La Mort derrière les rideaux (Death Behind the Curtains) is Paul Halter’s fifth novel (previously unpublished in English).
It was published in 1989, following La malédiction de Barberousse (1986), La quatrième porte (1987), La mort vous invite (1988), and Le brouillard rouge (1988). As Roland Lacourbe notes regarding this novel: Après trois brillants exercices de style qui sont autant de réussites exceptionnelles et de tentatives expérimentales, un jeune auteur fait ses gammes… Si La Mort vous invite était une exploitation virtuose du thème cher à son coeur du problème de la chambre close, avec La Mort derrière les rideaux, Paul Halter se livre aux joies les plus orthodoxes du pur « whodunit »
WARNING : SPOILERS
The novel opens in a peculiar fashion: an elderly lady, Violet Garfield, presents herself to Inspector Hurst at Scotland Yard to reveal that, simply by observing a certain person's gaze, she has intuited that he is about to commit a murder. In essence, Hurst doesn't believe her.
After this highly unusual prologue, which comprises the first chapter, the action shifts to the streets of London. There, Marjorie Conway is busy fending off the advances of a suitor she thoroughly dislikes—Peter Schuyler—going so far as to slap him before running off. While on the street, she spots a man engaged in a very intimate encounter with a woman: he leans over her as if about to have sexual intercourse, then makes a movement she cannot interpret and tosses something onto the steps of a house, leaving the woman lying on the ground. Shortly after the discovery of the body and the object that had been thrown, a terrifying scream rings out; Marjorie flees toward the boarding house where she lives, only to realize that the man responsible is heading in her direction. He enters the same boarding house, and while she cowers on the stairs, he makes his way to the bathroom, leaving a trace of blood on a towel; the killer lives in the same building, yet, paralyzed by fear, she fails to see which room he retreats into.
The next day, the young woman goes to Scotland Yard to give her statement to Inspector Hurst and her friend Twist; she reveals that she lives in a boarding house at 48 Hoxton Street and, when pressed by the two men, briefly describes the boarders—mostly men—noting that Violet Garfield also lives there. The two men are not yet convinced that she actually saw the killer (who had also scalped the victim), but they become fully persuaded when the elderly lady is stabbed to death in the boarding house’s entrance hall—an area screened off by two red curtains. No one saw the killer, and escape from the house seemed impossible, as the only footprints in the snow were the victim’s own, leading toward the building.
An intensive investigation follows, focusing primarily on three boarders: Mr. Graham Street, who always dresses in black and claims to walk the streets of London at night seeking inspiration for his new book (he is a writer); Mr. Alfred Leane, a bald pianist who wears toupees; and Peter Schuyler, whom William Scott—a journalist in love with Marjorie—suspects might be the killer. Peter is one of two witnesses present at the scene who claim to have seen nothing (the other being Mr. Jerry Hudson, the proprietor); while denying they witnessed Miss Garfield’s murder, they also vouch for their fellow boarder. Furthermore, a woman who found the dying Miss Garfield on the other side of the curtains—and was standing right by the opening—insists she saw no one behind them. To his friend's annoyance, Alan Twist will dub this case the "Crime of the Flying Dagger."
Among the boarders, there is Cornelia Drake, a blind hairdresser; Dr. Stafford, who is drowning his grief over the loss of his wife and daughter—killed during the bombing of London—in alcohol; and the Hudsons, a married couple who run the establishment. They are both heirs (being cousins) to Colonel Hudson, whose wife had been killed in the early 1900s in the exact same manner: stabbed with a dagger taken from a wall-mounted display—the very same dagger used to scalp the victim on the street and, subsequently, Miss Garfield.While Cornelia was a hairdresser and Leaman wears a toupee, Graham Smith also has a connection to hair; in his youth, as an act of revenge, he had shaved the head of a neighbor, Mrs. Cranshaw. To escape public scorn, he, his mother (whose scalp had been ruined by a product used by Mrs. Cranshaw), and his sister fled one night and boarded a ship that later sank—leaving him the sole survivor.
