Hake Talbot : The Hangman’s Handyman, 1942

 

One of the best Locked Rooms ever 

Even from the first lines we see projected on a remote island, battered by gales, which has a name that says it all: Kraken, like the mythological monster of the deep sea. And the atmosphere already expresses its first signs ofstrange and threatening.

Nancy Garwood, actress and showgirl, is found lying across the bottom of the bed, still wearing the evening dress and and then she doesn’t how she arrived  to be in bed. She remembers when she arrived in the afternoon along with Jackson Frant and dinner: as yousay later, she knew Frant “intimately perhaps” but certainly notgood .. (it means that he had sex with him, but as a person he knewlittle). Also remembers the heavy atmosphere of that house and palpable; servants, silent and without an identity as  if they were shadows, the strange and the guests seated around the table, eight including the host and five empty seats to form thirteen places, omen of doom. She remembers the salt dropped in error on the tablecloth, she remembers the broken mirror, remembers thefrightened faces. She doesn’t remember anything.

When Nancy falls in the living room, by candlelight, the clock strikes ten o’clock p.m.. She remembers that she was at dinner at nine. Must have been unconscious at least one hour. The guests should be there, playing the piano, playing cards .. Instead, there is none.
Nancy increasingly tense, the show turns to the dark and threatening, by candlelight.
We observe the scene: Hake Talbot, with consummate skill we would like to say (but this is the debut) introduces the story as if it were not a detective novel, but a fantastic novel, a gothic novel : it would seem one of Radcliffe or Walpole. The candlelight, instead of decreasing the voltagefor the dark, it increases it, because it illuminates what is directly in front, but leaves the rest in darkness. And while Nancy advances frightened, scared and tense, the sound here is powerful and unexpected: someone knocks at the door.
She goes to open, because not even the servants made him, as if the house was empty, and she founds Roger Kincaid, a professional player, with an ambiguous past, but who knows human nature better than others, and above all knows how to go down to things, even to those who apparently are not seen.
Talbot reserves entrance leading to Kincaid, with which we can understand that we are facing the“deus ex machina” of the situation.
The nature of the character is also entrusted with the clothes she wears: a heavy raincoat and ahat from the wide brim, which remind us instantly (at least on those familiar with the detective genre) the most famous character of Carr, the Dr. Fell. It ‘a way as any to tell the reader: it is the investigator, there are the typical conditions of carrian novels, that are impossible crimes or closed chambers.
The impossible crime is what distinguishes the novel, and is also the event that caused the amnesia of the girl.

Nancy recalls that the number of thirteen invited (but a family of four was not reached) had provided an opportunity for Jackson Frant, industrial chemicals, could make fun of her brother, Lord Evan Tethryn enormously superstitious.
The mockery that was continued in a crescendo of tension, before reading an ancient documentwhich indicated an unspeakable family secret, that the brother had thrown into the fire, then causing the breaking of a mirror, powder, and then causing the deposit of salt on tablecloth, and at the same time emphasizing the ensuing seven years of trouble. The effect of this series of eventsis the curse cast by Evan at Jack, the real secret unspeakable: to kill the recipient immediately,and let him rot in a short time.
So did the exasperated Lord Evan against the brother Jack Frant. And hearing the curse “ Od rot you!” Jack was struck by lightning fell, dead: apparently Od, the sea goddess whom Evan had turned, was briskly to oblige. The body was then transported to his room and left there.
But we have before pointed to a crime impossible: what ever it would be impossible in instant death as surely falling into a pure coincidence, a man cursed by his half-brother? It could very well be a heart attack! So far nothing indicates manifest impossibility: there is only a coincidencealso if strange. The impossibility instead will be realized before our eyes, when Kincaid will travel to see the corpse, whose memory causes fainting again of Nancy. While Kincaid her aids, a new character materializes, Arnold Makepeace.

I note that the expedient of heightened tension, we have already seen both in the wake of Nancy (who finds herself in a strange house and darkness), and in the verbal confrontation between the two half-brothers, reappears now in the brief dialogue between these two characters: Arnold if at words he confirms as told by Nancy and tries to be as objective as possible, speaks almost shouting, in a tone that suggests to Rogan, as his partner is terrified.

