Augusto De Angelis : "The Hotel of the Three Roses" (L’Albergo delle Tre Rose, 1935). Mondadori, Sellerio (IT), Pushkin (UK)

The most famous Italian writer of detective novels in the Fascist Era, was Augusto De Angelis, the only whose novels have passed the test of time, and are still replicated successfully.

The most famous novel by De Angelis is undoubtedly L’Albergo delle Tre Rose, "The Hotel of the Three Roses", which is his masterpiece. It is not only a first-rate detective novel, with red herrings, clues, and highly faceted characters, but has a growing suspense, a considerable pace and mysteries galore.  It also has a claustrophobic atmosphere, as it is set in a small hotel, in the space of one night, and proposes also a mystery of a Locked Room, with a very interesting variation.
 

WARNING : SPOILERS !!!

 

De Vincenzi, who is younger than his Deputy Commissioner Sani, but he is respected and esteemed by his uncommon genius, just entered at the Police Headquarters, he finds among  the mail, various letters:  one that turns on his interest is an anonymous letter announcing that something sinister is happening at “The Hotel of the Three Roses”, a third-rate hotel, more boarding house  than anything else, with a restaurant. The very phrase effect that draws his attention, is "The Devil laughs behind every door." Struck by the letter, almost immediately called by Commissioner Bianchi, a friend of his, and is informed that at The Hotel of the Three Roses has been a crime.

Once there, they notice a commotion. Since it is evening, the restaurant room is full: in addition to occasional customers, there are those who play a game of cards, and then the regular customers of the pension. The police are informed that on the third floor, Bardi, a hunchback who lives in retirement, found hanged the young Douglas Layng. It seems to have been put to impress or Carlo Da Como, a man who was born rich and has dispelled all his wealth by living a dissolute, or a German, Vilfredo Engel, a friend of Da Como: it is thought that it may be a warning to one of them, because to go to the rooms where they live, they need to pass where the young man was hanged.

The young man, however, seems hung, not hanged. The fact is that the “Guardia Medica” (public doctor who works by evening and by night), can not say more than what he sees because the light is very dim: then, at  the light of a bulb high brightness recovered downstairs, he, removed clothes, realizes that the young man was stabbed. The clothes, however, are not torn, a sign that after being stripped clean by the blood, it was covered, and then hung up. A horrible hoax: why? Brought the corpse at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, they make another discovery: the corpse has the secondary flaccidity that occurs after rigor mortis. But, how long is he dead? First we assume a time, but then the importance of the discovery of a cup on the bedside table, coffee cup that would not have been able to be there when the reorganization took place in the morning because the room would have been brought down, it is assumed that the murder occurred after; the fact that it was thoroughly washed, suggests some dissolved substance, or poison, or sleeping pills. The first hypothesis is to be discarded because it would not make sense to poison, stab, and then finally hang the same person; so you think about a narcotic. An examination of the room ensures that under the bedspread, the sheet below is all soaked in blood, a sign that the body naked or otherwise undressed was left there for some time.  How did it change the rigor mortis: one thinks about  a stove, but they do not find traces of it.

Many people are suspicious. First, those who are on the floor where he was found the hanged, among them Engel, who proves to be afraid of something, in addition to possessing a strange thing for a man: a doll. What's even more strange is that even Layng owned a doll, as well as a Swedish nineteen, such Karin Nolan. Three dolls alike, holding three different people. It 's clear that there must be a bond. And since for better,  one of the three owners was killed, De Vincenzi suspects  that the murderer still wants to kill.

To complicate matters, it is also the arrival, just after the discovery of the body,  of a pair of tourists from British nationality, the spouses Flemington, who, having been informed of the sad randomness and invited to go to another hotel, they prefer to declare who must stay in this third-rate. Immediately to the Commissioner, the Flemington wife seems very scared, terrified to even when she knows the identity of the victim. It 's easy to understand that even they know something , but…what?

Among the many regular customers, there is one that immediately catches the attention of the Commissioner: he is a Levantine, from Cypriot nationality, who ekes out a living by making the fortune teller and selling various knick-knacks. Entered at the Layng’s room , immediately declares that that atmosphere is saturated with death and that there someone was killed at 12.30, the day before. Besides this, he says nothing: the only thing he tells it’s he picked up a wickled aura.

