Carr, John Dickson -- Shorter Works

(a. k. a. Carter Dickson and Carr Dickson)

"New Murders for Old" (1939)

(a. k. a. "The One Real Horror")

as by Carter Dickson

***

"You would have known that this was a house in which death had occurred, and occurred recently ..."

***

"It was the nightmare again. One of the worst features of his nervous breakdown had been the conviction, coming in flashes at night, that he was not real any longer; that his body and his inner self had moved apart, the first walking or talking in everyday life like an articulate dummy, while the brain remained in another place. It was as though he were dead, and seeing his body move. Dead."

***

"One moment he was standing there with the automatic pistol in his hand, the noise of the engines beating in his ears and a horrible impulse joggling his elbow to put the muzzle of the pistol into his mouth and --"

***

"Haven't you ever realized that a giant ocean-liner, just before it leaves port, is the ideal place to commit a murder? .... And what happens to your victim after he goes overboard? He will be sucked under and presently caught by the terrible propellers, to make him unrecognizable."

**********

COMMENTS

Tony Marvell, on the urging of friends and family, decides to go on an eight-month round-the-world cruise: Tony's workaholic lifestyle has pushed him to the brink of a nervous breakdown, and his fiancee and brother insist on this rest cure. Tony, however, will experience a real shock to the system when he does something few men ever have: read his own obituary in a newspaper. Someone, it seems, wants very badly to see him dead, and if necessary would willingly kill him twice.

NOTES

Dickson/Carr relies on a hoary gimmick to activate the plot, but he still keeps things moving, employing his trademark horror atmospherics but paying it all off with a perfectly rational denouement -- although you should be prepared to believe at least two impossible things before breakfast about the character Rupert Hayes.

TYPE: Short story.

GENRE: Mystery fiction.

NARRATIVE: Third person.

WHERE: London; Southampton; aboard the Queen Anne; on the boat train; a house in St. John's Wood.

WHEN: Present day (1930s).

CHARACTERS: Hargreaves; Hargreaves' companion; Tony Marvell; Old Jim Marvell; Stephen Marvell; Judith Gates; ship's purser; Mrs. Reach; taxi driver; Rupert Hayes.

FOUND IN: Alfred Hitchcock Presents 14 of My Favorites in Suspense (1959, 1976), pp. 206-229.

FIRST COLLECTED IN: The Department of Queer Complaints (1940).

FIRST APPEARED IN: The Illustrated London News (Christmas 1939).

"Silver Curtain, The" (1939)

by John Dickson Carr

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"'There,' reflected the croupier, 'is a young man who will have trouble with his hotel.'"

***

"How'd you like to make ten thousand francs?"

***

"The air is aromatic; open carriages clop and jingle along broad avenues; and the art of extracting money from guests has become so perfected that we find our hands going to our pockets even in sleep."

***

"His tan topcoat was now dark with rain. His heels scraped on the pavement, for he had been stabbed through the back of the neck with a heavy knife whose polished-metal handle projected four inches. Then the wallet slipped out of his fingers, and splashed into a puddle, for the man died."

***

"He was a nasty little beast; but I don't for a moment believe you killed him."

"Thanks. But why?"

"I don't know."

***

"My friend, you looked straight at that murder; and you never saw it. You never saw it because a shifting, gleaming wall of rain, a kind of silver curtain, fell across the door-lamp and the beam of the lighthouse."

**********

COMMENTS

Young Jerry Winton is having rotten luck at the baccara tables; seeing his difficulties, Ferdie Davos offers Jerry a sizable sum. All he has to do is pick up some pills from a local doctor and collect ten thousand francs: piece of cake. But on his way to his rendezvous Jerry witnesses a murder, an impossible crime, and one for which the local gendarmes have a prime suspect: Jerry! For the real killer, Jerry fits perfectly in the frame; for Colonel March of Scotland Yard, there really is no mystery, and elucidating this case is all in a day's -- or night's -- work.

NOTES

Be prepared to accept one or two highly unlikely aspects of the crime (the skill and timing of the murder); if you buy those, the story should be enjoyable.

Carr adapted this one for radio in 1944 as "Death Has Four Faces," but without Colonel March. (See the review of The Dead Sleep Lightly here.)

TYPE: Short story.

GENRE: Detective fiction.

SUB-GENRE: Impossible crime fiction.

NARRATIVE: Third person.

WHERE: The casino at Bandalette; the Square St. Jean, Avenue des Phares; M. Goron's office.

WHEN: Present day (1930s).

CHARACTERS: croupier; Colonel March; Jerry Winton; Ferdie Davos; a French policeman; Eleanor Hood; Dr. Edouard Hebert; M. Goron; Eleanor's father.

FOUND IN: Tricks and Treats (1976), pp. 178-191.

FIRST APPEARED IN: The Strand (August 1939).

For more on Carr/Dickson, see:

http://tinyurl.com/67r2e8

http://gadetection.pbwiki.com/Carr,+John+Dickson