Paul Halter
"Reader Beware: SPOILERS"
And
now we
talk about the plot.
One of the recurring
themes in the novels of Paul Halter (we could say, one of his fixations) is the lost youth (whom someone could want destroy): once again we find ourselves struggling with characters,
little more than boys. We had found the
boys in La
Malediction de Barberousse, we find them here, but also in other novels, for example.
in Le Brouillard Rouge, or in Spiral or in L'Arbre aux Doigts Tordus.
The narrator is James Stevens, Elizabeth Stevens is his sister, Henry White is a neighbor and friend, as well as John Darnley: they are all young boys.. The families of some of them have common characteristics: in fact both John
and Henry are motherless. Henry's
mother died in a car accident (due to recurring disputes
between Henry and his father, Arthur), while that of John was
found dead in an attic of their home, locked from the inside, in a pool of blood, covered in stab wounds with a knife near his death was ruled a suicide, and
the rest was enough that the door was found locked from the inside, to dispel any doubt.
However, as Victor Darnley, the
father of John, he needs to get money, after
the war he tries to rent some rooms in his house, but always, after a short stay, the
tenats renters go away because of those strange
noises that they feel come from the attic at
night: the sound of
footsteps, and a strange atmosphere, mysterious,
unhealthy. Until one fine day, the fame of the house, haunted by the spirit of
the late Mrs. Darnley, does not attract a couple a bit strange, the
Latimer, Alice and Patrick. She
is a medium, and soon
this thing will
have consequences.
One
fine day, indeed a beautiful night, the Henry’s father in the grove around his house sees some suspicious movements: someone carrying what looks like a body. Then nothing, and when he was found bleeding with a very bad head wound, already mourning his death. However Arthur lives. But in the meantime, Henry disappears and we do not know anything about him.
The Henry’s disappearance and the near-fatal attack of Arthur, combining the strange noises begin to feel at home Darnley,
coming from the attic, despite John and his father (first suspected to be
the one to produce, when he goes in the attic
looking for the spirit his wife) are together next to Alice Latimer and other actors, they form an explosive mixture.
In addition, the
spirit of Mrs. Darnley,
manifesting herself through the medium Alice Latimer, during a seance, rages against those who killed her,
saying that he will find peace only when
his murderer will be found.
One day they
combine an experiment in the attic room which is said to be haunted by the
spirit of Mrs. Darnley: Patrick Latimer offers to be locked up,
to meet the spirit and be able to know
who killed her, for greater
safety, every half hour someone will ensure that he is alive
and he is well, until the
end of the experiment. And to avoid
that the scene is contaminated by other
presences, the outside
handle of the room is sealed and the seal is created using an ancient coin, one that is pressed
into the hot wax.
Patrick comes shortly after, wrapped in a coat and with a hat : evidently he believes need it, because it's cold in the attics. But when the time runs out, they do not feel response from within and decide to open the sealed door, they found dead Patrick , with a dagger in his back.
The windows are
closed, the door had been sealed by them, in the
room there is nobody: surely if it was murder,
it had a supernatural cause. Alice at the sight of
her husband killed, faints. The surprises do
not end here: in fact, when
you discover the dead man's
face, you know immediately this is not Patrick but Henry, and then they remember how the figure, before entering the room was too well wrapped in cloak and hat almost to conceal their identity.
Meanwhile, here's Patrick makes his appearance: he says he was attacked while
he was down to put on his coat. But then
why Henry, after being
presumed dead or disappeared, after he was
seen by
two different people in two
different places at the same
time, did he come to die
right in that house?
No one can
explain, until comes the
third surprise: a few days later, the doorbell rings, and here ..
Heny. Henry? But he was not dead?
Two Henry, identical. What will be the
right one? A few hints of his history, and
they understand the real Henry is what they are
facing, live, while the false Henry died, is his
friend, Bob Farr, almost a look-alike.
Enters the Inspector Drew: however, while doing surveys, and interviewing
the involved people, no one understands why this young man, Bob Farr, was
killed instead of Heny. And, despite Drew skim anger, Henry refuses to talk and
tell the truth.
The fact is that just Drew, during a family gathering,
accuses Henry of murdering his friend, and hewill assume that Henry may be if
not the reincarnation of Harry Houdini, at least one close relative, since
Harry Weiss, the original name of Harry Houdini, is also of Arthur White, which
also he resembles as a drop of water.