Also reticent is the hunchback Bardi, whom De Vincenzi understands have been the mysterious and anonymous writer of the letter delivered to the police station made​​, especially as the typewriter in his room has the same flaws of the characters encountered by him on the typescript.

Other characters are the blonde Stella Essington, starlet, who is visibly frightened and he doesn’t tell anything but she must have seen something; and the same Karin Nolan, a relative of a soldier who had fought in the Boer War, says she does not know anything.
it’s found a scrap of paper on which, signed by a certain Julius Lassinger, he promises more deaths, because the young man killed is the first of a series.
Before that, however, the Commissioner begin to understand anything, in that board so cramped, so dimly lit, littered with cops, takes a second murder: the Cypriot magician, Giorgio Novarreno, is found stabbed. De Vincenzi had given orders to guard the garden closed,  on which look out the windows of the various rooms, but due to the heavy rain his deputy  it was not felt to place a column in the rain. The fact is that the window is open, and since it has not gone out the door because the murderer  would have to pass in front of the cops who say that no one has passed, he has to be passed by the window. In fact, at the foot of the wall, there is a long staircase, lying sideways. The fact is clear: the murderer through the ladder, he must be climbed, he must have met with Novarreno (who probably had the intention to blackmail him) and should have killed him and then the murderer went back downstairs using the same scale. He doesn’t  understand why the killer risking to lose time to fix it, being the the possibility of being seen. Moreover, the only internal access door to the garden is given by the restaurant, but when the cops  break in, no one says he saw someone enter and exit through the door window, nor are the wet footprints that there should be because it's raining outside heavily. In short, a classic mystery of Locked Room. How did the murderer do?

One of the fixed tenants of the property is such Besesti Pompeo, a wealthy industrialist who has not yet returned to the hotel.  Another is Al Nicola Righetti, an Italian-American, by his own confession, who travelled in several foreign cities, the last of which is New York. De Vincenzi suspects, but he has no evidence that he actually is an american gangster. These two men do not seem to have any weight in the death of the young man, because Besesti was out and Righetti was dining in the restaurant, and there are witnesses who saw him to dinner. Also there is another suspect still: a woman, Mary Alton, arrived at the hotel the night of the discovery of the corpse of Layng, who appears to have a dark past. She also owns a doll.
In short, there are suspects galore.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Dawn does not want to announce that terrible night: in fact another deadly event, comes to disturb De Vincenzi, Sani & Co. It is found Karin Nolan, with scissors stuck in his chest: she is immediately sent to the hospital and De Vincenzi, fearing that she might die, he does not even pull out the scissors from his chest. And it is good because, she, well stated grave, is saved. This time the murderer has failed. The series was interrupted. Who is Julius Lassinger?

Vilfredo Engel reveals the story that is the basis of this slaughter: both the brother and  the greater Alton, both Nolan had been part of the army, in particular a battery of light artillery, and in this capacity they had fought in the Boer War. But before enlisting, both Nolan and Alton both Lessinger had been partners in a company that dealt with the extraction of diamonds. Over time, Lessinger had hoarded the best diamonds , not always with his own merits, but also deceiving the two partners. This had increased the desire of the other two, who, envious, had conceived a plan to recover their stones: with the excuse to flush out the rebels, once enrolled, they had raided the property of Lessinger where he lived with the three daughters, and they had been slain, with the complicity of Engel. The precious diamonds had been hidden. Engel died shortly thereafter, Nolan time after while Alton had survived for several years, and he, old man already, he had married  with Mary Alton, right in the Hotel of the Three Roses.
And Julies Lessinger? He was the only son of the former diamond miner, enlisted as a soldier at the time of the murder of his father and sisters, and for this fact, escaped the massacre, who had vowed to take revenge. It’s obvious that  he is killing the characters. But what Layng had nothing to do? It is established that he was the son of Major Alton, who had a relationship with Ms. Flemington before she remarried with the lawyer: he had to read the last will of that Major Alton, who close to dying, ordered the division of his substance between 3 entitled: Engel, Nolan and Layng.

