Joseph Commings : The Scarecrow Murders, 1948 . From Bodies from the Library 3, 2020

 

Who is Tony Medawar? The Indiana Jones of the Mystery. He who spends time discovering forgotten or unknown treasures of the Mystery.

He has been researching the writers of the Golden Age since he was a teenager, and has discovered countless lost or unknown works including full length stage plays, novels and stories - sometimes written under pseudonyms. As well as writing for The Armchair Detective, CADS and other magazines (under several pseudonyms!) he has edited it introduced over 20 books. Since 2018 he has edited the Bodies from the Library series for HarperCollins whose contents have included previously unpublished or hard-to-find short stories and plays featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, Roderick Alleyn, Hercules Poirot, Nigel Strangeways, Senator Brooks U Banner, Inspector French, Sergeant Beef, Roger Sheringham and Gervase Fen as well as Agatha Christie’s first short story - previously uncollected - and dozens of other pieces. The fourth volume is published later this year and the fifth in 2022 so there is lots to look forward to!

Medawar recently collaborated with Douglas G. Greene by passing him the information of the discovery of Carr's unpublished radio plays, kept at the Library of Congress still in CBS radio script tissue, which Doug then copied and published recently for his publishing house Crippen & Landru. Medawar, however, publishes by himself everything that he can manage personally.

Lots of interesting things in the latest Bodies From the Library 3, including the extraordinary Grand Guignol, the story expanded at a novel whom Carr later published as It Walks By Night. And among them, I'll talk about an extraordinary short story by Joseph Commings, The Scarecrow Murders, not published in Senator Banner's anthology, released years ago by Crippen & Landru. The Scarecrow Murders, which was originally published for the first time in April 1948 in 10 Story Detective Magazine, is an impossible crime tale.

 

Eight miles from an unspecified city is the farm of the Jelke, brother and sister, who they call Blackmarsh Grange. The two have always been divided on what to do with the property, even if they live together in the same house: Hudson, a boy in his early twenties, is married to a Canadian girl, Celeste, and does not want to sell the farm, which he inherited from his parents, while his sister Beverly would like to leave. The quarrels are almost continuous. One day in August, Beverly's body is found in the shallows of the stream that passes near the farm; further upstream, Beverly's clothing is found, where the water is deeper. The girl is wearing only the bathing suit. Someone shot her from close range with a double-barreled shotgun, and half his face went away from the buckshot. Only Judson remained, who without witnessing the slightest pity for her sister went to her morgue and took off her family ring. It is clear that it is he who is suspected in the death of his sister, at least for the property that has now passed into her hands. That's why Judge Skinner turns to Senator Banner to untangle the problem. Skinner has known the boys since they were little, because he lives nearby; on the contrary, he has offered 5000 dollars on more than one occasion for the purchase of the farm. He knew Beverly who behaved like a tomboy and excelled at horseshoe throwing, and he knows Hudson who knows nothing more than to keep running the farm and knows he couldn't have killed his sister. The two go to the Jelke farm and are greeted by the repeated barking of the dogs. Skinner introduces the boy to Banner and the two understand each other immediately: they both want the killer caught. Then they meet Hudson's very young wife, Celeste: if she could, too, she would sell the farm and go away with Hudson. Then they introduce Wayne Markes their worker. He has recently fallen in love with a girl Joan Vicars, who studies at Foxchase Hall, a school near the farm. Until he solves the catch, Banner is invited to the Jelke house. In the bedroom there is nothing besides a cot and a duvet, a bedside table, a chair and a lamp. At night, Banner is awakened by a gunshot. When he connects, he dresses up, flipping the lamp over and losing in the dark to find his way, and goes down to find Hudson in the porch, dead: he was shot with buckshot from close range.