Henry, he would go mad, believing to be Harry and still believing to have ties
of blood. The motive? Revenge, not against Farr, but against his father Arthur
accused of being responsible for the death of his mother: his crime, should be
connected to disagreements between him and his father, and then Arthur will be
accused by the murder of his son, indeed Farr, Henry believed.
But how he may have been able to create a trick for locked
room? Drew imagines an elaborate hoax: before, Henry would kill Bob Farr,
stabbing him in the back, and leaving him in a nearby room, then showing up and
being locked from the outside, he would have sprinkled his jacket of a red
liquid and then he would be placed on the back a dagger from the scene,
retractable. At eyes of those who had opened the door, it would have seemed a
murder, then confirmed by the following trick: a rubber ball in the armpit,
then narrow, so stop by for a few seconds artery blood flow radial, and
determine the failure of the detection of the flow on the pulse. While the
moment bystanders should come down to alert the police, he hastily would take
the corpse of Bob Farr and would put in place: resulting the impossibility of
the murder.
However, the Drew’s solution just disgruntles the accused who shows that
just the night of the Farr’s murder, he was in America, providing an alibi bomb.
All over? No. Because time later, while friends are
spending an evening together, and it is snowing, it consumes a second murder,
just as impossible: in fact the father of Henry, Arthur, dies for a shot to the
head. Mut meanwhile it snowed
before, and then, if there was murder
(on the phone Arthur begged the help of his
son because he was shot),
how did the murderer to escape, if he left a
blanket of snow intact without his
footsteps?
The
subsequent investigation by Drew does not lead to any useful results, except for the fact that the spouses Latimer seem dissolved into thin air. It issued the order to search for the fugitives, who turn out to be from the investigation , swindlers, crooks. It is then convened a meeting at the home of Henry in which the senior police officer communicates to the onlookers the progress of the investigation: in the course of it, while some of these are sitting in the room, some on chairs, some on a large sofa, Elizabeth Stevens complains that her boyfriend has cold hand, but then she understands the hand she is holding is not the the boyfriend’s hand but that sticking out of the seat of the sofa: when he remove the bottom of sofa, they found,
inside the bottom, the bodies of the spouses Latimer, two days old. The chapter ends and the next chapter begins with what Todorov would call a '"hesitation".
What happens? I do not say, as
well as obviously I do not reveal how the story ends, and who in the end is framed as a
murderer. Except to solve everything is
ex - Inspector Alan Twist called by a writer of thrillers,
Ronald Bowers. Who is Ronald Bowers? I do not say.
But, dear reader, just in case you thought, at
one point, you understood all, instead you will understand that you didn’t understand anything.
And two final
revelations are taking place, the first false, the last true.
The last two words of the book.
Extraordinary novel, a true masterpiece. I would say, with hand on your heart, one of the best novels of the last twenty years, ever. For the rest, what can you say?
Let's start with the fact that the very first
self-released novel, La Malediction de
Barberousse, has, with this novel, a feature common Paul Halter pours all
of himself, gives breath to all his overflowing imagination, but if in the very
first novel, the good things are too, here instead, they are congenial to the
success of the plot.
As the plot occurs and the action is stretched and is
inserted a triumphal march which proceeds with increasing force, until the
discovery of the bodies in the sofa and even more so to the end of Part II. In
the transition from Part II to Part III, there is a very clear caesura, which
manifests itself with dismay by the reader, and with what Todorov called
"hesitation", and others who called themselves "estrangement",
"astonishment", "confusion."
The triumphal march resumes in later chapters, with
increasing voltage, up to the last two surprises, in a series of twists and
turns. We can say that if the voltage is sensed from the beginning of the novel
and does not seem to calm down, it proceeds essentially in two separate blocks:
the first consists of Parts I and II, the second begins with Part III; between
the two blocks , we repeat, there is a very clear caesura, which coincides with
the arrival on the scene of Ronald Bowers. It is not only a detective novel but is also a fantastic
novel. It is because there are at the plot many contrivances typical of
fantasy’s literature: as rightly said Philippe Fooz, in the novel there are Lieux Hantes lieux ou maudits, cursed
and haunted places; Réincarnation ("a
reincarnation du célèbre magicien Harry Houdini");
bilocation, which occurs when Henry is seen in two different
places, by different people, at the same time; there is also the theme of the
doubler, two Henry, the resurrection (Henry rings the doorbell, when believe in
its death). It is a fantasy novel, not only because it has
recognizable features, attributable to the fantastic novel, but also because it
has the peculiarity that Todorov identified as the light that frames the novel
as a fantasy, determine at the reader the occurrence of a certain factor X , a
certain hesitation. The occurrence of this hesitation, the caesura, the
transition from Part II to Part III, is real. Todorov cites two novels as examples of fantastic: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by
Agatha Christie and The Bourning Court, by John Dickson Carr, for various causes.
