It's not always easy to pinpoint the origin of a cliché, but many of them come from literary fiction. In particular, what we call "genre fiction" — mysteries, crime thrillers and whodunits — has contributed many of the common phrases in our lexicon.
Such as "the butler did it." It's a great phrase that does a lot of work in a very little amount of space. It evokes the image of a tired and overburdened attendant, angry at his employers for some slight or an accumulation of them, ready to kill while maintaining the practiced, chilly demeanor that comes with his station.
It came from Pittsburgh.
Mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart was one of the first female World War I correspondents to travel to the front lines, where she was able to tell the stories of soldiers first-hand. Before and after the war, she wrote hundreds of short stories and essays alongside dozens of mystery novels, which earned her the moniker, "America's Agatha Christie."
She's also credited with inventing the plot device, if not the phrase, "the butler did it." Rinehart was born in Allegheny City in 1876. At 20, she graduated from the Pittsburgh Training School For Nurses, and subsequently married a local doctor, settling to raise her children in town. But during the stock market crash of 1903, the Rinehart family lost their savings, finding themselves destitute.
The 27-year-old mother of three decided to support her family with her hobby: telling thrilling stories. She wrote and placed more than 40 stories in magazines around the country. In 1908, she released her hit novel "The Circular Staircase," which eventually sold more than a million copies. Within five years, the Rineharts went from being broke to thriving. Now she had plenty of domestic help — including a few butlers.
She left this comfort to write from Europe for the Saturday Evening Post during World War I, where she conducted interviews with royalty as well as the everyday men of the front lines. Still — no matter how serious some of her writing got, Rinehart always returned to her first love, mysteries.
"The Door," published in 1930, introduced the trope that "the butler did it." In the novel, the butler actually murders an elderly family nurse and his crime is not confirmed or fully revealed until the ending. Although that exact phrase does not appear in the work, reviews and discussion of "The Door" brought it to life.
