Chapter 37: The Sleuth's Trap
What savvy Sleuths do when they're down to the wire
Let’s return, for a moment, to the story of Mrs. Mass in “Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger,” which we discussed in the previous chapter. When last we left her, Mrs. Mass had tried to use an Incompetence Alibi (being blind) to prevent her from being suspected of shooting her Victim. However, this alibi was disrupted when Monk realized that she had extended her left hand to shake with a man whose right hand was in a sling.
Case closed, right? Not so fast. Yes, this disruption is a Damning Clue that leads our Sleuth to understand exactly what happened. But it’s simply too small, subtle, and undocumented to carry any weight at trial. And the end of a mystery isn’t just about knowing the solution—it’s about using that solution to achieve justice.
In this episode, Monk has what I call Story Proof—proof sufficient to convince the Sleuth, and the reader. But he’s still got to find a way to get his hands on Legal Proof—proof sufficient to convince a court.
There are lots of reasons your Sleuth may find himself in possession of the Story, but not the Legal. Maybe:
The Story Proof is based on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence
The Story Proof is based on a tangible clue that’s ephemeral, subjective, or difficult to document, such as a smell
The Sleuth had Legal Proof in hand, but it has been lost, destroyed, or declared inadmissible in court
In that case, your Sleuth may find himself wanting to run a Sleuth’s Trap: a plot device where he tricks the Villain into revealing his own guilt. There are a lot of ways to run the Sleuth’s Trap, but basically your sleuth will be trying to do one of two things:
Force the Villain to point the way to the Damning Clue
Get the Villain to behave in a way only a guilty person would
Your Villain may also use a Sleuth’s Trap to smoke out an unknown killer—especially if time is of the essence. In several of the examples in this chapter, the Sleuth runs their Trap against a group of suspects, allowing the guilty party’s reaction to seal his fate.
I encourage you to get creative with how you construct Sleuth’s Traps, because there are a lot of different ways they can go down. This chapter will give you a good idea of several of the tactics available, but it’s not meant to be a comprehensive list.
Trick the Villain into Admitting to Revealing Knowledge
We’ve reached the part in this book where I get to trot out every 80’s kid’s favorite boy detective: Encyclopedia Brown. In the story “The Case of Cupid’s Arrow,” Encyclopedia is trying to figure out who tried to steal a diamond necklace. The thief was thwarted in his attempt by the necklace’s owner, Mr. Crane, who launched the necklace out the window with a bow and arrow. Then the thief, in frustration, beat Mr. Crane.
Fortunately Crane has a suspect: Mr. Holt. Encyclopedia’s dad, police Chief Brown, summons Holt to the Crane estate, and meets him at the foot of a narrow staircase. There, he tells Holt that fortunately, the necklace’s whereabouts have been narrowed down, and it is “only an arrow flight away.”
Holt responds, “Then go outside and look for it!” And that’s when he’s arrested—because, according to Encyclopedia, the natural response of an innocent man would be, “Then go upstairs and look for it!” Hearing the chief’s words, at the bottom of a narrow staircase, and without any knowledge of Crane’s trick with the arrow, Holt should have interpreted them as “only a narrow flight away.”
To be honest, I think Holt’s natural response should have been, “Say what?”—since “a narrow flight away” is an extremely odd way to say “upstairs.” Nevertheless, Holt’s response gives away Revealing Knowledge that ties him to the scene of the crime.
A very fun way to trick the Villain into admitting Revealing Knowledge is to make him think that he’s in danger from the murder weapon. In the Columbo episode “Short Fuse,” our Villain, Roger, rigs a cigar case with a bomb, and puts it in his uncle’s car, expecting it to be opened while his uncle is traversing a twisting mountain road. He’s hoping the death will look like a car crash.
Columbo figures out Roger’s scheme, but without any proof, he has to execute a Sleuth’s Trap. He asks Roger to accompany him to inspect the crash site one final time, and the two men board a tiny cable car. Columbo waits until it’s suspended in midair before he pulls out a cigar box that’s identical to the booby-trapped case. He claims that it was found, unopened, at the crash site.
Since the bomb won’t go off until the case is opened, Roger is now sure that (1) his uncle’s death really was a car accident, and (2) much more importantly, he’s trapped in a small space with a bomb that could go off any minute. He sweats and stares as Columbo clumsily bumbles the case about, making it likely that it could spring open at any second. Finally, Roger can’t take it anymore, and tries to hurl the box out of the car. When it opens harmlessly and a bunch of ordinary cigars go flying, he realizes he’s been had.
In both of these cases, we’ve seen situations where the Sleuth had Story Proof implicating a particular suspect. But this kind of trap can also be run even if the Sleuth isn’t yet sure who the guilty party is. Imagine a situation in which it is widely believed that the Victim was poisoned with the liquor in his study—but your Sleuth has figured out that the poison was actually in the sugar bowl in his tea set. She makes a cake and serves it to the suspects. While they’re eating, she cheerfully mentions that she ran out of sugar in the kitchen and had to borrow some from the tea set. The Villain is whichever character greets this information with alarm.
Other examples: “The Case of the Flower Can” in Encyclopedia Brown Tracks them Down by Donald J. Sobol; Remington Steele “Second Base Steele”
Stage an Evidence Race
An evidence race is a plot device in which both the Sleuth and the Villain are aware of a particular piece of evidence that has yet to be found. Whoever gets to the evidence first will win this game of cat and mouse—the Sleuth by using it to convict the Villain, and the Villain by destroying it.