But, to throw more dust in the face, he’s just Besesti, the President of the Society of Pure Metals, who, when questioned from De Vincenzi, confesses the fact that he had blackmailed in the past Alton  and he forced him to finance his company, threatening to reveal what he knew from the mouth of Julius Lessinger. Only, he reveals a puzzling thing: if before  it was thought Lessinger  had an accomplice at the hotel, as he was unable to write in Italian, barely knowing English, now we learn that Lessinger may not have been the author of these crimes, because he, Lessinger, died in 1913.  So who is the murderer?
De Vincenzi will find out who is the killer not before yet another victim has been sacrificed. And not before the reading of the will has provided the final pieces because the guilty, mad, be entrusted with the care of a psychiatric prison.

 

THE END OF SPOILERS

The Hotel of the Three Roses is one of the finest novels of detective fiction Italian of '900: first, it is very well written, with descriptions of the characters that secure well in mind; the same psychological characteristics are extremely determined, and along with the physical ones, he realize fully particular subjects;  the story is compelling, and uses a device that is directly derived from Conan Doyle (the Valley Of Fear): something happened in the past which is the basis of the tragedy that is happening in the present. There are many red herrings, distracting the reader and lead him to consider the roads are impossible to follow, but instead the story is very simple, and also the true motive is simple; there is a Locked Room very interesting (not an expanse of snow, but a garden completely wet with rain, such that the murderer should leave wet footprints, and instead he doesn’t leave them, and he behaves in a strange way,  not like anyone who didn’t want to be seen, he would involve).

There are continuous staging: the dolls that appear; the corpse stabbed, then stripped, coated in such a way that does not see the blood, and hanged; the attempt to eliminate the rigor mortis; the appearance of the real mother of the victim; two different testaments; and finally a marriage of which you do not know anything.

This plot is typical in English novelists (such in Agatha Christie).

In De Angelis you note, however, an extreme version of the stories and characters that are very strong: there are no weak subjects, but all could be the murderer, or at least they have hidden something then joined the rest, form the puzzle reassembled. Even, Bardi, the hunchback, that starts the whole story with the anonymous letter, is a strong character: as he feels a victim of the system for his morphological diversity, he hates more than the others, even though he has feelings of protection against people he considers weak as he was. And it is precisely because he wants to save one of these people, which the notifies to the Commissioner about  something imminent that he thinks is going to happen in that house. But in his anonymous letter there is a misconception that plays in favor of events. He moves to save an innocent, but does not know that the threat is part of a far greater plot .
 

 

 

 

 

 

Beyond this, the critical judgment can not pinning that on other things.

The spirit in which the novel is written is affected by the creeping xenophobia against foreigners (the Italian people was perfect, the others not: in this, the fascist and Nazi propaganda were the same), but it is nevertheless a fact that there had to be otherwise the fascist censorship would not have never authorized the publication of the novel. For the rest, the novel tells the story of three crimes occurred in a hotel (and a fourth alleged, more an attempt to murder), but where several clients reside permanently. More than hotel we could call it a boarding house, with the restaurant. This is a very important detail that I recommend: in fact, years later Steeman wrote L'assassin habite au 21, a novel that takes place in a boarding house.

I would say Steeman might very well have read the novel by  De Angelis, because in those times, De Angelis was the detective novelist most famous in Italy. If Steeman in plot owes something to Agatha Christie, with regard to the place of drama he repeats what it surely already had been written by De Angelis.  Compared to Steeman and Ten Little Niggers by Christie, the De Angelis novel has, however, extremely claustrophobic atmosphere that accentuates the tension spasmodically. In some ways it is very close to The Greene Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine or The Tragedy of Y by Ellery Queen. Furthermore, for the particular that two of the three crimes, including a presumed Locked Room, take place in circumstances impossible or almost, in a hotel guarded by police, may have been tributary of Noel Vindry, that in some of his novels (for example,  Le Piège aux and diamonds and La Bête hurlante written the first, one year before and the second two years before) he let  guard the house by the police. It is one of those novels that despite having a locked room, do not highlight it, because their authors were probably not interested in being ascribed to the genre of perpetrators of impossible crimes.

