Sleeping Murder

From time to time I make approving mention of the fact that Trollope thickens his mix with discussion of serious topics, in contrast to Christie who does not.

However, in the margins of seeing some of 'Sleeping Murder' and in then skimming our newly ebayed copy of the originating novel, I find that this is not altogether true, in that in this story we have the issue of whether it is appropriate to stir up a twenty year old murder which no-one knows about. That is to say that the victim has indeed vanished, but in circumstances which led people to believe that she had simply done a bunk, rather than done a deader.

There is not much discussion, beyond a sense that Christie herself was not sure about the merits of stirring, although that sense may not survive reading the novel as a whole.

Now it seems fairly clear that if the murder was a hundred years ago, there is going to be little point in stirring, although I suppose it is possible that there might still be property interests even after an interval of that sort. We suppose for the purposes of this discussion that there are no property interests. And also fairly clear that if the murder was yesterday, there is every point in stirring. No-one must be seen to get away with murder. But what happens between these two extremes is much less clear.

Point 1: if knowledge of the murder is confined to a very small number of people, the argument about being seen to get away with murder is much weakened.

Point 2: if the murderer is known and known to be dead, arguments about setting the record straight are much weakened. Murderer certainly dead after a hundred years, probably alive after twenty.

Point 3: the murderee might have been a thoroughly evil person, better out of the way. One should not allow or condone a murder, but maybe after twenty years no great harm is done by letting things lie.

Point 4: it is hard to get a conviction for an old murder because evidence, bio or otherwise, degrades with time. This is relevant to the decision about whether to stir or not because the incidental damage usually caused by stirring is not justified if one is unlikely to proceed to a trial.

All of which seems a bit thin. Maybe I will be able to do better when I have finished the book.