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Death Watch

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"Death Watch" was first published in 1935, in the midst of a golden era for both John Dickson Carr and British mysteries in general. Dr. Gideon Fell, Carr's gargantuan serial detective, actually comes across as human in this novel, not just a creature of snorts, tics, and coy half-sentences.

The plot is extremely intricate and it took me a couple of plunges into the book to really get going. First I had to sort out the characters at Mrs. Steffins' boarding house. There were quite a few pairs among her boarders: two glamorous young women; two eligible young men; two middle-aged men plotting a perfect murder. Once I figured out who everyone was, it was possible to choose my suspect and read right along to the denouement. You can judge the complexity of the plot by the fact that it takes two long chapters at mystery's end to explain how the murder was committed and by whom.

As usual in a Carr mystery, my suspect was not the murderer although I stuck faithfully to him through thick and thin. Hint: don't trust anyone, even (or most especially) a character with an iron-clad alibi or an eye-witness who could vouch for him or her at the time of the murder.

A Scotland Yard detective is stabbed to death with the minute hand of a clock while snooping around Mrs. Steffins' boarding house at midnight, on the trail of shop-lifter who had stabbed a department store detective to death when she was caught stealing jewelry.

The two middle-aged boarders were overheard plotting to murder Detective 'Busy' Ames by shooting him, but he was stabbed to death before he could enter the door to the apartment where they were lurking in wait. One of the young men happened to be on the roof of the boarding house, watching the two plotters through the skylight when the murder occurred.

He tumbles off of the roof when he sees a horrible creature, hands dripping with gilt, emerge from behind a chimney stack.

The other young man awakens from a drunken stupor the next morning, and finds a gilt-stained woman's glove in his bathrobe pocket, with a key to the roof stuffed into one of its fingers.

Dr. Gideon Fell and his friend, Professor Melson happen to wander into Mrs. Steffins' boarding house shortly after Detective Ames was stabbed to death, and the humungous detective is soon off and running (well, stumping) on what his friend, Chief Inspector Hadley called 'The Case of the Flying Glove.'

"Death-Watch" is stuffed with odd bits of lore about the history of watch-making, and the Spanish Inquisition. It has a very elaborate plot, and a lot of characters clamour for the reader's attention at the beginning of the book, but the author doesn't cheat on the clues, so it presents a fair challenge for mystery-lovers.

This mystery stars John Dickson Carr's gargantuan, shovel-hatted detective, Dr. Gideon Fell and takes place in England between the world wars. All of the characters act suspiciously, including the true and false heir to the extensive Farnleigh estate (and the title that goes with it), their two lawyers, the butler, Lady Farnleigh, and assorted family friends. The reader has many reasons to suspect each character in turn after the murder (or was it suicide?) of one of the two competing heirs. The only person who might be able to tell whether the true John Farnleigh died or still lives is his tutor, Murray who happens to have taken a thumb-o-graph of young John before he was sent away to America to live with a distant relative.

John wasn't the heir, but the black sheep of the family when he was packed off to Colorado via the spanking, new ocean liner, 'Titanic.' He was thought to have died when his ship sank on her maiden voyage, but after his older brother dies without issue, not one but two John Farnleighs show up within a year of each other to claim the family estate and title. The first one to appear marries John's childhood sweetheart and settles down to manage Farnleigh.

Then up pops John Farnleigh #2, one of the competing heirs dies, and someone steals Murray's thumb-o-graph. The reader is beset with conflicting stories and clues, when Dr. Fell finally lumbers onto the scene with his shovel-hat, swirling cape, and crutch-headed cane. He figures out who killed whom right away, but the reader is left grasping at hints (some of them pretty darn subtle - I think Carr cheats a little on this mystery) until the final denouement, which involves that fateful night when the 'Titanic' went down.

As always with this author, the eerie, suffocating atmosphere surrounding a mysterious death is tinged with an aura of the supernatural. "The Crooked Hinge" features devil worship and a horrible old eighteenth-century automaton called, 'The Golden Hag.' Her sinister appearances alone make this a novel worth savoring, and Carr also provides a meticulously plotted mystery (although I could do without a few of his great detective's tics and his refusal to blab out the name of the murderer as soon as he figures out whodunit. And what the dickens is a shovel-hat?)