Killing Time: "Persons or Things Unknown" (1938) by Carter Dickson

Back in 2012, I reviewed John Dickson Carr's The Department of Queer Complaints (1940), published as by "Carter Dickson," but my Dell Mapback edition omitted three stories from the original publication, "The Other Hangman," "New Murders for Old" and "Persons or Things Unknown," that are generally regarded as some of his best short stories. Until now, these stories had completely eluded me.

"Persons or Things Unknown" was first published in The Sketch, Christmas Number, 1938, which was later collected in The Department of Queer Complaints and recently reprinted in an anthology of holiday mysteries – entitled Murder Under the Christmas Tree: Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season (2016). So this is going to be first holiday-themed review of 2018. However, the festivities only serves as an ambiance here for "a historical romance" from the distant days of Charles II.

The story opens during a house-warming party in a centuries old home, hidden behind a hill in Sussex, where a group of people have gathered around the fire in the drawing-room after Christmas dinner. When the conversation drifts towards the little room at the head of the stairs, the host tells them the chilling story attached to that room.

A grisly tale of a man who was hacked to death there, with thirteen stab wounds, by "a hand that wasn't there" and "a weapon that didn't exist." An impossible stabbing that occurred there in 1660. Just after the Restoration.

The story comes from a diary kept by Mr. Everard Poynter, which ran from the summer of '60 to the end of '64, who owned the neighboring Manfred Manor and was friends with the then owner of the house with the little room at the head of the stairs, Squire Radlow – which is how he became a witness of the inexplicable murder. Squire Radlow's only daughter, Mistress Mary Radlow, was engaged to be married to Richard Oakley of Rawdene. A serious-minded, studious, but genial, man several years her senior. Nevertheless, the match appears to be a good one and the only obstacle is the potential ruin of Oakley if the sale of his estate, purchased under the Commonwealth, is declared null and void. And then a young man appeared in a blaze of glory.

Gerald Vanning was one of those "confident young men" about "whom we hear so much complaint from old-style Cavaliers" in the early years of the Restoration. Over a period of weeks, it became a given that Vanning would eventually become the Squire's son-in-law. A plan Vanning had been working towards, but then the news broke that an act had passed to confirm all sales or leases of property since the Civil Wars and Oakley was "once more the well-to-do son-in-law" – finalizing his engagement to Mary. Vanning was out of the picture, but around the same time "curious rumors" began to swirl around the countryside about Oakley. Who was he really? Why did he need over a hundred books? Who was the figure that was seen following Oakley? A creature that appeared human, but the witness was not sure if it had been really alive!

On the night of Friday, the 26th November, Vanning returned to the house and appeared to be on "a wire of apprehension" as he kept looking over his shoulder. Vanning instructed the steward to fetch some servants with cudgels and they went to Oakley and Mary in the little room at the head of the stairs. Shortly after he went in, there was a thud and Mary screaming, but servants found it had been bolted and it was Mary who unbolted the door with blood on her dress – what was left of Oakley had fallen near a table. Vanning was immediately seized and justice threatened to be swift and ruthless, but he tells them he has not touched Oakley and had not been carrying a sword or dagger when he came into the house.

So they comb over every inch of the little room and didn't find so much as "a pin in crack or crevice." The question is if Vanning or Mary murdered Oakley, what happened to the murder weapon? If an outsider did the murder, how did this person enter or leave a bolted room with three armed servants at the door?

Here you have an inverted mystery with a historical backdrop and a challenge to the reader to piece together how the murder was done, which is a fairly clued challenge, but where Carr demonstrated his craftsmanship is the false solution that works like a psychological red herring. You rarely get to see a false solution so nicely positioned next to the actual explanation that it camouflages it.

Unfortunately, the locked room-trick failed to take me by surprise, because Carr reused the idea in a radio-play and the solution immediately occurred to me when the room was described. And if you know the trick, the clues are easily spotted. This was hardly enough to keep me from being an unabashed fanboy and marveled at how the plot stuck together with the clues. Or how a long-gone of passage in history was briefly opened through Carr's writing.

On a whole, "Persons or Things Unknown" can be summed up as an atmospheric historical mystery and an inverted detective story with a clever locked room-trick all rolled into one. A minor gem by the undisputed Grand Master of Detection. Highly recommended!

A note for the curious: this is an obscure, little-known fact, but John Dickson Carr is my favorite mystery novelist. Just wanted to state that for the record.

