The Hit List: Top 7 Most Murderable "Victims" in Detective Fiction

So over the past year, or two, the idea for a rogues' gallery of the classic detective fiction emerged from the comments left on some of my reviews by Scott, a regular in the comments, but not a comic-like gallery with the expected suspects – like Professor Moriarity, Arnold Zeck, Arsène Lupin and Renya Karasuma. A gallery of the most odious, morally reprehensible and murderable victims. The type that makes it entirely understandable someone went through the trouble of putting together a clockwork alibi or create a locked room illusion just to get a stab at them.

I started compiling a list half a year ago, but thought it too basic a list with too many recently reviewed titles on them reads on them. So it got shelved for the time being. It has been months since "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohir Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 26-50" was posted and needed a filler-post. I really want to do "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorites from a Decade of (Shin) Honkaku Translations," but have to wait until everything published this year has been read and reviewed. Yukito Ayatsuji's Tokeikan no satsujin (The Clock Mansion Murders, 1991) sounds like it could become my favorite in the series and don't want to count out Seishi Yokomizo's Kuroneko tei jiken (The Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, 1947) or Yasuhiko Nishizawa's Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995).

So probably won't get around to doing that list until January, February of next year. I didn't want to do a basic list with simple favorites from a specific author, publisher or go back to the locked room well again. Believe me, I could have easily done "The Hit List: Top 10 Locked Room Mystery Novels That Need to Be Reprinted" part two. That brought me back to this list of murder victims who made us either glance questionably at our moral compass or outright root for the killer to get away with it. Putting the list together was not as easy as thought.

I was dissatisfied with the original top 10 with too many entries feeling like filler-entries compared to the marque entries. So decided to trim the list down to seven and pair each entry to one of the seven deadly sins, but that proved to be too awkward and distracting. If you scroll down the list, you find a few characters who could be paired with gluttony and greed, but those sins would underplay the reason why they made the list in the first place. So ended up with just seven entries.

 

The malefactors are presented in order of appearance:

Charles Augustus Milverton from "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" (1904) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905)

Why not start out with Charles Augustus Milverton, "the king of all the blackmailers," who has the distinction of not only being one of the OG of "murderable victims," but the poster boy of "murderable victims" of the pre-1930s detective story – before financiers and bankers took over the torch. I can't remember how many times an old-timely mystery referred to blackmailers as bugs or vermin who deserved to be exterminated. So their murder is often likened with community service. Not without reason. Milverton planned to publicly destroy a young woman to ensure future victims are more compliant to his demands. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a knights errant, a spot of burglary, but they end up witnessing Milverton getting shot and killed. They do absolutely nothing about it. Holmes even tells Lestrade "there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge." That remained prevailing opinion on blackmailers for decades.

Mary Gregor from The Silver Scale Mystery (1931) a.p.a. Murder of a Lady by Anthony Wynne

Another common victim of the early 20th century detective is the cruel, penny pinching family patriarch, or matriarch, who make their relatives dance like puppets from their purse strings. Mary Gregor is different for two reasons: she's not the family matriarch, but the sister of the patriarch and her hold over the family is a very disturbing, subtle kind of evil. Mary Gregor acted like a benevolent dictator who could wrap the most spiteful slander in the kindest words and always willing to forgive people for sins she invented. That alone hardly warrants murder, but her project to destroy the bonds between her nephew, his wife and two-year-old son in order to take the child comes a lot closer. Mary Gregor stands out as a subtle piece of evil not only in this early Golden Age detective novel, but among Wynne's own work that can be marred by Victorian-era melodrama and histrionic characterization.

