2018.07.07 柯南-道尔的辩护

shiyi18

观察侦探
当阿瑟-柯南-道尔喊出 "J'Accuse... "的时候。
在 "苏格兰德雷福斯 "案中，这位小说家部署了他虚构的侦探的敏锐度

2018年7月7日


柯南-道尔的辩护。作者：Margalit Fox。兰登书屋；352页；27美元。简介；16.99英镑。

19世纪末，一位病人出现在苏格兰一家医院的医生和他的学生面前。医生约瑟夫-贝尔，鹰钩鼻上方的眼睛炯炯有神，对他说。"你来自利伯顿，"他说。"你赶着两匹马，一匹灰色，一匹海湾；你可能受雇于一家啤酒厂。" 令他的学生们感到敬畏的是，这位目光敏锐的医生在所有方面都是正确的。

眼尖的读者会猜到他的一个信徒的身份。阿瑟-柯南-道尔爵士（见左图）。众所周知，柯南道尔将贝尔的推理天才（以及他的简介）借用到他的虚构侦探夏洛克-福尔摩斯身上。鲜为人知的是，柯南道尔还利用贝尔的方法来解决现实生活中的犯罪。其中一起犯罪--谋杀--是玛格丽特-福克斯的新书《柯南道尔的辩护》的主题。


柯南-道尔以前也曾卷入过司法不公，但这一次会让他们都黯然失色。它是如此腐败，以至于 "与其说是苏格兰的判例，不如说是俄国的味道"；它是如此反犹，以至于被错误指控的受害者被称为 "苏格兰的德雷福斯"；它是如此令民族自豪感尴尬，以至于英国作家不是用一个而是用两个国际比喻来表达他们的厌恶。

调查本来是很简单的。1908年12月21日，富有的老处女玛丽恩-吉尔克里斯特被人用钝器敲打致死。此后不久，苏格兰警方逮捕了当地的德国犹太人奥斯卡-斯莱特（图右），从而 "解决 "了这一案件。斯莱特被认定有罪，并被判处在彼得黑德陛下监狱服苦役。

如果不是他的困境被提请柯南-道尔注意，他可能会一直呆在那里，这种方法本身就充满了维多利亚时代的悲惨剧色彩。一张恳求的纸条被带出了彼得黑德，藏在一个出狱的囚犯的假牙里。柯南道尔是维多利亚时代的一个大人物，留着海象胡子，热衷于板球和公平竞争，他觉得有责任进行调查。他开始工作，翻阅了一页又一页的证据。他对自己的发现感到震惊。

福尔摩斯对华生说，在事实面前进行理论推理是一种极度的犯罪。像贝尔一样，福尔摩斯从血迹、鞋上的泥巴以及在犯罪现场发现的精确的灰烬等细微的证据中得出结论--这些科学技术在很大程度上归功于福尔摩斯本人，最终成为全世界警察部门的标准做法。当柯南道尔研究斯莱特事件时，他意识到苏格兰警方的理论不仅仅是在事实发生之前，而且是在犯罪发生之前。


格拉斯哥的警察已经观察斯莱特好几个月了。他不是天使，但福克斯女士认为，他之所以引起怀疑，主要是因为他是外国人。不仅是外国人，而且是德国人、犹太人、赌徒和（也许是最可怕的）放荡不羁。警方立即提高了警惕。

柯南-道尔在斯莱特案中发现的最深的污点不是血迹，而是反犹太主义和仇外心理的黑暗色调。如果这是一个苏格兰的德雷福斯，那么柯南-道尔就是它的左拉，他用他的地位所允许的所有力量喊出了 "J'Accuse...！"。1927年11月14日，斯莱特被释放。此案结束了。但它所暴露的偏见却一直存在。

斯莱特从未回到他在德国的家人身边。福克斯女士说，这可能是 "恰到好处的"。几年后，纳粹掌权，他的两个妹妹在特莱西恩施塔特和特雷布林卡被杀害。




Watching the detectives
When Arthur Conan Doyle cried “J’Accuse…!”
In the case of the “Scottish Dreyfus”, the novelist deployed the acuity of his fictional detective

Jul 7th 2018

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Conan Doyle for the Defence. By Margalit Fox. Random House; 352 pages; $27. Profile; £16.99.

TOWARDS the end of the 19th century a patient appeared before a doctor and his students in a Scottish hospital. The doctor, Joseph Bell, eyes bright above a hawk nose, addressed him. “You came from Liberton,” he said. “You drive two horses, one grey, one bay; you are probably employed by a brewery.” To the awe of his students, the sharp-eyed doctor was right on all counts.

The sharp-eyed reader will have guessed the identity of one of his acolytes: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (pictured left). It is well known that Conan Doyle borrowed Bell’s deductive genius (and his profile) for his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. Less well known is that Conan Doyle also used Bell’s methods to solve real-life crimes. One such crime—a murder—is the subject of Margalit Fox’s new book, “Conan Doyle for the Defence”.


Conan Doyle had involved himself in miscarriages of justice before, but this one would eclipse them all. It was so corrupt that it “savoured rather of Russian than of Scottish jurisprudence”; so anti-Semitic that its wrongly accused victim became known as a “Scottish Dreyfus”; so embarrassing to national pride that British writers resorted to not one but two international analogies to convey their disgust.

The inquiry should have been simple. On December 21st 1908 Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy spinster, was bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument. Shortly afterwards the Scottish police “solved” the case when they arrested Oscar Slater (pictured right), a local German Jew. Slater was found guilty and sentenced to hard labour in His Majesty’s Prison Peterhead.

There he might have remained, had his plight not been brought to Conan Doyle’s attention, via a method itself redolent of Victorian melodrama. A pleading note was carried out of Peterhead, hidden in the dentures of a discharged prisoner. Conan Doyle, a Victorian dynamo with a walrus moustache and a passion for cricket and fair play, felt duty-bound to investigate. He set to work, trawling through page after page of evidence. He was horrified by what he found.

It is a capital offence, Holmes declared to Watson, to theorise in advance of the facts. Like Bell, Holmes drew conclusions from evidence as minute as bloodstains, mud on shoes and the precise sort of ash found at a crime scene—scientific techniques that, largely thanks to Holmes himself, would eventually become standard practice in police departments across the world. As Conan Doyle examined the Slater affair, he realised the Scottish police had theorised not merely in advance of the facts but in advance of the crime.


The bobbies in Glasgow had been watching Slater for months. He was no angel but, Ms Fox argues, he had aroused suspicions mostly because he was foreign. Not merely foreign, but German, Jewish, a gambler and (perhaps most horrifying of all) debonair. The police were immediately on their guard.

The deepest stains identified in the Slater case by Conan Doyle were not of blood, but the darker tones of anti-Semitism and xenophobia. If this was a Scottish Dreyfus, then Conan Doyle was its Zola and he cried “J’Accuse…!” with all the might that his position allowed. On November 14th 1927 Slater was released. The case was over. But the prejudices it exposed lived on.

Slater never returned to his family in Germany. That, says Ms Fox, was probably “just as well”. A few years later the Nazis took power and his two sisters were murdered at Theresienstadt and Treblinka.