De Quincey wrote an essay on the subject.
If you'd read it, you'd know better than to mix up artistic murder with
the commonplace assassinations of the ordinary burglar. You might just
as well say that Beethoven is the same sort of person as the Italian
organ-grinder who plays abominable tunes under your window, in the hope
of your giving him twopence to go away."
"Nothing you've said so far," said the Major, "convinces me in the
least that your identification of the lady is certain, or even likely
to be right."
"I knew you'd be sceptical. You always are sceptical about anything
the least out of the common; so while I was shaving this morning I
arranged the evidence in such a way that you can't possibly escape from
it. In the first place, there are the portraits. I don't dwell on
them because you haven't seen Miss King, and so they won't--for the
present--carry much weight with you. In the second place, there is her
confession. You choose to consider that I was mistaken about that, and
that Miss King was really confessing something of quite a different
kind. I say nothing about the improbability of my being mistaken in a
perfectly simple matter.
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