Sandra, the Fat Lady from The Fair Murder (1933) by Nicholas Brady

I'm not easily shocked and have even gotten some funny looks for laughing at the blunt, edgy try-hard shit of Michael Slade, but Brady's The Fair Murder managed to do it. A detective novel deceptively presented as a weird, offbeat whodunit about the murder of the Sandra, the Fat Lady, who's found stabbed to death in her tent and it falls to Reverend Ebenezer Buckle to catch her killer – which doesn't sound too shocking or off the beaten path. However, what Reverend Buckle uncovers towards the ends makes The Fair Murder one of the darkest, grisly 1930s mysteries and Sandra the most deserving character to have a dagger shoved down her gullet. A monster without the excuse of being an actual monster.

Samuel Ratchett from The Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie

I'm sure many feel about Samuel Ratchett, an alias of Cassetti, the way I feel about Sandra and holds a similar "vintage victim" position as Charles Augustus Milverton. Samuel Ratchett, an American businessman, traveling on the Orient Express asks fellow passenger and sleuth extraordinaire, Hercule Poirot, to be his bodyguard. Poirot turns him down and after a restless night on the Istanbul-Callais coach, Ratchett is found covered with stab wounds in his berth. Poirot quickly figures out Ratchett's real identity and the shocking crime he has been running away from. Leave it to Christie to exploit the "murderable victim" trope up to the hilt to create its most infamous example.

Quentin Trowte from The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936) by Christopher Bush

The reprint renaissance has, over the past ten years, unearthed several new names for this list and Quentin Trowte immediately stood out when I read The Case of the Missing Minutes back in 2018. An elderly, psychological sadist who has custody of his 10-year-old granddaughter and they live together in a dark, remote house – where she's home schooled and sleeps in a windowless bedroom. When the servants in their cottage hear screams comings from the house at night, Ludovic Travers goes out to investigate. Travers not only finds a dying Trowte, stabbed in the back, but a frightened, malnourished child with evidence something disturbing had been going on at night in that house. Quentin Trowte and Mary Gregor would be a match made in hell or a child's nightmare.

Miss Octavia Osborne from Murder in the Family (1936) by James Ronald

I was tempted to drop Miss Octavia Osborne in favor of Paul A. Moxon and Sydney Deeping (Freeman Wills Crofts' The Mystery on the Channel, 1931) or Jesse Grimsby (Bruce Elliott's You'll Die Laughing, 1945), but they felt too like filler entries. Miss Octavia Osborne almost feels harmless compared to the previous entries, however, I noted in my review she establishes herself as top 10 material for most murderable victim in a detective story. Someone who's described by her youngest relatives as an acid-tongued, sniffy-nosed old megalomaniac who takes great pleasure in nurturing grudges over years and even decades. She takes even greater pleasure in turning down her brother, who married against her wishes, when he's let go from his job. So needs money to carry over his family, until he finds a new position. Now turning someone down is one thing, but Miss Octavia does it by inflicting as much damage as possible to point where you'd think she's baiting her family in taking a swing at her. Again, not the worst offender on the list, but thought at the time she deserved to make the cut.

Battery Sergeant-major William George Yule from Subject—Murder (1945) by Clifford Witting

You would assume the worst character in World War II detective novel would be found on the Axis side, but Battery Sergeant-major William George Yule, “Cruel Yule” to his enemies, abuses his position at a training camp to abuse and bully everyone below him – physically and mentally. Some of his victims were transferred or demoted while others have committed suicide. Not even animals were sparred his tortures. A sadistic bully of the first water whose end comes with “the harsh, brutal justice of the Dark Ages” executed with all the ingenuity of the Golden Age detective story. Brutal enough for a ping of pity even for character like Yule. Very much deserving of his spot in this rogues' gallery.

 

You know what, maybe I should have just done a top 10 favorite hybrid mysteries instead of holding a beauty pageant for corpses. This was a terrible idea, Scott. No idea why you bothered suggesting it. ;)

Notes for the curious: I didn't want to clutter up and derail this list with the first entry, but "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" feels like it could have been written by Doyle's brother-in-law, E.W. Hornung. If Hornung had written it, the story would have ended a little differently. Raffles and Bunny would have stepped over Milverton's body, pocketed the table silver and send a complimentary bouquet of flowers to a certain woman the next day.