The Widow's Walk (Details)
citation: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1947, 10(44):58-66
alias: None
teaser: None
summary: Annie is a young housewife determined to kill her Mother-in-law, thereby reclaiming the peaceful and happy life she shared with her husband Al before his Mother came to live with them. She decides to push the old lady over a ledge, but finds no opportunity until she reads an article on Widow Walks — porches on the roof with knee-high railings. After some convincing, Al becomes an unknowing accomplice, building one for her. Annie then has only two problems: getting her Mother-in-law up there, and keeping herself mad enough to go through with it.
words: 3,657
genre: Mystery
similar: Diagnosis Completed (The Other Arrow), It Wouldn't Be Fair
people: Annie, Mother, Al, the Dykes, the Crowleys
places: Unspecified (Eastern Seaboard)
comments: Considered Finney's first appearance ... a lengthy preamble to the story provides additional details about Finney's life and aspirations at the start of his writing career:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jack Finney is one of the three new writers discovered by EQMM's Second Annual Contest. With two others — Harry Kemelman and Mrs. R. E. Kendall — Jack Finney was awarded a Special Prize for a first published story. Mr. Finney is thirty five years old, married, has no children, and lives in Manhattan. At present he is a copywriter in the advertising agency of Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample — he has been writing advertising copy for the past twelve years. The EQMM Annual Contest spurred him to writing fiction, almost the only writing he has done outside of his work since he finished college in 1934. Submitting a story to the Ellery Queen contest, and winning a prize, has revived Mr. Finney's interest in creative writing and now he is tilting his typewriter at the windmill of radio. His first attempt at radio ratiocination is, in his own words,
quite a bloody script — two killings in less than fifteen minutes(which is certainly par for the course). Mr. Finney closed his letter to your Editor by saying:I once saw Ellery Queen (one of them) in person. He was, as I recall, denouncing the movies.Could be, could be!
At the end of the story, Ellery Queen provides additional comment, but note the plot and outcome of the story is revealed!
ABOUT THE STORY: The Widow's Walk is a crime story. No, that's not quite true. Annie planned to murder her mother-in-law, but as you now know, the plan backfired — the intended crime never came off. Purists might quibble, therefore, as to the legitimacy of calling The Widow's Walk a crime story. They would more than quibble if we called it a detective story: there is no detective character, either professional or amateur, and there isn't even the breath of detection anywhere in the tale.
Yes, we would be forced to admit that The Widow's Walk cannot properly be classified as a detective story.
Yet it contains, entirely apart from a premeditated crime, two of the most important elements in a detective story.
It contains (1) a clue, and (2) the purest of all detectival ingredients, fairness to the reader.
The clue is handed to you on a silver platter. It is placed before your eyes (and mind) in the most prominent position imaginable. It is literally thrust upon you.
The clue is the title of the story.
And the title of the story is an ingenious example of the modern fairplay method.
Had you stopped to analyze the full implication of the title, you would have been able to anticipate the climax; had you realized the full meaning of the title, you would have been able to foresee the unexpected ending. For consider, in the light of what you now know:
How could the story achieve its only possible technical perfection? Only if its main device — The Widow's Walk — turned out to be precisely and literally a “widow's walk.” How was that possible? Well, suppose the mother-in-law was actually murdered, as the reader was led to believe: the death of the mother-in-law would not make the porch on the roof a real “widow's walk.” Only one event would make the title come true — the death of the husband Al. That, and that alone, would make Annie a widow.
So, from the very beginning, from the moment you read the title of Mr. Finney's story, you should have known what would happen. But did you? We didn't. We missed the plot significance of the title completely …