The stories in Carr have their part of great
importance: very often serve as testing of forms, and it is not improper to say
that if it is true that some novels are absolute masterpieces, for example.
"The Three Coffins" or
" The Crooked Hinge" or " He Who Whispers" or "The Bourning Court ", it is equally
true that many of his stories and radio-plays are just masterpieces ( The Crime in Nobody's Room, in which a
crime happens in a second floor apartment that should not exist, or the classic
Radio play, Cabin B-13 with the two
spouses Richard and Anne Brewster boarding the steamer Maurevania, for their
Honeymoon, and then later in the story, vanishes a cabin, the B-13, and the
bridegroom with it) .Very often the stories in Carr's novels are nothing more
than (very often with locked rooms, impossible crimes, unexplained
disappearances, sinister atmospheres) .. concentrates. That is because it is
also important to examine them and try to find within them, elements that
justify the existence and the enthusiastic judgment of critics and readers,
thing not common. Carr collected together his stories in some series: in one of
them, "The Door to Doom and Other
Detections", there are 4 emblematic stories belonging to the first
carrian production, starring Henri Bencolin. We talk about the period in which
Carr is close to France: France and Paris in particular, are imaginary places,
come down to us unchanged, with their load of mystery and fascination, as he
had read in the novels of cloak and dagger of which he was nurtured still
young. And is the Paris by Honoré de Balzac, Stendhal, Victor Hugo, not that by
Zola, with its social contrasts, with its processes. The protagonist is
Bencolin, the first of the carrian characters, interpreter of five novels. The
stories in the order they are: The Shadow of the Goat (1926), The Fourth Suspect
(1927,January), The Ends of Justice (1927, May), The Murder in Number Four
(1928); and a short
novel:
Grand Guignol (1929).
About the short novel, T. J. Yoshi, at his
essay “John Dickson Carr: A Critical
Study”, says:
“In 1928 Carr’s parent sent him to the
Sorbonne in Paris for further study; but Carr spent all his time writing, and
here produced the short novel Grand Guignol, an early version of his first
novel, It Walks by Night (1930); it was published in The Haverfordian in the
issues for March and April 1929. In 1929 he expanded Grand Guignol into it
Walks by Night, and it was prompty bought by Harper & Brothers…When the
novel was published, Harper unprecedentely advertised it in a full-page ad in
the New York Times, and it ultimately sold 15.000 copies. Carr’s career as
mystery novelist was launched… Grand Guignol, the early version of It Walks by
Night, allows us to examine carefully the early growth of Carr the detective
writer. Grand Guignol, at 25.000 words, is a substantial novelette or short
novel…probably written in 1928, is set in 1927, as is It walks by Night; the
mechanics of the principal crime – a “locked room” murder – do not differ
appreciably, although events following this crime are elaborated at
considerable length in the novel” (pages. 14-15, Yoshi’s essay).
If at It Walks
by Night we find the Bencolin’s description: “Then
you studied the face, turned partly sideways—the droop of the eyelids, at once
quizzical and tolerant, under hooked eyebrows, and the dark veiled light of the
eyes themselves. The nose was thin and aquiline, with deep lines running down
past his mouth. A faint smile was lost in a small moustache and pointed black
beard—the black hair, parted in the middle and twirled up like horns, had begun
to turn grey. Over the white tie and white shirtfront, it was a head from the
renaissance in the low light of the lamps. He rarely gestured when he spoke,
except to shrug his shoulders, and he never raised his voice…The twirled hair,
the pointed beard, the wrinkled eyes, and the inscrutable smile were known”, at the short novel, we find the definition more effective and withering of
his character, a real photo:
“He rose and began to pace
about, hands clasped behind his back, head bent forward. Mephistopheles smoking
a cigar, several of him reflected in the mirrors around the walls as he passed
up and down; a queer and absurd little figure in motion, but Pari’s avenger of
broken laws. “Mephistopheles smoking a cigar”: there is more to this
soubriquet, we are given to understand, than merely a description of Bencolin’s
moustache and goatee” (Yoshi’s Essay, page 10)
But why Mephistopheles?
