No reply to (1 of 2).
 

Edmond.
 
You further say, "When I was setting up the circumstance, I did use the ordinary perfect ('the police were complacent' and 'gave up their inquiries'), but that was me, outside the circumstance telling you what it was.  A person (not me) inside the circumstance actually commenting upon the real case many years afterwards, would have said 'Someone had committed the murder; the police had no right to close the case'. That is perfectly good English."

 
I think, dear fellow, while conceding your seniority on the subject, that such convoluted reasoning as you have just demonstrated is what gives rise to otherwise reasonable people thinking that 'had' somehow belongs in front of past tense verbs, a practice that is rampant in America.
 
The past is past. The past includes everything from this moment back to the beginning of time. Accordingly, the sentence should read, "Someone committed the murder; the police had no right to close the case". That's what happened: someone committed the murder.
 
In the sentence quoted, "committed" is a past tense verb. It describes something that happened in the past. It doesn't matter whether it happened yesterday or a hundred years ago. The past is past.
 
The past perfect, however, is a specialized device that allows us to show that one past event preceded another past event.
 
When the Queen arrived, they dined. (They dined after she arrived.)
 
When the Queen arrived, they had dined. (They dined before she arrived.)
 
These two were laid on me by a professor at an English university and I totally agree. The two sentences denote different dinner times for the others, whoever "they" may be, relative to the Queen's arrival. The professor stated that there is no other way to convey the timing and I'm not sure I agree with that. Given enough words, one can exactly indicate anything. Ask any lawyer or more particularly, ask the patent office.
 
Aside: I prosecuted my first patent pro se, which is legal in this country but vigorously discouraged by the patent office. It took me four years of patiently working the language until they (grudgingly) conceded that the words meant exactly what was intended. That's where I learned the simple method of bracketing what is to be (deleted) and underlining what is to be substituted or added. They never start over. They work from what has been established and massage one word, or several words, at a time.
 
.brad.XXaug08.


      

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