30 pages • 1 hour read
Miss Hinch
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Character Analysis
Miss Hinch
Miss Hinch captivates the New Yorkers of the story with a tale of a daring escape. Her ability to become someone else as an actress creates her possibilities for camouflaging her identity as a criminal. Though her mind remains inaccessible in the text, she is described as intelligent and a “considerable beauty of a bold sort” (561). Miss Hinch’s first name is not provided. She blends into whichever character best suits her needs. Her theatrical performances consist of “transformations so amazing as to be beyond belief, even after one had sat and watched them” (561). She uses these talents for disguise and immersion into a role to allow her to temporarily escape justice after she murders her lover.
Miss Hinch must either run or surrender. Though her lover has “done things he hadn’t ought” (561), news reports do not leave space for the presumption of her innocence. Hinch is not framed as a stereotypical serial villain or femme fatale. She committed a single crime of passion, if she indeed committed it at all.
The narration reveals Miss Hinch’s increasing desperation as her suspicions of the elderly woman who insists on remaining near her increase. Although her thoughts are not revealed, her movements increasingly characterize her as a calculating murderer. Once the elderly woman thwarts her escape from the restaurant, Miss Hinch—as the clergyman—realizes she must get rid of her. As they return to the 14th Street station, Hinch seems to pull the woman toward the platform, where the clergyman/Miss Hinch notes “the overturned bucket of water, and the splotch of thin ice” (568). The narrator also shows her care to position the old woman so that as she is tripped, she falls in front of the speeding train.
Hinch’s near escape highlights her cleverness and cunning, traits that become her downfall. Embodying her role as clergyman and confident that she framed her pursuer as the murderer, Miss Hinch calmly speaks to the victim, making a show of her concern for the victim. Yet, like many villains of mysteries, she is ensnared by her pride, as this act unveils her as a woman and leads to her capture.
Jessie Dark
Jessie Dark enters the story in disguise to pursue the famous Miss Hinch. The narration shows that Dark enters the mind of her quarry, using her insights as a woman to anticipate their movements when male detectives cannot. Dark’s real name is Miss Mathewson. As Miss Hinch uses costumes to gain mobility as a single woman, Dark uses a pen name that is less overtly female than her given name.
Dark is characterized in many ways as a typical sleuth in the whodunit genre. She is clever, the public is fascinated by her special gift for catching female criminals, and the hunt for Miss Hinch is her most dramatic pursuit yet. Dark wants to make the capture so desperately that she risks, and ultimately loses, her life.
When Dark smashes into the supposed clergyman while they are both running, she commits to chasing down Miss Hinch to the end. She decides to attach herself to her foe, rather than running for the police or hoping the notes that she leaves for them are taken seriously. She descends the subway steps slowly, delaying as much as she reasonably can in the hope that the police will follow her clues and catch up with her and the disguised murderer. Although she is ultimately pushed to her death by Miss Hinch, a final narrative twist allows her to unveil the killer.
Train Passengers
The subway train passengers drive the narrative forward and show the appetite for salacious crime stories in the early 20th century. The passengers comprise a cross section of New York’s population; they come from myriad backgrounds and age groups, but each of them knows the story and has a theory as to its conclusion. The train carries an elderly man, a young couple, and the train conductor, in addition to the disguised Jessie Dark and Miss Hinch. The man champions Dark’s prowess: “Oh, she plays the game—yes, yes! She has her private ideas, her clues, her schemes. The woman doesn’t live who is clever enough to hoodwink Jessie Dark” (562). His lines not only serve an expository role for the reader; they also unknowingly reveal Dark’s name and methods to Miss Hinch. The clergyman/Miss Hinch listens as the passenger espouses his beliefs in Jessie’s “professional pride” and “sex jealousy,” stating that “women never have the slightest respect for each other’s abilities” (562).
The young couple joins the discussion, despite the forceful older man’s tendency to talk over them. The young man “felt perfectly free to offer his contribution” (562) because the public is so captivated by the story that its details are widely known. At one point, the conductor even leans into the car to add his thoughts to the conversation. He suspected an earlier passenger of being Miss Hinch in disguise with “a brown veil and goggles” (562). The young man brings up the police’s inability to catch Miss Hinch, and the chorus continues until Grand Central Station. The older man argues that Jessie will call the police if she finds the murderess, but the young man counters that Miss Hinch might just kill Jessie, unknowingly exposing the story’s final plot twist. The conductor also tells the purported clergyman that his wife was followed for five blocks under suspicion of being Miss Hinch. This further demonstrates the confusion the public can cause in the search for a criminal and highlights the public’s expectation that Miss Hinch disguises her identity but not her gender.
Harrison uses the passengers’ comments to demonstrate the story’s deep grip on the minds of the populace. The narration also reveals each passenger’s longing to be part of the story and demonstrate their ownership of the details, whether by feeling connected to the characters or by playing a role in capturing the infamous murderer. The excitement that the mystery generates reaches across social barriers of age and gender and invites speculation and suspicion.
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