Lewen Hewitt is a
little-known, long-since forgotten mystery writer of short stories,
whose work was mostly published in Detective Story Magazine,
but as obscure as he has become today, Hewitt deserves to be
remembered as the spiritual father of perhaps the first
magician-detective of the genre, Balbane – who appeared in
Detective Story Magazine from 1921 to 1922. Only six of these
stories were reprinted a decade later in Best Detective Magazine.
A second achievement you
can possibly put to his name is that Hewitt might have written one of
the earliest examples of that popular staple of the locked room
mystery: an impossible murder during "a spiritualistic séance."
Hewitt's "The Twisted
Bullet" was originally published in February 12, 1921, issue of
Detective Story Magazine and was reprinted in the June, 1932,
publication of Best Detective Magazine.
Mr. Trautman invited a
spiritual medium, Finley, to "show his ghosts" as "a
diversion from the ordinary dinner party" and had "prevailed
upon the great Balbane to attend," but had warned the
magician-detective that, in case of fraud, there was to be "no
melodramatic exposure" – only murder made such a dramatic
exposure a necessity. The séance started out normally enough with "seemingly miraculous" slate-writing and reading from
sealed envelopes, but eventually "the shape of a fiery ball"
appeared in the center of the table. When the lights were turned on,
they found "a great heap of purple violets" on the spot
where the fiery ball was seen.
These are the simplistic,
stock-in-trade, tricks of the fraudulent medium and I remember John
Sladek's Black Aura (1974) had an excellent and
entertaining rundown of most of these cheap parlor tricks.
A second séance is
conducted and the ball of fire reappeared in the darkened room, but
the magic of the moment was shattered by an explosion. Once again,
the lights are turned on and a revolver lay in the middle of the
table with "a wisp of smoke curling from its barrel,"
which pointed to the chair of a man named Hargrove – who's leaning
back in his chair with a bullet hole in his forehead. So who fired
the fatal shot. And, more importantly, how? All of the participants
formed an unbroken circle of linked hands.
Trautman is not partial to "thickheaded policemen" and implores Balbane to reveal the
murderer before the police arrives, but nearly everyone seated around
the table turns out to have a motive. So the magician-detective
decides to stage the third séance of the evening and lure out the
murderer by using himself as bait.
Regrettably, the solution
to the impossible shot in the darkened room with everyone locking
hands is not as good, or imaginative, as its premise and impressed as
a little impractical. Surely, one particular person should have
noticed that something was amiss. I think I would have noticed it. In
any case, "The Twisted Bullet" deserves recognition for being one
of the earliest examples of a (locked room) murder during a séance
in a pitch-black room. A premise with an enduring popularity and used
by mystery writers to this very day. So definitely a notable title as
far as the history of the genre is concerned.
Finally, in order to pad
out this very short blog-post, I'll dump a list of links here to
other reviews or posts about séance-themed detective novels and
short stories.
Anthony Abbot's About
the Murder of a Startled Lady (1935)
Anita Blackmon's There's
No Return (1938)
John Dickson Carr's "The
Black Minute" (collected in The
Dead Sleep Lightly, 1983)
Robin Forsythe's The
Spirit Murder Mystery (1936)
Peter Lovesey's A
Case of Spirits (1975)
Bill Pronzini's "Medium
Rare" (collected in Carpenter
and Quincannon, 1998)
E.R. Punshon's Six
Were Present (1956)
Clayton Rawson's "From
Another World" (collected in The
Great Merlini, 1979)
Max Rittenberg's "Rough
Fist of Reason" (collected in The
Invisible Bullet, 2016)
Christopher St. John
Sprigg's The
Six Queer Things (1937)
