The Man Who Could Not Shudder - John Dickson Carr

US 1st edition (Harper, 1940)

In slowly working my way through the works of John Dickson Carr I think I may have found a book to surpass the devilry and ingenuity of He Who Whispers as my favorite of Carr’s books. The Man Who Could Not Shudder (1940) is an intriguing mystery that not only features Carr’s most frequent recurring motif (a haunted house or haunted room) it presents two of the most ingenious impossible murders in the Carr (and Dickson) books I have read so far.

Martin Clarke is planning a weekend house party in which he hopes to show his guests the paranormal phenomena that pervade Longwood House, his newly acquired home with a reputation for fatal hauntings. Seems in the past a butler inexplicably grabbed hold of a chandelier and was killed when it came crashing down from the ceiling and landed on top of him. There have been reports also of furniture leaping out at visitors. The grandfather clock in the hallway supposedly stopped at the precise time the first owner, Norbert Longwood, died. And centuries ago Longwood himself was supposedly seen sitting by the fireplace the night after he was placed in his coffin. Clarke is ready for an all out ghost party and hopes to count among his guests a lawyer, a scientist, an architect, a spiritualist, and a priest. Clarke inadvertently invites danger to the house, too. Instead of fun and games with ghosts and poltergeists he has a weekend of violence. One of Clarke’s guests is horribly murdered and it seems that a ghost was responsible.

Benton Logan is found shot dead in a study in which an antique gun collection has been mounted to the wall above a fireplace. His young wife had entered the room just prior to the murder and swears she saw a gun jump off the wall and fire in midair. No one was in the room but she and her husband yet she was nowhere near the gun nor was her husband. Is it a possible that a ghost picked the gun off the wall mounting and fired it at her husband?

Gideon Fell shows up along with the police to help sort out the real from the illusion. Is there genuine psychic phenomena at work? Is Longwood House a cursed home inhabited by the ghost of a 19th century man rumored to have been involved in witchcraft? Or is it all the work of fiendish human hands adept at fanciful trickery?

UK 1st edition (Hamish Hamilton, 1940)

And remember that tale of the butler who went swinging on the chandelier only to have it become his deathtrap? There will be a chilling echo of that mysterious death and other threats and near murderous attacks before the mysteries are all rationally solved and the ghosts are put to rest. The solution when it comes is one of Carr’s most ingenious and gasp inducing finales. There are three obscure clues planted in plain view that can lead to an understanding of what exactly is going on in Longwood House, but only the most astute readers will catch them.

If you like your detective novels bizarre and puzzling, if the miracle problem or impossible murder is to your liking The Man Who Could Not Shudder will be right up your alley. The abundance of baffling situations will satisfy even the most demanding reader. It’s the kind of book that makes a true fan of detective novels want to give the author a standing ovation.

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Reading challenge update: Golden Age Bingo Card, space G4 -- "A Locked Room Mystery". I prefer the umbrella term "impossible crime" under which all "locked room" mysteries fall. Not all impossible crimes have a genuine locked room, but they are all related to the same subgenre.

The Problem of the Green Capsule - John Dickson Carr

The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939) is subtitled "Being the Psychologist's Murder Case." If the reader should miss this on the title page the final chapter is also conveniently titled the same thing. In England the book was published as The Black Spectacles which, in addition to being part of the murderer's elaborate disguise, is an interesting metaphor which will be explained later. Under his Carter Dickson pseudonym Carr wrote a book called Seeing Is Believing (1941). This book might just as easily be called Seeing Is NOT Believing for the powers of observation – or more accurately the lack thereof – is at the heart of this devilish detective novel.

Here is an example of the type of John Dickson Carr book so lovingly parodied by Anthony Shaffer in Sleuth. It is pure artifice, something that could never happen in real life. The whole thing is really nothing more than a piece of theater. Illusion and misdirection were the key components in Carr's fantastical detective novels. It's surprising he didn't employ more theatrical plot devices like this one in his books. Puzzle lovers are sure to get caught up in the multiple layers that make up the criminal activity in this book. At work are mind-bending psychological game playing, intentional trickery and bamboozlement galore.