It is later revealed that Leaman is also connected, being Mrs. Cranshaw’s nephew. In short, there is a great deal going on.
Twist and Hurst must navigate numerous obstacles to unravel the mystery, a process that unfolds following a second scalping-murder on the streets of London. The resolution will solve Violet’s impossible murder, the killing that took place in the same house years earlier, and the two street murders, ultimately bringing a diabolical killer—or rather, two—to justice: one responsible for the three present-day crimes, and the other for a crime committed long ago.
THE END OF SPOILERS
The narrative unfolds along a line of mounting tension, punctuated by intermezzos that strategically slow the pace before ramping it up again to heighten the impact; the reader is thus swept into a whirlwind of red herrings leading up to the revelatory finale—or rather, the *double* revelatory finale. It is worth noting that the victims are not the intended targets of the murders; rather, they are mere pawns—instruments the killer uses to achieve his ultimate goal: framing a specific individual—identified by the alias Steeman assigns the killer: "Mr. Smith."
Thus, the novel features a main plot (a killer targeting three women) alongside various subplots that, while linked to the central narrative, are irrelevant to the solution and serve primarily as distractions (such as the scalping motif, alluding to hair loss—Leaman, Smith, Cranshaw, Smith’s mother, Cornelia Drake the hairdresser—and Cranshaw’s shaved head; or the street killings of the two women because they were Smith’s lovers).
To goad the police into arresting Smith (who had previously shaved a female neighbor’s head), the killer does not hesitate to scalp and murder two women, nor to kill a female lodger—out of sheer jealousy—after she instinctively uncovers his murderous schemes. Meanwhile, the reader—skillfully misled by Halter—focuses on irrelevant details and characters before finally grasping the culprit's identity in the first of the two finales.
In this instance, the "locked-room" scenario is not the plot’s pivot or the novel’s foundation—as it is in *La quatrième porte* or *La mort vous invite*—but merely one element, albeit an impossible one; instead, as Roland Lacourbe observes, the book is a pure, straightforward whodunnit. Like all the novels of the early period, it employs macabre references; here, it is the double ending—truly extraordinary, I must say—that calls to mind something from the past.
One would call it a masterpiece, were it not for two narrative choices by the author that disrupt the novel’s fabric: 1) the delay with which Twist and Hurst attend to Violet Garfield—she has already voiced her suspicions to Hurst, who disbelieved her; Marjorie has witnessed a murder and reported what she saw—including the location, the building the killer entered, and the fact that Violet Garfield was among the boarders. An ordinary inspector would have gone to see Garfield immediately, yet that does not happen here until after she has been killed. 2) During the course of the story, Hurst comes to suspect the killer, but Twist dismisses his partner’s theory, arguing that the individual in question could not possibly be a suspect—only to ultimately identify him as the culprit.
The rich, evocative writing invites the reader not only to hunt for the killer but also to track down the references Halter scatters throughout the novel—nods to past writers whom the French author pays tribute to in the dedication following the title: "To J.D. Carr, Agatha Christie, S.A. Steeman, and all the others
Indeed, these authors are referenced—sometimes directly, sometimes cryptically—in many parts of the novel.
Steeman, first and foremost: the killer living in a boarding house calls to mind the Belgian writer’s masterpiece, L’assassin habite au 21 (1939). Steeman’s killer is referred to simply as "Mr. Smith," and—coincidentally—there is a Mr. Smith in Halter’s novel who falls under suspicion. Then Carr: there are various references in the novel—direct ones (mention is made of The Red Widow [1935] and The Three Coffins [1935] during a sort of aesthetic judgment on the detective story that Marjorie voices to William, leading directly to Thomas De Quincey’s about Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts): “..." “— Le crime est une chose fascinante, déclara-t-il au bout d’un moment.— Pardon ? — Une chose fascinante, c’est bien ce que j’ai dit. Je ne parle pas de ces règlements de comptes entre gangsters ou de ces voyous qui sortent leur couteau pour un oui ou un non. Je pense aux crimes parfaits, qui sont le fruit d’un plan mûrement réfléchi, longuement médité, où chaque éventualité est envisagée, analysée, où rien n’est laissé au hasard. Ces meurtres-là sont des chefs-d’oeuvre, conçus par de véritables artistes, pour ne pas dire des génies”.
