The Men Who Explained Miracles (1963) by John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr's The Men Who Explained Miracles (1963) is a short story collection, comprising of half a dozen short stories and a novella, featuring his "famous 'tec trio" of Dr. Gideon Fell, Sir Henry Merrivale and Colonel March – who specialize in explaining so-called "miracles." Or, as they're known around these parts, impossible crimes and locked room mysteries. Additionally, the collection has two standalone short stories in which "espionage and assassins spark two tales of international intrigue." One of these "Secret Service Stories" is a historical mystery-thriller akin to Carr's stage-play "She Slept Lightly" (1945) and the novel Captain Cut-Throat (1955). So a bit of an eclectic melange of crime fiction, but a treat for fans of Carr and detective fiction in general.

The Men Who Explained Miracles begins with two short stories from "The Department of Queer Complaints" series, starring Colonel March, which weren't included in The Department of Queer Complaints (1940) collection. The first story hadn't been published yet and the second story possibly was left out because it used a similar murder method as a then recently published Sir Henry Merrivale novel. It would not be until March, Merrivale and Murder (1991) that the whole series appeared together in a single collection. Note that the Colonel March short stories and the H.M. novella were published under Carr's penname of "Carter Dickson."

"William Wilson's Racket," originally published in the February, 1941, issue of The Strand Magazine, brings Lady Patricia Mortlake, only daughter of the Earl of Cray, to Colonel March's Department D-3 of Scotland Yard. Lady Patricia has been baffled by the behavior of her fiancé, Right Hon. Francis Hale, who's "a man of almost painfully straitlaced life" with a spotless reputation, but lately, he has been acting out-of-character and obsessing over a newspaper add – simply stating "William and Wilhelmina Wilson, 250a, Piccadilly" ("nothing more"). Lady Patricia decided to investigate Mr. Wilson at his office, but what she found shocked her. Francis was sitting in Mr. Wilson's office with a redheaded woman sitting on his lap in a loving embrace. She turned around, left the room and, when she composed herself, returned to get answers, but Francis has disappeared. William and Wilhelmina Wilson claim they never heard of, or know, a Francis Hale. However, Lady Patricia spotted his coat and other personal items in the cloakroom. And he's still missing. So what happened?

Colonel March is seriously amused by what he has been told, but tells Lady Patricia to go home as he has a pretty shrewd idea about the true nature of "the profession of William and Wilhelmina Wilson." The splendidly clued answer lives up to its brilliantly presented premise. Admittedly, "Mr. Wilson's Racket" is relatively minor detective story, but a tremendously fun, cleverly crafted detective story hearkening back to the days of Conan Doyle and the best of Sherlock Holmes (e.g. "The Red-Headed League," 1891). So it's actually surprising Carr didn't rewrite it as "The Adventure of Mr. Wilson Racket" for The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1954), co-written with Adrian Conan Doyle, because it would have been a perfect fit for that collection.

"The Empty Flat," first published in the May, 1939, issue of The Strand Magazine, is regrettably a marked stepped down from the previous story. Two rivaling academics, Douglas Chase and Miss Kathleen Mills, discover they live in the same building when the "detestable cacophony" of a radio going full blast distracts them from their studies. They discover the noise is coming from an empty flat, only one in the building, which Chase manages to enter through the service hatch. What he finds, beside a radio playing in a dark, empty flat, is the body of a man who had apparently died of fright. Colonel March is posed with two questions: why would a man afraid of the dark go ghost hunting after dark and how was he killed?

So a good, solid premise with enough intrigue abound to fill a novel, "find a way to kill someone by fright, and you can commit murder almost with impunity," which is exactly the problem. The short story form is simply too short for the plot to do the premise any justice and the disappointing combo of murderer/motive didn't help either. A rare miss by Carr.

"The Incautious Burglar," originally published in the October, 1940, issue of The Strand Magazine under the title "A Guest in the House," is the first of two short stories featuring Dr. Gideon Fell. This is a non-impossible crime short story, but therefore not any less brilliant. On the contrary, it's a gem of a Golden Age mystery and one of Carr's best short stories! The backdrop of the story is a house party at the home of Marcus Hunt, "the Colossus of Business," who has two Rembrandts and a Van Dyck "hanging in an unprotected downstairs room with French windows giving on a terrace." Hunt had even removed the burglar alarms as though he wanted the house to be burgled. That evening, a masked burglar enters Cranleigh Court, however, someone within the house caught him red handed and killed the burglar in the ensuing struggle – stabbing through the heart with a thin fruit knife. What looks like a botched burglary turns into a deep, contradictory mystery when the mask is removed from the body to reveal the face of Marcus Hunt. Why would a man burgle his own house to steal valuable paintings he refused to insure for even a penny? More importantly, who killed him?

Dr. Gideon Fell is asked to give the case a look and sees red hot, tell-tale clues where the police perceives only "negative evidence." Dr. Fell is not blinded by the central question why Hunt would try to steal his own, uninsured paintings ("don't become hypnotized by it") and focuses instead on finding the person who stabbed him. The perfectly reasoned solution Dr. Fell constructs out of the given clues is excellent demonstrating that the short story form is no excuse to forego fair play. A vintage whodunit from the master of the locked room mystery!

"Invisible Hands," originally published under the title "King Arthur's Chair" in the August, 1957, issue of Lilliput, is an odd impossible crime story of the no-footprints variety. Dan Fraser, "the luckiest man in London," is traveling to North Cornwall to see Brenda Lestrange ("...she had wanted him"), but is told upon arrival she had under tragic, inexplicable circumstances. She had gone down to the beach to swim and her strangled body was found later that morning lying in front of small, natural rock formation known as King Arthur's Chair. Impossibly, there weren't any footprints in the sand around the rock formation except Brenda's own!