Pietro De Palma

Carter Dickson/John Dickson Carr: The Third Bullet (1937; 1948)

You can not really say that "The Third Bullet " by John Dickson Carr is a famous work , as  many other novels. The fact is that we are speaking about one of the most interesting works by Carr, not known like his large Rooms of the '30s : The White Priors Murders , The Judas Window , The Three Coffins .
First, it is to say that by this work , there are two versions: the first , published on behalf of Carter Dickson , in 1937 , is longer than a short story : in essence a short novel. Then there’s another, published before in EQMM  of January 1948 , and after in an anthology , The Third Bullet and Other Stories , in 1954 , signed by John Dickson Carr , along with the stories The Clue of the Red Wig, The House in Goblin Wood (Sir Henry Merrivale ), The Wrong Problem (Dr. Fell ) , The Proverbial Murder" (Dr. Fell ) , The Locked Room ( Dr. Fell ) , and The Gentleman from Paris. The story in the original version has been republished in the 1991 collection , Fell and Foul Play .
The shortened version is explained by the fact that, to be included in the publication  E(llery) Q(ueen) M(ystery) M(agazine) , the story could not preserve its intact length (it was a short novel ) and for this Frederick Dannay (one of the two cousins ​​authors of Ellery Queen ) provided with the consent of Carr himself, as is explained in the bibliography of Carr signed by Douglas G. Greene .

The Third Bullet is a great locked room, meticulously constructed following the 20 rules for the construction of police, by S.S. Van Dine : a judge is killed in a pavilion. Nothing strange: things start to get complicated when you find that the likely murderess did not kill the judge and in addition to his weapon, in the same room , at the moment when he shot him, two other weapons shot, and between them one it’s to compressed air. If from a weapon didn’t you find the bullet , from other you found the bullet shot, but no the weapon. In other words a quadruple volatilization: weapon, bullet and two shooters, because in the moment in which the suspect, then arrested , shot lacking the judge , nobody saw other people. Coincidentally , however, on the the site of the shooting there were policemen that didn’t see shooters: one had control of the output from the pavilion (in the corridor ) and from there no one escaped; then the windows of the west side are so rusty and caked that not even Hercules would be able to open them. Yet, footprints are found there as if someone had come out from there , as the bullet, that nobody had found before, it’s found into the trunk of a tree , but it is not in a straight line from the point where it is supposed someone shot, but at the end of a curved trajectory . In short, a firework of riddles and impossible situations The long story is interesting in my opinion for other reasons, which at first glance would seem to be of very little importance.
First of all, the protagonist of this story is the Colonel Marquis: is a character who only appears in this work .. and then disappears. Or better .. Carr says that he would have been “ probably a mental forerunner of Colonel March”, but if it really was true, Colonel March, Head of " Department of Queer Complaints " like Carr told, he should have kept the characterizations of his progenitor; instead, to remember a possible filiation, is the group of three letters at the beginning of surname: Marquis - March.

The appearance of Marquis is very different from the appearance of Colonel March , head of Department D- 3 Queer Complaints , in which, however ( freckles , sideburns , mustache ) will accrue the characteristics of carrian Watson, Masters and Hadley " a large, amiable man (weight seventeen stone)” : “…with his florid complexion, sandy moustache, and bland blue eyes…he was smooking a large-bowled pipe with the effect of seeming to sniff smoke from the bowl rather than draw it through the stem” ( J.D.Carr , The New Invisible Man, from the Collection Department of Queer Complaints) .

Moreover, as Merrivale was created looking at Churchill, and Fell, having to model Chesterton , in the case of March, it was created looking the character and the  personality of someone whom Carr knew well: a friend of his, John Rhode . Many times Carr borrowed in his novels, characters really existed : at The Bowstring Murders he created John Gaunt , probably remembering John of Gaunt , fourth son of Edward III , Duke of Lancaster and Aquitaine , founder of the eponymous real Lancaster family and guardian of Richard II , who will return in many novels by Paul Harding, pseudonym of Paul Doherty (series of Brother Athelstan ); and at the same The Burning Court, two characters mirrored the historical characters: Marie d' Aubray, looked at the famous poisoner "La Marquise de Brinvilliers", and Gaudan Cross , looked at the Knight Gaudin de Saint- Croix ( the french Croix means “Cross” in English); and Mark Despard - the neighbor of Edward Stevens, whose wife looks so disconcerting to the  ‘600 famous poisoner - who dies poisoned by a mysterious lady dressed in a gown century : Mark Despard let us remember the Desgrais or Desgrez or even Desprez ( Despard - Desprez ) , charming captain of some troops quartered near the convent , where he had the certainty that the poisoner had fled ( taking advantage of the extra- territoriality and of the right to asylum enjoyed by the ecclesiastical institutions ), who managed Brinvilliers to leave the convent, and stopped her.

