By Ben Morris
Deception is a common motif in detective stories. After all, it would be difficult for a mystery to
be compelling if everyone told a truthful story. As such, a study of the ways a detective story uses deception is essential for understanding its craft. In “The Redhill Sisterhood,” we see many examples of things not being as they seem at first glance and how initial assumptions prevent Loveday Brooke from properly solving her case. In some cases, the story will immediately show that our assumptions are incorrect, whereas in other cases the story withholds this revelation until the very end. The failure of assumptions is key to the story’s mystery and suspense.
The most glaring assumptions in the story are those made by investigators about the titular Redhill Sisterhood. Police detectives view the sisters as prime suspects for a recent string of burglaries. The inspector finds the actions of the sisterhood suspicious, especially since it is undenominational and one sister has what is described as a criminal face. It is worth noting that there were a number of such sisterhoods during the Victorian era due to the Church Penitentiary Movement. Typically these sisterhoods were led by a male authority figure.[1] As such, when the police encounter a sisterhood that has a female leader and appears unconnected to any specific church, they become suspicious. When explaining the sisterhood to Loveday Brooke, Gunning assumes a dismissive tone, saying “they call themselves ‘undenominational’” rather than simply saying that they have no denomination.[2] As for the appearance of a criminal face, it is fairly typical for fiction to associate specific physical traits with villainy. This is of course also true in real life. As Mary Evans puts it, “The social world maintains a stubborn allegiance to the view that the surface appearance of human beings and their surroundings is an accurate indication of their moral worth and purpose.”[3] Criminals take advantage of this tendency to make judgments based on appearance. For example, in “The Redhill Sisterhood,” Mr. White assumes a kind demeanor in an attempt to trick Loveday Brooke into revealing her suspicions about her case. His attempt ultimately fails even though his seemingly kind demeanor is aided by his apparent good looks.
The story reveals over and over again that judgements based on appearance are flawed. Despite her appearance, Sister Monica proves to be tender to the children in her care, and as result, she is cleared of suspicion of the crime. As Brooke asserts, “I would like to ask some rabid physiognomist how he would account for Sister Monica's repulsiveness of feature as contrasted with young Lee’s undoubted good looks.”[4] By calling attention to prejudice, the story is pulling at a similar thread as Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” published in 1892, a little over a year before the publication of “The Redhill Sisterhood.”[5] Both stories highlight how assumptions are made based on appearance; however, while Conan Doyle uses these assumptions to emphasize the evil done by individuals in his story, Pirkis explores how these assumptions can’t be fully trusted to solve the mystery at hand. Pirkis makes it clear that the audience should be more like Brooke—focusing on how people act and making inferences from behavior rather than appearance.
Loveday realizes that Mr. White has been lying to her when she analyzes the physical properties of certain objects in his possession. For example, she notices that Mr. White’s book of poems is relatively unused, despite him saying that he is a literary man. Loveday also notices that he has the exact bicycle that she had previously seen John Murray ride. In particular, she notices damage from an accident that is particular to that specific bicycle. All of this detail enables her to conclude that the two characters are working together in some manner. The way the story’s point of view reveals these discoveries is itself worthy of discussion. The narration is third-person limited, largely following Loveday Brooke’s train of thought. However, in the scene where Brooke meets Mr. White and realizes the flaws in his story, she withholds this fact from readers. During the course of the story, Brooke does not mention her inferences about the book and the bike; it is only at the end of the story that she reveals her insightful conclusions. This contrasts the assumptions made by the average reader to the superior skills of Loveday as a detective. By pioneering this type of unreliable narration, Pirkis sets the stage for later detective stories.[6]
There are other aspects of “The Redhill Sisterhood” that play with assumptions and deception, such as Loveday’s strategic use of gender prejudice to deceive the criminals with her behavior while being spied on and her use of invisible ink to get a message across to Inspector Gunning. By playing into common assumptions about female detectives and by capitalizing upon the common prejudices of others, Loveday Brooke highlights her detection skills and takes her place as an important figure in the history of detective fiction.
Notes
[1] Scott T. Rogers, “‘Goblin Market’, Sisterhood and the Church Penitentiary Association,” Journal of Victorian Culture 27, no. 1 (2022): 77–78.
[2] Catherine Louisa Pirkis, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective, (New York: Dover, 2020), 70.
[3] Mary Evans, The Imagination of Evil: Detective Fiction and the Modern World (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 151.
[4] Pirkis, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, 94.
[5] Alyce von Rothkirch, “‘His face was livid, dreadful, with a foam at the corners of his mouth’: A Typology of Villains in Classic Detective Stories,” Modern Language Review 108, no. 4 (2013): 1046–47.
[6] Sari Kawana, “A Narrative Game of Cat and Mouse: Parody, Deception and Fictional Whodunit in Natsume Sōsseki’s Wagahai Wa wa neko neko dearu,” Journal of Modern Literature 33, no. 4 (2010): 7.