One of the four stories comes to help us, the second for the accuracy, The Fourth Suspect. Another Adventure of M..
Henri Bencolin. When Bencolin is to
the presence of Villon (in that time, he is the Chief of Police), Carr provides
a framework for the figure:
“The little detective came
shambling in with his rather apologetic air. Bencolin’s eyes were kindly and
squinting; Villon could picture the stooped figure, black beard, high nose, all
redolent of cigar smoke, even with closed eyes: Bencolin had a top hat stuck
rather rakishly on his head; his cloak sagged after him when he advanced to the
desk”. In short, a man not
nice, but a character, however, what we would call a "type". But
Carr, before this description, he told us, as to prepare a description of a
physical certainly not by Adonis, that in Bencolin: “..the
innate sentimentality of the man worked against him; at odd moments he might be
found dreaming at the opera, or buying wine for Bohemian friends on the left
bank, or consorting with beggars whose obviously false tales drew large sums of
money from him”.
His nickname of Mephistopheles, is definitely
connected to his profession, as he can transform into a merciless judge; but
also undoubtedly to his appearance. Interesting is what Gil Bethune says in Deadly Hall, the penultimate novel
published by Carr: “Uncle Gil
..Momentarily Had Looked like less amiable, beardless like Mephistopheles than
a Grand Inquisitor preparing to order torture”.
To whom is
he referring? T. J. Yoshi believes that the reference to Mephistopheles, is
linked to the figure of Bencolin, and that the parallel is intentional as the
story of the novel precedes by a few days the first big event of Bencolin
remembered it It Walks by Night: in
fact, the date that is framed at the beginning of Deadly Hall, is April 19, 1927, while the story of It
Walks by Night, begins April 23 1927, but Yoshi stops here. Instead I would
say much more.
First, the appearance: we refer to Mephistophelean
expression and even more so to Bencolin’s eyebrows. The expression refers
aspect of Gilbert Bethune. Carr when describes his appearance, says that to
Bethune hair blacks were streaked by grey: this expression is too similar
to the citation or to the reference
contained in the famous description of the appearance of Bencolin contained in It Walks by Night, " the black hair, parted in the middle and twirled
up like horns, had begun to turn grey ": it is as if Carr had wanted to pay tribute
to his early years, to Bencolin, who was the symbol of his early successes.
Both names of the two characters starting with "Be", both serve two substantially similar professions
(Investigating Judge and the Chief of Police, Bencolin; District Attorney,
Bethune); both smoke cigars; both have mephistophelean eyebrows that is arched; both novels are set at a distance of a few
days in 1927; both have a young man who is as if he acted as an assistant (the
situation of Watson): Jeff Marle in the case of Bencolin, Caldwell said Jeffrey "Jeff" in the
case of Bethune, and both names begin with “Je”. Too many coincidences to not be instead of wanted citations.
Carr wanted say that Deadly Hall is
like another novel with Bencolin (situations, times, and in different ways)?
And to Bencolin always we think, in the case of his
last novel, Hungry Goblin: Carr in
fact, just in The Lost Gallows, in
the short span of a few pages – as Don D'Ammassa says quite rightly – had cited
the terms that would later become the titles of his works: "... Carr mentions three terms that would later figure in the
titles of novels - Punch and Judy, the Red Widow, and the Hungry Goblin."
But how does change the representation and the figure of Bencolin, with the
description that is given us at It Walks
By Night, compared to the previous offer in "The Fourth Suspect" ? There we see him elegant (here, he is
not), sliced, broken (here is not), a person of a certain standard even
social: Bencolin is no longer one of the many 86 Prefects, but he is "Juge
d'Instruction" : investigating judge, counselor of the Supreme Court and
the chief of police. He is changed: he is no longer so "human", he has
become harder, even ruthless, implacable judge with the transgressors: it’s the
life which has made him such!