They all get off. Once again the rifle was used which is owned by Hudson, but which is not found. They see footprints that were not there before, they follow them and stop at the end in front of a field where an old scarecrow stands out in the middle: the footprints continue and stop in front of the scarecrow, which is nothing more than two cross poles and above. a tattered suit, pants, a cracked hat and the shoes that they then check are the very ones that left their footprints. Banner is flabbergasted. How is all this possible? There is only one set of footprints going towards the scarecrow, but none other coming from it. Hudson's body is removed and Celeste announces her willingness to sell the farm. Skinner agrees: he'll take the money to the farm and they'll make the sale. Meanwhile, another fact is added: Wayne Markes saw something white and sparkling dancing in the woods, in the light of the moon and then vanish. While Celeste claims she saw someone move around the house while everyone was out. Banner decides to inspect the house, after having heard the steps above himself, where no one should be: each room is the same as the others, the locks are identical and there is only one key in the house; there are no secret passages; in each room the window closes from the inside and outside there is a railing nailed to the wall. Banner decides to lock every room from the outside and even put a tilted chair under his handle. Yet, that night the sound of a shot is heard: Celeste is on the ground lifeless and wounded in the head, in the room closed from the outside and with the chair tilted. Banner sets a trap for the killer and catches him.

Meanwhile, let's say that the story is an absolute beauty. The story mixes a supernatural atmosphere (the figure covered with light that hovers and disappears in the woods and the scarecrow, with his walk to the plowed field) with superfine logic and absolutely rigorous deduction and every fact that happens has its own explanation that contributes to the incrimination. of the murderer - the bright thing; the scarecrow who is not an invention, but is a character that Celeste sees before being shot; the behavior of dogs; the fact that the killer does not kill from the outside but from the inside; the presence of a single key, which Celeste gives to Banner before being locked up in her room. The impossibility is about Hudson's death. In fact, the killer waits for Hudson dressed as a scarecrow and shoots him and then returns to the plowed field, and there he performs his magic: he manages to put his clothes back on the wooden cross without leaving footprints, but not flying. But why the scarecrow's clothes? The killer does not disguise himself to frighten (perhaps he does it when he tries to kill Celeste) but for a functional use. And this is the fundamental point, without which we understand nothing and from which Banner probably starts: why does the killer have to dress up as a scarecrow? Why does the killer act from within, and above all how he acts? Where is he hiding? The important clues to understand are mainly: the dogs, the horseshoe, the scarecrow clothing, the luminous shape in the woods. If you understand all this .. you understand everything. It is not really a whodunnit but a howdunnit, because like other Commings tales, in which the number of acting subjects is reduced to a minimum, it is also possible to identify the culprit in a sense; however, if we want to identify it on the basis of a logical discourse that explains the various impossibilities scattered throughout the story, the discourse is something else. In fact it is necessary to explain how the events happened. This is the difficulty.

Commings speaks about dogs, no scarecrow, but from the speech he makes ... It could be also a possible derivation from Carr. The killer is hiding in the house, because the attempted murders are carried out from the door. It is evident that he has to hide (Commings does not say) in the only room they do not see, which was the one that belonged to Beverly. And when Banner checks all the rooms next to each other, and therefore that too, the killer changes location, only to return to them. It is an absolutely risky way of doing because he could be discovered but it is the only one he can implement. The derivation could therefore be from a novel with Merrivale,  The Unicorn Murders

Remarkable.

 

Pietro De Palma 

 

Joseph Commings: Ghost in the Gallery, 1949

Joseph Commings is an author that every lover of Impossible Crimes and Locked Rooms should know.
Born in Mount Craven in 1913, Commings dreamed all his life to become famous. But in life you have to have luck, and Commings not had it, although he’s considered by critics as one of the greatest authors of stories with impossible crimes, like Hoch, Rawson or Carr. He created the colossal “Senator Brooks U. Banner”, the equivalent of “Dr. Fell” by Carr, who made his debut in the tale Murder Under Glass of March 1947, published in the magazine Ten Detective Story. Later began publishing stories in another magazines: Ten Detective Aces,  The Mystery Digest Magazine. The most important magazine was E.Q.M.M., but while subjecting his works to Dannay, he did not have the good fortune that they were upheld. Disappointed and depressed, Commings wrote other stories with Banner in 1957, when the Mystery Digest Magazine welcomed his works in his pages. If the collaboration with this magazine went on until 1963 -since 1961 he was also chief editor - until 1968 began one with another magazine, The Saint Mystery Magazine, for which he published a few short stories.