Well, he obviously present in the stroke, he is hoped in his heart that even Dr. Braxton defines it such. And the tension grows, and continues when the first Rogan rummaging through the ashes of the fireplace, he founds almost intact the loot of pages that had been thrown on the fire (which is a series of reports showing old black magic powers given to the family of two brothers by Od, an elemental spirit of sea) and then when he himself, in the library, founds a series of books specifically occult character, read and reread, especially one with such a famous short story by Edgar Allan Poe: The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Do you remember that case? No? It talks about the mesmerism, animal magnetism made in the case of a man at death, which remains in a state of suspended death, until awakened from this state of decomposition in a heartbeat. Because Talbot refers precisely to this story by Poe? Why Kincaid will find Frant, wearing the dress evening, died not from a few hours, but died at least a month, in decomposition so advanced that the only way to assign him the identity, it’s a ring that could not have been imbedded after died.
Here is the manifest impossibility that would legitimize a supernatural intervention, to Od.
That’s it?
No. Someone tries to kill Kincaid strangling and yet manages to leave the room leaving her locked inside, with mosquito nets and intact old-growth, impossible to disassemble and assemble outside. Carr would say vanished into air.  Only Od in person could have been!
But why Od would want to kill Kincaid?
Nothing I will say more, except  that the ending of novel is amazing.

Why the novel did impress me so favorably?
The first, we are dealing with a crime so impossible that it can not be more impossible, and even a beautiful Locked Room. Talbot, in short, to create his debut novel, in honor of Carr and Rawson, and fills it impossible crimes and locked rooms, in a supernatural tricks illusions (the same Hake Talbot dabbled in magic) and centers the target , expecting to an established pattern of classic mystery (island battered by storm, secluded villa, curse, crime impossible and even more in a closed chamber, substitutions in person, continuous plot reversals) and creating an atmosphere dense and palpable able to fascinate.
Also it wouldn’t seem to be a debut. It has not flaws in the final by Rim of the Pit, though a lot of persons still consider it superior to ours. The fact is that the ending can not hold the tension accumulated up to that point and Rim of the Pit seems to be missing something, because, summingimpossibilitytoimpossibility, and concentrating the explanation of all the mysteries in the finale, “with an effect of complexity a bit too exhausting”, as would tell someone I know, Talbot can not answer all the questions, to satisfy them completely, and leaving a sense of something unresolved.
This leads us to consider how, instead, the first novel, with some humility that is lacking in the second hand, tends to solve the puzzles, each time, leaving only the final identification of the murderer (which is not easy). In fact, the first Talbot/Kincaid addresses the Locked Room, and then he explains the crime impossible.
Beyond this there are similarities between the two novels.
First, the mythological allusions: here is an elemental deities, Od, a demon of the deep sea while there another demon is, an Indian demon, a Windingo. In addition both novels, show magic tricks performed and explained by the guests.
Here and there you notice any mistakes, you may notice that only after reading the novel several times: first it says that an examination of the fingers of the corpse decomposed by Kincaid, Sergeant Dorsey, the police photographer and Feldman Medical Examiner Dr. Murchison, we note that had been removed the skin of the fingertips; then at the end of the novel, we read that the corpse was that of Frant because Feldmann had taken fingerprints: inconsistency perhaps be explained by a previous draft of the novel different?
Beyond this, even Talbot, as Halter, may have used, to wrap the plot of his novel, a series of references to him earlier: the guests present at a villa on an island, reminiscent of And Then There Were None 1939, by Agatha Christie; the 13 dinner guests, another novel by previous Christie, Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; and finally, I would be even tempted to believe that the same misfortune Rogan on board the vessel in the middle stormy sea and its landing on the island where the other guests are waiting, could refer to Careless Corpse, 1937, by King Charles Daly.
Well … an extraordinary novel, which takes engrossed until the last page.

Pietro De Palma

P. S.
The device by Talbot, also was used by Bill Pronzini and  Paul Halter.

Hake Talbot : Rim of the Pit, 1944

Henning Nelms was born in Baltimore in 1900. He taught dramatic Literature at Middlebury College and Pennsylvania State University, and conducted several theaters. He did several jobs, including the profession of lawyer, a family profession, since his father had also been (as a shepherd of the Episcopal Church); But he had also done the sailor, the editor, the accountant, the director of an advertising agency, the prestigious. With his true name he signed books about theater, drawing, and a handbook of illusion and prestige.
Similar to Clayton Rawson, he wanted to try to write mystery novels in which he transfigured his illusionist knowledge, and with the pseudonym Hake Talbot he signed two great classics of the mystery: The Hangman's Handyman (1942) and Rim of the Pit (1944); as well as two short stories: The Other Side (1940) and The High House (1948).
Rim of the Pit has always enjoyed a certain fame: it has been (and still it is today) praised or attacked. Talbot wrote a novel that had to astonish: it is understood from the beginning:

Dead of Winter

There are dead people who are mistaken for living beings.
- ELIPHAS LÉVI, Dogme de la Haute Magie

"I came up here to make a dead man change his mind."

