Do we all have skeletons in our cupboards?
I have a writers’ mind (that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking
to it!) which harbours all sorts of ideas, phrases, and, it has to be said, the
occasional cliché. (Hey – they wouldn’t be clichés if they weren’t true, and
sometimes they are difficult to avoid.)
I love working with the idea of secrets, so the phrase ‘Fly, all is discovered.’ is a favourite
concept, one that bubbles to the surface at regular intervals. A particularly
apt one for crime and thriller writers, playing on the hypothesis of a universal
sense of guilt and the idea that a large part of the population has something
to hide.
I’m not sure if the expression is actually just a phrase or whether
it has acquired the status of an urban myth. A little wandering in the byways
of the Internet suggests that it has, and credits the origin both to Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle and to Mark Twain. The anecdote that accompanies it indicates that
if a message with these or similar words were to be sent to people of your
acquaintance (sometimes it’s to a group of famous and/or influential people)
then a large number of them would have left town by the end of the day.
Fly - all is discovered? |
It’s an idea that I occasionally toy with for a book. What
would be the modern equivalent of the message? How would it be delivered? Do
secrets of sufficient weight still exist these days to force someone to flee?
And where to? Would modern
communications and social media allow them to remain hidden? I haven’t got the answers, but I think there
is a book in there somewhere. One day perhaps I’ll extract it.
At the moment I’m working on a plot that has two characters
who each have a very big secret. If they got
that message both of them would leave town, although neither from a sense of
guilt.
So –it’s a fascinating concept, but we’re not all guilty.
Me? I don’t have any skeletons in any of my cupboards –
there simply wouldn’t be room for them.