The Name of the Great Detective.

Davies, Peter Ho

The name of the Great Detective remains, of necessity, an abiding mystery.

This is not to imply that the Great Detective has a mild-mannered alter-ego, as of a Bruce Wayne or a Clark Kent. The Great Detective's unswerving commitment to truth and justice eschews such disguises, since for the Great Detective to be anything other than the Great Detective would be to fall into deceit, or duplicity, antithetical to his purpose. No masked man, he; rather an unmasker of men. It is axiomatic, therefore, that the Great Detective never assume another identity and, in consequence of such honesty, his name is held in utmost secrecy.

Most understand this anonymity to be for the sake of security. If the Great Detective's name were known he might be vulnerable to attack, might become the subject of criminal activity, instead of its uncoverer. He would in this regard be the cause of crimes, rather than their solution, or even, unthinkably, their victim, requiring another greater detective's investigation. Since the Great Detective is the greatest detective (modesty, and a certain sensitivity to tradition, deter him from taking this as his title, though it is said he did for a time toy with 'Chief Inspector') this would, of course, be a logical impossibility.

Anxious citizens, to be sure, have periodically voiced a concern that the Great Detective's name being so shrouded, his very being might be doubted, despite his manifest works and 100% clearance record. It has even been whispered that the Great Detective is, in this respect, failing in his civic duty. If his existence were proven, after all, there would be no more crime, since whosoever knowing of the Great Detective and believing in him would be foolish enough to commit criminal acts? Sophists among us, the criminal masterminds especially, have pursued this argument so far as to actually deny the existence of the Great Detective. If the Great Detective truly wanted to stop crime, they contend, he would surely reveal himself. Since he does not, he cannot exist. Such reasoning is facile, however. If the Great Detective were a great deterrent, there would be no crime and therefore no criminals to detect: then and only then, in fact, would he cease to be. Were he to prove his existence, as demanded, he would in essence be simultaneously disproving it. By these lights, the Great Detective's secrecy regarding his identity may be seen as one more example of his piercing brilliance.

More recently, however, certain subversive elements have raised a radical, new objection, accusing the Great Detective, himself, of being above the law. After all, they point out, what if the Great Detective decided to commit a crime--could he be caught? Indeed, these scurrilous critics contend, he might already be responsible for countless unsolved murders. The Great Detective, they assert, is thus both the world's greatest detective and its greatest crime lord.

While this is clearly the latest self-interested attempt by the lawless to undermine the authority of the Great Detective and, indeed, of the entire criminal justice system, the charge must be refuted. To this end, scholars at the Police Academy, in concert with the Great Detective himself, have arrived at a definition of the perfect crime and concluded that the Great Detective is incapable of performing it.

The perfect crime, according to their theoretical research, would be an undetectable murder--murder being the most heinous of all crimes (as well as a traditional and popular classic). The scenario for this perfect or infallible murder runs as follows: Victim A is found; Suspect B is sought. Victim A is male, discovered in a heavily trafficked location, say a busy park in the center of town, with no identification: a John Doe. There are, however, several clues about Suspect B. Shoe prints are left at the scene. Wounds to the victim's body suggest that the assailant is of a certain size, and right-handed. These clues, however, lead only to the following conclusions. Suspect B is of average height (determined from the angle of the blows), average weight (determined by the depth of his shoe-prints) and average strength (judging from the harm to the victim's body). Furthermore, he is, as mentioned, right-handed like the majority of the population; male (from the force of the blows) like the majority of murderers; and wears the best-selling shoe size and style.

Already the alert reader will observe the nature of perfection in the perfect murder. All deductive detective work, from the very first demonstrations of the method by such luminaries as M. Auguste Dupin, proceeds from the assumption that anyone, in theory (with the exception of the detective who can rule himself out, unless he is a Bad Cop), could have committed the crime. As clues are gathered, however, evidence eliminates possible suspects, all the time focusing more and more narrowly on a solitary individual, who must, logically, be the criminal. What the thought experiment of the perfect crime envisages, however, is that rather than narrowing the field, the evidence collected about Suspect B ensures it remains as wide as possible.

Crime aficionados will note that while this is an intriguing scenario, it should still be possible to detect the killer's identity through his choice of victim. But here the theoretical case constructed by the Great Detective and his colleagues takes a singularly logical and devilish turn. It is further determined that Victim A is also of average height and build, that his shoes and clothes are also of the most common sizes and styles. The park he is found in is a regular haunt of all our citizens, regardless of age, and social class. Victim A, therefore, is to all known degrees also an average man.

Thus, the report concludes, the perfect crime would be the murder of one statistically average citizen, by another statistically average citizen. Hence the Great Detective--an individual entirely exceptional--could not possibly have committed such a crime. It is incidentally to be noted that such a killing need not be random. The motive for such a murder on the part of Suspect B might well be to find some means of distinguishing himself, of making himself less average. The sole distinguishing and individual feature of this criminal, therefore, would be that he was a criminal, but this one trait alone, of course, would not be sufficient to detect him.

While these researches, and their subsequent approval by Internal Affairs, have cleared the Great Detective of any possible, or even hypothetical, wrongdoing, the conclusions of the report have had additional unforeseen consequences that have failed to fully restore public confidence. Sadly, and worryingly, as commentators have pointed out, one corollary of the thought experiment is that while the Great Detective could never commit this crime, neither could he solve it, suggesting the sobering and disturbing possibility that crime is ultimately a stronger force than detection. (Previously, popular opinion had held that detection would always triumph over crime, and even more sophisticated thinkers among us had considered crime and detection to be in perfect balance, neither able to exist without the other).

In response to these concerns the Great Detective himself has, in an unprecedented move, issued a statement through his attorneys to the effect that even though the perfect murder of one actuarially ordinary individual by another resists detection this need not be any cause for alarm. As the Great Detective goes on to explain, the peculiar horror of murder lies in the extinguishing of individuality. But if one thoroughly average man kills another, what, in truth, is lost? Can such a killing even be called murder? So theoretically perfect a crime, the Great Detective continues, remains ultimately undetectable because it is indefinable, insignificant, indeed, almost immaterial.

It remains to be seen whether this latest statement from One Police Plaza will allay public concern ...