Not a Ghost to Be Found: "The Name on the Window" (1951) by Edmund Crispin

"Edmund Crispin" was the pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery, a classical musician, composer, conductor, anthologist and mystery writer, who has been called one of the last writers of detective stories the classical, Golden Age traditional and mold – debuting with The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944). A warm homage to Crispin's favorite mystery novelist and principle influence, John Dickson Carr. Crispin's series-detective even claims to be a personal acquaintance of Dr. Gideon Fell ("heaven grant Gideon Fell never becomes privy to my lunacy..."). If you want to get a good idea just how big of a JDC fanboy Crispin really was, I highly recommend tracking down a copy of Swan Song (1947).

Lamentably, Crispin was one of those mystery writers who shined like a brief, sudden burst of bright light that dimmed within a few years to a small flicker. Crispin published eight of his nine detective novels between the mid-1940s and early '50s. The ninth and final Professor Gervase Fen novel, The Glimpses of the Moon (1977), appeared more than a quarter of a century after The Long Divorce (1951). Crispin continued to write short stories over the next ten years and most where gathered in two collections that include the posthumously-published Fen Country (1979). However, the short stories are not to be overlooked as some are classics of the short story form ("deceptively simple, little ingenious gems"). Notably, the riddle-me-this "Who Killed Baker?" (1950), the excellent, surprisingly hardboiled "The Pencil" (1953) and the very late, but amusing, "We Know You're Busy Writing, But We Thought You Wouldn't Mind If We Just Dropped in for a Minute" (1969), but my personal favorite will always be the subject of today's review. A gem of a locked room mystery appropriate for the season!

"The Name on the Window" originally appeared as "A Crime for Christmas" in the December 24, 1951, edition of the London Evening Standard and reprinted in February, 1953, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and collected in Beware of the Trains (1953) under its current title – apparently the story also appeared somewhere as "Writing on the Pane." But have been unable to find where it was published under that title.

The story opens on Boxing Day at the North Oxford home of Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature, who recouping among the ruins of an exhaustive children's party when he finds an old friend on his doorstep. Detective Inspector Humbleby is stranded, "roads are impassable” and “trains as there are are running hours late," but Fen welcomes the Scotland Yard man with open arms. And the inspector has an intriguing story to tell. Humbleby is investigating a very mysterious murder on the sprawling grounds of the Rydalls estate. The residence of the famous architect, Sir Charles Moberley, who hosted a large house party that honored a now long-lost Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories. Rydalls has a ghost of its own.

An 18th century pavilion stands on the grounds, about a quarter of a mile away from the house, where once upon a time someone, or other, had been murdered, but "the haunting part of it is just silly gossip for the benefit of visitors." One of the guests, Sir Lucas Welsh, demanded to investigate the ghost and, on Christmas Eve, arranged a lonely vigil. But never came back out alive. Sir Lucas was found lying near the window with an old stiletto sticking out of his back, but he hadn't died immediately and used his last strength to write his murderer's name in the grime of the window-pane ("Otto"). Otto Mörike is a young German, a Luftwaffe pilot during the war and presently studies architecture, who has a double motive. Sir Lucas opposed an engagement with his daughter, Jane Welsh, but with him out the way, Otto can both marry Jane and enjoy her inheritance. Just one problem. How could Sir Lucas have been stabbed inside, what amounts to, a locked room?

The small, circular pavilion has a longish, narrow hall as an entrance ("if you saw it from the air it'd look like a key-hole"), but all the windows were nailed shut, "chimney too narrow to admit a baby" and only the victim's footprints in the otherwise undisturbed, years-old dust on the hall floor – unquestionably made by Sir Lucas ("Otto's feet are much too large"). Humbleby asks Fen, "so ghosts apart, what is the explanation?" Fen has one answer, "you've got locked rooms on the brain" and recalls how "Gideon Fell once gave a very brilliant lecture on The Locked-Room Problem," but "there was one category he didn't include." Fen's category to explain how the murderer got into and out of the pavilion is worthy to be compared with the best from Carr. Even better, Crispin brilliantly tied the locked room-trick to the dying message, which appeared to be so crystal clear at a first glance. I particularly liked (ROT13) ubj gur oyvaxva' phffrqarff bs guvatf va trareny sbeprq gur zheqrere'f unaqf gb ghea n jebat qlvat zrffntr vagb n yrtvgvzngr pyhr. Only, very tiny flaw in this gem is that the motive feels like it was tacked on at the end, but that's a problem often found in short detective stories.

So, other than that small niggle, "The Name on the Window" is one of the best short impossible crime stories and shows Crispin was not only a maestro of classical music.