IN BRIEF: The Bowstring Murders - Carr Dickson (John Dickson Carr)

I've had my copy of The Bowstring Murders (1933) for decades. Why have I never read it until a few days ago? Well, for one thing it's a treasure. I own the hardcover first edition with the silly attempt at creating a new pseudonym for John Dickson Carr. Instead of "Christopher Street", the name Carr wanted as his pseudonym, an executive at William Morrow slapped the utterly giveaway name of "Carr Dickson" on the book. Copies of the original hardcover with this pseudonym are extremely hard to find these days. It's the only book with that dumb pen name.

Maybe Carr's angry reaction to that decision of which he was not notified as Douglas Greene records in The Man Who Explained Miracles (1995) was the reason that this book is also the only one with John Gaunt, a detective consultant to Scotland Yard who shuns modern scientific advances. I was sorting through a box of vintage paperbacks and I found another copy of The Bowstring Murders, this one a 1970s era reprint from Belmont Books. I figured: Well, no time like the present. So I dashed off my long overdue read of this early John Dickson Carr book in a couple of days last week.  Interestingly, it seems more of a retread of both Carr's own books as well as the work of some of his influences.

The story takes place in a familiar Carr setting: the Gothic castle known as Bowstring, home of Henry Steyne, AKA Lord Rayle. Bowstring comes complete with a moat and a man made waterfall on the vast estate that feeds the water in the moat and keeps it flowing to avoid the stench and health hazards of stagnant water.  The reader is constantly reminded of the presence of the waterfall and its never-ending roar which prevents many of the characters from hearing certain crucial sounds related to the several murders that take place. Also notable is that the story takes place over only three days.

UK 1st edition. Used Carter Dickson as author.
Body is illustrated as face up unlike in the book.

Lord Rayle is an eccentric medievalist who prefers living in the past and lecturing anyone who will indulge him on his vast collection of medieval weaponry and suits of armor. The night before he is killed a pair of gauntlets go missing. Then Lord Rayle decides to nail shut a door hidden behind a tapestry in the armor room that leads to a secret alcove. It's almost a case of shutting barn door after the horse has fled.  Later, we learn that passageway was used a trysting spot for his daughter Patricia. She would use that hidden area to meet a handsome guest, Larry Kestevan, for midnight snogging sessions. As she is thwarted from meeting her lover Patricia eventually discovers her father's body, practically tripping over it in the candlelit armor room. Her father was apparently strangled by a bowstring and his body is crumpled in a strange position face down on the floor of the armor room.

Gaunt is called in to help Inspector Tape. Prior to the arrival of Gaunt the book is fairly colorless with lots of chit chat from Francis Steyne, son to Lord Rayle, and what amounts to a lot of malarkey about the collection of armor. For me, Gaunt was the only really interesting person in the entire cast.  Another in a long line of omniscient detectives with antisocial tendencies, a high opinion of himself, and critical opinions of everyone else, he's also a rampant alcoholic. Carr tries to hint at a tragedy in his past as a reason for his heavy drinking. (He caused the death of one of his partners, I think. I forgot to note it exactly.) Eventually he lost his job with the police due to his drinking, but still manages to be called in regularly to help with unusual crimes. And so we find him at Bowstring trying to make sense of not only the strangling death of Lord Rayle but also the strangling of the maid Doris, who claimed to have seen a suit of armor standing in a stairway a few nights prior to both violent murders. About midway through the book another character is killed. But this person is shot to death which immediately dismisses the idea of anything supernatural related to a ghostly figure in armor.

1973 Belmont paperback
This time the body is face down (sort of), but
his arms are wrong! They should be underneath.
And the clothes are all wrong, too.

The most impressive feature is not the bizarre murder method of strangling by gauntlets (already used by Carolyn Wells in 1931's Horror House) or the impossible circumstances surrounding the brutal murders. Instead what stands out as more ingenious is how Carr manages to take all the minute details -- details most readers will dismiss as ornament and filler -- and apply them to the overarching plot. Offhand comments and one particular insult, for example, all serve to support Gaunt's solution. All details reveal the strange weak character flaw of the murderer, a person with a lack of imagination whose lies are obvious. At least to Gaunt.

Lying and the art of lying seem to be central to the book.  Gaunt has a mini lecture on the dubious science behind the lie detector machine, a fairly new invention and used regularly in police investigations since the mid 1920s. He describes in detail the lack of understanding of psychology of liars' behavior and how that will almost certainly backfire the moment a lie detector machine is introduced.  He believes that the machine's recording of the body's reactions (pulse, heart rate and respiratory signals) are not the telltale signs of lying. In fact, the liar he believes will immediately be put on guard and the usual giveaway of a liar -- elaborate storytelling -- will be substituted for short colorless answers lacking in the details that will always reveal a liar.

