Chapter 31: The Escalated Coverup
This is where things get tricky.
Thus far, the work we’ve done building your Clue Bank has been rigorous—but fairly straightforward. You’ve figured out your Villain’s actions and lies, and you’ve come up with ways to clue your reader in to all of them.
Mysteries, however, are rarely straightforward. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at the ways your Villain’s plan may go wrong—and what that will mean for your plot.
One of the biggest things that will propel the plot of your novel is your Villain’s Escalated Coverup. This begins when something goes wrong for him—when he begins to be in danger of getting caught, or of losing the goal he committed this murder to get.
Here’s a handy list of some of the things that might go wrong for your Villain.
Someone saw him. This is something that frequently goes wrong for mystery Villains, resulting in witnesses whom he must bribe, discredit, threaten, or eliminate.
He was interrupted and failed to complete the crime. This also might result in a witness or two—perhaps even the Victim herself.
The Victim survived. Even if the Villain completes his attack, sometimes the Victim manages to survive. This is another event that creates a troublesome witness for your Villain to deal with. In plots like this, it’s very common for the surviving Victim to be unconscious or otherwise unable to relate her story. In that case, the Villain’s next step is obvious: he needs to finish the job—and fast.
The Villain was injured. If the Villain is injured while attacking the Victim, he’ll likely have to conceal that injury—or at least invent an alternate explanation for it.
The wrong person was killed. This can happen for a number of reasons. The Villain may mistake one character for another. Or perhaps he sets up a trap, such as a poisoned bottle of wine, but the wrong person triggers it. Or perhaps he uses a haphazard method of murder, such as rolling a boulder down a hill. And, well—boulders are hard to aim.
He yielded to a temptation to commit an additional crime. Let’s say that your Villain breaks into his aunt’s house to murder her—but while he’s there, he sees a necklace that once belonged to his own mother. It has great sentimental value for him, and he takes it. This necklace may become an important piece of evidence against him—but it may also reveal something to your Sleuth about his motivations.
He lost control of a piece of evidence. Your Villain may lose control of something as small as his shirt button, or something as large as the body itself. He needs to recover this evidence, or find some other way to obscure or invalidate it.
The narrative didn’t work. Perhaps your Villain tried to create the narrative of a heart attack—but as soon as the investigation gets going, facts are revealed that disrupt this narrative. Note: It’s very common for the narrative to convince the police, but fail to persuade the Sleuth.
The goal wasn’t achieved. Remember that your Villain’s goal isn’t actually the Victim’s death—it’s Money, Love, Power, or relief from Fear. It’s possible that your Villain could succeed in committing murder, but still fail to achieve his goal. Let’s say, for example, that your Villain wants to acquire the house next door, and with it, the treasure he knows is buried beneath the basement floor. His crotchety old neighbor won’t sell, so he kills him, assuming his heirs will be eager to unload the rundown property. Sadly, he’s wrong—the old man’s daughter is just as unwilling to part with the house. Now he has to decide how to continue pursuing his goal—will he kill the daughter? Or perhaps seduce and marry her?
So what happens to your Villain when something goes wrong? He makes a correction, of course—he tries to steer his plan back on track, so that he can acquire his goal and avoid prosecution. He might:
Create a narrative. If the Villain committed a crime in haste, he may try to construct a narrative in a hurry—perhaps that the death was the result of a robbery gone bad, or maybe even that the Victim is still alive.
Patch a failing narrative. If the Sleuth doesn’t seem convinced by the narrative, your Villain may try to “patch” it—supply additional evidence, or even alternate narratives, that can allow the crime to be dismissed. Let’s say the Villain tried to create the narrative that the Victim fell down the stairs and died—but your Sleuth isn’t buying it. You Villain could then supply an alternate narrative that still exonerates him—he frames another suspect for pushing the Victim down the stairs.
Hide, alter, or destroy evidence. This can be an especially fun plot point when that evidence is hard for him to get to. Maybe it’s locked in the Victim’s safe, or even buried in the Victim’s body.
Silence witnesses. The most obvious way to silence witnesses is to kill them, but it’s not your Villain’s only option. He can bribe them, and not just with money. He can use romantic attention, political support, or anything else the witness values. He can also threaten witnesses, or discredit them. Let’s say our villainous duke fears his wife saw some element of his crime—but he doesn’t want to kill her. He might instead drug her, so that she appears erratic, pugilistic, or confused. If she later says she saw him kill the maid, who’s to say that anyone will believe her?
Sow suspicion. Your Villain might do this by planting or altering evidence, or just by giving false witness against another character.