The references to Carr—less obvious but ever-present in the work—concern the following: Marjorie Conway, who is also the main character in Carr’s The Black Spectacles (1939) (appearing there as Marjorie Wills, née Conway); Chapter 15 mentions —a clear reference to Arabian Nights Murder (1936). In Chapter 16, William Scott, in love with Marjorie, embraces her and sings "Oh by Tummel and Loch Rannoch and Lochaber I will go…," a line that brings to mind a famous Carr novel, The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941). (1) After shaving his neighbor’s head, Smith leaves with his mother and sister and boards the “White Star”, which is subsequently wrecked; one cannot help but link this scenario to the “Titanic shipwreck” featured in The Crooked Hinge (1938). Roland is convinced of this connection, too: Mais l’ombre de Carr plane également sur cette histoire en la personne de Graham, le beau ténébreux qui, tout comme un certain Naufragé du Titanic, s’embarqua jadis avec sa famille sur le White Star à destination des États-Unis et fut le seul survivant d’un tragique naufrage…
Finally, the story of Dr. Stafford—who lost his home, as well as his wife and daughter, in a Luftwaffe bombing raid on London—could easily be an allusion to Carr’s own personal experience; he lost his home, destroyed by a German bomb, while he and his family were in London.
Yet, while there are numerous references to J.D. Carr, there are just as many to Agatha Christie—a true object of cult-like admiration for Halter. First of all, alongside the two Carr novels, *Death in the Clouds* (1935) is cited. Then there is... Violet Garfield.
Many people have mistakenly identified her with Miss Marple—including someone I know. However, in a review on Anobii, this person—despite the mistaken identification—raised a crucial question: “It is evident that the character of Violet Garfield is modeled on Miss Marple (I wonder why she turns out to be the victim?).” The answer is simple: because she isn’t modeled on Miss Marple, but rather on one of the many characters Christie included in her novels. In Murder Is Easy (1939), Luke Fitzwilliam, a retired police officer, meets an elderly woman named Lavinia Pinkerton on a train; she tells him about deaths in her village of Wychwood-under-Ashe that were mistaken for accidents but which she suspects were actually murders. Luke does not believe her at first, but upon learning that Lavinia has been killed in a strange traffic accident, he begins to investigate.
Peter Schuyler, on the other hand, bears a strong resemblance to another Christie character: Marie Van Schuyler from Death on the Nile (1937). Meanwhile, the name might perhaps allude to Peter Ustinov, who played Poirot in the film adaptation of that same title. Harvey Stafford, too, appears to be a composite of two different references: Sir Stafford Nye is the protagonist of the 1970 spy novel Passenger to Frankfurt, while Captain Harvey is a British intelligence officer who appears in the 1927 Poirot novel The Big Four. The same applies to Cornelia Drake, who may be the result of combining two other Christie characters: "Cornelia" points to Cornelia Robson from The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), while Drake refers to Rowena Drake, a key figure in Hallowe'en Party (1969).
Lacourbe writes the novel’s heroine, Marjorie—who exposes herself to various dangers during her investigation, even risking her life—clearly evokes the protagonist of Ethel Lina White’s 1933 masterpiece Some Must Watch, in which a fearless young woman confronts perilous situations and risks her own life: How could one not agree with him?
Ultimately, this is an excellent novel—one of the very best—thanks in no small part to the magnificent double ending, which showcases Halter's brilliant gift for creating atmosphere. The solution to the locked-room mystery is astonishing, even though, as is often the case, it hinges on a sleight-of-hand trick executed in the blink of an eye—a trick that might otherwise have been exposed, had…
Pietro De Palma
[1] If you want to hear the Scottish song, see my article on the novel in question on my blog. https://deathcanread.blogspot.com/2018/01/john-dickson-carr-case-of-constant.html
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