Due to a rather small set of suspects the ultimate reveal of the killer is no real gasp-inducing surprise. It's clear that of the small pool of suspects -- Francis, Patricia, Larry, the footman Saunders, and Bruce Massey, Lord Rayle's secretary and financial advisor -- it can only be one of three people. Greene mentions in The Men Who Explained Miracles that the solution seems to very similar to another book Carr wrote prior to 1933 which featured Henri Bencolin.  He says that it may be one of Carr's many cases of self-plagiarism in his early career. Carr was known to recycle ideas form short stories and put them into his novels. This happened several times in the stories that appear in Department of Queer Complaints, for example. Ultimately, it was fun to see just how Gaunt caught the killer who he says acted mostly on impulse even though his crimes had been well thought out in advance. In one way this novel is more satisfying as a howdunit and whydunit than it is the old-fashioned whodunit.

It's Her Own Funeral - Carol Carnac

THE STORY:  Anne Tempest is recuperating from a broken leg. Her primary caretaker and niece, Isobelle Verringer, decides she has  had enough of her aunt and the gloomy house. She summons two young cousins to come live with their great aunt, to take over as caretakers of both the bedridden woman and the grounds so Isobelle can finally leave.  The cousins -- brother and sister Roland and Jane -- move in and make substantial improvements to the antiquated home. The major renovation project is getting a gas cylinder operated stove to replace the immense, impractical and ancient range in the kitchen. Within weeks there is a horrible gas leak and the Palings, husband and wife servants working for Aunt Anne, succumb to gas inhalation and pass out in the kitchen. Jane rescues both servants then rushes upstairs to Aunt Anne whose bedroom is directly above the kitchen. The rafters have cracks in the ceiling and anyone can see through those cracks into Aunt Anne's bedroom floor. Jane fears the gas made its way into the bedroom and rushes upstairs. But she is too late. Her great aunt is dead and has been for hours, her body rigid and a disconcerting smile on her face.

THE CHARACTERS: It's Her Own Funeral (1952) is a claustrophobic story confined to a small cast of only five major characters along with policeman Julian Rivers who shows up to investigate the suspicious gas leak. The ruinous Tempest estate is a character unto itself. It consists of the old main house, filled with empty rooms and decrepit furnishings dating back centuries, and a cottage which was the home of the Palings. They've been displaced by Isobelle so that Roland and Jane can move in and make their home there. The Palings are ordered to move into the main house where they can be closer to Anne. Maggie Paling and her husband do not leave too willingly as they love the cottage, but eventually relent and give up their treasured cozy home for the young people.

The book is as much a murder mystery as it is a study of differing generations. Aunt Anne representing the eldest generation clinging to a past, honoring the antiquity of the only home she's known since her childhood.  Isobelle, one generation removed from Anne Tempest, is the haughty indifferent and impatient agent of a generation so desirous of moving forward with little room in her heart (what little heart she has) for a past best forgotten and buried. She cannot abide Dene Manor with its dust filled rooms, museum like atmosphere filled with useless relics and dour faced portraits of her ancestors hanging on the dingy walls. In fact she outright states she loathes the place on every occasion she can. Of course Jane and Roland, the youngest members of the cast, are the symbols of a bright and carefree future.

Roland is a would-be poet who looks forward to steeping himself in his family's rich past. Snuggled in the coziness of the warm and inviting cottage he plans to draw on that past to inspire him. Before Great-Aunt Anne dies she remarks that Roland is a remarkable dopplegänger for her brother, Roland's namesake and the black sheep of the Tempest family. The long dead and elder Roland, grandfather of Jane and her brother, had fallen in love with a servant and was disowned by his father. Roland the younger shares with his grandfather the Tempest temper; both Rolands have an angry violent streak. Inspector Rivers learns that Roland displayed that anger when the intrusive Guy Deraine, another cousin in the Tempest dynasty, barged into the cottage uninvited to lecture Jane on her "thievery." Guy suspects that the siblings took not only furniture from the main house but valuable objects and he wants them returned.  Roland interrupted the argument and ended it by punching Guy in the nose.  rivers suspects that Roland' temper may be a sign of a murderous streak.  Could the brother and sister be truly guilty of stealing from their aunt and killed her to get their hands on everything they wanted?