In short, a bumpy entry!

It begins with that "I came up here to make a dead man change his mind", that expresses already a lot and already introduces one of the subjects of the work, the windigo, the evil spirit. In fact, in the phrase  “I came up here to make a dead man change his mind” (expression recalled by Carr in his famous phrase, which he formulated when Talbot's novel came out in the types of Bentam: “From the first period: I came here to induce a A dead ghost comes back ... or maybe he does not come back at all. A flying ghost drops apparently as he hits and goes to the attack. No angels, but demons and sorcerers seem to be dead. Dancing on the tip of this needle ... The edge of the abyss is a magnificence “), the adverb "up" can be understood with reference to two things: referring to the place of the spiritual sitting, that is a cabin in the mountains , And / or referred to a place anyway higher than that in which it resides.  Grimaud Désanat, if it is an evil spirit, he will dwell in hell. Moreover, his evil indole is also witnessed by the name Talbot furiously gives him: in fact, in Grimaud Désanat, the beginning of the word Grimaud, "Grim", is the same as Grimorium (black magic book), and moreover the adjective "Grim" in English may mean "horrible", "left", "hateful", "fierce", "macabre"; while Désanat can be understood as a sciarada, formed by the union of two words: De and Sanat, then Satan's anagram, Satan. So .. "Grimaud of Satan or Grimaud from Satan". But ... Grimaud is not quite a Talbotian name, but invented by Carr: it is the surname of that Charles that appears in Carr's Hollow Man. Another connection with the great John?

Rogan Kincaid is a gambler with a lively and adventurous life behind him, who suddenly, when needed, is a detective. Landlord of vast mountains, covered with trees, Grimaud Désanat is dead. Luke Latham, a wealthy sawmill owner, would like to convince Grimaud's widow to sell the forests, but she is reluctant to do so, interpreting the will of her husband who has left them. But Latham does not deny and obsessively tries the widow, as long as she agrees to initiate a spiritual session, in which she will play the part of the medium, having specific powers. Some people will be attending the session, including Rogan, Latham, Ogden, Latham's partner, and a Czechoslovakian magician, Svetozar Vok, who should unveil the tricks of the medium.

The spiritual session begins, and at some point the voice of the medium changes, taking a different pitch from her and assuming a male timbre; then immediately after, happens the apparition of a malignant face suspended in the middle of the air, so malignant to horror the present:  is Grimaud Désanat, who curses his wife for changing his wills.

Immediately afterwards, in the horror of the onlookers, the spectrum vanishes seeking refuge at the top floor. Meanwhile, the widow-medium faints and if anyone had some pretense or a supposition that it was a trick, he must recur as there is no trace on fresh snow that can prove the existence that someone not known else has arrived in the meantime, not seen, in the cabin. Meanwhile, however, Vok reveals some of the tricks practiced by charlatans and fake mediums.
At this point, the impossible happens: the medium is killed in her room by the windigo, the evil spirit in which Désanat has turned, and no trace is found on the snow covering the window sill. Subsequently, there will be a second murder, this time outside, without any traces found, and Ogden, Letham's partner, will die. In the end Rogan Kincaid will solve the arcane, demonstrating the murder was not supernatural but human.

In America, the novel was originally published in paperback on the Pulp Magazine "Thrilling Mystery Novel" in the 40s, then in the Bantam Paperbacks in 1965 (as part of "The World's Great Novels of Detection" series chosen by Anthony Boucher), and in the 80's, always in paperback, by International Polygonics, Ltd. In recent times, also republished by Ramble House.