A Scandal in New Orleans

"When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls, and the bat in the moonlight flies,

and inky clouds, like funeral shrouds, sail over the midnight skies –

When the footpads quail at the night-bird's wail, and black dogs bay at the moon,

Then is the specters' holiday – then is the ghosts' high-noon!"
- Sir Roderic Murgatroyd (Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore, 1887)

Last week, one of my fellow locked room enthusiast, "JJ," posted a two-month notice, "John Dickson Carr is Going to Be 110 – Calling for Submissions," which is an open invitation to post Carr-related reviews and blog-posts on the day marking his 110th birthday – which is on November 30, 2016. I immediately called dibs on the criminally underrated Captain Cut-Throat (1955), but the notice still left me with an urge to return to Carr.

Fortunately, I still have about half a dozen of his (primarily) non-series work residing on my prodigious TBR-pile. And one of them promised a Last Hurrah for my all-time favorite mystery novelist, the great John Dickson Carr. 

The Ghosts' High Noon (1969) is a historical mystery and Carr's third-to-last novel, which would only be followed by penultimate Deadly Hall (1971) and the much-maligned The Hungry Goblin (1972). These titles were published during the last twelve years of Carr's life and this period showed a painful decline in the quality of his writing. A downturn that first overtly manifested itself in The House at Satan's Elbow (1965), but one of these last novels seemed to be relatively rot-free: the aforementioned The Ghosts' High Noon, which received some honest criticism, but never the abuse leveled against its contemporaries – e.g. the mediocre Panic in Box C (1966) and the tedious Dark of the Moon (1967).

On his excellent website, Mike Grost has shown the greatest amount of enthusiasm for the book, which he labeled as "a genuine mystery classic" with "a well done impossible crime."

So it has always struck me as a sudden, but briefly lived, revival during the final stage of Carr's literary career. I simply decided the time had come to take it off my TBR-pile. And I know, I know. I should've probably saved the book for November, but who asked you to drag common sense into my decisions? Get out!

Wooda Nicholas Carr

The Ghosts' High Noon is set during the early days of Carr's early childhood, 1912, when his own father, W.N. Carr of Pennsylvania, was elected to Congress and the United States was in the throes of "a three-cornered fight for the Presidency" – pitting the incumbent W.H. Thaft against Democratic Governor Wilson and the boisterous Teddy Roosevelt for the Progressives. There are references throughout the book to these three gentlemen, because the plot of the story is tinged with political intrigue.

The protagonist of the story is a newspaper reporter, Jim Blake, who wrote bestseller, The Count of Monte Carlo, which gave him new found prosperity and "freedom from the ancient shackles." But he's adverse to take on special assignments as a reporter. So when Colonel George Harvey, "president of the stately old publishing house in Franklin Square" and "the very active editor of Harper's Weekly," contacts him with a particular request he accepts. Colonel Harvey wants him to travel down to New Orleans to write an article on a promising Congressional candidate, James Clairborne "Clay" Blake.

James "Clay" Blake is a young lawyer and a colorful character, who's running for Congress, but he's unopposed and therefore can't help being elected. So the Colonel wants James "Jim" Blake to write a personality piece on his namesake, but there's also an underlying motive: the underground wire is reverberating with rumors "that some enemy is out to ruin him." As an investigative reporter, Blake immediately sets out to work and makes a stopover in Washington before traveling to New Orleans. There he learns from a legendary police reporter, Charley Emerson, what the tool of Clay Blake's potential downfall could be: a high-class courtesan, Yvonne Brissard, who captured the full attention of the future Congressman. In spite of their discreet conduct, it became very evident that "the Creole siren and the Anglo-Saxon lawyer" have "fell for each other like a ton of bricks." A scandal in the making, but could the courtesan be a part of "the alleged plot" against the budding politician?

On his way to New Orleans, Jim encounters a pair of mysterious figures: first of them is his love interest, Gillian "Jill" Matthews, who literary walks into his arms, but also vanishes when she wants to and her role in the overall story is a actually a genuine plot-thread – a pretty good one at that! The second figure is an unknown person on the train, who knocks at his compartment, but when he opened the door there was nobody outside. And the porters on either side of the corridor swear they saw nobody.

This incident is presented as an impossible problem, but the explanation is extremely bad and Robert Adey did not even deign it worthy of being mentioned in Locked Room Murders (1991). Luckily, there's a bone-fide locked room mystery in the second half of the book.

