message from a call received
0:38:07 > 0:38:1025 minutes earlier.
0:38:10 > 0:38:14The voice on the phone identified himself as Mr RM Qualtrough.
0:38:16 > 0:38:19He wanted Wallace to visit him on insurance business,
0:38:19 > 0:38:26at 7:30 the following evening, at his home, 25 Menlove Gardens East.
0:38:26 > 0:38:30Even though he seemed puzzled by the message, Wallace took out
0:38:30 > 0:38:32his small Prudential diary
0:38:32 > 0:38:35and made a note of Qualtrough's name and address.
0:38:35 > 0:38:38He obviously decided to keep the appointment.
0:38:41 > 0:38:45The next day, which was the 20th January, Wallace had his tea,
0:38:45 > 0:38:48he got together some papers for this business meeting
0:38:48 > 0:38:49with the unknown man
0:38:49 > 0:38:53and he said goodbye to his wife Julia right here at the back door
0:38:53 > 0:38:55of their house on Wolverton Street,
0:38:55 > 0:39:00and he then set off to this unknown address, Menlove Gardens East.
0:39:05 > 0:39:09And so began Wallace's odd nocturnal journey.
0:39:09 > 0:39:11Hold tight, please. BELL DINGS
0:39:16 > 0:39:21The tram conductor would later recall Wallace emphasising the fact
0:39:21 > 0:39:25that he was a stranger and repeatedly asking for directions.
0:39:30 > 0:39:33And when he finally reached the right neighbourhood,
0:39:33 > 0:39:35Wallace said he was able to find
0:39:35 > 0:39:38Menlove Gardens North and South and West,
0:39:38 > 0:39:40but East simply didn't exist.
0:39:41 > 0:39:44Wallace stopped to ask several people,
0:39:44 > 0:39:48and so drew attention to himself, but nobody was able to help him
0:39:48 > 0:39:51find the address or the mysterious Mr Qualtrough.
0:39:53 > 0:39:56Wallace headed home, and he was seen by an eyewitness
0:39:56 > 0:40:00speaking to a mystery man a few streets away from his house.
0:40:00 > 0:40:04Was this an accomplice, or was it simply a red herring?
0:40:07 > 0:40:10When Wallace got back from his pointless search,
0:40:10 > 0:40:13he claimed that the door of his house had been locked.
0:40:13 > 0:40:16He waited around until his neighbours were passing,
0:40:16 > 0:40:18Mr and Mrs Johnston,
0:40:18 > 0:40:21and then he tried it again and this time it opened.
0:40:21 > 0:40:23It's almost as if he'd wanted witnesses
0:40:23 > 0:40:25to his going back into his house.
0:40:28 > 0:40:29Wallace went inside.
0:40:32 > 0:40:35On lighting the gas lamp in the kitchen,
0:40:35 > 0:40:38he noticed a small cabinet had been broken into
0:40:38 > 0:40:41and that a piece of its door was lying on the floor.
0:40:42 > 0:40:45He went upstairs, calling out his wife's name,
0:40:45 > 0:40:48but there was no sign of her.
0:40:48 > 0:40:52In the front bedroom, the bedclothes had been pulled back.
0:40:52 > 0:40:53He went back downstairs,
0:40:53 > 0:40:56and now he noticed that the parlour door was ajar.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02He struck a match, held it aloft, and went in.
0:41:04 > 0:41:08The scene which greeted him was ghastly.
0:41:08 > 0:41:10There, lying across the rug in front of the fireplace,
0:41:10 > 0:41:15was the body of his wife, Julia, her head in a pool of blood.
0:41:15 > 0:41:17She'd been savagely attacked.
0:41:19 > 0:41:21Wallace went to get his neighbours.
0:41:21 > 0:41:23"Come and look, she's been killed," he said.
0:41:23 > 0:41:27And he showed a surprising lack of emotion as he knelt down
0:41:27 > 0:41:29by his dead wife's body.
0:41:29 > 0:41:33"They've finished her," he said. "Look at the brains."
0:41:33 > 0:41:36The murder baffled everybody.
0:41:36 > 0:41:41But when Mr Qualtrough's mysterious telephone call was traced to
0:41:41 > 0:41:45a kiosk just 400 yards away from Wallace's house,
0:41:45 > 0:41:48people began to suspect that Qualtrough and Wallace
0:41:48 > 0:41:52were one and the same person and that the business
0:41:52 > 0:41:56of the appointment had been nothing more than a very elaborate alibi.