Failing to get along easily, he wrote also porn stories, as his dreams promptly crashed; and also his hopes that someone would offer to pubblish his novel with some locked rooms or impossible crimes, which never happened. It is known that at least a novel with locked room he wrote, but then he burned it because no one was agree to publish it. Since 1979, the fortune he thought to minimally be favorable, and finally another tale with Banner, written together with Hoch, could be published. He died at Edgewood in 1992. The last tale written, The Whispering Gallery, remained unpublished until 2004 when it was published in the anthology Banner Deadlines, by Douglas G. Greene Publishing House, Crippen & Landru.

Ghost in the Gallery, was published in 1949 by the magazine Ten Detective Aces.

The story begins with a plot twist, and already in this denotes a certain originality: Linda Carewe has killed her husband DeWitt Carewe. After have killed she runs into the arms of her lover, Borden Argyll, an accomplished painter. A classic. She has killed him giving five grains of arsenic. It is not murder to wickedness and greed even though in this case would resort assumptions, but out of necessity: she married her husband eight months earlier, having known a year before. In the knowledge that never became true in love but rather a sort of disturbance, they were merged various instances: the man's wealth and his economic modesty, and age: he forty years, she twenty-three. But what had attracted her was his energy inhuman: sported a confidence that she had not, and produced wealth where others failed. However on him were rumors about his demonic nature which although not true testified that doing the good deed was not his prerogative.
Obviously Linda is surprised when she sees him entering the gallery, where are she and Borden, just her husband with a cruel grin, who accuses them not to have murdered him because he is immortal or nearly so, and challenges them to conclude their enterprise . Having said that, he  disappears around a bend of a corridor. They follow him, so much for stopping in front of a door on which is written “Administration”. The glass door, permits to see everything inside the room: there is, Satan himself, DeWitt Carewe behind a desk. Only him. No other exits except the one behind which they are. Turn off the lamp that is on the plane. Argyll in turn strikes a match and opens the door. Linda does not want to because she fears for the life of Borden but what is the surprise when, after turning on the light in the room they don’t find DeWitt but Phillis Remington, the model of Borden, just killed. But DeWitt? Where did he go? How did he get out of the room, the door of which was guarded by his wife.

While they are racking their brains,  comes to the gallery the director, George Honeywell. Questioning, they find out where it comes from him, that is, from his room, he did not see anyone. In other words. Carewe has disappeared. As they walk in the gallery are facing a picture painted by Borden in supernatural subject: is a werewolf who has the appearance of DeWitt Carewe intent on to tear the flesh of a woman with the features of model murdered. It turns out then that the two had been lovers even before he got married to Linda, and she was blackmailing him because they do not blurt out to his wife who had continued to see each other after marriage. The motive of the murder then would blackmail.
Honeywell going to call the police and in that moment Linda hears a strange noise, like a Venetian blinds which are lowered. Except that in the gallery, Venetian blinds there are none.

The hours pass, and the police are not in charge of the arcane. Borden decides to turn to Senator Banner, an expert on crimes impossible: he knows him because he has portrayed him long ago.
Banner is introduced into the gallery by a policeman that there works.
After explaining everything to Banner, even the strange noise, he comes to know that nearby there is a room where the Chinese shadows are projected. Unrolls the screen and see ...
Needless to say, behind the screen, he finds the corpse of DeWitt Carewe, hanged. Resolved the disappearance. Il corpse was in a space of just thirty centimeters between the screen and the back wall: suicide or murder?

Senator Banner solves the riddle by explaining how it was possible they didn’t find Carewe in room while they had found the body of his mistress; and it does so by applying optical physics concepts. In this it seems to me that the explanation comes close to that of one of two murders at The Hollow Man by Carr. And he explains how the same Carewe and her lover have been victims of a ruthless puppeteer, who killed them, pretending to be in agreement with him to cheat his wife.

