Firecrackers on the other side of the house? Attracts attention there and makes enough noise to cover breaking a window. Warm honey freezes up fast and hard in winter. Damned sticky too.
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Breaking into a house through a window
- Thread starter Marian Perera
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The MC needs to get to a safe in the study, open a combination lock (without knowing the combination in advance, so this will take some time and require silence/concentration) and then leave with his ill-gotten gains. Making some sort of loud noise/commotion on the other side of the house would wake up everyone inside. I guess the MC could enter the house and hide until everyone goes back to sleep, but it seems needlessly complicated (and I'm not sure if there are firecrackers to be found or bought in the local village).
Thanks for the tip! Either treacle or honey it is.
But I'm not going to buy him breaking a window and getting in if the homeowner is security conscious. You can't create a problem and then magically wave a wand to make it go away.
However, remember that the homeowner doesn't go around setting the bolts in the door. A servant would do this. But would a servant bolt the kitchen bolt? I'm not so sure. That means someone has to get up bright and early to let the kitchen staff in early in the morning. And what about the scullery maid that sneaks out at night for a little bit of romance during the night?
Further, the servants didn't get paid a whole lot in those days. It won't cost a whole lot to get one to unbolt the door.
Personally I like the idea of him trying the windows, discovering they were barred and impossible to get in, the coal chute was bolted, and he's screwed, until he sees the scullery maid sneaking out. Or the butler sneaking out to visit the scullery maid at the house next door.
Jim Clark-Dawe
I can add that the frames of the windows fit tightly enough that the MC can't work a knife between them, and all the windows are latched. I'm not sure what more the homeowner can do, security-wise. And there is a dog inside the house, which eventually discovers the MC and starts barking.
The servants live inside the house. Wouldn't that be normal for a nobleman's mansion in Victorian England?
She can certainly sneak out, but it's a bit of a lucky coincidence that she chooses to do so on the one and only night the MC can wait outside.
But how does the servant know that the MC (who's a stranger) won't come in and rape the housemaids or cut their throats?
And part of my setup is that the MC doesn't have any money. As in, none at all. I could have him take money from the heroine to bribe the servant, though then I'd have to come up with some plausible excuse for him to give the heroine (because she wouldn't agree with the robbery plan) and she's poor herself. The most she could give him would be a few shillings, and I'm not convinced it would be less risky plan for the MC to select some random maid, offer her a few shillings and ask her to let him in at night.
It's a workable idea, for sure. If he had three or four days, I could have him camping outside and watching for such a stroke of luck.
But I just can't have him go there, knowing he has only one night in which to do this, and so he sits and waits outside for hours until the butler sneaks out. How did he know the butler would sneak out? And what was his backup plan if the scullery maid had her period and just wasn't up for sex that night?
I completely agree. But how does the MC (a stranger to the area, penniless) finds enough money and the right person to bribe during the course of an afternoon?
Also, I want readers to like the MC for his resourcefulness, skills, and daring. It'll be clear he's resourceful, clever and daring if he breaks into a mansion via a MacGyver-esque trick. If he bribes his way in, though...
I was reading Janet Reid's blog today where she said a story doesn't necessarily have to be realistic, but it has to be believable. I think that definitely applies here.
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A real burglar got into my Victorian terrace house via a sash window, quite easily! They merely slid a knife through the latch between the top and bottom windows. Then they pushed the bottom part up and climbed in (ground floor, but could have been a higher floor if they accessed via an outhouse or convenient tree.)They cleverly re-drew the curtains and a clothes-rack in front of the window, so there was no trace of their entry. When I came home, they were upstairs in the bathroom and jumped out of that window. Five!!!! police arrived and told me to always keep a light in rooms when the house was empty. Special screws fixed into the sideframes secured the sash windows after that. They'd have to break the glass and the neighbours, only a few feet away, would hear it.
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I'd go with this approach. It seems to be the least complicated and still indicates that the person has some break in knowledge. I don't know what sort of narrative you are using, but if the reader is privy to this character's thoughts during the process, you could indicate when and how they learned this trick.
I ended up using both methods on different occasions. It is simpler to just push the latch out of the way, agreed, but I wanted to show the character's more unusual skills in action first. On a later occasion, he pushed the latch out of the way because the second time, speed was more important and it was an older house.
Instead of brown paper and treacle, try fly paper. Same idea. Victorian houses in my neighborhood all have small windows in the cellar. That would be a safer place to break the window to get in. The only problem would be if someone habitually locked the door to the cellar (and there would be a door to the cellar from the kitchen because various food stuffs and preserves were stored in the cellar).