We can also see here a substantial difference with
the other figures of investigators: Fell is a character that has nothing to do
with the police, while Merrivale while belonging to military intelligence (he
is even the head of counterintelligence), the figure is not comparable to a
policeman, while Bencolin, he is. And if
It Walks by Night is the grand
entrance of Carr, on the stage of the crime in the genre of the novel, with the
virtuosity of staging and characterizations of Grand Guignol, typical of the early novels, especially of the
bencolinian cycle, it is equally important to emphasize the extraordinary
importance of the earliest stories, the ones with Bencolin young, as already
contain all the characters and characterizations of the next Carr, of the great
successes. In particular, we can safely say that many of the ideas that will be
developed later in the great novels, are already here completed.
The first in order of time of the tales is The Shadow of the Goat: it was written
in November-December 1926 We find for the first time represented, not one but
three of the most recurring characters of better identification of Carr: a man
disappears from a hermetically sealed room – we would say "vanished into
thin air"; a murder at a Locked Room, an attempted impossible murder, with
another disappearance can not be explained except by supernatural events.
There's the bet, which is a prelude to
the disappearance impossible, that it will be resumed in The Three Coffins (between Grimaud and Pierre Fley), but there is
also the first disappearance: a man, Cyril Merton, locked in a room with stone
walls, in which the only exit is the door , guarded at sight, vanishes in thin
air without leave traces, at the expected hour; the murder of another in a
home, as the witnesses tell, in which has not joined anyone, and there are two
people of the servants who swear that is exactly what happened (and who does
not swear falsely): the only person who would been there, Garrick, the nephew
of the victim, could not be there because he was committed to guard the door of
the room, from which there was the disappearance of Merton: two facts
undeniably linked, but unexplained. The important thing is that Jules Fragneau
has been killed. Finally, the grandson of Fragneau is attacked by someone who
hurts him, and who hurts him, by assertion of Bencolin, is a dead man. Three
inexplicable facts, resolved with iron logic: the result is a solution
absolutely spectacular.
Another feature of this first and surprising story
with Bencolin, whom many consider a masterpiece (and it is easy to confirm it,
reading it), is the supernatural atmosphere that you breathe, another
characteristic of the carrian works (ghosts, demons, impossible disappearances
, gloomy atmospheres), who could remember us an English specialized in ghost
literature, Montague Rhodes James, but that, according to Douglas G. Greene, it
is characteristic of certain works by Anne Katherine Green for example: he
claimed to be even similarities of the plot at the carrian story The Gentleman from Paris and the story
by Green, The Leavenworth Case
(1878), as well as between the radio play Cabin
B-13 and Room 3 of 1909 by Green.
It will not be difficult to recall the atmosphere of The Three Coffins when before Grimaud and his friends converse in
front the fire, and then in the eerie and sinister tale, the unknown Pierre
Fley fits, who threatens Grimaud to intervene in his place, his brother. So
much so that some critic says that this story “contains the seeds of two of his best later novels, The Three Coffins and The
Nine Wrong Answers” .
And we notice another detail, which also occurs in
the other 3 short stories: Bencolin is not alone. With him there is another
protagonist in the novels that disappears, and is replaced in the first four
novels by Jeff Marle: namely Sir John Landevorne. Yes, that Sir John
Landervorne that will appear again for the last time, in that masterpiece of
the first production of bencolinian cycle romance that’s The Lost Gallows.
John Landevorne appears for the last time in The Lost Gallows (not to appear
anymore). The fact that Carr, from the first of the novels published with
Bencolin, decides to take him out, testifies to me the new professional and
social status achieved by Bencolin, “Juge d'Instruction” while Landevorne, is
in essence, now, an ex-police officer of Scotland Yard: “Sir
John Landevorne had once come from that vague section of London known as
Whitehall, and he had been possibly the only man in the city who might have
given police orders to Scotland Yard. If M. Henri Bencolin was only one of
France’s eighty-six prefects of police, he was not the least important of them”.