However, the pace of the story considerably slows down until the murder occurs and this section of the book has Jim encountering several characters in the New Orleans setting: the Colonel and Charley recommended Jim to ask Alec Laird for help, the high khan of the Sentinel newspaper, who is described as "an unredeemed puritan," but also someone you want to have in your corner. One of his relatives an elderly dowager, Mathilde Laird, a crusty aristocrat who inexplicably rented the village of her dead and beloved brother to Yvonne Brissard. She has a son, Pete, who she overly mothered and refused to even let him drive his own car. So he has his own personal chauffeur, Raoul. And then there's Flossie Yates. A woman who can discreetly be described as "the madam of a brothel."

Eventually, the plot begins to pick up the pace again. One of Jim's old classmates, Leo Shepley, "a rake and bon viveur," becomes entangled in the plot and this does not end well for him: there are several witnesses, including Jim, who saw him speeding like a devil out of hell in his two-seater Mercer – which ended with a crash and the sound of a gunshot inside a partially locked-and watched shed. Shepley had been shot through the head from close range, but the police fail to find a gun at the scene and nobody could've entered or left the shed without being seen. So how did the murderer or the murder weapon manage to vanish from the closely watched shed?

The seemingly impossibility of the murder frustrates Lieutenant Zack Trowbridge and wonders out loud "what kind of a murderer" vanished "like a soap-bubble as soon as he pulled the trigger," but Jim "pieced the whole thing together less'n twenty-four hours" after the murder. Admittedly, it's a pretty clever piece of work and showed how Carr was still capable of constructing an intricate locked room puzzle. Even if the execution required some low-conscience life forms (i.e. pawns) to make it work. And the motivation for making this an impossible crime is also noteworthy.

So the storytelling, characterization, setting and the plot were somewhat uneven, but, overall, The Ghosts' High Noon is a very consistent detective story. In any case, the plot and writing are far better than what most readers would expect from one of his novels from this late date. That being said, I've to point out one thing: by the late 1960s, Carr had sadly lost his ability to write historical fiction. Carr's writing used to be able to breath life into long-dead, dust covered periods of history (e.g. The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey, 1937), but here he never came further than making some clunky (pop-culture) references. One of the characters even notes how long-distance phone calls would've been considered a miracle only a couple of years ago, which felt really, really forced.

I thought this was a sad aspect of the book, because Carr was not only the undisputed master of the locked room, but also an early champion of the historical mystery novel. And the historical mystery novel was also his retreat when began to tire of the modern world (i.e. post-WWII England). This allowed him to add a few additional classics to his resume when the quality of his regular series began to suffer. Nobody will deny that his post-1940s historical mysteries were better than any of the Dr. Gideon Fell or H.M. novel that appeared in the same period. So it was sad to see that by the late 1960s he was unable to bring the past back to life as once had done in such delightful works as The Devil in Velvet (1951) and Fear is the Same (1956).

Well, look at me, I still managed to end this review on a depressing note! So, yes, The Ghosts' High Noon has some of expected flaws of later-day Carr, but not nearly as many as most would expect and large parts of the plot shows flashes of the old master. That alone should warrant investigation.

Let me end this overlong review by directing your attention to my previous review, which is of the excellent translation of Alice Arisugawa's Koto Pazuru (The Moai Island Puzzle, 1989).

A Devil of a Time

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

- George Santayana 

If you're one of those souls who haunt this place with a certain degree of regularity, then you have probably spotted my glowing opinion on the greatest mystery writer who ever lived, the wonderful John Dickson Carr, who's still rightfully regarded as the undisputed master of the locked room mystery. But he also dabbled in another field of the genre that's often overlooked: historical mysteries and adventure stories.

During the 1950s, Carr became slightly disillusioned with the modern, post-war world and he began to retreat into historical fiction, which would come to dominate his output in the last decades of his life – beginning with the highly regarded The Bride of Newgate (1950) and ending with the very rare The Hungry Goblin (1972).

As I said before, Carr is seldom recognized for helping popularizing the historical detective story, but even rarer is seeing an acknowledgment for his contributions to an extremely obscure niche within this particular sub-genre: namely time-slip novels!

Carr wrote three of such stories in which the twentieth century protagonists are transported back in time and have to piece together certain events among the ghosts of the past. The Devil in Velvet (1951) and Fire, Burn! (1957) are relatively well known to both his fans and readers of historical detective stories, but Fear is the Same (1956) seems to be completely forgotten by everyone and appeared, for some reason, under his penname of "Carter Dickson" – which he primarily used for his Sir Henry Merrivale series. Its neglect is hard to explain and entirely undeserved, because it's as good a story as its two companions.