0:41:57 > 0:42:01The murder weapon wasn't found, and there was no motive.
0:42:01 > 0:42:04But then, there were no other suspects.
0:42:04 > 0:42:06So Wallace was arrested.
0:42:08 > 0:42:11On 22nd April his trial opened
0:42:11 > 0:42:15here at St George's Hall in central Liverpool.
0:42:15 > 0:42:16It drew massive attention.
0:42:18 > 0:42:20As he sat through his trial,
0:42:20 > 0:42:23Wallace's behaviour counted against him.
0:42:23 > 0:42:25He was impassive, cold.
0:42:25 > 0:42:29He didn't visibly react when people mentioned his dead wife
0:42:29 > 0:42:31and he was heard to say that he felt
0:42:31 > 0:42:34that the jury members were rather stupid.
0:42:34 > 0:42:38He also had the misfortune to fit most people's image of a murderer.
0:42:38 > 0:42:40He tended to wear black
0:42:40 > 0:42:43and he had little round spectacles like Dr Crippen's.
0:42:43 > 0:42:47On the other hand, though, Wallace's defence were pretty confident.
0:42:47 > 0:42:51There was no killer piece of evidence against him.
0:42:51 > 0:42:55That's why, after four days of trial, and an hour's deliberation,
0:42:55 > 0:42:57there was a gasp in court
0:42:57 > 0:43:00when the jury revealed that they thought he was guilty.
0:43:03 > 0:43:06The date was set for Wallace's hanging.
0:43:06 > 0:43:09But then came the final twist that turned
0:43:09 > 0:43:13the case of William Herbert Wallace into a legal landmark.
0:43:13 > 0:43:16In May 1931, the Court of Criminal Appeal
0:43:16 > 0:43:19overturned his conviction.
0:43:19 > 0:43:23Basically they said the evidence was insufficient.
0:43:23 > 0:43:25The jury had got it wrong.
0:43:26 > 0:43:29So Wallace lived to tell his tale,
0:43:29 > 0:43:33and to sell it of course to a Sunday magazine,
0:43:33 > 0:43:37under the bragging title of The Man They Did Not Hang.
0:43:43 > 0:43:46The Wallace case is perhaps the ultimate whodunnit,
0:43:46 > 0:43:49because it remains unsolved to this day.
0:43:51 > 0:43:54It provided wonderful fodder for speculation
0:43:54 > 0:43:57amongst the Golden Age writers like Dorothy L Sayers.
0:44:01 > 0:44:04Capitalising on this real-life mystery,
0:44:04 > 0:44:07they started to provide ingenious fictionalised solutions
0:44:07 > 0:44:12to the case, transforming it from reality into myth.
0:44:21 > 0:44:23LIGHT MUSIC PLAYS
0:44:27 > 0:44:33It's no coincidence that the murder mystery reached a peak in popularity
0:44:33 > 0:44:38at the same time as a similar vogue for chess and the crossword puzzle.
0:44:40 > 0:44:45Britain now also saw an explosion of murder mystery games,
0:44:45 > 0:44:47the forerunners of Cluedo.
0:44:51 > 0:44:54This, for example, is the Baffle Book.
0:44:54 > 0:44:57It's not a collection of stories, it's a set of 30 mysteries
0:44:57 > 0:45:01and detective problems to be solved from given data.
0:45:01 > 0:45:03"Be your own detective," it says inside,
0:45:03 > 0:45:07and you're put into all sorts of everyday situations like this.
0:45:07 > 0:45:09"You're staying with the Duchess, the Butler comes in
0:45:09 > 0:45:12"with the tragic announcement that the Master has been found slain
0:45:12 > 0:45:16"in the Billiard Room, an oriental dagger through his heart.
0:45:16 > 0:45:17"What are you going to do?"
0:45:17 > 0:45:20Then there's the Murder Jigsaw. In this it's only as you
0:45:20 > 0:45:23put in the very last piece that you realise that this man
0:45:23 > 0:45:27isn't holding a musical instrument, he's using a gun
0:45:27 > 0:45:30disguised as a clarinet to shoot the victim over here.
0:45:32 > 0:45:35And top of the tree, we've got the Murder Dossier.
0:45:35 > 0:45:38This is full of all kinds of evidence.
0:45:38 > 0:45:42We've got a cable and a police memo and testimony
0:45:42 > 0:45:45and crime-scene photographs, even a clue.
