Demon Child
Thinking that I better look further into the question of James Hogg’s The Suicide’s Grave, I listened to a superb audiobook rendition.1 It’s a vivid, unsettling story which still enthralls as a crime mystery and as psychological horror. More to the point, I now think Grinell’s idea that this nineteenth century novel gets a cryptic shout-out in the Exorcist Letter is more than an interesting guess. I would rate it as highly probable.
We shouldn’t be too surprised when a search on the phrase “the suicide’s grave” pulls up something morbid which can be constructively related to The Exorcist or to the Zodiac case, but the thematic link is right on the nose here. James Hogg’s protagonist is a pious youth whose soul is captured by the devil, who turns him into a serial killer — his first assignment being the murder of a priest.
It also notable that the book is clearly intended as a satirical comedy. At times laugh-out-loud funny, Hogg lampoons religious fanatacism, puritanism, and theological sophistry by deadpanning savage irony and absurdist humor. That seems significant because the Zodiac labels The Exorcist a satirical comedy, even though it’s anything but. The juxtaposition of “the suicide’s grave” next to his review of the smash hit horror film is like a crossword puzzle clue for the smart set.
Apart from the broad brush linkage, there are several aspects to the novel which could have had special significance to George Hodel. The fact that the first murder is the intellectually “justified” killing of a priest is interesting in view of the hypothesis that George Hodel was Father Heslin’s murderer. There is also a big scene involving a life-and-death struggle on a clifftop. Meanwhile, the character of Arabella Calvert, an itinerant prostitute with a succession of underworld consorts who cuts herself a deal to escape the gallows, recalls William Hightower’s companion, Doris Shirley.
The shape-shifting devil character, Gil-Martin, — the gullible murderer’s “illustrious friend” — passes himself off as Czar Peter, prince of Russia, traveling incognito in Scotland. Gil-Martin’s MO is to go from town to town without acknowledging any fixed abode, to employ his remarkable powers of persuasion to recruit and manipulate wretches into murdering the victims on his list, and then leave these lesser intellects holding the bag after he moves on.
There is much reference in the book to the pathetic fallibility of the criminal justice system, to the conviction of innocents and the malleability of witnessess, judges and juries, to the power of self-deception, and to instances of gross misidentification and willful impersonation.
After the murderer’s written confession, which forms the middle section of the novel, there is a postscript describing the re-exhumation of his remains from a pauper’s grave a century after the main events. This epilogue dilates in almost interminable forensic detail on the condition of the cadaver, the shape of the murderer’s skull, what survives of his clothing and personal items, etc.
I have to say, it all seems right up George Hodel’s alley. I discussed what we know of his literary tastes in the last post, but we also have three works of fiction which he left us, all juvenilia from his teenage years. In “A Sad, Sad Tale,” published in his 1921 high school yearbook, a Pasadena housewife misses out on a double indemnity insurance payout when a spilled cup of tea leads her angered husband to omit taking out the policy right before he is run over by a streetcar, changing the entire course of her life. An untitled story published in the 1922 yearbook is a vignette depicting the death of one Baron Karl von Ritthauffen, who tumbles down a crevice in a glacier. The punch line is that his body is uninjured except for a crude letter ‘K’ ripped in his forehead on the way down by a projecting rock. Then, from January 1925, we have a poem entitled “Inference,” self-published under the pseudonym Vernon Morel in Hodel’s literary gazette, Fantasia. Writing in first person, Hodel casts himself as a demon child or avenging angel conceived during a wild night of lovemaking in the temple of the mother goddess, Cybele. His life’s mission remains unexplained.
There is also a Polish movie adaptation, Memoirs of a Sinner, which I have not seen. The artwork under this blog entry’s title is a detail from that film’s poster.