Marcus Chesney claims no one truly observes. He pronounces that eyewitnesses are worthless. He is determined to prove to his niece Marjorie, her fiancé George, and Professor Ingram, a psychologist; that they are not as observant as they think they are. In a letter to Dr. Fell he outlines his ideas:

All witnesses, metaphorically, wear black spectacles. They can neither see clearly, nor interpret what goes on on the stage, still less what goes on in the audience. Show them a black-and-white record of it afterwards, and they will believe you; but even then they will be unable to interpret what they see.

Chesney arranges a theatrical experiment, enlisting the aid of a household servant, which they are all to witness and be quizzed on what they think they saw immediately afterwards. To help prove his point he asks one of the participants to film the proceedings. What is meant to be a piece of melodramatic theater – the servant dressed in an outlandish disguise enters from outside and feigns murdering Chesney – goes horribly wrong. Chesney dies as the result of prussic acid poisoning apparently at the hands of his confederate. Yet later the confederate is discovered wounded and dazed in the yard outside. The pieces of the disguise strewn about the yard. Questioning of the three witnesses proves that none of them could have left their places. It's another impossible situation.  This all seems to be related to a series of poisonings that took place weeks ago. Poisonings in which Marjorie was a primary suspect and the target of malicious gossip.

Dr. Gideon Fell is consulted when one of the three policemen Inspector Elliott is stymied. It doesn’t help matters that Elliott has previously met Marjorie coincidentally while traveling in Italy and has fallen in love with her. Dr. Fell recognizes this emotional flaw and helps guide Elliott out of his self-imposed trap towards the proper solution. The film of the playlet proves of great importance in unmasking the killer as does one character's knack for lip reading.

Two interesting parallels: One the book deals with prussic acid poisoning the murder method used in The Fifth Tumbler by Clyde Clason, a book I wrote about last month. There is a remarkable section in Carr's book almost identical to a passage in Clason's book in which the chemical properties and composition of prussic acid are discussed. Not only that –- the commercial, agricultural and industrial uses of potassium cyanide, the main ingredient in prussic acid, are also mentioned in almost exactly in the same order as in The Fifth Tumbler. Clason's book was published in 1936 three years earlier than Carr's. Had Carr read it and used it as a reference in writing about prussic acid and potassium cyanide? Or is it one of those outrageous coincidences of life? Definitely something to mull over.

Secondly: Dr. Fell gives one of his famous lectures in this book. This time it is a poison lecture. I wonder why critics never talk about this one. His locked room lecture (found in The Three Coffins, also published as The Hollow Man) is very well known having been cited many times in numerous articles, critical works. And rightly so. It's a brilliant crystallization of the various ways in which a murder can be committed and made to appear impossible. But this poison lecture is one that is based on true crime cases not a fantastical detective novel trope. Carr outlines a type of poisoning persona and uses the case histories of convicted poisoners to support his theories. It's an overlooked portion of the book and deserves some mention.

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This is my first completed read in Bev's Color Coded Reading Challenge at My Reader's Block.  If you like reading contests jump on the bandwagon, friend!  Click here to get the scoop and the rules.

Death Turns the Tables - John Dickson Carr

Here Carr blends into his story some tricks that are the favorite plot motifs of other mystery writers.  We get a story of an attempted murder in the past, a missing murder weapon from that crime, an actual murder, a faked murder and the disappearance of a tramp accidentally run down. The business with the murder weapon reminded me of Erle Stanley Gardner's obsession with switched guns and missing bullets and all the rest of the dizzying ballistics games found in his Perry Mason novels.  And the final twist of where the victim was actually killed as opposed to where he was found is something that turns up quite often in the novels of Anthony Wynne.  The re-enactment of the faked murder towards the end of the book, however, is pure Carr. It is simultaneously one of the most preposterous and clever bits in the books of this period when he was at his most creative. Only a reader equipped with an arcane knowledge of Canadian geology and taxidermy could possibly figure it all out.

 

Dr. Fell is much more somber here and less of his usual blustery, pontificating self.  We still have Fell's cries of "Archons of Athens!" and "Oh, my ancient hat!" but, with the exception of some antics at a pool party, the book is fairly devoid of the usual farcical excesses.  Since Dr. Fell is engaged in a mental game of chess with the most arrogant of Carr's villains, Fell adopts a new persona.  He is, in effect, acting as Nemesis in the classical meaning of the word.  He knows full well who is responsible very early on and is determined to give the culprit what he fully deserves.  How Dr. Fell doles out his retribution, however, surprises not only the murderer, but the reader as well.