In his turn, Marquis, is depicted so:  “On the edge of the Assistant Commisioner’s desk, a folded newspaper lay so as to expose a part of a headline: Mr Justice Mortlake Murdered. … On top of it was an official report sheet covered with Inspector Page’s trim handwriting. And of top of the report sheet, trigger guard to trigger guard, lay two pistols. One was an Ivor-Johnson .38 revolver. The other was a Browning 32 automatic of Belgian manufacture. Though it was not yet eleven in the morning, a raw and rainy day looked in at the windows over the Embankment, and the green-shaded lamp was burning above the desk. Colonel Marquis, the Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, leaned back at ease and smoked a cigarette with an air of doing so cynically. Colonel Marquis was a long, stringy man whose think and wrinkled eyelids gave him a sardonic look not altogether deserved. Though he was not bald, his white hair had begun to recede from the skull, a though in sympathy with the close cropping of the grey moustache. His bony face was as unmistakably of the Army as it was now unmistakably out of it; and the reason became plain whenever he got up – he limped. But he had a bright little ye, which was amused”. 

However, we can well say that the way at which Colonel Marquis is outlined in the course of the long story, takes into account the characteristics of other carrian characters . S.T.Yoshi will tell:

“Toward the end note is made of his “deplorable foundness for flourish and gesture”, but this is equally a trait of Bencolin, Fell, Merrivale, and even Rossiter and Gaunt” (S.Y. Joshi John Dickson Carr: A Critical Study (1990).

We can not be in agreement with Yoshi: in fact the Colonel Marquis follows many among the traits of the other most famous carrian detectives. For example, sometimes the Colonel, while he’s lame, indulges in disconcerting manifestations of joy. When Page understands that Marquis if he was not lame, he would start dancing, we could associate him to the typical manifestations from Dr. Fell; when Marquis is very elegant: “.. in dark blue coat and hat pearl gray, so that you tell how Colonel Marquis was a real appear”, in my opinion, we could look to the Juge d'Instruction Henri Bencolin.

The first thing that surprises us is the difference of the surname : Marquis , for us, looks at France, March  to England. Carr seems to have forgotten the foggy atmospheres and full of mystery of bencolinian Paris , looking rather to the ghosts from UK : we remember that when Hodder & Stoughton in London in 1937 published The Third Bullet, have already gone out for a short time the  great Carter Dickson’s novels ( The White Priors Murders , The Red Widow Murders , The Unicorn Murders , The Magic -Lantern Murders , The Peacock Feather Murders , and shortly thereafter released The Judas Window ), but also novels with Fell had been published (Death -Watch , The Three Coffins , The Arabian Night Murders ) .
This short novel , is the last great thought to France : with the transition to the hazy atmosphere of London, Colonel Marquis will turn into Colonel March . So you can just say that this story is a large pot ,in which many projects boil , so many characters , so many events : You can also find something of the earlier novels . For example, the lawyer Travers , who comes out from his office , whose only exit door is guarded by his secretary , coming down the fire-stairs of the building, in coat and cylinder , might remind us another character in coat and cylinder , in The Arabian Night Murders ( there will also have a false beard , a book of recipes next to a knife driven into the body).
In my opinion, the Colonel Marquis is still tied as genesis, to the French stage by Carr : Marquis could also be French name rather than British , and it could mean a title : Marquis . If Bencolin looked to Mephistopheles as his likely referent, Marquis instead which could be referring to?
Douglas G. Greene  traces the name by Marquis , in a deliberate carrian homage to Melville Davisson Post, because one of the his characters was called just Sir Henry Marquis . However, I believe that Carr might have looked to other, increasingly from French area : after all, what does a writer do,  to invent a character? He draws from his surroundings .