If you see
well, Jeff Marle, who plays the part of Watson's situation, it is not in a
position of parity, which is essentially what is observed in the case of Landevorne
in the first four stories (even if the true deus ex machina is always Bencolin)
and the Lost Gallows, but despite being an acquaintance of Bencolin (Bencolin
and his brother Jeff were friends) is still in a more secluded location,
however, and does not share the center stage. And 'he, the famous French
policeman at the center of the lights, it is he who dictates the action
detective, there is no one who can try to steal the limelight. It is as if
Bencolin destroying the image of her mate once, destroyed part of his past, a
part of consciousness that no longer wants to be considered. It’s to say,
however, that, despite apparently after The
Corpse in the Waxworks (1931), Jeff Marle disappears (in fact, the last
novel with Bencolin, The Four False Weapons
(1937), he is not one of the characters), in reality Carr gave him the chance
of dying in beauty, having the spotlight all to himself, without recurring
character in a novel, Poison in Jest,
a novel of 1932, which is a bencolinian novel without Bencolin.
However, to explain what is happening in The Lost Gallows, Carr says that
Landevorne was changed having lost a son tragically (hung himself): since in
none of the four stories of the youth of Bencolin, it hints at possible dates
which they connect, ie not is specified the period of time, from what Carr says
in The Lost Gallows, one could argue
that they have been placed in a time that comes before the outbreak of the
First World War. This would also
explain how from the end of the fourth short story to the first novel, when in
the actual time pass a few months, in the imaginary and literary, more than ten
years spend, at which Bencolin passes from office of Prefect, one of many, that
of Chief of Police, to Advisor to the Supreme Court and the Investigating
Judge, ousting that Villon who appears in two among the four stories: in the
second and in the fourth.
Bencolin, unlike Merrivale and Fell, works better when he has an opponent
who is opposed: betrays his romantic
originates. It's like a knight who reacts to affront suffered immediately, and
reacts much more vehemently than who
opposes is big and smart as he is. In The
Fourth Suspect, is Count Villon, his superior, who asks for his help while
contesting the fact that Bencolin can find the key to the problem (he hates,
for the extraordinary ability to Bencolin have everything under control and to
solve the most complex skeins): the spy LaGarde was killed in front of the eyes
of the same Villon and the agent of the secret service Riordan, who heard the shot:
they broke down the door, without having seen anyone leave a hermetically
sealed room, and they were in front of the only exit. LaGarde is still dressed
in the style of the masquerade ball held in his house, and on his face is a
mask. On his face, there are three holes: two for the eyes (in the mask), and
the third in the forehead, from which comes out a trickle of blood, before
their eyes. Once again a locked room absolutely extraordinary, once again
resolved with skill.
The murder takes place before their eyes, but both swear that no one was
there except of course the victim, as in the novel of 1937, Peacock Feather Murders (also The Ten Teacups), where Vance Keating
that "she is wearing a hat that is obviously not his size" is entered
in a penthouse apartment, closing the door behind him, while both the window
and the door only, are guarded outside by the police is murdered with two
bullets, and the gun, an old revolver, is found on the floor, and no trace of
the killer .For more, The Four Suspect,
is the first of his writings in which he elaborates the theme of the object
(the weapon, but also other), which disappears after a crime, from a Locked
Room and the seeds sown here, will bear fruit elsewhere: first, the weapon that
disappears in Till Death Do Us Part;
many wads of cash, vanished in a room, Hot
Money (short story included in the collection The Department of Queer Complaints); the testament that disappears
from a locked room, which has heavily barred the window while the door is
guarded, in The Gentleman from Paris
(story taken from the collection "The
Third Bullet and Other Stories").