Evidence races are great fun in any plot. Just imagine all the different pieces of evidence that could be out there in your world—witnesses, documents, diaries!—and the machinations your Sleuth and Villain might go through to get them. But when used as a Sleuth’s Trap, it’s usually a case of the Sleuth making the Villain think he’s in an evidence race. The Sleuth isn’t actually zeroed in on any particular piece of evidence—but she’s hoping that if the Villain thinks she is, he may give himself away.
In an episode of Columbo called “Double Exposure,” Columbo is certain that there’s some crucial piece of evidence secreted away in the Villain’s office—but he doesn’t know what it is, or exactly where to look for it. He takes pictures of himself in various positions around the room, then introduces them in split second cuts to a movie being watched by the Villain. This plants the subliminal message that Columbo is close to finding the evidence. The Villain panics, because he knows exactly what piece of evidence will sink him—a calibration coverter he used to allow his gun to fire smaller cartridges than it was designed for. He hurries to his office to retrieve the converter and hide it away—and that’s when Columbo steps out of the shadows and confronts him. By joining the false evidence race, he’s inadvertently pointed the way to the Damning Clue.
But the Villain doesn’t always have to point out evidence to fall victim to this version of the Sleuth’s Trap. Sometimes just jumping into the evidence race is enough to make his guilt apparent. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a Vulcan officer named Valeris acts as a Mastermind, enlisting a couple of redshirts, Yeomen Burke and Samno, to assassinate a Klingon chancellor on her behalf. When it seems as though the Enterprise crew is closing in on the culprits, Valeris coolly dispatches them.
Captain Kirk and crew find the yeomen, dead in a turbolift. That’s when Kirk hatches a Sleuth’s Trap: he makes a ship-wide announcement, ordering the ship’s stenographer to sickbay to take testimony from Yeomen Burke and Samno. (Side note: What is a ship’s stenographer? Does Starfllet have a JAG office?)
This announcement makes Valeris believe she’s in an evidence race. The evidence in this case is the yeomen’s testimony, which she must destroy by killing them. She creeps into sickbay with a phaser—and that’s when she’s caught red-handed.
This is another trap that can be used even if the Sleuth isn’t sure whodunit. She can announce the evidence race to a large group of suspects, then wait and see who takes the bait.
Other examples: Columbo, “Death Lends a Hand”; Remington Steele, “Vintage Steele”
Give Them an Incentive to Confess
Our third way of executing the Sleuth’s Trap is to make the Villain think they have a choice: confession on the one hand, and on the other, something they find even more unpleasant.
In an episode of Columbo called “Mind Over Mayhem” Columbo makes the Villain believe that his beloved son is about to be sent up the river for his crime. He can’t see any way of getting his son off the hook—except by confessing his own guilt.
Getting the Villain to choose confession may seem hard—but it’s not impossible, because most people do have a few things they value over their own freedom. Many of them value the well-being of those they love, like the Villain in “Mind Over Mayhem.” They also may value their life over their freedom. That means that this version of the Trap can work by making the Villain think that he’s about to become the target of a revenge killing if he doesn’t get somewhere nice and secure—like a jail cell—pretty darn quick.
Bluff Like a Boss
If your Sleuth has nothing, she might just be desperate enough to use a pure bluff. She tells the Villain she has evidence against him, then watches how he reacts. Your Sleuth may claim that a missing witness has been found, or perhaps that the Villain’s fingerprints were found on a particular object. Whatever evidence she’s claiming doesn’t matter nearly as much as the Villain’s reaction.
Maybe he’ll break down in tearful confession, like so many Villains do in courtroom dramas (Hello, Perry Mason!). Maybe he’ll make a run for it. He may even take a hostage, or attack the Sleuth. Whatever he does, it’s sure to make his guilt apparent to all.
This is a Trap that’s usually sprung on a single suspect—but it can also work when the Villain is unknown, as in an episode of M*A*S*H called “I Hate A Mystery.” In this episode, someone is stealing personal items from the tents of the army officers at the 4077th army hospital. The camp is searched, and all of the purloined items are found in the locker of the show’s protagonist, Hawkeye Pierce.
To clear his name, Hawkeye puts out the word that all the stolen items have been locked in Col. Blake’s desk. When the items go missing again, Hawkeye gathers the likely suspects in the mess tent and tells them that he’d painted the items with a chemical that causes human fingernails to turn blue.
Everyone is surprised, but only one suspect hides his hands—Ho Jon, a Korean teenager who helps out around the camp. Although Hawkeye had no evidence, Ho Jon’s reaction gives him away.
Other examples: Remington Steele, “Small Town Steele”; Perry Mason, “The Case of the Malicious Mariner”
Force Them to Publicly Break a Crucial Narrative
So what finally happened between Monk and Mrs. Mass in “Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger?” Monk was certain that she was no longer blind, and was therefore capable of committing the crime. But he needed proof.
Throughout the episode, the police department had been plagued by a streaker who kept turning up at inopportune moments. After the streaker is caught, he’s offered clemency in exchange for streaking one more time—in the park, where Mrs. Mass is sitting. When she sees him, her shocked reaction is obvious enough that it can be documented and used as evidence.
Other examples: “Mr. Monk and the Critic”
A Sleuth’s Trap can be a delicious way to bring your mystery novel to a close—showing off your Sleuth’s cleverness while exposing the Villain to the shame of bringing about his own downfall. But there are still a few more ways to end your novel. I call them the “alternate endings,” and they’re what we’ll dig into in next week’s chapter.
What’s your favorite Sleuth’s Trap? Let me know in the comments!