0:45:45 > 0:45:47Here's a bit of blood-stained curtain.
0:45:47 > 0:45:51And here's a sample of somebody's hair.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54And what you're supposed to do is read through the whole thing,
0:45:54 > 0:45:57come to your conclusion and only then do you open
0:45:57 > 0:46:00the envelope at the back containing the solution.
0:46:00 > 0:46:03All these games and puzzles are jolly good fun.
0:46:03 > 0:46:06But they do show how murder between the wars
0:46:06 > 0:46:10had become sanitised and, with that, trivialised.
0:46:10 > 0:46:13In real life, most murder was driven by poverty,
0:46:13 > 0:46:15alcohol or abusive relationships.
0:46:15 > 0:46:17No sign of that here,
0:46:17 > 0:46:20nor of the Great Depression or the rise of Fascism.
0:46:20 > 0:46:23And some people don't even like to
0:46:23 > 0:46:25use the name "the Golden Age" for this.
0:46:25 > 0:46:28They think a more accurate name for this school of fiction
0:46:28 > 0:46:31would be "snobbery with violence".
0:46:35 > 0:46:38Little by little, the whodunnit began to seem stale,
0:46:38 > 0:46:42and its writers out of touch.
0:46:42 > 0:46:46By the 1930s, though, a new genre of entertainment
0:46:46 > 0:46:50would unleash the primitive emotions aroused by murder.
0:46:51 > 0:46:52This was the cinema.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55It was now rivalling the detective novel.
0:46:55 > 0:46:57The British were spending hours a week
0:46:57 > 0:47:00in dark and ornate picture houses.
0:47:02 > 0:47:06The '30s were to become a Golden Age for the crime film too,
0:47:06 > 0:47:09with 350 thrillers released during the decade.
0:47:11 > 0:47:16And the greatest genius to practise the fine art of cinematic murder
0:47:16 > 0:47:19was of course Alfred Hitchcock.
0:47:19 > 0:47:23The assembly of pieces of film to create fright
0:47:23 > 0:47:26is the essential part of my job.
0:47:28 > 0:47:33The first Hitchcock murder shocker was a silent film, The Lodger.
0:47:34 > 0:47:38It was terrifying right from its opening shot of a screaming girl,
0:47:38 > 0:47:41backlit to accentuate her golden halo of hair.
0:47:42 > 0:47:46The film was based on a novel and a stage play that had given
0:47:46 > 0:47:50the 16-year-old Hitchcock an enjoyable shiver.
0:47:50 > 0:47:53It's the story of a Ripper-style murderer
0:47:53 > 0:47:56stalking blonde girls in London.
0:47:56 > 0:48:00It resonated with Hitchcock, who had followed famous murder cases
0:48:00 > 0:48:03from his youth.
0:48:03 > 0:48:06As his official biographer and friend John Russell Taylor
0:48:06 > 0:48:11explained to me, he had a lifelong fascination with real-life murder.
0:48:12 > 0:48:18Hitchcock must have been interested in true crime from very early on,
0:48:18 > 0:48:23because at that time, when he was a kid in Leytonstone,
0:48:23 > 0:48:27the nearest playground to Leytonstone was Epping Forest,
0:48:27 > 0:48:32and every August Bank Holiday there seemed to be at least one
0:48:32 > 0:48:35sexually motivated murder in Epping Forest.
0:48:35 > 0:48:38It was a regular for the newspapers,
0:48:38 > 0:48:41and he seemed to have consumed those all with great interest.
0:48:44 > 0:48:50I'm sure that was part of the reason for his choices in film-making.
0:48:53 > 0:48:58Here Hitchcock introduces the eponymous Lodger in chilling style.
0:49:02 > 0:49:04The Lodger sets up all sorts of themes that we'll see
0:49:04 > 0:49:07running throughout the rest of Hitchcock's work.
0:49:07 > 0:49:11There's the association between sex and death,
0:49:11 > 0:49:13there's a blonde in peril,
0:49:13 > 0:49:16there's voyeurism and there's dark humour too.
0:49:20 > 0:49:24In The Lodger here is the man himself, with his back to the camera
0:49:24 > 0:49:28in the first of his famous cameo appearances.
0:49:28 > 0:49:31He's the newspaper editor receiving the news
0:49:31 > 0:49:34and writing his eye-catching headlines.
0:49:34 > 0:49:37With all these shots of newspapers rolling off the presses,
0:49:37 > 0:49:42Hitchcock shows us the media's sensationalising response to crime,
0:49:42 > 0:49:46exactly as it had been seen 15 years before in the case of Dr Crippen.