The story is a gem, a masterpiece, chosen along with other stories, by Adrian Jack & Robert Adey for their highly successful anthology The Art of The Impossible, has not only a great mystery of the Locked Room solved brilliantly, that essentially no meet any of the three temporal instances, valid to explain a crime in a locked room(before crime committed, the crime that takes place in the moment, crime committed after) because the disappearance of DeWitt Carewe happens elsewhere, and the special nature of the door, of the dark and of the faint light, causes the creation of a illusionistic effect that you may believe that DeWitt is in a room rather than elsewhere. No, the story also has an amazing atmosphere.

Commings since the first lines creates the conditions so that you may believe in DeWitt as a human being by the demonic nature: his appearance; the rumors about his demonic nature (vampire or werewolf); the place where Linda had met him for the first time, a forest, in which the earth and the sky was the same pale color (the color of death); the rustling of leaves that Linda should have interpreted as a warning about the nature of that human being who was in front, when they had met.
Not only.

It seems to me extraordinary that Commings, with a parallelism, a rhetorical figure of undoubted charm, creeps before the murder is fulfilled, even before the crimes are committed, the very idea that death lives there: in Autumn the afternoon is rainy and gloomy; the heavy shower  makes the Honeywell gallery, covered with marble dark green (a marble used in cemeteries), of the same colour of a tomb. And that the same crime and the murderer's disappearance, are to be charged to the facts of a supernatural nature, to be related with the pretended demonic nature of a human being of which have been previously hypothesized characters. In essence, the whole story is an illusion.

Until the final explanation, everything that happens, has the purpose to be misleading: the alleged nature of DeWitt, the murder committed in his detriment by his wife (we are in another case in which arsenic is used as the murder weapon without being, impetuously crime mean: in fact arsenic kills at a distance of at least three days, and not immediately), the first murder and the disappearance of De Witt, the second crime, the noise Linda hears, the painting that is almost the representation of crime that is claimed to be just occurred (the killing of Phyllis by DeWitt), the dislocation of DeWitt, the killing of the model. His same motive is offered to the reader, before you understand that he was the murderer.

It’s clear that this story is not a real whodunnit but a real howdunnit: in fact approaches more properly to the mystery of the French type, at which as is not important identifying the murderer as is important explain how the murder was committed, because it will the explanation to nail him. It’s also clear in order that this happens it is necessary there aren’t many suspected but extremely few, as in this case.

Two other things seem interesting in this tale: how the killers are introduced (the alleged and actual), and Senator Banner.
The alleged murderer, DeWitt Carewe, we mentioned how he is introduced in order that you rightly think that he is an human being by demonic nature. That makes use of his limbs to perpetrate an impossible crime: perhaps that the devil can not disappear from one place and appear elsewhere? The rest is to be of supernatural (divine or demonic) beings have the gift of omnipresence. However, even the true murderer is introduced in a certain way: he has a bald head, a round big face, a prayer robe, glasses tied with a black lace. A description that is very close to that of Dr. Fell. Possible that the murderer is likened to Fell? It can be if you see him, not so much the ruthless murderer, when the human being who achieves an almost perfect crime, that sublimes the very concept of Locked Room, to do one that calls the murder the most extraordinary explained by the same Fell in The Hollow Man.

Also Senator Banner, too, is described in a characteristic way: the paunch, the shirt green striped mint and white color, the figure of King Kong, red suspenders, his greasy tie as if it had been soaked in the soup ( and it had happened just that !!!). Which does he resemble to? I think to Merrivale, the Grand Old Man, who very often is ridiculed in his appearance before as usual he solves the most mind-blowing puzzle: in order to the paradox succeeds and it’s enjoyable, it is necessary that the crime is solved not so much by a Philo Vance who in the long time is unpleasant but from which would seem to be the only person not able to solve it: Senator Banner in this case.

Pietro De Palma