First of all, the action is narrated in the first person, as in the masterpiece
of Christie mentioned: the first two parts, by James Stevens, the third, by Ronald Bowers. In that book, is also linked to another detail that I do not reveal (but compared to the original Christie's it’s
different in the psychologica
intent ). Then there are at least five quotes who are related to Carr: the crime in any other place than that in which
it was held the closed, comes from The Crime in Nobody's Room by Carter Dickson, whose earlier than Halter,
others inspired: from Appleby's Other Story by Michael Innes to The Problem of
the Phantom
Parlor by
Edward D. Hoch, and so on. A second carrian
quote is obviously the discovery of the bodies in the sofa:
the reference is here at The Red Widow Murders by Carter Dickson, a novel in
which a corpse is found folded to form the backbone of an armchair,
on which is seated a character, that is not the murderer.
The
corridor from the attic where there
are four doors, including the one
where she died Mrs. Darnley, is lined with oak
paneling, as well as the doors, which are distinguished by having white porcelain knobs: this is a carrian quote . In
fact, in the famous story The Door To Doom, the
room that kills, at which staying Maynard,
it is lined with oak paneling,
and the door is different from the rest,
just because it stucks a white porcelain knob. The entrance of Alan Twist forwarded
to the novel, can
safely refer to The Plague Court Murders, always by Carter Dickson,
in which H.M. enters
at the scene a later time,
as well as on a novel by Noel Vindry, Le Piège aux diamants, in which the judge Allou, intervenes in
time to find the culprit. Finally,
even the reincarnation of Henry
White / Harry Houdini is comparable to that of Marie D'Aubray /Mary Stevens/Marquise de Brinvilliers in The Bourning
Court by John Dickson Carr. Because
that, if
Todorov had written his essay a few years later, after reading “The Fourth Door”, perhaps he could insert it, among the examples of fantastic literature.
However,there aren’t only these obvious quotes; there is also someone who is not. I am referring to the reverse quotw, another feature in the novels of Halter (the original citation is transformed
and often upside down), at the beginning of the part III, "Intermezzo". It 'a quote that has
eluded those who reviewed already this novel: “A guy breaks into an old armor ... the man is still inside the armor but he lost
his head ... his head was cut off and disappeared”. The quote refers to Death of Jezebel, spectacular novel with
Locked Room by Christianna Brand,
already reviewed in this blog, in which at the
medieval rodeo, there is a knight in armor riding a horse, inside which there
is no body, but only the severed head. And then many others, which can easily refer to
other points in the novel:
the theme of the double, may have been
taken from Ellen McCloy
as well as from Ellery
Queen; the false seance, from Abbot or Talbot, and the same bilocation from Ellen
McCloy. Not
to mention the locked room, the first: it is a rare spectacle in its effectiveness.
A corpse that there should have been not and it there is, and a door who isn’t locked from the
inside but
from the outside: the particularity of this staging, is the subtlety that the action is not the result of an action done within but outside the room, in which who is inside the room plays only a passive role: the seal on the handle, excludes him from the action, which is rather a prerogative of those who are outside. In a way by analyzing the two proposed solutions, the simplest is the first,
the wrong solution, but only because it identifies the culprit in a subject that is not. Instead, the right solution is more difficult, based of a modulation of the proportions of the rooms; the first
solution is a revival
of the trick already staged in La malediction de Barberousse: the body which is believed dead at first sight, it is not. However, the trick staged to set up the room and that is explained later, is simply magnificent, because, as the large Locked Rooms, those spectacular, almost always, the murderer has a cover of an accomplice: the accomplice creates confusion, and supports the action of the murderer. The trick here is, to create an illusion, which rests on the remodeling of spaces and objects: a final curtain, door knobs, a corridor lined with oak paneling all the same color as the doors, a corridor that is shortened or stretches, without bystanders noticing, except variability of the proportions of the corridor.
In short, an absolute masterpiece.
Let’s read the novel: you will be amazed !
In short, an absolute masterpiece.
Let’s read the novel: you will be amazed !
Pietro De Palma
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