Snoop on the investigation. If the Villain thinks the Sleuth is getting close to an answer, he may snoop on her investigation so that he can learn what she learns, and perhaps destroy evidence immediately before she gets to it. Some Villains even attach themselves to the Sleuth as an ally, so they can be in position to sabotage her case.
Attack the Sleuth directly. Sooner or later, this is a place where a lot of plots end up—and with good reason. It can add some wonderful drama to your novel.
Neither of these lists is meant to be exhaustive—there are a lot of things that can upset your Villain’s plan, and plenty of ways he can try and steer it back on course. But these are some of the most common, and you can refer back to these lists as you create your Villain’s coverup.
The Coverup Timeline
The things that go wrong, and the corrections your Villain makes, will compose his Coverup Timeline—a list of events that may take up half, or more, of your plot.
To get started on your Coverup Timeline, let’s pull out your Action Log and give it a second look. For each action, you’ve already created potential clues. Now you’re going to add something else: potential glitches in the plan—that is, things that might go wrong for every item on the Action Log.
Let’s try this with the duke’s Action Log, as it currently stands:
He stole rat poison from the kitchens.
He summoned the maid to his room by leaving a candle burning in his window—their usual signal for an assignation.
He slept with her, and gave her the tea before sending her back to her room.
He left a suicide note in her room, along with the remainder of the rat poison.
And let’s add in his accomplice’s Action Log as well:
She met privately with the duke.
She wrote the sentences he requested, believing them to be a handwriting sample for the duke’s study of graphology, rather than a false suicide note for the maid.
For each of these actions, what could go wrong? Well…
For stealing rat poison from the kitchen, the duke might have stolen the wrong thing, and so his first poisoning attempt doesn’t work. Or maybe he was interrupted, and in his fear and surprise, he accidentally spilled some of the arsenic into the tea set’s sugar bowl. I can think of several things that might happen with that poisoned sugar bowl. If the duke realizes what happened, he may have to go to great lengths to prevent anyone from eating the poisoned sugar. But if he spilled the arsenic without noticing, he could wind up with a number of unintended Victims.
For summoning the maid to his room, what if his wife walked in just when the assignation was about to begin? If she realized what was happening, he might wind up in a situation where he needs to kill her as well.
For giving the maid the tea, what if she noticed the funny taste, and realized what was happening? She tried to scream for help, and the duke was forced to strangle her, then smuggle her body out of his room. He’ll have to construct a new narrative on the fly, or perhaps give up on the idea of a death narrative at all. Another possible glitch is that the maid may consume the tea, but not die. Instead, she’s found the next morning in a coma, and the duke is terrified that if she awakens she’ll give him away.
And for leaving the note and poison in her room, well, the obvious thing that could go wrong here is that her roommate could see him. Or perhaps the suicide narrative won’t work, at least with one important character—perhaps our maid’s best friend, who becomes our Sleuth.
And the accomplice’s actions, what about those?
For meeting privately with the duke, what if she used the opportunity to nick something valuable from his study? This isn’t necessarily evidence of the duke’s crime—but it’s evidence of a meeting between him and the accomplice, which he doesn’t want to have to explain. He may need to get that item back.
How about writing those sentences—what if she made an additional draft? Perhaps she thought her first effort was sloppy and decided to re-do it. The first draft would then become an important piece of evidence which the duke might have to recover.
And the mere fact that she is an unwitting accomplice means that once she figures out what happened, she may choose to engage in a little light blackmail. Or perhaps she’ll simply confront the duke, hoping against hope there’s an innocent explanation. Either way, she’s a threat to him.
It’s possible that some of the glitches you come up with for an action may be the very same ideas you wrote down when you were generating clues. For example, both times that I examined the action of the duke leaving a note in the maid’s room, I was unable to resist the idea of him being seen by the maid’s roommate. The only real difference between clues and glitches is that glitches demand action from the Villain. In this step of the process, we’re not worried about subtle little traces that your Sleuth can pick up on later—instead, we’re zeroed in on those mishaps that your Villain can find out about, and take steps to correct.
Don’t worry if you can’t come up with potential glitches for every item on your Action Log. You only need one really good glitch to get you to the next step, which is figuring out what your Villain does to steer his plan back on track.
Let’s say the glitch I’m going with is that the duke was seen by the maid’s roommate. What correction will this prompt the duke to make? Well, if the roommate goes to him for blackmail money, his correction might be murdering her. That would make the beginning of his Coverup Timeline look like this:
A duke killed a maid, BUT…
Her roommate witnessed the crime and tried to blackmail him, SO…
He killed the roommate.
