Persons or Things Unknown - John Dickson Carr

Story: Persons or Things Unknown

Author: John Dickson Carr

Book: The Department of Queer Complaints, Fell and Foul Play.

Theme For The Month: Locked Room or Impossible Crime Stories

It has been a habit with me for quite some time to always begin the New Year by reading a novel written by my favorite author John Dickson Carr. This year, I decided to go with a short story collection which is like shooting three birds with one stone: I’m still beginning the New Year with Carr, I’m covering a Queen’s Quorum title and I get to read a few high quality locked room/impossible crime stories.

The original edition of ‘The Department OF Queer Complaints’ is supposed to have consisted of 11 stories; my 1940 paperback edition has 10 stories – 7 featuring Colonel March and 3 standalones. The Colonel March stories have already been reviewed by my fellow blogger Tomcat here  and hence I decided to pick one of the non-series stories.

This is a historical mystery in which an unnamed host, who is hosting a few families for Christmas in his newly acquired house recounts this chilly tale of impossible crime which took place in that house centuries ago. The story is recounted from the diary of a Squire who was a witness to the actual murder and corroborated by a few facts catalogued from the inquest held at that time.

Oakley & Mary are engaged and are to be married shortly but Gerard wants to marry Mary and the first step towards it has to be the murder of Oakley. One fine night, Gerard enters the house when the couple are sure to be found in the ‘little’ room, the servants know for sure that Gerard was without his sword on this occasion, Gerard requests a few servants to join him and keep vigil outside the door with plenty of candles lit when he goes inside the room to converse with the couple. After a few minutes, the candle lights are extinguished inside the room and the servants posted outside hear some strange cries which finally end with a big thud as though someone has fallen on the ground. When the servants barge in, they find that Mary has fainted and Oakley is dead with deep and multiple stabbings but there is no sign of a murder weapon in the vicinity. The door was locked from the inside, the room doesn’t have any windows through which the weapon could’ve been discarded and every nook and cranny in that room is searched but the police fail to find any sign of the knife that must caused the deep and brutal wounds. A man hacked to death, with thirteen stab-wounds in his body, from a hand that wasn’t there and a weapon that didn’t exist! The verdict at the inquest: “Death due to Persons or Things Unknown.”

The solution is pretty simple and pretty clever - the host provides the secret of the ‘invisible knife’ as he calls it – probably the atmosphere and the historical setting aid in the non discovery of the weapon which probably wouldn’t have been possible in the modern settings but that doesn’t take away anything from the puzzle plot aspect – the reader has all the clues fairly laid out in front of him to figure out the solution.

Last week, I went through Robert Adey’s bibliography of locked room mysteries and shortlisted all the stories that I could lay my hands on from the collections that I’ve. Hopefully, I should have enough stories to last for the complete month!

Cabin B-13 - John Dickson Carr

Theme for the Week: Murder on The Seas

Name of the story: Cabin B-13

Author: John Dickson Carr

Source: The Door to Doom and Other Detections

Story Number: 52

This is one of Carr's very popular radio mysteries; it was adapted as a television drama; and in 1953 the script became the basis for a feature-length movie, Dangerous Crossing. Richard and Anne Brewster, married a few hours earlier are leaving for Europe on their 3 month honeymoon on board the ocean liner 'Maurevania'.

When they check in to Cabin B-13, Anne somehow recollects the old Paris Exposition story - where a mother and daughter duo check in to a hotel, the daughter goes out and when she returns, the mother has disappeared from the face of the earth and the proprietor of the hotel swears that she came alone! Little does Anne know that she is gone be in exactly the same situation just a few minutes later! Richard goes away to hand over the money to the purser, Anne goes to the upper deck and waits for Richard. The first person she meets there is Dr. Hardwick - who gives her the first shock that there is no cabin in that ship with number 13. When they go to B deck to investigate, they don't find Cabin B-13. The stewardess confirms that in all her eight years of service there never was a cabin with number 13.

Anne's luggage is found in B-16 but there's no sign of Richard or his luggage. Hardwick escorts her to Mr. Marshall, the second officer who was standing guard when the passengers entered the ship. He swears that Anne entered alone and no one was with her. The captain of the ship agrees to searching the whole ship but there's still no sign of Richard. Later in the night, Anne gets a call in her cabin from Richard; who says someone has been trying to kill him and he has been thwarting those attempts by hiding from them. He asks her to meet him in the upper deck immediately - where the climax is played out with Dr. Hardwick coming to the rescue of the intended victim to reveal a diabolical plot hatched out by the criminal. As in most of Carr's tales, the clues are fairly presented to the reader for him to identify the solution and the guilty party.