Fear is the Same has two characters caught in a time-slip, Lord Philip Clavering and Jennifer Baird, who were passionate lovers in the mid-1950s, but "a clap of thunder" and "a roar" flung them back in time – all the way back to the Regency Era in 1795. The experience has pulled a veil over their memory, but one that only vaguely obscured their knowledge of their life in the future. Memories come rushing back when they meet again, "it seems a little ridiculous to ask whether we have met before," but their new situation in this old world is as fraught with complications as their past lives a hundred and fifty some years in the future.

Philip found himself in the body of a rich, but spineless coward, Lord Glenarvon, who's married to a woman he intensely dislikes, named Chloris. Jennifer is a relative and ward of Lady Oldham, who has given her blessing to a marriage between Jenny and Richard Thornton. He's the son of Colonel Tobias Thornton, "of the King's Royal Dragoons," who serves as the story's antagonist and has several confrontations with Philip, which consists of what you probably expect from a rivalry in a period yarn from Carr's hands – fisticuffs and a bit of dueling! Again, what did you expect? It's Carr!

Anyway, there were also the bleary recollections of a murder more than a hundred years in the future. A murder they were so hard on the run for that they ended up in the 18th century, but the consequences seem to be inescapable, because similar events begin to unfold in front of the two lovers.

The maid of the Glenarvons, Molly, has been doubling for her mistress when she was out of the house and this may have resulted in her death, because her body is found in Chrloris' bedroom – strangled to death with a bell rope. Superficially, Philip looks to be guilty of the deed and the magistrate is on his way to procure an arrest, which makes him flee for a second time. This time has to look out for the Robin Redbreasts from the Bow Street Runners. However, the whodunit element is a surprisingly underplayed part of this historical romance and adventure story: there's a sort of set up in the early chapters, the murder itself (chapter 8), a late investigation in chapter 14 and an explanation chapters 19 and 20. The plots in Carr's historical novels tend to be less elaborate than in his regular series, but they're usually nicely done. I found the one in Fear is the Same to be somewhat routine, but it was acceptable enough.

What's written between the detective story is, as said before, a romance adventure set in the Regency Era, but Carr had a strong a love for history as he had for detective stories and it shows. Philip has to outwit Colonel Thornton in a close quartered pistol duel and gets drawn into a fistfight with a guy known as the "Bristol Smasher," which followed by a boxing match towards the end of their journey. But Philip and Jennifer also crossed the path of several historical characters. The most notable is the Prince of Wales, who would be later known as King George IV, who "the lampoonists," of the future, "show as popinjay and jack-fool," but was cast here in a fairly sympathetic light. Carr always had a royalist streak in his historical writing.

Then there are the moments when Philip accidentally betrayed knowledge he was not supposed to have in the 1790s, which includes being familiar with certain people who have not yet risen to prominence ("Who the devil’s Napoleon?") or knowledge of court secrets for which "proofs had been discovered" in "modern times."

So, all of this makes for a well-written, eventful and, above all, a fun historical narrative, in which a mystery plot is expertly wrapped in thick elements of romance and adventure. The ending had a hint of Charles Dickens, which I found slightly disappointing, because I had predicted a very dark ending based on the clap of thunder that threw back into the past. I suspected it was them dying in the 50s and somehow woke up in a parallel time-line, in the past, where they to go threw it again, but this time try to stay alive. But that's more a fault of my expectations. In short: if you enjoyed some of the other historical novels mentioned in this blog-post, you'll probably appreciate Fear is the Same.

Just Like in the Movies

"So our final toast is inevitable."

- Gervase Fen (Edmund Crispin's Frequent Hearses, 1950)

My undying love for John Dickson Carr's detective fiction is well documented on this blog and grab every opportunity to reference his stories in otherwise unrelated posts, but the backlog of his unread work has rapidly diminished over the years – leaving only a handful of standalones, historical novels and short stories.

Well, there was one novel in the Sir Henry Merrivale series, And So to Murder (1940), which lingered on the pile for years, but decided it was time to finally wrap up that series. So here we go.

The setting of the story is Pineham Studios during middle-and late August, "before there had come any glimmer of events that were to shatter Europe by the end of the month," where several movies are being shot. One of the productions is based on a best-selling, but scandalous, novel, entitled Desire, which was written by a canon's daughter from a small village.

