Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong by Pierre Bayard

Author:Pierre Bayard
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

Even if psychoanalysis allows us to justify the strangest behavior by finding its hidden motives, it is rather difficult for the reader to make what he knows of Stapleton’s personality coincide with that of a serial killer whose entire life is determined by the lust for money.

The only real passion of this bland character, attested by everyone who knows him, is his passion for scientific research, especially entomology. At the end of the book we learn that he is a well-known authority on the subject, and that he has even given his name to “certain moth which he had, in his Yorkshire days, been the first to describe.”47

Of course, the passion for entomology does not necessarily preclude a love of money. But it does seem that up to now Stapleton has not organized his existence according to financial interests. (He was, after all, the headmaster of a school.) It is strange that Holmes never wonders about the duality of a character whose motivation in life is supposedly split between scientific research and the yearning for affluence.

Although it is true that one can be simultaneously a scholar passionate about one’s field and an unscrupulous criminal, Stapleton seems to show a certain absentmindedness in the performance of his crimes. Thus Holmes is the first to acknowledge that the scholar might not have known about the existence of an heir in Canada,* which is clearly the sign of a singular lack of curiosity; it seems safe to say that most motivated criminals, in similar circumstances, would have taken the trouble to make inquiries.

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