In the case of Marquis the reference, for me, is a coeval carrian novel : The Burning Court, 1937. One of the characters of the novel , the female character is Marie d' Aubray that would appear to be the reincarnation of a famous poisoner of the seventeenth century, La Marquise de Brinvilliers , historical figure at the center of a murky affair of poisoning, one of the few representatives of the French aristocracy ( the time of Louis XV ), which has been entrusted to the secular arm : the Brinvilliers was tortured ( subjected to water torture ) and then burned : in French we would say " La Marquise de Brinvilliers ." Possible that did Marquise turn into Marquis? Could be, although I think that The Third Bullet should be considered closely related to The Burning Court for other reasons : they are two contemporary works , in 1937 , and in both there are negative female characters : the first has hair blacks ( Carolyn Mortlake ) , the second has brown -blonde hair ( the Marquise de Brinvilliers ) , the first is lithe and lean , the second is plump and smaller in stature. Moreover, one of the reasons base of the short novel is the confrontation-clash between the two sisters Mortlake : between the black , impetuous , charming and vulgar Carolyn who from the beginning is referred to the black sheep , and the little fair-haired and gentle Ida, the prototype that the literature often transformed into a tiger . I would like to point out another feature that jumped in my eyes: both feminine figures of the two novels are similar, despite having different features . Marie d' Aubray Marquise de Brinvilliers was a woman of insatiable sexual appetites , who on several occasions had incestuous relations with his brothers and had had many lovers including the last, fatal for her Jean -Baptiste Gaudin de Sainte -Croix ; also Carolyn Mortlake is a woman of insatiable appetites , that has had more lovers.

As the Marchioness of Brinvilliers as Carolyn Mortlake desperately need money , and both they have a father who loathes their love story, and tightens the purse strings : Dreux d' Aubray, father of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers imprisones in the Bastille the Knight de Saint- Croix, and refuses to give her daughter the huge sums of money that she uses to satisfy her appetites , while the Judge Mortlake ago so that is imprisoned Gabriel White ( who just like the Knight of Saint- Croix, has noble origins , and whose original surname , begins at the same way: Croix - Cray ) and is presented in the novel as a father who coming to the knowledge of her turbulent loves,  hardly he would leave her any money in the testament:

Finally , another parallel : just as the Marchioness Brinvilliers is accused from the letters of confession found in a metal cassette in the rubble of the laboratory in which Saint- Croix, her lover, prepared the poisons which she needed to suppress her family, as well the same Gabriel White actually the son of the Earl of Cray , in a dramatic confrontation, accused her of being a murderer : " .. I did not commit a murder. Given the circumstances, I will be forced to testify against you" ( Carter Dickson , op. cit. , p. 171).

If this was not enough to establish a clear parallel between the two novels , there would also be the further complaints by the two servants : in fact at The Third Bullet, the old keeper Robinson to which  an important pivot of the staging had been given, without he understood the purpose, is who makes the most tremendous “Je t'accuse” , against the murderer : ****** " .. I know that I swore on the Bible that I would not have said a word to anyone, and I also said that , if I went to tell it, no one would believe me , but I have no desire to be hanged because of him " (Carter Dickson , op. cit. , p. 172) , while at the case of La Marquise de Brinvilliers , to accuse her, is the faithful servant and accomplice , Jean Hamelin said “La Chaussée” , who reported to the authorities from the wife of Saint Croix, under torture, accuses her about serious crimes. Thus we see that The Third Bullet if individually is part of a remarkable example of Locked Room (the explanation is really extraordinary), broken down into its components, it can be identified as the second face of the same coin, of which the other side is represented by the other novel by 1937.