The third story is even more remarkable. The End of Justice once again the theme of the challenge that
Bencolin accepts: this time, there’s a
man whom Bencolin respects, Follewes, who has spent all his money to charity,
to be sentenced to death for the murder of his cousin Darworth. The murder is
still a Locked Room: Fellowes was seen entering at the victim's home, knock on
the door, announce himself, be let in, and lock the door. Then, was found
killed the brother, known spiritualist, shackled at the hands and feet to a
chair with a knife in his heart: there is no one in the room of course!
Fellowes seems to have disappeared, evaporated, especially as the only window
is open, yes, but on the edge of the sill and on the lawn below is a white
expanse of snow without a single footprint, immaculate and perfect. How did the
alleged murderer to escape, more that he didn’t
move from his house? Who was the real murderer? Bencolin succeed even in
this case to solve the mystery, but he
will not save his friend, who will be hanged unjustly, a few minutes
before be instead discovered the real culprit.
This story provides, along with the first examined, several ideas for The Three Coffins. In addition, the theme of the snow-covered
expanse in which you do not see footprints or you see them but they do not
belong to the victim, will be repeated with endless variations from the same
Carr (and others, his posterity): The
Footprints in the Sky(1940), story in which Carr as usually will not save
himself and he will invent a kind of broader Locked Room, the snow-covered
lawn, with a solution to truly leave you speechless; the expanse of snow at The
White Priory Murders; the snow coming down and the absence of footprints by
the killer of Grimaud at The Hollow Man;
also at The Gilded Man.
Another issue present here, that of ventriloquism, will be promptly revived
with rest of his career as a writer of Carr, in 1935, in the series with HM
with which Carr is signed for editorial reasons under the pseudonym Carter
Dickson, will see the light novel The Red
Widow Murders, which sees The Grand Old Man in the throes of one of his
best and most intricate exploits, where one among the characters is
ventriloquist. The story seems to me somewhat unbalanced as a solution: imagine
that Darworth found handcuffed to the chair, while accustomed to seances
biased, having had the strength, even after he has chained ankles to stab to
the heart, and after he has handcuffed himself, seems to me a colossal bluster.
This young Carr is much more extreme bully and Carr's more mature, more
thoughtful, balanced and perfect in his reconstructions: in his desire to
impress with a sham really the limit, he climbs on the mirrors in order to
refute what would seem the only possible solution, as in turn impossible. It almost
seems like the very first Paul Halter de The
Curse of Barbarossa. I could understand if he had inflicted stab in the
stomach and then he bled to death, but imagine to hit the heart (and the death
is almost instantaneous) and then have the strength to handcuff himself, would
reveal in the victim not a man but a demigod. One thing a bit difficult to
digest .At last there’s the last story, The Murder in Number Four.
It’s a locked room very suggestive: this time it's in a compartment of a
train. Mercier, diamond smuggler, was found strangled in a compartment, closed
with deadbolt from the inside, and a opened window has a space across which
would not pass even a dwarf. The solution is again suggestive, and indeed the
only one possible, if you do not want to admit the fact that Mercier has been
strangled by a ghost. The vital clue that leads Bencolin to identify the
murderess is a ticket.
However, the story, even though it offers a
spectacular solution, is the least original of the four: it has a direct subsidiary
in The Big Bow Mystery by Israel
Zangwill. It’s, however, to be noted how in this story, Carr explores for the
first time the technique of solving a problem, discussing not so much about the
technique of the locked room, but how the detective can and should work to
solve happily a case of detection . Here is the first part of the dissertation,
between Sir John Landevorne and Bencolin
who in the course of the story, fiercely, says: “…I am Bencolin, Prefect of Police in Paris”. I omit the second
part because it refers clearly to the resolution of the case in question:
"A pretty enough
chessboard, isn't it?" he remarked after a while. "A chess game can
be a terrible and enthralling thing, when you play it backwards and
blindfolded. Your adversary starts out with his king in check, and tries to
move his pieces back to where they were at first; that's why you can't apply
rules or mathematical laws to crime. The great chess player is the one who can
visualize the board as it will be after his move. The great detective is the
one who can visualize the board as it has been when he finds the pieces
jumbled. He must have the imagination to see the opportunities that the
criminal saw, and act as the criminal would act. It's a great, ugly, terrific
play of opposite imaginations. Nobody is more apt than a detective to say a lot
of windy, fancy things about reasoning and deduction, and logic. He too
frequently says 'reason' when he means `imagination.' I object to having a
cheap, strait-laced pedantry like reason confused with a far greater
thing."