A classic no-footprints situation, however, the trick employed is something most would probably associate or expect from the pulps or pulp-style mysteries – notably a particular item. It's something I have come across in the works of several, non-pulpy mystery writers and they got a lot of mileage and variety out of it. Carr used it before in one of his 1940s radio-plays to create an impossible disappearance and here it has a dual purpose (ROT13: n fvqr-rssrpg vf gung gur zheqrere hfrq gur fbhaq bs gur zheqre jrncba sbe na nyvov). So not exactly your standard no-footprints-in-the-sand puzzle and, plot-wise, it almost reads like a Paul Halter short story. Another thing making this a bit of an odd story in Carr's catalog is that the characterization is a tick sharper than the plotting. One more thing worth mentioning is Dr. Gideon Fell making one of his greatest entries into a case ever!

So, on a whole, "Invisible Hands" is a solid and logical detective story, despite its outre method, demonstrating that only one of the suspects could have done it.

"Strictly Diplomatic," originally published in the December, 1939, issue of The Strand Magazine, is the first of two standalone short stories of international intrigue. Andrew Dermot, an overworked barrister, is prescribed a holiday on the continent, "tension which tautened nerves in the rest of Europe did not exist in Ile St. Cathérine," where he promptly falls in love Betty Weatherill. She mysterious disappears from the arbor of their hotel. Dermot was standing at one end, watching her go inside, while a Dutch hotel guest was sitting at the other end. Dr. Henrik Vanderver, special diplomat for the Sylvanian Embassy, swears she didn't emerge from his end of the arbor. What's going on? A very minor espionage mystery with the reason for the disappearance being better and more interesting than how she vanished, which is a variation on a shopworn piece of misdirection. Still not a bad short story. Just not an especially memorable one.

"The Black Cabinet" first appeared 20 Great Tales of Murder (1951) and reprinted in the January, 1952, issue of Robert Arthur's The Mysterious Traveler Magazine. This story is a historical character piece full of adventure and revolution as a young woman, Nina, is determined to assassinate the French emperor Napoleon III. Aunt Maria, an ex-revolutionary, tries to change her mind and the story is largely a discussion between these two characters – until a mysterious gentleman appears on the scene. This mysterious man succeeds in foiling the assassination with his identity providing the story with an unexpected, but satisfying, historical twist. If you're not a fan of Carr's historical fiction, or historical fiction in general, "The Black Cabinet" is not going to do anything for you.

"All in a Maze," originally appeared under title "Ministry of Miracles" in the January, 1956, issue of The Housewife and reprinted in the March, 1956, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as "The Man Who Explained Miracles." It finally appeared under its generally accepted title, "All in a Maze," in this collection.

Arguably, "All in a Maze" is the most important story in The Men Who Explained Miracles giving a proper sendoff to Sir Henry Merrivale after his less than stellar performance in The Cavalier's Cup (1953). H.M. is back in Britain following his shenanigans adventures abroad, "you wrecked the subway at Grand Central Station and nabbed the right murderer on the wrong evidence," which got him into trouble upon his return. Mostly on account of having spent more money than he can account for. And in order to atone and payback for his sins, H.M. is put back in charge of the Central Office Eight of the Metropolitan Police. A quasi-official department that gets handed all the strange, rummy cases the ordinary police can't be bothered with, however, H.M. promises "anybody who calls it The Ministry of Miracles is going to get a thick ear" ("they had enough fun, curse 'em, with the late Ministry of Information"). Tom Lockwood, a journalist, presents H.M. with one of those strange, rummy cases. Lockwood bumped into a young woman, Jenny Holden, on the steps of St. Paul's. Obviously in distressed mumbling something about a voice coming "where no voice could have spoken" and some trying to kill her the previous night "by some miracle no one can understand."

So he drags her to a tea shop and get the whole story out of her. Firstly, the previous night someone had entered her bedroom and turned on the gas-tap, but the door and windows were securely locked and double bolted on the inside. Secondly, she heard a disembodied voice in the Whispering Gallery of St. Paul's cathedral telling her she was going to die. Lockwood urges her to go to H.M. with her story, because explaining miracles is his specialty, but Lockwood and H.M. have more to contend with than a disembodied voice and an attempted murder in a locked bedroom – they have to contend with Jenny's formidable aunt. Aunt Hester is determined to take Jenny back to Paris and marry her off to a successful businessman, Armand de Senneville. But they find an unexpected ally in De Sennevilla's hired spy who witnessed these so-called miracles. And realizes how close Jenny came to dying. Not everyone in this story is lucky enough to escape a trip to the morgue. It all makes for a pleasantly busy, engaging locked room mystery.

Well, the solution to the disembodied voice is as obvious and simple as it sounds, but, plot-wise, it served its purpose. The attempted gassing of Jenny in her locked room bedroom, on the other hand, is a gem of brilliant simplicity in both presentation and solution. All very neatly clued, tightly-drawn together and comes to an end in the famous maze at Hampton Court Palace. Only thing you can say against "All in a Maze" is that it can't hold a candle to first of only two H.M. novellas, "The House in Goblin Wood" (1947), which is an undisputed masterpiece in a miniature. In every other way, it's a finely crafted impossible crime story and a better swan song for H.M. than his last three or four novel-length outings. Highly recommended!

The Men Who Explained Miracles is a splendid, nicely balanced collection of Carr's older and some of his then somewhat more recent work. "The Empty Flat" is the only dud in the collection and "Strictly Diplomatic" a little bland, but "William Wilson's Racket," "The Incautious Burglar" and "All in a Maze" are first-rate with "Invisible Hands" and "The Black Cabinet" not all that far behind. So, all in all, a lot to recommend here to fans of John Dickson Carr and Golden Age (locked room) mysteries.