In The Bourning Court, the characterization and the characters are obvious, while in our they are masked. Why would Carr hidden this second nature of the characters? To subvert their rules, and return to the charming blonde women their place in society female. In fact at the end of the story, he writes: “.."In one way this has been a very remarkable case," said Colonel Marquis. "I do not mean that it was exceptionally ingenious in the way of murders, or (heaven knows) that it was exceptionally ingenious in the way of detection. But it has just this point: it upsets a long-established and domineering canon of fiction. Thus. In a story of violence there are two girls. One of these girls seems dark-browed, sour, cold-hearted, and vindictive, with hell in her heart. The other is pink-and-white, golden of hair, innocent of intent, sweet of disposition, and (ahem) vacant of head. Now by the rules of sensational fiction there is only one thing that can happen. At the end of the story it is proved that the sullen brunette, who snarls all the way through, is really a misjudged innocent who wants a lot of children and whose hardboiled worldly airs are a cloak for a modern girl's sweet nature. The baby-faced blonde, on the other hand, will prove to be a raging, spitting demon who has murdered half the community and is only prevented by arrest from murdering the other half. I glorify the high fates, we have here broken that tradition! We have here a dark-browed, sour, cold-hearted girl who really is a murderess. We have a rose-leaf, injured, generous innocent who really is innocent. Play up, you cads! Vive le roman policier! Ave Virgo! Inspector Page, gimme my hat and coat. I want a pint of beer” . A metaphor? Ave Virgo is the salutation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary: and the Virgin Mary  is depicted in the European tradition with blond hair. It’s a revaluation by Carr about traditional image of women? Possible, bearing in mind the conservative nature of Carr. In my opinion, however, there is also something else: Carr with the double meaning given to the characters, means that the feminine nature has two different faces: the devilish and the angelic, and that it is not always said that the devil is truly such, and the angelic the same thing.
And then Marquis which is referring to? Why this name? Carr could not have looked, in-depth historical investigator, also to Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade, “ The Divine Marquis”? Marquis! But why the Colonel Marquis would have kept in mind the Marquis de Sade?Perhaps because the Colonel Marquis - as De Sade discovers the perverse ambivalent nature of human nature and of the female in particular, in "The Justine" and "Anti-Justine", comparing the different personalities of the two sisters Justine and Juliette (the first image of virtue and his misadventures, the second that of the defect and its triumphs), so he reveals the nature of the two sisters, Ida and Carolyn, are profoundly different: the blonde angel in which Carr has restored once such expression is reversed in blonde lustful and perverse de La Marquise de Brinvilliers; the brunette who normally throws at the end of the cloak, and reveals a gentle creature and fond of children, is reflected in the nature of evil and impetuous Carolyn.The Bourning Court and The Third Bullet, compared, acquire depth meanings. 
You may notice another important thing: in our opinion, the judgment that Carr put into Marquis mouth is actually his, is his conception of ethics: good always triumphs over evil. For this reason his Marquis is a double of the  Sadian Marquis: he discovers and does affirm the virtue over vice, not vice versa. But everything in this novel is twofold: First, the two sisters, Ida- Justine and Carolyn-Juliette are the doubles and are the doubles also because during the course of the novel they seem  be the double of themselves : Ida doesn’t seem be virtuous sister and  Carolyn doesn’t seem be the vicious sister; two sisters oppose the two suitors who are also themselves the doubles: White-Travers, and they  are so in relation to the double of their beloved women: it is almost a chiasmus. Travers is suspected to be involved and he’s not instead, White who seems to be out precisely because he is inside, instead .. Also White is the double of himself: White named, in reality he’s black inside. White is the personification of evil: he’s beautiful, he’s s noble, he’s s athletic, loves women, but he’s rotten inside.The novel is a double compared to The Bourning Court ( in which the double is obvious : Gaudin de la Croix/Gaudan Cross ; Marie d' Aubray Marchioness de Brinvilliers/Marie d' Aubray , the first reincarnation of the second , and then the double of herself , the doppelganger ; Desprez - Despard ) because it is based on the double Marie d' Aubray/Carolyn Mortlake .
Double is also the volatilization : a bullet that is found (from air pistol), but not the corresponding weapon, the Browning gun is found while no the corresponding bullet. And if you see, double would have been the volatilization of the other two alleged shooters in the pavilion , and when you understand that the air pistol is out of the context of the other two weapons , these mean a double, to a character , White, who, in his nature , is the double of himself.In addition Marquis is almost double of Marquise. Without the intervention of double of Marquis, of carrian double Marquis against the Sadian Marquis, virtue would not have prevailed over vice; and the fact that Robinson did not fix the window, while in reality he says he did, shows how a double truth for once penalize evil instead good: it is as if the Fate, the Chance, the Divine Providence as is commonly call, had intervened to change the course of events: if there had not been, the window would be repaired and White could get rid of the gun, throwing it out the window: here, then, the ethical outburst by Carr. You would not understand, moreover, why Carr did invoke to the size of the detective novel. That is perhaps because it was published on EQMM and specifically it was reduced by two cousins QUEEN: even the 2 cousins Queen ​​are a triumph of double : double is the name because in Queen word there’s a double “E”, and “ u” and “n” are two letters of equal form but inverted, they are doubles because a surname shares two persons, two cousins ​​who both were born in the same year, in 1905. In addition Barnaby Ross is a double of Ellery Queen, and the double  is often present in their production, from The Siamese Twin Mystery to The Finishing Stroke, until The Greek Coffin Mystery, where two corpses  are found in the same coffin.
In short, a triumph of the double.

Vive le romance policier!

Pietro De Palma