Complications arise with the introduction of two neighboring families who are tenant farmers on the Tempest estate. Of these two families the most intriguing of them are the Boltons and their strange daughter Kathie. Kathie is described by nearly everyone -- especially disdainful Isobelle -- as a deviant or a half-wit. She behaves oddly, chants in a sing-song manner, is often found hiding in bushes and shrubbery spying on the members of the Tempest household.  Rumor has it she also enters the Tempest kitchen uninvited regularly helping herself to food she may find on the table. Maggie Paling insists that Kathie has never set foot in the kitchen. And so Rivers tests the rumor with a fascinating experiment and learns that Kathie is easily tempted with treats.  In fact, it's quite possible that the girl entered the kitchen without anyone knowing. Was she responsible for monkeying with the gas taps? And did she cause the accidental death of Anne Tempest and the gas poisoning of the servants?

There is more to Kathie than any reader may suspect. She becomes instrumental in the story and her mother, a drunken woman of mercurial disposition with an ethnic background as a "gypsy", is the most surprising character of the entire novel. Mrs. Bolton has an adversarial relationship with nearly everyone due to her "gypsy" nature. She thinks very little of Mrs. Paling, and Rivers soon learns the feeling is mutual. But the relationship between Kathie and her mother and the somewhat startling secret that Mrs. Bolton keeps from everyone except the penetrating interrogation of Julian Rivers adds quite an unexpected twist to the already very convoluted and twisty plot.

INNOVATIONS:  Witchcraft comes up frequently throughout the story.  Mrs. Bolton is a gypsy with strange powers. Many people Rivers interviews mention the day Kathie wandered into the woods and "came back changed."  This coupled with the heavy Gothic descriptions of Dene Manor add a level of superstition and "the unknown" to a novel already teeming with unease and creepiness. Additionally, Rivers finds witnesses who talk of Anne Tempest as a witch for she eschewed modern medicine and concocted her own remedies using herbs from her rich and varied garden.

A subplot is introduced ever so subtly when Guy Deraine pursues his suspicions of Jane and Roland as stealing "valuables" from the main house. When Rivers questions Guy about what exactly the valuables consist of the man cannot name anything specific. He has only feelings and instinct that the brother and sister came to Dene Manor with ulterior motives. But Rivers sees the odd relationship between Isobelle and Guy (she openly insults Guy and belittles his accusations of the young people as petty thieves) as an artifice covering up something far more sinister. Anyone familiar with detective novel conventions would immediately suspect haughty Isobelle of ulterior motives herself. Her personality is so cultivated in its contempt for everyone and everything it can't possibly be genuine. Carnac handles the subtleties of this subplot and strews about a plethora of red herrings with mastery.  I was sure that Isobelle was a villain of some sort, but was ultimately surprised when Rivers exposes a truly devious clash of wills between several unsuspected villains that had been cleverly embedded throughout the entire book.

QUOTES:   Those who worked with Rivers at Scotland Yard knew how deceptive were his sleepy glance and his amiable if sometimes flippant manner. Rivers had not only an observant and retentive mind, he had a lively imagination, and a very small item of evidence sometimes set his imagination working, so that he saw the relevance of a fact which, however small, seemed anomalous.

"Nonsense is mischievous sometimes," said Rivers, "especially if people let themselves get frightened by it."

An Isobelle rant:  "If I have to put up with much more melodrama, I shall be a mental case Have you got enough imagination to realise what it's like for a civilized being in this charnel house? It's as if death were gibbering at you round every corner. Look at it!"

He thought hard as he strode along, and it occurred to him that his progress through the mist was very akin to his detection in this case.  In front of him was still the impenetrable mist of uncertainty. On either side were indications of progress--small facts which could be likened to the frosty verges which his torch illuminated. And how easy it would be to fall into the ditch or to take a side turning in detection, Rivers was only too well aware. [...] the ditch ready to fall into--the bottomless ditch which awaits every detective whose awareness fails to interpret the facts which edge his path.

EASY TO FIND?  Remarkably this Carol Carnac mystery was reprinted in a variety of formats apart from the original UK and US hardcover editions, some of which are out there for sale but of course are also the most expensive options. In the UK and Canada It's Her Own Funeral was reprinted by Collins in a paperback edition under their "White Circle Crime Club" imprint.  I found two of those offered for sale online. In the US the novel was reprinted as part of the ubiquitous Detective Book Club in a 3-for-1 omnibus. There are a handful of those DBC editions out there waiting for purchase.  These are always the cheapest options and you get two other books: Dead Man's Plan by Mignon G. Eberhart and Death Begs the Question by Lois Eby & John C. Fleming.

Oh, one more thing (as Lt. Columbo liked to say)... You can buy my copy  Sorry…it sold in only three days. Happy hunting for another copy.