The Maltese Falcon: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Even though Spade took Gutman’s money, he calls the police in order to get justice. Spade, however, may have ulterior motives. Since the falcon was a fake and Spade cannot make any money, he has no reason to protect the criminals. So, in order to get the cops to stop investigating the murder case (since he is a suspect after all), he turns in the criminals. As of yet, we don’t know if self-preservation or justice is driving Spade to act.

Unlike Gutman who appears to tell Spade the truth about his and Wilmer’s involvement in Thursby’s murder, Brigid cannot stop lying. She tells Spade that she didn’t trust Thursby, but Spade realizes she just was greedy and didn’t want to share the profits. Her greed gets Archer killed, though she denies responsibility for his death.

Again, Brigid and Spade face off in a kind of chess match of deceptions and skeptical insight. According to Spade’s theory, Brigid’s greed turns her into a heartless villain who killed a total stranger just so she could frame a man who’s been helping her so as to increase her own profits. If this accusation is true, Brigid seems just as bad or even worse than even Gutman.

This is a definitive moment, for two reasons. The possible relationship between Brigid and Spade comes to a climax here, as Spade is faced with protecting a woman he may care for versus getting justice for his partner (whom he neither liked nor respected). That he chooses justice for his partner suggests three things: first, that he does not put much stock in love in general; that he does not trust that Brigid truly loves him (which in some ways is a just a variant of the first reason, as Spade finds love innately hard to trust because there can be no proof of it; and, finally, that he does have a code of ethics that pushes him to seek justice no matter what.

At last, Spade reveals his steadfast ethical code, saying he only acted crooked in order to catch the real criminals. Even if he was offered the $50,000, Spade claims he would still have sought justice. Spade also gives the “bribe” he took from Gutman to the cops as evidence against Gutman, emphasizing how justice matters more to him than money. Meanwhile, that Wilmer killed Gutman shows the inevitable result of deception and betrayal: in this case Wilmer, who thought Gutman loved him, turns on Gutman after Gutman betrayed him.

Effie’s reaction reveals that sometime justice and loyalty cannot always coexist. Spade cannot do right by a woman who loved him and do right by his dead partner. Since Effie has been a source of morality, her disapproval makes Spade rethink his decision, makes him face the fact that he turned down the chance at love, for a woman who seemed his equal, for justice. And in the last moment Spade is faced with a further result of his choice: having given up on a chance at love with a woman who was his equal; having betrayed a chance at love in favor of justice; Spade must now confront Iva’s attempts to rope him into a more domestic arrangement with a woman he definitely does not love. Will Spade, after seeing the possibility of love and facing death, follow in Flitcraft’s footsteps and fall into a kind of blind domesticity?