Monica Stanton is elated to have gained a position at the film studio as a scriptwriter, but those feeling quickly subside when Monica learns she isn't going to work on the adaptation of her own novel. A producer by the name of Tom Hackett assigned her to work on a script based on William Cartwright's latest detective novel, while Cartwright is adapting her novel for the big screen – which brings back memories of Monica's annoying aunt grieving over the fact she didn't write a nice detective story like Cartwright.

Of course, Monica and Cartwright are simply ignoring their true feelings for each other, but, luckily for them, an aspiring murderer is driving them closer together by targeting Monica.

A spate of incidents occur over several weeks, which include water in an innocent looking bottle being replaced with sulfuric acid and the same corrosive liquid is pored down a speaking tube – nearly disfiguring Monica. There are anonymous letters being passed around and a poisoned cigarette almost took the life of one of the actresses, but the problem is that these incidents are merely (detective) interruption in a character-driven, comedy of manners-style novel. And that makes it very difficult to review this book.

There are several titles from the Merrivale-series, written under the name of "Carter Dickson," in which Carr attempted to take a different approach to the detective novel, such as A Graveyard to Let (1949) and The Cavalier's Cup (1953), but they were still detective stories. Surprisingly, for Carr, And So the Murder merely masquerades as one and the mystery elements that are present are poorly handled.

A portion of the information pertaining to the plot was withheld from the reader and that's detrimental to any impact the solution might have had, which had some points of interest. But were ultimately lost in the mess. A lot of the trouble could've been prevented if they simple had decided to lock a few doors or hire security guards. You have to wonder why H.M. even bothered with this case at all.

And So to Murder has some points of interest: the depiction of the film studio and what goes on there were interesting, as were the characters buzzing around the sets and the flashes of humor, but as a detective story it was as unsatisfying as Seeing is Believing (1941) and Patrick Butler for the Defense (1956). I can only really recommend this one to completists.

So, there you have it, after several years I finally wrote and posted as less than enthusiastic review about a John Dickson Carr novel, which I hope will be as rare an occurance as a snow-covered Sphinx.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

John Dickson Carr:

The Emperor's Snuff-Box (1942)
The Bride of Newgate (1950)
The Third Bullet and Other Stories of Detection (1954)
Fire, Burn! (1957)

The Dead Sleep Lightly (1983) 

Carter Dickson:

The Judas Window (1938)

And So to Murder (1940)

The Department of Queer Complaints (1940)
She Died a Lady (1943)
The Cavalier's Cup (1953)

Window of Opportunity

"The most creative people have this childlike facility to play."

- John Cleese

Last Friday, Sergio from Tipping My Fedora posted a glowing review of He Who Whispers (1946), which came out on top of a John Dickson Carr poll that was held on his blog in late 2014 and the results were very interesting.

The internet has done its fair share in bringing about a Renaissance Era of Detective Fiction, giving (secondhand) book dealers and independent publishers an open market place, which made hoarding Golden Age mystery writers as easy as pulling a coin from a child's ear. Once popular writers that were relegated to obscurity are being discovered and appreciated again by a whole new crop of readers. John Dickson Carr is one of the mystery writers who benefited from this, as nearly all of his novels are easy to come by today, but this seems to have resulted in a reassessment of what readers consider to be Carr's best work – swapping The Hollow Man (1935), The Peacock Feather Murders (1937) and The Crooked Hinge (1938) for He Who Whispers, She Died a Lady (1943) and Till Death Do Us Part (1944).

Only The Judas Window (1938), published as if by "Carter Dickson," seems to be as popular as ever, which made me wonder: would the story stand up to re-reading? The short, easy answer is: yes. But that would make for a rather short review.

The Judas Window is, unusually for Carr, structured as a courtroom drama with the scowling, Churchillian figure of Sir Henry Merrivale acting for the defense at the Old Bailey in a murder trial. James "Jim" Caplon Answell stands accused of the murder of his future father-in-law, Mr. Avory Hume, who could've only been killed by Answell – despite a clear lack of motive. They were the only occupants of Hume's practically bare and hermitically sealed study. A solid, wooden oak door, bolted from the inside, fits tightly in its frame and the windows were latched and covered with steel, burglarproof shutters. The decanter of the doctored whiskey, which made Answell pass out, has been replaced and Hume lays sprawled on the ground – a trophy arrow wrenched from the wall protruding from his chest.