"But look here," said Sir John,
"suppose you take this business tonight. You gave a reconstruction of that
crime, all right, and perhaps that was imagination. But you didn't tell us how
you knew that was the way it happened. Reason told you that. Didn't it? How did
you get on to the murder, anyhow?'
"It's an example of
what I was trying to say. There is so much elaborate hocus-pocus around the
whole matter of criminal detection that it makes a detective wonder why people think
he acts that way. The fiction writers want to call it a science, and attach
blood pressure instruments to people's arms, and give them Freud tests—they
forget that your innocent man is always nervous, and acts more like a guilty
one than the criminal himself, even his insides. They forget that these
machines are operated by the most cantankerous one of all, the human machine.
And your psychological detective wants to pick out the kind of man who
committed a crime; after which he hunts around till he finds one and says,
'Behold the murderer,' whether the evidence supports him or not. I hope you'll
permit me to say damned nonsense_ There is no man who is incapable of a crime
under any circumstances; to say that a daring crime was necessarily committed by
a daring person is to argue that a drunken author can write on the subject of
nothing but liquor, or that an atheistical artist could not paint the
Crucifixion. It is frequently the tippler who writes the best temperance
eassay, and the atheist who finds the most convincing arguments for religion.
A script that defines once for all the importance of these stories, a true summa
of Bencolin, a mine of situations and ploys that Carr will then use in his
career as a writer: among other things, I like
mention here, that in The Lost Gallows,
the novel he sees for the last time together Landevorne and Bencolin, which in some ways is one of the most
romantic novels by Carr, a very dark romance, is evident throughout the
Mephistophelean nature of Bencolin , more than perhaps happens in It Walks by Night, ruthless, sardonic, which in
the four stories perhaps
reveals itself almost never.
At the end of
Paragraph 5 of The Ends of Justice,
Bencolin asks the bishop Wolfe to delay as much as possible the execution of
Fellowes, because he and Landevorne can save him, but the bishop refuses to cooperate: “You’re
insane!”, the bishop said. “I refuse to be party”. They stood up, opposite each
other, clergyman and detective, each vaguely visible, but the hatred that
sprang between them lit each face like fire.“Bishop Wolfe” Bencolin said
quietly, “Pilate was more merciful than you”.
Here it is useful to comment on how Bencolin
appears much more human than the bishop and much less ruthless and hard, and
even less cynical as it will appear in later novels: the Church (Anglican
because the action takes place in London), named heir, would gain a lot of
money by the death of Fellowes, and the bishop Wolfe helped solve the case. I
note only as once again the use of the names is characteristic: the bishop is
called Wolf(e) as the beast. I do not think a random choice for a cleric who
despite not having spotted the crime, seeing that through the arrest of
Fellowes would have earned much money, he offered himself to help the police to
arrest Fellowes.
Bencolin is human with the honest and meek, cynical with profiteers,
terrible with the killers.
In the final pages of The Lost Gallows, Bencolin reminds to El Moulk that he is saving
him from death by hanging, to which had been intended by ****, just because he
want to see him climb the scaffold at dawn and wants to see how The Red Widow
caresses the neck.
And in the epilogue of the story, when everyone are
speechless from horror, Bencolin..sings a cheerful ditty: Bencolin, implacable
judge, he would see guillotined El Moulk who had been the cause of a tragic
event, but he accepts the fate : God struck the wicked, and he did justice.
And everything can end well.
Pietro
De Palma
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