And what is killing the roommate? It’s a new action—in fact, a new series of actions, that can be added to your Action Log:
The duke agreed to the roommate’s blackmail demand.
He met her at the stables to deliver the blackmail.
He bashed her over the head with an iron horseshoe.
Now we get to examine these new actions and go through the same two steps we’ve already done. We’ll generate potential clues (mud on the duke’s new boots? a horse who witnessed the event and now shies away from his presence?). And then we’ll generate potential glitches.
Let’s say that this correction (killing the maid’s roommate) resulted in the following glitch: his coat became covered with her blood. He carried it into the woods and buried it—but after he did so, one of the stable dogs dug it up. When he sees a dog running around the estate with a scrap of his coat in its mouth, he realizes that he’s lost control of an important piece of evidence. He needs to find whatever remains of the coat before anyone else gets a good look at it.
But this proves impossible—he has no idea how many pieces the coat has been torn into, or how far the dogs might have carried them. His next idea is to provide an alternate explanation for the blood on his coat—he injures himself, deliberately slicing his hand while puttering in his garden. He hopes that if anyone sees a scrap of his bloodied coat, they’ll assume the blood is his own.
Slicing his hand is of course a new action, which provides opportunities for new clues, and new narratives the duke may need to spin up (“I’ve decided to take up gardening;” “This spade is sharp enough to inflict a deep cut.”). Everything your Villain does to maintain his illusion of innocence gives him the opportunity to visit new locations, where clues may be left, and to establish new narratives, which may be disrupted.
And there’s one correction that very often occurs towards the end of your Villain’s Coverup Timeline: The Villain decided the Sleuth was getting too close, so he tried to kill her. Let’s look at a completed Coverup Timeline for the duke’s crime:
A duke killed a maid, BUT…
Her roommate witnessed the crime and tried to blackmail him, SO…
He killed the roommate, BUT…
He lost control of his bloodied jacket, SO…
He deliberately injured his hand, BUT…
The Sleuth was asking too many questions, SO…
He tried to kill her.
How long should your Coverup Timeline be? Well, there are a lot of factors that might go into answering that question, such as how long your book is, and at what point the murder takes place. But I generally think of 3-4 glitches a good place to get started.
Warp and Woof
At this point in the planning process, a lot of writers experience some anxiety about the Villain’s actions being simply too… obvious. Our villainous duke has been stalking around our scenes, complaining about his injured hand and generally looking terribly suspicious. Surely our readers will clue into the fact that he’s our Villain?
And if they do—will that ruin our book? As mystery writers, we work hard to create that shock and awe moment when our Sleuth unveils the killer—and we have a horror of readers guessing our endings.
I’d like you to put that fear out of your head, or at least do what you can to set it to one side while you work through the planning process. Let me explain why.
Let’s imagine your mystery novel as a piece of woven cloth—not the stretchy cloth from which we get t-shirts and onesies, but the firmer cloth from which we get things like jeans, sheets, and tablecloths. Woven cloth is made from two sets of threads: one going up and down, which is called the warp, and the other going side to side, which is called the woof.
When a weaver begins creating a new piece of cloth, she begins by “warping” the loom: placing those up-and-down strands. Then she puts the thread for her woof onto a shuttle, and passes it back and forth—sometimes passing it over the warp threads, sometimes passing it under. When she passes her shuttle over the warp threads, they’ll be concealed on the right side of the cloth, and when she passes it under, they will be exposed. And by choosing when to go over and when to go under, she can create the pattern of the cloth.
What does this have to do with mysteries? Well, you can think of the warp, those long threads going up and down, as the Villain’s actions. You need to put them into place first, so you understand the story your Sleuth is going to uncover. What about the woof? That’s made up of your Sleuth’s actions. You will be charting her course through the story, deciding when to expose some of the Villain’s actions, and when to leave them concealed. By doing so, you can weave a beautiful pattern—and a wonderfully confusing plot.
So don’t be worried if, while you’re looking at the warp, it seems a trifle… simple. Only half the threads are on your loom so far—and a lot of what is there is going to wind up concealed.
Speaking of concealment, in the next chapter we’ll get deep into that subject, as we begin to tackle how to hide clues in plain sight.
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This is so great! I’ve read just about every book on writing mysteries out there, and I’ve never found one that as clear and instructive as yours. Can’t wait for the next chapter!
This is just so SO good. As good as reading a thousand delicious mysteries at once because they're all swimming in my head! The possibilities!!! Thank you so much, Jane!