Nobody believes in Answell's innocence. Nobody, except for Merrivale, his unshakable believe in the "blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general" and knowledge of the existence of a Judas window. And with that, Carr did what he did best and spun something perfectly sinister around something innocuous and everyday as an unseen opening. 

A Judas window is a window in a cell door to the see the prisoner, but H.M. points out there are more of them, "you've got a Judas window in your own room at home; there's one in this room, and there's one in every courtroom in the Old Bailey. The trouble is that so few people ever notice it," which is why H.M. so strenuously objected to the study being described as "sealed." H.M. assured that the door/windows were really "tight and solid and bolted" and "nobody monkeyed with a fastening to lock or unlock either," which was the same for the walls – bare of any crevices or rat-holes. A tough nut to crack and it's an impossible situation begging for a mind bending simple explanation, which (IMO) is a challenge that was met. It was simple and original, but without reducing the sinister aspect of the titular window. This alone will secure it as a favorite among locked room enthusiasts for many decades to come.

The other part that probably made this book an endearing to JDC fans is Merrivale's one-off appearance as a barrister, which was the first time in fifteen years and there was (of course!) some commotion the last time he appeared in court – addressing the jury indiscreetly with, "well, my fatheads." H.M. is prone to theatrics (e.g. The Gilded Man (1942) and The Skeleton in the Clock, 1948), but is more contained here and pounds the enigmatic facts of a perfectly sealed room that wasn't sealed, a missing piece of goose feather from an arrow, golf suits and inkpads, and compiling a "Time-Table for Archers" – while witnesses who were milling in-and around of the house take their seat in the witness boxes. Slowly, but surely, Merrivale peels away the many layers of confusion wrapped around Hume's murder and the Old Man's performance at the Old Bailey would've gotten the slow-clap from Perry Mason, John J. Malone and Francis Pettigrew after concluding the evidence for the defense with "Bah!"

If there's anything to be said against The Judas Window, it's that H.M. takes his sweet time to arrive at the final conclusion and that made it, at times, feel a tad bit padded. Alex Atkinson spoofed this wonderfully in "Chapter the Last: Merriman Explains," from Murder Impossible: An Extravaganza of Miraculous Murders, Fantastic Felonies and Incredible Criminals (1990), but I only mention this to proof I can be critical of Carr. The Judas Window stood more than up to re-reading.

Note for the curious: Chapter Fourteen, "Time-Table for Archers," mentions a locked room murder in tower looking out over the sea, but not the title of the story or the name of the writer. Well, it's one of the stories from Otto Penzler's The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries (2014). SPOILER: ["The Badmoor Murder" by Melville Davisson Post].

Solving the Unsolvable

"In my cases, sir, you can have practically everything."

- Dr. Gideon Fell ("The Hangman Won't Wait," collected in The Door to Doom, 1980) 

Yes, I know. I have criminally neglected this blog over the past few months, but, hopefully, activity will now revert back to its regular pace without any interruptions. And now, without further ado...

The Third Bullet and Other Stories of Detection (1954) is a collection of short stories by John Dickson Carr, one of the Old Masters of the Impossible Crime tale, who seldomly disappoints – even if I knew a few stories from other books and incarnations (i.e. radio plays). A novella, "The Third Bullet," opens the collections and stars a prototype of Colonel March (e.g. The Department of Queer Complaints, 1940), Colonel Marquis, tasked with looking into the seemingly impossible shooting of Charles Mortlake. Mortlake was shot in his pavilion, which exits where either bolted shut or under observation and the evidence points to one person. The explanation follows Merrivale's Law of the "blinkin' cussedness of things in general," which made an extremely confusing murder appear to be completely impossible, however, it's main weakness is its length. It should've been much, much shorter. I can also recommend the mini-anthology Locked Room Puzzles (1986), which includes this novella and three others by Bill Pronzini, Clayton Rawson and Edward D. Hoch.

"The Clue of the Red Wig" details the peculiar circumstances surrounding the murder of Hazel Loring, a columnist with a loyal following of housewives who read her weekly column, "Smile and Grow Fit," whose denuded body was found on a park bench in Victoria Square on a cold December night – most of her clothes neatly folded besides her. A young, cheeky Franco-British journalist, Jacqueline Dubois, takes on the case on behalf of the Daily Record and helps Inspector Adam Bell find a clever answer to the baffling problem. Miss Dubois herself brings some Gallic flair to a quintessential English detective story, saying such things like "hot ziggety dame!" and offering to make love to the Assistant Commissioner in exchange for a scoop. And, of course, casting a young, French journalist as one of the detectives is nothing more than a poorly disguised nod and a wink at one of Carr's favorite locked room mysteries, Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) by Gaston Leroux.

