1. Introduction: Burglarious Backwaters

In one of E. W. Hornung’s Raffles stories, ‘The Criminologists’ Club’ (1905), it is suggested to Lord Thornaby that his rooms might be burgled while he is out presiding over a meeting about crime. Lord Thornaby brushes away both the possibility that he himself might be a victim of burglary and the topic in general, observing dismissively ‘I don’t know which of us it was … who seduced the rest from the main stream of blood into this burglarious backwater’ (Hornung 1996: 315). Blood is indeed the main stream of British detective fiction, but it has not always been so. Most real-life crimes centred on property were considered heinous, especially burglary (entering premises by night, as opposed to house-breaking, which took place by day). A conviction for burglary could carry a life sentence in British courts, and fear of burglary and theft was reflected in early detective fiction from Sherlock Holmes onwards. Investigating such stories allows this chapter to move away from women as dead bodies, so often a staple of crime fiction, to women as possessors of desirable objects and as actively engaged in crafting images and identities for themselves. Stories about theft also raise questions of justice, entitlement, and distribution of wealth; moreover, since there is typically an intimate connection between both the person who owns the object and the person who steals it, the nature and history of the object stolen can comment on both owner and thief. In this sense, objects detect people.