Miss Hinch

“Miss Hinch” has all the trappings of the typical whodunit. Harrison uses the conventions of the genre to craft a story of suspicion and second-guessing. The two women in the story circle one another, feinting and searching for an opening to win the battle of wills. Harrison subverts gender norms and expectations to build suspense. At the core of the tale is the quintessential battle of good and evil. The story’s ominous setting of dark, deadly cold New York City helps create an ominous mood, which deepens with the striking image of two dark figures moving in literal opposition to one another around a subway station entrance. Their behavior raises suspicions about their motives before they finally enter the train and face one another.

Harrison’s description of the characters helps remove them from suspicion. The elderly woman is described as “old,” “wispy,” “white-haired, wrinkled, spectacled, and stooped” (559), placing her in a category of women who easily blend in or become invisible in public. Her behavior contradicts this benign and harmless description, which suggests something suspicious or misleading in her characterization. Harrison’s use of alliteration highlights the adjectives that describe her feebleness and age. The clergyman’s description renders him equally harmless; his disability slows his pace, “handicapped as he was by his clubfoot and stout cane” (559). The juxtaposition between the setting and the characters is heightened by the presence of two slow-moving, non-intimidating creatures. Both Jessie Dark and Miss Hinch chose disguises that leave them free from questioning in the night, preventing the police or other passengers from viewing them with suspicion.

The characters’ suspicious activities continue as they enter the same subway car. The old woman moves down the car, and the clergyman follows her. Here, Harrison introduces the reason for the suspense. His hiding of the crime in question contributes to the ominous mood of the text. It is “commonplace enough, even vulgar” (560), but the ensuing events captivate New York City. The story that takes over the paper’s front page is that of a cunning murderess who evades the police through her expertise in costume and deception. Miss Hinch is a young, independent woman fleeing justice. The clergyman with a physical disability and the frail old woman could be anyone.

The train’s few passengers are all well-versed in the case’s details. This interlude reveals Miss Hinch’s infamous reputation as “a most astonishing impersonator of her time” (561) and Dark’s talent as an investigator. The elderly woman describes Dark’s prowess: “It seemed like she knew in her own mind just what a woman would do, where she’d try to hide and all, and so she could find them time and time when men detectives didn’t know where to look” (562). The passengers root for the virtuous Dark to nab the actress, but the drama delights them and enlivens their evening. This emphasizes the entertainment value of yellow journalism; violent, tragic events serve as diversions for the public. One passenger summarizes the investigation as “two clever women pitted against each other in a life-and-death struggle […] keen professional pride on one side and fear of the electric chair on the other” (562). Harrison uses the crowd’s titillation to demonstrate the story’s ubiquity. It also establishes the paradigm of two independent women fighting each other, one a villain and the other a heroine. In the train car, the woman borrows a blue-leaded pencil from the clergyman. This detail ultimately leads to the revelation of their identities.

The other passengers exit the train first, leaving the elderly woman and the clergyman to sit silently. When the clergyman states that he must change trains at the next station, the woman claims that she must do so as well. Thus, although their identities and purposes are unclear, their mysterious connection to one another begins to become apparent. Their process of ambling about the station, with the man rejoining her, reinspecting the paper, and attaching himself to her again, continues to build tension by making it clear that one person is in pursuit of the other. Despite walking through a major city’s streets, they are depicted as being alone together; in “the bleak concrete expanse, they detracted little from the isolation that seemed to surround the woman and the clergyman” (564). Their extended meal together and the question of the bill of fare catalyze the rising action: It becomes unclear who is pursuing whom. The clergyman previously appeared to be in pursuit of the woman. Now he flees from her. This is a classic strategy of the mystery, aimed at preventing the reader from prematurely solving the whodunit.

Harrison devotes much of the story to showing how well-known the crime drama is to the public. This is further evident in the response to the note scrawled on the back of the bill. Both the waiter and the proprietor know who Miss Hinch is, and they also understand how unlikely it is that she would show herself. Their disbelief in the likelihood of her capture is further demonstrated when the ticket chopper arrives with a second note. Harrison uses these characters’ disbelief as a foil to the reader’s and the main characters’ suspicions. The dull plodding of the secondary characters heightens the suspense and the desperation of the main characters. By this point, it is clear that either the woman or the clergyman must be Miss Hinch; dramatic irony, in which the reader knows more than a character does, further intensifies the suspense and the likelihood of the killer’s escape as the constabulary struggles to slowly understand what is already clear to the audience. Harrison uses the tempo of the policemen’s gaits to illustrate their gradual realization of what is happening. This process occurs through slow reflection, rather than as an epiphany: “As the minds of the four men turned inward upon the odd behavior of the pair in Miller’s restaurant, the conviction that, after all, something important might be afoot grew” (567). The group descends the steps from the lighted streets to the dark subway platform, returning to the ominous setting of the story’s opening.

Harrison manipulates expectations as the police officers reach the platform: The clergyman seems to have the upper hand as he coerces the old woman onto the platform, and the narrator notes the icy patch. Using the double deceptions of masculinity and ministry to avert suspicion from the clergyman, Harrison makes it seem as though the man unveiled Miss Hinch by wiping the elderly woman’s makeup off and revealing her unlined face. Paying into the myth of the triumphant hero, the narration seems to have reached its climax by having the villain meet her death.

However, Harrison adheres to the mystery genre’s convention of providing a last-minute plot twist, revealing that the clergyman is Miss Hinch. The heroic sleuth manages to out her even after her own death when the supposed clergyman’s beard catches on her hatpin as the villain performs the charade of grief. Miss Hinch’s final moment before capture involves the loss of the mobility and freedom afforded by her masculine disguise. With her arrest, she is defined by her “witchery,” but the heroic, martyred Dark’s death enshrines her within the feminine ideal; by morning, “the papers […] printed pictures of the unconquerable little woman and of the hat-pin” (569).