Certainly a lot of the fame, derived from the enthusiastic judgment expressed by Carr:

“From the very first sentence, I came up here to make a dead man change his mind, we are into the realm of nightmare: Miracles gather and explode. A dead man returns – or does not return. A flying ghost, apparently, swoops down and attacks. No angels, but goblins and wizards seem to dance on the point of this needle. But gently: have patience! Everything is explained on natural grounds, un a marvel of ingenuity; and all the clues are there…Rim of the Pit is a beauty. Don’t argue with it; read it”

Now, that Carr was convinced about the absolute goodness of the work, and with him those who embraced his argument, it is not in question; It may be to see if in fact the novel merited  entirely the fame  .
I’m somewhat disappointed (I think it was understood) maybe because I had been excited by Talbot's other novel, written before this. Of course I'm aware that I'm so against all the series of enthusiastic judgments that you can read here and there, but I do not care to be an out of line opinion. So ..

First of all, nothing can be said about the aspirations of this novel: it tries the difficult way of the nystery novel that goes hand in hand with the supernatural one, as J.D.Carr had already done with superb results in The Burning Court and Melville Davisson Post in several stories. In fact, in the intentions of Talbot, until the last, one should not be understood whether the crimes were committed by supernatural beings or in flesh and bone; and even this is widespread everywhere in all websites.
I must say, in truth, that all that concerns illusionistic magic (phantom appearance, tricks, and anything else) is treated with mastery, and some peregrine thinking if and how the ghost may have appeared, peeps, I admit . And how the crime could have happened, given the restrictions imposed, typical of novels like this (intact snow, absence of footprints, etc.). So nothing to say about that.

I disagree about the axiom for which the Talbot novel was written by taking as an example Carr. It does not seem to me that Rim of the Pit can only remember Carr: at the same level of novelists, it seems to me that much more of Talbot's carriageway, for example Alan Green. In spite of some aspects that actually exist in the novel, Hake Talbot seems to me much closer to Clayton Rawson, as more than anything else tries to focus on the quality of the enigma: a novel I would ideally associate with this could be No Coffin for the Corpse by Clayton Rawson, in which there is an impossible disappearance and an equally emblematic appearance. And as I say this, it would seem to me that another novel that could have been taken, for example, could have been the Winslow & Quirk Into Thin Air, reviewed in this space some years  ago.

The fact is that it seems to me (where instead others don’t think this ...) that this novel has an inadequate atmosphere: it is frosty, claustrophobic yes certainly like the environment in which it is placed (and some American critics rightly refer to The Plague Court Murders by Carter Dickson (also the one reviewed here), but it can not captivate in the manner we would think; this judgment I have compared to that of other friends who read it, and many among them think the same thing : it's also a matter of style. In addition, and this in my opinion is a further limitation, if not even a wrong choice, Talbot inserted at the beginning of each chapter a quotation from magic books, treats, or anything else: this escamotage ends up removing any residue of supposed supernatural truth, since the continuous recurrence of something related to the atmosphere that one would like to create ends up to make sure that of supernatural there is nothing (the reader who buys the novel knows it is a human crime, but at least during the novel he would like to be carried on the wings of fantasy elsewhere; instead ..).

In addition, when Rogan Kincaid unmasks the assassin saying that the gun that had shot blancks to Windigo, and the silver bullet that had been found in Ogden's deadly wound, had been Kinkaid to put it in the wound when he Had pretended to extract it, and that Ogden had not been killed by a bullet but by a stab and accuses X of having killed him, he doesn’t believe as Carr, to provide a clear and acceptable explanation of the crimes, that instead remains cumbersome and unresolved, to testify that not always, climbing on the mirrors, you can then climb them. In short what in a much more specialized environment than mine, others say: "The actual impossible murders (there are two) are well set up but less convincingly resolved, though they're certainly original. In my opinion it's very good, but not great."

In this he differs even from Rawson, who, as is well-known, has never been too much praised for the style of writing or for the atmosphere, but essentially for the quality of the puzzles he was able to create, being able to explain them In the best possible way, despite some of them, for example Death from a Top Hat are remembered like some of the most complicated puzzles ever conceived, often very close to pure illusionism. Then, if someone looks  for other things, like locked rooms, and the same mechanisms used by Carr to mislead the reader (in The Hollow Man), here he is going to observe them. Only the judgment expressed by so many critics and novelists, that is, in their list of the best Locked Rooms overall, this novel by Talbot was the second after The Hollow Man by Carr , it seems to me a bit unbalanced (and heavily influenced, from the positive opinion, expressed by Carr).

Pietro De Palma