"The House in Goblin Wood" is one of few short story appearances for the Old Maestro, Sir Henry Merrivale, and it's generally considered to be on par with the best full-length cases of H.M. Twenty years before the opening of the story, a young girl, named Vicky, disappeared from a house that was locked and bolted from the inside – only to reappear a week later with a story of having lived with the fairies. When she returns to the house two decades later, she disappears again under similar circumstances, however, this time it becomes a grim fairy-tale. This is like G.K. Chesterton at his best: treacherously benevolent on the surface.

"The Wrong Problem" is a semi-inverted mystery with the tendency to twist and turn, in which Dr. Gideon Fell has a talk with a man by a lake, located in a valley in Somerset, about a crime that has been buried in the distant past. There's an artificial island in the lake with a summerhouse and the man was suspected to be responsible for the death of two of his family members, who died in the summerhouse. One of them in a bare, top-floor room with bars decorating the sole window and the only door was under constant observation. The method was recycled from another story, but, as a whole, it was nice, leisurely and well clued detective story.

"The Proverbial Murder" involves the fatal shooting of Dr. Ludwig Meyer, a German refugee, working a dissertation on atoms and the police surrounded the cottage at the time, because his English wife had reported him as a spy. Ardent readers of Carr will probably figure out large swats of the solution before Dr. Fell. There are bits and pieces that cropped in other stories, but even without that it's not that difficult to get on the right track. A simple, but nice, detective-meets-spy story.

I was already familiar with "The Locked Room" as a radio play, in sound and script, in which a book collector, Francis Seton, is assaulted inside his locked and guarded office, but Dr. Fell makes short work of the problem. And, to be honest, the story is a notch or two below Carr's best and the locked room problem/solution impressed me as sloppy in their presentation. Not all that bad, but also far from the best.

"The Man from Paris" shows why John Dickson Carr is grossly underrated as a writer of historical mystery-and adventure stories and here he combines it with his talent to imitate 19th century fiction writers. In the Dr. Gideon Fell mystery The Mad Hatter Mystery (1933), Carr wrote a completely imaginary, but very convincing, passage from a lost Edgar Allan Poe tale. Here a Parisian travels to America to right a wrong, but is confronted with a dying woman and her will that has disappeared under impossible circumstances, however, as a mystery, it’s only of interest for the secret identity of one of the characters – and the historical atmosphere of mid-19th century America, if you enjoy historical mystery. By the way, while I was reading the story, I suddenly wondered who the president was at the time and the story immediately answered with a reference to Zachary Taylor. As to say, here dummy. Hey, it could've been James Polk, right?

And thus concludes my first, proper review in what feels like ages and I have still failed in giving my all-time favorite mystery writer a bad review, which I solely blame on Carr for insisting on being an unapologetic mystery writer. I mean, how can snooty purist like me take umbrage at a man who loudly proclaimed: "...I wanted to write detective stories. I don't mean that I wanted to write great novels, or any nonsense like that! I mean that I simply damn well wanted to write detective stories." It's an attitude that's strongly reflected in his work and it's a stance that's still hugely appreciated! 

Secrets of the Heart

"Oh, my son! You don't know my history. I've seen a feller who was dead, and yet who wasn't dead. I've seen a man make two different sets of finger-prints with the same hands. I've seen a poisoner get atropine into a clean glass that nobody touched... as for a murderer floating in the air, I'm expectin' to meet one any day. It would just round out my cycle before the old man goes into the dustbin."

- Sir Henry Merrivale (She Died a Lady, 1943)

There are only about half a dozen reviews posted on this blog concerning my all-time favorite mystery writer, John Dickson Carr a.k.a. "Carter Dickson," whose name, however, I drop whenever as much as a particle of an opportunity presents itself. You only have to look at the number of posts labeled "Locked Room Mysteries" or "Impossible Crimes" to know I had no shortage of opportunities.

I felt that a return to the maestro himself was in order, and Sir Henry Merrivale in particular, but had only And So to Murder (1940) left to explore and I was in the mood for something grander – ending up re-reading one of the best titles in the H.M. series.

