Double, Double

"You never count on the perfect plan. The perfect plan, it has too many moving parts... you got to expect the perfect plan to fail."

- Nathan Ford (Leverage) 

There are a number of impossible situations of the miscellaneous kind, such as trains being whisked away in between two stations or an entire house vanishing over night, but they are uncommon because they're hard to do convincingly – not to mention the lack of wriggle room for an original solution. The doppelgänger of folklore is another example of an inviting premise trammeled by a limited amount of options to work with, if the supernatural has to be kept outdoors.

Helen McCloy's suspenseful Through a Glass, Darkly (1950) and Time Waits for Norman (1998) from the Jonathan Creek TV-series seemingly did everything that was (fairly) possible with the premise, however, Charlotte Armstrong found a nifty and clever way to extract some extra mileage out of the doppelgänger-ploy in The Dream Walker (1955) – which has also been published as Alibi for Murder.

Armstrong's twist lies in not coming up with a brand new solution to the problem, but showing the reader the ugly, plain woodwork behind the plot to assassinate the character of the respected John Paul Marcus. The reader knows from the offset who, why-and how and this makes The Dream Walker an inverted impossible crime story (another rarity), but the advantage is that the astral projection trick can be played up to full effect for story telling purpose. You're sort-of committing yourself with a locked room premise to deliver some kind of clever or original trickery at the end.

The Dream Walker tells the reader from the beginning Raymond Pankerman, third-generation millionaire, financiered the smear campaign against Marcus, after the latter alerted Uncle Sam of the illegal activities of the former, by offering a fat reward to Kent Shaws – brains of the outfit and slightly unhinged. Cora Steffani and Darlene Hite round out the team. Shaw's crazy scheme begins like a benevolent urban legend after Cora passes into a trance for the first time and dream walks. Miles away. Usually in another state of the country. There were even people who confirm to have talked to Cora while she was laying unconscious in another circle consisting of impeccable witnesses with no reason to lie.

While suggestions of an elaborate publicity stunt and "there are more things in Heaven and Earth" are being volleyed around, the reader can feel smug the entire time for knowing more than the characters trying to figure out what's happening. You're far more willing to go along with the insane scheme, because the inverted structure of the story makes the reader feel like a silent partner in the plot. You can simply sit back and look bemused at the unfolding events, complimenting Armstrong when she throws in an uncontrollable variable in the perfect plan of the foursome – forcing the dream walker to stumble over a body. It does, however, give the story traction in the press and Marcus eventually finds himself in a compromising position and nobody believes it when everybody swears, Marcus included, he didn't receive an envelope from the dream girl.

As noted in my review of The Case of the Weird Sisters (1943), it was Patrick, blogging At the Scene of the Crime, who propelled Charlotte Armstrong higher up my wish list (thanks!) and have to agree on two of his main points: it’s a strong statement against the witch hunts of the McCarthy-era and Armstrong knew how to pen a suspenseful story. Once again, this simple trick, made complicated for the sake of being complicated, worked admirably because of the inverted angle for the reader. The moment everyone in the story has figured it out the reader doesn't respond: oh, there were two of them, because that was never the point. Armstrong could focus completely on the characters and their exploits.

I have to add that I still think Patrick Quentin's Black Widow (1952) is the best persecution / suspense story of its kind, but The Dream Walker comes in as a close second. So I'll definitely be returning to Armstrong. 

By the way, you can all be proud of me: I resolutely said no when a punning post-title, "A Trance-Continental Flight," suggested itself. None of that Tom Foolery on this blog! 

Uneasy Ties

"Curiosity is useful for us detectives. It makes us nibble away at impossible problems."

- MacDougal Duff 

Charlotte Armstrong's The Case of the Weird Sisters (1943) was jotted down on my wish list after a laudatory and tantalizing review from Patrick, who still blogs At the Scene of the Crime, praising the novel as "one of the most uniquely-constructed impossible crime mysteries I've ever come across." Naturally, my interest was piqued, especially after finding out the book escaped the attention of Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders and Other Inpossible Crimes (1991), but that was for an obvious reason – 'cause it is not an impossible crime story. But more on that later.

I have to agree Armstrong took an unconventional, but fanciful, approach to constructing the plot and characterization that was both in-depth and grotesque. In a way, the story reminded me of some of John Dickson Carr's later period Sir Henry Merrivale novels, in which he experimented by removing or reducing one of the central ingredients of a whodunit (e.g. A Graveyard to Let, 1949).

The Case of the Weird Sisters begins conventionally enough with the engagement between Alice Brennan and Innes Whitlock, who has one million dollars to his name. It's a marriage of convenience and they both take something away from it: Innes gets the wife he desires and Alice's future is secure in a rapidly changing world. However, the unconventionality begins to seep through when their car, conveniently (plot-wise, that is), breaks down while passing through Innes hometown of Ogaunee, Michigan, forcing them in a situation they would've otherwise avoided – visiting Innes' three sisters at their ancestral home.

"Whitlock Girls" are what remains of the town's past dynasty and their distorted personalities, detached from reality, is reflected in both their characters and physical presentation. Maud is a lazy slob who gradually lost her hearing and a car-crash left Isabel with one arm, but Gertrude is the one Innes fears as it was negligence that left her blind in a horse-riding accident. Maud, Isabel and Gertrude are locked in their own worlds, but the question arises if these separate entities could form an alliance when they learn of the engagement and the accidents begin to happen. The missing road sign could've meant anything, but the falling lamp and tinkering around with gas pipes are clear indicators of malice. And they do what every rational human being would do in a case of attempted murder: call the police bring in an amateur detective!

MacDougal Duff is a retired historian-turned-detective and furnished this review with an opening quote, but The Case of the Weird Sisters really shouldn't be classified as being of the impossible variety. The nature of the disguised murder attempts require the simple power sight and sight or the practical use of both arms, however, the physical restrictions aren't even considered a necessary obstacle by Duff – arguing the sisters could've been in cahoots or one of them isn't half as disabled as everyone believes. You could argue it's a borderline impossible crime, but I would (IMHO) place it closer to such howdunits as Dorothy L. Sayers' Unnatural Death (1927). The disabilities of the three sisters mainly functions here to cross a nifty array of possible scenarios off against the sequence of events.

Patrick justly points out that the sequence of events, in some instances, was perhaps too clever for its own good, but the genuine weakness of The Case of the Weird Sisters may also be the books biggest triumph: Armstrong kneaded a fascinating detective story with compellable characters out of the mundane facts of how-and when a table lamp was thrown over and a road sign was removed. It's not a first-grade mystery and perhaps needed a full-blown impossible problem as the centerpiece of the plot, but it's a strangely compelling story. 

By the way, I smirked immaturely a couple of times at the poor choice of words directed at the Whitlock sisters. Duff actually begins explaining himself to the blind, but stuck-up, Gertrude with "Well, you see..." and part of me wanted Duff to follow up with "...truth only falls on deaf ears if people refuse to see it or grab it with both hands, you fossilized crayfish. Why aren't you collecting dust up in the attic?" 

Hey, I gathered from the overall story that Armstrong didn't like the Whitlock's either. So... until next time.