0:49:49 > 0:49:52Hitchcock, born in the last year of the 19th century,
0:49:52 > 0:49:56was influenced by the murderous entertainments of the Victorians.
0:49:59 > 0:50:02For example, just look at the acting style in The Lodger.
0:50:03 > 0:50:06All this gesturing and the intensity of it
0:50:06 > 0:50:09reminds me of Victorian melodrama.
0:50:09 > 0:50:11And that's because Hitchcock
0:50:11 > 0:50:15and his actors knew about this stylised form of theatre.
0:50:15 > 0:50:17They were taking its traditions with them
0:50:17 > 0:50:19into the world of silent cinema.
0:50:22 > 0:50:24And he also tapped into another genre
0:50:24 > 0:50:28of Victorian crime entertainment.
0:50:28 > 0:50:30It strikes me that what he's doing has a lot in common with
0:50:30 > 0:50:33the sensation novelists of the 1860s.
0:50:33 > 0:50:37Cos what they were hoping to achieve was to make the hair stand on end,
0:50:37 > 0:50:41to send a shiver down the spine, to create a sensation in the reader,
0:50:41 > 0:50:43and that's exactly what he's doing in his films.
0:50:43 > 0:50:48He once fantasised to me that the ideal situation would be
0:50:48 > 0:50:54if you didn't have to make the film, you could just wire the seats
0:50:54 > 0:50:55in the cinema,
0:50:55 > 0:51:01so you would get the shock, horror, laughter at the right moments
0:51:01 > 0:51:05just from the electrical effects on the audience,
0:51:05 > 0:51:12and so I think he saw films as machines to work on the audience.
0:51:15 > 0:51:19Hitchcock was concerned with something very different from
0:51:19 > 0:51:21the brainy trickery of the detective writers.
0:51:24 > 0:51:27What interested him was much more visceral.
0:51:30 > 0:51:32I don't deal in mystery.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36I never make whodunnits, because they're intellectual exercises.
0:51:36 > 0:51:38You're just wondering, you're not emoting.
0:51:41 > 0:51:44Raw emotion is the key to another Hitchcock film,
0:51:44 > 0:51:48the 1936 talkie called Sabotage.
0:51:48 > 0:51:52Here he brilliantly stretches the scene out
0:51:52 > 0:51:54to ratchet up the suspense.
0:51:54 > 0:51:57Sylvia Sidney has just worked out that her husband
0:51:57 > 0:52:01is the saboteur whose actions have killed her brother.
0:52:02 > 0:52:05She's now wrestling with an impulse to kill him.
0:52:06 > 0:52:10Hitchcock said he wanted to maintain the audience's sympathy for her,
0:52:10 > 0:52:13and make us feel like killing the man ourselves.
0:52:13 > 0:52:17He builds up their confrontation through this montage
0:52:17 > 0:52:23of reaction shots, her hand hovering throughout over the carving knife.
0:52:35 > 0:52:41Hitchcock makes us endure a slow and agonising wait before the deed.
0:52:53 > 0:52:55SHE GASPS, HE SHOUTS
0:53:06 > 0:53:09Sabotage, and this scene in particular,
0:53:09 > 0:53:10was enthusiastically reviewed
0:53:10 > 0:53:13by one of the country's leading film critics.
0:53:15 > 0:53:19He was an aspiring novelist called Graham Greene.
0:53:20 > 0:53:23"This melodrama," Greene wrote in the Spectator,
0:53:23 > 0:53:25"is convincingly realistic."
0:53:26 > 0:53:30By the mid-1930s Greene was writing novels influenced by
0:53:30 > 0:53:36American crime writers like Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
0:53:39 > 0:53:42Their hard-boiled thrillers, amoral and violent,
0:53:42 > 0:53:46made a refreshing alternative to the cosy British whodunnit.
0:53:48 > 0:53:52Now Greene set about creating his very own version,
0:53:52 > 0:53:53a British crime noir.
0:53:54 > 0:53:58He'd take murder, and the murderer, out of the library
0:53:58 > 0:54:03and the drawing room and he'd place them in a shabby seaside resort.
0:54:05 > 0:54:09Brighton Rock, I really intended when I began writing it
0:54:09 > 0:54:11to be a detective story.
0:54:11 > 0:54:15Then the character Pinkie took hold
0:54:15 > 0:54:19and I realised that I was not going to write a detective story at all.
