Mysteries Abound!

[moon_custafer]

green_trilobite's been watching a lot of tv mystery series of late. A couple of thoughts that have occurred to me:

1. In all the golden-age mysteries I've ever read, when the Stupid Police (tm) find a body with a wristwatch or nearby clock smashed in the struggle, they always use it to estimate the time of death - and it always turns out the murderer moved the hands and then smashed the timepiece on purpose to throw them off. In recent police procedurals, OTOH, the smashed clocks keeps turning out to be exactly what they seem.

2. In the Six Napoleons (cut for spoiler) , wouldn't being hid in a piece of plaster for a year be very damaging to a pearl? They're very delicate gems, unlike diamonds or the other precious stones, and I can vouch that handling plaster dries out one's hands - I'd imagine it would strip the surface off a pearl.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

1 - Yes, murderers aren't what they used to be. Harder to move the hands on a digital watch too! Or maybe the authors figure the audience doesn't know what clock "hands" are. Remember the joke about the school teacher having to use a ruler to demonstrate "clockwise" to the class?

2 - I think the pearl would be OK until you tried to get the plaster off. Or maybe the guy just poked the plaster cast so as to make a cavity in it and then sort of rolled the pearl into the cavity. I suppose there also could have been an tiny unmentioned paper envelope around the gem. Do I get a No-Prize?

/Don

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Sure!

I, too, figured wrapping the pearl in something would be the simplest solution.