The Butler Did It

The Butler Did It

Witty writing and an interesting system of questioning suspects makes The Butler Did It appealing. You play the mustachioed detective Jacques-Louis Barajean, who encounters a possible murder while on vacation. You have to choose the appropriate attitude to display while questioning each suspect. We like the way the program lets you view the introduction and tutorial separately from the game. Watch the clock: the police will come at noon in the trial version, and you must identify your suspect. You can go back through the game as often as you want, but the clues and perpetrator change each time.

On top of an amusing aside when the police arrive, three nag screens stand between you and the game’s exit. Navigating the hotel can be difficult; we found ourselves walking back and forth between hallways until we finally located the exit to the greenhouse. Occasional lapses in English grammar might distract some gamers. We really wish the program’s automatic notepad recorded suspects’ answers and where evidence was found, not just the physical description of each person. While the demo version doesn’t allow much time to actually solve the case, The Butler Did It shows promise.

One of the most familiar clichés of Mystery Fiction.

The stereotypical example is that a bunch of people are invited to a dinner in a wealthy man’s house, and the wealthy man is poisoned while they are all eating dinner. All the guests debate who among them is the killer, only to discover during the climactic summation gathering that the guilty party is none other than… the butler, who nobody bothered to think twice about; he’s just part of the furniture, as if the table was the culprit.

The butler is the avatar of the most unlikely suspect that turns out to be guilty because the author wasn’t creative enough to come up with a better way to surprise the reader. It’s the mystery writer equivalent of the Ass Pull, except that you can see it coming a mile away, making it, for modern readers, The Un-Twist. Ironically, because this trope is so well known, when an actual butler is involved he rarely “did it”, or, when he did, it’s often a parody and Played for Laughs.

The expression “The butler did it” is commonly believed to have been coined by mystery author Mary Roberts Rinehart in her 1930 novel The Door, although this is actually a real-world example of Beam Me Up, Scotty!. The actual plot device goes back still further, and was already regarded as hackneyed even then; the earliest verified explicit statement of disapproval regarding its use dates to S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 essay “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories”. (It might be noted that these rules would disqualify the authors who defined the genre, including Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle — indeed, rule 20 says that a good mystery should not include certain types of clues that Doyle introduced into the mystery genre on the grounds that they were now overused — and Van Dine’s essay could more accurately be titled “Twenty Rules for Writing a Fair Play Mystery”.) This article explores in detail the origin of this strange semi-existent trope. It’s possibly related to the Real Life stereotype that, if something goes missing in a home, the hired help likely stole it.

This is a Dead Unicorn Trope in murder mysteries, essentially a form of The Dog Was the Mastermind that’s too well-known to use. It is okay, however, for a butler to be a suspect, primarily to mislead the reader.

Not to be confused with A Wizard Did It, which is a form of Hand Wave (and doesn’t have much to do with actual wizards). It is the case that this is an English-language trope: crime novels popular in Germany in the same period were notorious for the cliche that “the gardener did it,” this transplanting the blame out of the house.

The province of Ontario is currently in Stage 3 of reopening and we are now open for business. Currently we are taking staffing orders for events that fall within government regulations and recommendations. We have initiated protocols with health and workplace safety restrictions in place in order to keep our staff and clients healthy and safe.

Employee protocols

• Employee COVID-19 mandatory safety training
• Employee health checks prior to the start of each shift
• Providing employees with (PPE)
• Onsite protocols that allow staff to keep proper distance and their safety in mind
• Protocols addressing situations where government regulations are not being followed

Event protocols

• All restaurants, bars, concession stands, and other food and drink establishments may open for indoor dine-in.
• Nightclubs are not yet safe to open, except for the purpose of serving food or drinks to patrons in accordance with the conditions that apply to restaurants and bars.
• All patrons must be seated when eating or drinking at the establishment.
• Establishments must take appropriate measures to ensure physical distancing of at least two meters between patrons from different tables, unless separated by plexiglass or some other impermeable barrier.
• Buffet-style service is not yet permitted in Stage 3.
• Singing or music may be performed by a person or group at the restaurant or bar, with restrictions, including barriers between the performers and patrons and physical distancing. Dancing may only be performed by someone working at the establishment with restrictions.
• Karaoke is permitted only outside of private karaoke rooms, which are not yet permitted to open in Stage 3, with restrictions including barriers, physical distancing and increased cleaning and disinfecting.
• Physical distancing of two meters between patrons from different households or social circles also continues to apply to food trucks, food courts, concession stands and tours, including tastings at wineries, breweries and distilleries.