0:54:21 > 0:54:25All that remains of a detective story is the original murder.
0:54:26 > 0:54:29I wanted to make people believe that he was
0:54:29 > 0:54:33a sufficiently evil person almost to justify the notion of hell.
0:54:35 > 0:54:38Like Hitchcock, Greene was a Catholic,
0:54:38 > 0:54:46hence his preoccupation with evil and sin and guilt and redemption.
0:54:48 > 0:54:51Even the cover blurb of Brighton Rock tells us that
0:54:51 > 0:54:54this is a new kind of novel. As it says here,
0:54:54 > 0:54:57"In this book murder is no parlour game likely to be solved
0:54:57 > 0:54:59"on the last page,
0:54:59 > 0:55:04"but an act of terrible and terrifying significance."
0:55:04 > 0:55:06The emphasis is now off the detective
0:55:06 > 0:55:08and onto the murderer himself.
0:55:08 > 0:55:11The hero - or the antihero - of Brighton Rock
0:55:11 > 0:55:13is a teenage gangster called Pinkie.
0:55:13 > 0:55:16He's rather clever and very violent.
0:55:16 > 0:55:20He seems to be in charge of half of the criminals of Brighton.
0:55:20 > 0:55:24Graham Greene says that he's like a child with haemophilia -
0:55:24 > 0:55:27everyone who touches him draws blood.
0:55:27 > 0:55:30He grinned again, passing through the charge-room,
0:55:30 > 0:55:34but a bright spot of colour stood out on each cheekbone.
0:55:34 > 0:55:38There was poison in his veins, though he grinned and bore it.
0:55:38 > 0:55:41He'd been insulted. He was going to show the world.
0:55:41 > 0:55:44They thought because he was only 17...
0:55:44 > 0:55:46He jerked his narrow shoulders back
0:55:46 > 0:55:47at the memory that he'd killed his man,
0:55:47 > 0:55:50and these bogies who thought they were clever
0:55:50 > 0:55:53weren't clever enough to discover that.
0:55:53 > 0:55:56He trailed the clouds of his own glory.
0:55:56 > 0:55:58Hell lay about him in his infancy.
0:55:58 > 0:56:00He was ready for more deaths.
0:56:03 > 0:56:06And we're in a very different environment now too.
0:56:06 > 0:56:10The story of Brighton Rock takes place in tea rooms and pubs
0:56:10 > 0:56:12and amusement arcades.
0:56:12 > 0:56:15The murder happens in a public toilet.
0:56:15 > 0:56:18It's a long way away from the rarefied country houses
0:56:18 > 0:56:21of the classic Golden Age detective novels.
0:56:21 > 0:56:25Graham Greene loves taking us into the sleazy underbelly
0:56:25 > 0:56:29behind the shiny shops and the hotels of the Brighton seafront.
0:56:33 > 0:56:39Brighton Rock points to the future, to the American-style thriller,
0:56:39 > 0:56:44and the brutal, psychological type of crime fiction that we read today.
0:56:44 > 0:56:48But it's still recognisable as a very British murder -
0:56:48 > 0:56:51after all, what could be more British than a seaside pier?
0:56:52 > 0:56:57Greene's novel also taps into a deeper past
0:56:57 > 0:57:00and the dark obsessions we've encountered.
0:57:00 > 0:57:04Pinkie's evil character is rooted in our fear of murder,
0:57:04 > 0:57:08but also our fascination with the murderer,
0:57:08 > 0:57:11just like earlier entertainments like ballads and broadsides
0:57:11 > 0:57:14and melodramas.
0:57:14 > 0:57:17May this crime forever be a curse.
0:57:18 > 0:57:22The same fears fed the imagination of Victorian writers
0:57:22 > 0:57:26like Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.
0:57:26 > 0:57:29They turned the sensational crimes of their own day
0:57:29 > 0:57:30into great literature.
0:57:32 > 0:57:37It's all added up to a significant strand of our national psyche.
0:57:39 > 0:57:42The very British relish for murder hasn't gone away -
0:57:42 > 0:57:45far from it.
0:57:45 > 0:57:47Just look at your television schedule.
0:57:47 > 0:57:50It'll be packed with all kinds of gory stuff that you can
0:57:50 > 0:57:53hardly bear to watch, and yet you do.
0:57:53 > 0:57:56It seems that we still can't resist this guilty pleasure.
0:58:25 > 0:58:26Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:26 > 0:58:28E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk