The Mystery of The Sleeping-Car Express - Freeman Wills Crofts

Story: The Mystery of The Sleeping-Car Express

Author: Freeman Wills Crofts

Source: The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories, The Mystery of The Sleeping-Car Express & Other Stories. It can be read online here.

Story Number: 18

The story is divided into 2 parts. The first part provides the details of the double murder and its investigation. The initial setting of the railway compartments is explained brilliantly in a few short lines. Someone pulls the emergency brake to halt the night train in the middle of nowhere. The guard in the last coach looks out of the window to check what’s wrong and notices that a few men in the first-class coach are summoning for help through the windows. The first-class coach embedded between a sleeper-car and third-class coach has six compartments – the first 2 and the last two are occupied with the in-between ones being vacant. When the guard reaches the 5^th compartment, he notices that a woman is trying to open the door but the door is jammed and the door on the other side is blocked with 2 dead bodies – both shot in the head. The compartment on the right has 4 gentlemen but they are also in the same predicament of the door being winched. No gun is found in the compartment, the woman inside the compartment testifies that someone shot from outside but the neighbors on the right and the left swear that no one except the guard used the aisle! Also, the vestibule exits at both the ends of the coach were guarded, no one was seen exiting the train through any of the doors and all doors were under constant observation by the people who were craning their necks outside the windows, which leads to an impossible murder situation! And the guard is not the culprit! J 

What follows is a detailed investigation from the police – thinking that the murderer must have left the train when the train stopped, they search the area where the train had stopped, no man is found in any nearby village, no stranger was noticed anywhere, there were no other trains – either a freight or a passenger train which the escaped man could have taken. Next, they investigate all the passengers who were in that compartment and the story of every individual matches the facts in the case and hence the police end up clearing everyone. The case remains un-solved.

The second part of the story deals with the murderer confessing on his deathbed to a medical practitioner as to how exactly he committed the murder and escaped.

The solution is too technical and requires a thorough knowledge of the British Railway system to understand the mechanics of the crime – which puts the readers throughout the world at a great disadvantage. A detailed map of the set-up could have improved matters a bit but don’t think it would be sufficient; it would need a series of pictures showing the step by step movement of the criminal to make the reader understand what the author is trying to impart. I being from India and being a rail fan where the railway network was introduced by the British, was a lot more familiar with the terminologies and the set up to an extent, but have to admit the solution was hazy and have only a vague idea as to how it was done.

Unlike some of the others who were frustrated (rightfully so) with this story (saw their reviews online), it didn’t stop me any from enjoying it and hence its inclusion in this post. A few have pointed out that the collection ‘The Mystery of The Sleeping-Car Express and Other Stories’ has some top quality stories (including 5 more railway mysteries) and I am planning to read it if I can get a copy of this book for a fair price.

Probably these two sites with the pictures should help:

The story is set in 1909 – the compartment that fits best our story would the 1900s one and can be viewed here.

This link clearly shows the compartment set up.

But it is incomplete without a picture of the outside of the train and how the compartments were connected to each other – couldn’t get it in the limited time that I spent on it.

The Locked House - Stephen Barr

Story: The Locked House

Author: Stephen Barr

Source: 21st annual anthology of the ‘Best Detective Stories of the Year’ published in 1966.

Story Number: 17

What are some of the statements which a critic or a person who abhors locked room mysteries could put forth for his defense? They could read something like this:

 “A locked room problem isn’t a mystery at all: it’s a self-contradiction”

 “What the author asks the reader to believe is that a man is found murdered in a place from which the murderer couldn’t have escaped, and yet the murderer is not there. Writers have various ways of circumventing this. For example, the victim committed suicide in such a way as to resemble murder. Or the victim was dealt the fatal blow before he locked himself in. Or the murderer locked on the door on the inside while he was still on the outside.”

“The shoddiest solution of all is that he DID, in fact, get out, and his escape appears impossible only because of the author’s incomplete and therefore unfair description of the circumstances. None of these faces squarely up to the real dilemma – that the murderer got out when he COULD NOT. That, by definition, is absurd.”

Looks like the author set himself the task to break their defenses by providing this tightly knit locked room murder which does not fit any of the categories mentioned above. This is a story where a man has been murdered in a locked house (decapitated body in the living room with the axe used for the deed in the underground cellar), the murderer is not present in the house but at the same time, the murderer did not leave the room! If Dr. Fell gave us 7 categories under which to categorize all the possibilities of a locked room murder, Stephen Barr brilliantly instructs us that this method could very well be the eight. This story was written in 1965 but a variation of this method was used recently in one of the episodes of Jonathan Creek. It would be really interesting to come across a few more.

The Wine Glass - A.A. Milne

Story: The Wine Glass

Author: A.A. Milne

Source: 2^nd annual anthology of the ‘Best Detective Stories of the Year’ published in 1947.

Story Number: 16

A.A. Milne is best known as the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh but is also remembered by the mystery fans for his novel ‘The Red House Mystery’.

A detective novelist and a Scotland Yard detective are discussing the fine art of murder and the man from the yard opines that the simple way of committing a murder is often the best way. To substantiate his claim, he recites the following story.

The Marquis of Hedingham is celebrating his birthday and a bottle of Tokay arrives at the Lordship’s residence with a card bearing the name of his brother-in-law Sir William Kelso and a personal message. The butler is asked to serve this Tokay for the dinner party in the night but very shortly the butler is found dead after he tastes the wine while decanting. The narrator Mortimer and his boss are called in to investigate and they go about finding a person who had sufficient motive to kill the rich man, a man who had access to Kelso’s visiting card and knowledge of the relationship between the two gentlemen to feign a proper greeting message on the card. They fail to find any such person.

Mortimer then applies his theory that the simple solution is the true solution and thereby concludes that it was indeed the butler who was the intended victim and the murderer was none other than the man whose card was attached to the wine bottle!  Without telling his supervisor, he confronts Kelso to get a confession but he points out to Mortimer that the card being in his own name would convince any jury that he was innocent. Mortimer takes his leave telling him that he would pass on his theory to his boss. The next day, the boss is found dead due to poisoning, a wine bottle beside him with Mortimer’s visiting card attached to it! Mortimer is able to prove to everyone that he has a perfect alibi for the entire duration and moreover his visiting card attached to the wine bottle proves his innocence beyond doubt. When the police go to Kelso’s house, they find him to have committed suicide. The narrator ends the story here to which the novelist objects saying this can’t be the solution as it doesn’t prove what Mortimer set out to prove in the first place.

Mortimer then springs the delightful surprise on the novelist as well as the reader and explains how it indeed was a very simple murder and the simplest explanation was indeed the truth!

The Hand of God - Harry Stephen Keeler

Story: The Hand of God

Author: Harry Stephen Keeler

Source: 20 Tales of Murder (MWA Anthology Edited by Brett Halliday & Helen McCloy)

Story Number: 15

If the novels and stories of Harry Stephen Keeler have to be described in one word, the word that comes to mind is ‘Weird’. His stories are highly imaginative, unpredictable, unclassifiable & inexhaustible. And this story, which was written particularly for this anthology, is a fitting example which exhibits all these characteristics.

The first 2 parts of the story deal with the dream that is haunting the protagonist Carrew. He has been fantasizing for quite some time about a Chinese girl both in his dream and in his wakeful life. The dreams are beginning to worry Carrew as the girl in the dream is tending to get more aggressive as he starts preparing for his marriage in real life. One fateful night, he dreams that the girl has a Chinese dagger with her - which she plunges into his heart.

The 3^rd part is the police investigation where they find the body of Carrew stabbed to death inside a locked room. All the evidence in the case points to the fact that it was a murder and not suicide.

The penultimate part of the story is most fascinating in describing the testimony of the Physician to the coroner’s jury of how this murder was committed. He explains all the evidence and the clues garnered at the site to build up his case to show that what first appeared as a supernatural death indeed has a rational explanation, which obviously, only Keeler could have thought of! The final part is of course the jury’s verdict.

The Puzzle Lock - Austin Freeman

Story: The Puzzle Lock

Author: Austin Freeman

Source: The Puzzle Lock. All the stories can be downloaded from Gutenberg at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500391.txt

Story Number: 14

Dr. Thorndyke, creation of Austin Freeman is famous for his forensic/medical/scientific detective methods in his novels and short stories. This story however is not a typical story which will fit into these characteristics. Here, he tackles a chronogram which effectively leads the police to completely apprehend a big gang.

The story begins with Thorndyke and his companion Jervis observing Inspector Badger following a couple of men. A few days later, Superintendent Miller comes to the doctor’s house to narrate a strange case – the police force is on the track of a ‘managing director’ of a big gang which mainly deals in the burglary of jewels. Luttrell, the man they have been following in connection to this case has disappeared. It turns out that Luttrell was also one among the two whom Badger was following; both men have not been seen ever since they gave Badger the slip. Luttrell is a dealer who has built up a fortress like office with a strong room guarded by a Puzzle Lock – a lock without any keys and which can be opened only by providing a 15 digit code. The only clue which Miller can provide is a seal from the ring belonging to Luttrell – which shows a four line Latin poem.

A few days later, Miller requests Thorndyke to accompany him to check out Luttrell’s office as the owner has noticed a leakage on the utility meter but he can’t detect the source for this leakage. By this time, the doctor has already converted that poem into a chronogram and in solving that chronogram has obtained the 15 digit code to the lock. When the strong room is opened, they find the bodies of both the missing men along with a dairy of the list of the gang members. The doctor also identifies the mastermind for the police by explaining the clues which aptly point to the guilty party.

By an Unknown Hand - John Sladek

Name of the Story: By an Unknown Hand

Author: John Sladek

Source: The Times of London Anthology of Detective Stories

Story Number: 13

Out of the 1000 plus entries received for the detective story competition hosted by the Times of London in 1972, this story with its stylish whodunit and a top-notch locked room murder was deservedly the winner of this competition. In fact, I’m a bit surprised that this story has not found its way into any of the locked room anthologies. However, this story has been collected in “Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek” edited by David Langford, along with his science fiction stories. John Sladek was first and foremost a science fiction writer but he is known to the mystery world for his two very famous locked room novels ‘Black Aura’ and ‘Invisible Green’.

Thackery Phin posts an ad in the newspaper requesting for a challenge to tackle his mental acumen. In response, the owner of an art gallery Anthony Moon hires him to act as a bodyguard to protect one of the gallery’s chief contributors Aaron Wallis. Somebody has been sending threatening letters to Aaron and the last one is very specific that he would die at 9 PM on that day. The same has been prophesized by Aaron’s brother as well - who is a soothsayer.

Aaron occupies the complete 11^th floor of an apartment complex and he is the only one who has a key to the floor. When Moon escorts Phin to this floor to start his vigil, Aaron is yet to come back to the house. He turns up at around 8, enters his house, searches the house by himself and provides a chair to Phin to take guard outside his apartment house. All the windows have been barred and Phin has taken a vantage point such that he has kept the apartment door and the only other emergency exit in view. At 1 o’ clock, Moon comes back to the floor to discuss the situation and they decide to call off the vigil as nothing has happened. When they both go to the ground floor, the security guard is having a hard time restricting the entry of two people who want to meet Aaron. They call Aaron from the security desk but he doesn’t answer. They decide to go back in the same elevator (which no one has had the chance to use till now) and when they reach the 11^th floor, everything looks the same as it was a few minutes ago – the door is locked, nobody has tampered with the emergency exit and the orange chair on which Phin was sitting is exactly in the same position as he had left it. But when they price open the door, they find that Aaron has been strangled, having met his death between 8 and 9.

Phin turns to some locked room mysteries of Dr. Fell & Father Brown for inspiration to solve this puzzle. He questions the 4 suspects and then summons them to a traditional rendezvous at Hyde Park where he expostulates and discards 7 very ambitious solutions before revealing the actual solution which is simple but elegant, fairly-clued and very satisfying from a locked room mystery fan’s point of view.

The Tale of Sir Jeremy Fisher - Don Carleton

Name of the story: The Tale of Sir Jeremy Fisher

Author: Don Carleton

Source: The Times of London Anthology of Detective Stories

Story Number: 12

In the search for a potential new Conan Doyle, the Times of London, in conjunction with British publishing company arranged a special detective story competition in the spring of 1972. The panel of judges included five luminaries, one of them being Dame Agatha. It seems they received more than a thousand entries and out of these, the best 10 have been included in this anthology including the top 5 winners.

 “For resolving the most ingenious crime in ‘The Tale of Sir Jeremy Fisher’, Don Carleton won the second prize in this competition,” the judges quote in the introduction.

Scene of the crime: A three tiered pool. A big reservoir on top, from the reservoir water tumbles from a pipe down a narrow gulley to a shallow pool. From there it cascades down a wider gulley into a deep dark pool.

Jeremy Fisher, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wessex is found drowned in the lower pool with some head injuries caused before the death. A research scientist was on a boat in the reservoir, a group of archaeologists were on the site above the river, a student canoeing alone & a couple who saw Jeremy fishing 15 minutes before his death are the only witnesses and also the suspects, as each one of them has a likely motive. Nobody was seen approaching the dead man; all the others were constantly under observation by at least one other person.

After interviewing all the suspects, the Inspector(nameless throughout) has only 2 clues – a bottle of wine tied to a tree branch was found shattered with the broken string still tied to the branch and the broken paddle which the canoeing student claims was due to the river(which no one believes). Consulting the weather records and considering the motives of the various folks involved in conjunction with the two clues, the inspector shows how a murder could have been committed in that pool without anybody ever going near the victim.

Tomorrow’s post will feature the winning entry. J