She Died a Lady (1943) is set during the most defining period of the previous century, when Adolf Hitler had set out to conquer Europe and England was one of the last strongholds of the continent where his troops hadn't put boots on the ground... yet. The isolated, seaside town of Lyncombe with its sheer cliffs overlooking the sea, is almost a stand-in for the rest of the country. On top of that stone protrusion a small group of people begin to feel the effects of the war when it begins to intermingle with their normal, everyday problems.

Dr. Luke Croxley's narration of the events begin with a visit from Rita Wainwright, a patient of his son, Tom, who caught herself up in an affair with an American actor named Barry Sullivan, while still being legally tied to her husband Alec – of whom she’s fond and wants to spare his feeling. But her desire to be with Barry grows with the day and Alec's only occupied nowadays with listening to gloomy news broadcasts on the wireless on the war. There, amidst the blackouts and rationing, someone cuts the phone lines and drains the petrol from the cars. Rita and Barry vanish. They only leave a trail of footprints behind on sandy ground of a cliff, "a romantic promontory called Lovers' Leap," which looks out over a seventy-foot drop into the unforgiving tides and rocks below. Everything points to a suicide pact, until they wash ashore and bullets peeled out of the body indicate that they were shot at close range before falling from the cliff. This does not preclude suicide, if the gun had been found at the top of the cliff or somewhere below, but it was discovered somewhere discarded on a road!

This means, according to the evidence, that Rita and Barry were facing their murderer while standing on the edge of a cliff, which entails that the shooter was lighter than air, but still capable of lifting a gun, before apparently ceasing to exist. Or hovered back over the foot prints on to solid ground. 

Luckily, H.M. happens to be in the neighborhood to have his portrait done as a Roman senator and being bound to a (motorized!) wheelchair, on account of a broken toe, does not prevent him from leaving an ever-lasting impression on the village – frightening a few of its inhabitants by racing through the town as a cross between Winston Churchill and emperor Nero. However, the comedy does not intrude on the serious and somber tone of the story. It's Merrivale's way of coping with life and he becomes, IMO, more human as the story progresses. H.M. knows how to deal with supposedly cursed rooms that kill, dagger-waving poltergeists and the pseudo-science of telepathy, but a worldwide conflict the size of WWII reduces him to a rather helpless figure vowing "to be some use to this ruddy country yet... just you wait and see!" Before H.M. helped the allied forces plotting Hitler's downfall (you know he did), he did what he does best, find a natural explanation for everything.  

The impossibilities about footprints, whether it’s a single set of footprints where there were supposed to be two or the complete lack of them altogether, always struck me as one of the more difficult tricks to pull-off successfully – even more so if you try to be original. They always have me struggling for possible explanations and She Died a Lady is arguably Carr's most successful treatment of this type of impossible crime, because it's not a stock-in-trade situation the footprints emerge in and thus the solution is original. It's one of those tailor-made for the plot and setting types of solutions that Herbert Resnicow loved to play with during the 1980s (c.f. The Gold Deadline (1984) and The Dead Room, 1987), but the impossible elements do not dominate the story. They're a part of the larger picture that's not only one of Carr's most accomplished mystery novels, but also one of his most mature and character-driven stories, which deserves the reputation of The Judas Window (1938) – as good as that book is in it's own right, it lacks the depth of She Died a Lady.

She Died a Lady is in my eyes Carr's Death on the Nile (1937), one of his favorite mystery novels, and if you look closely at the plot, you may agree with me that Lady might be a very cleverly disguised homage to Nile. If you can't see it, think of a water mirror effect with ripples in it, caused by Carr to give it his own touch. And that's not a spoiler, because (SPOILER, select of CTRL+A to read): it's not giving anything away when Carr’s Eternal Triangle has a fourth side. Vintage JDC!

Finally, I found two more clock-quotes! I know, I know, but I'm still fascinated how the passing of time and the faces of clocks are associated in Carr's stories with impending doom, sickness or herald the death of a character. Sometimes, they even have the face of death, e.g. Death Watch (1935) and The Skeleton in the Clock (1948).

From chapter 13, page 126 (penguin edition):

"It inspired in me, I must confess, much the same sense of impending disaster as was inspired in Captain Hook by the approach of the crocodile with the clock inside."

From chapter 18, page 180:

"A clock ticked asthmatically in the dark hall."

I remain convinced that clocks are the source of all-evil in Carr's universe.