John Dickson Carr
John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) belongs to the Golden Age of mystery writing. Though perhaps not as well known today as he once was, he is considered one of the greatest writers of “lock-room” mysteries. Like Agatha Christie, who wrote during the same time period, Carr has a distinctly cozy, British feel. He inherited it rather than came by it through birth. John Dickson Carr was an American who migrated in England in the 1930s.
Carr created four ghostbreaking detectives: Henri Bencolin, Captain Marsh, Sir Henry Merrivale and Dr. Gideon Fell. (All ghostbreakers in the false monster tradition.) Ghost-breakers after 1913 were usually descended from one of the fore-runners: Sherlock Holmes or John Silence. The only other character to breed a direct descendant was G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown. Chesterton’s simple-seeming priest who solves apparently impossible or supernatural crimes, and the author of this character, were the dual inspiration for John Dickson Carr’s rotund ghost-breaking detective, Dr. Gideon Fell.
Dr. Gideon Fell, The Man
Starting in 1933 with Hag’s Nook, Carr placed his Watson, the recently arrived American, Rampole, in the ghostly landscape of Fell’s England. The man that Rampole seeks out through a mutual friend, Melson, is: “…one of the great institutions of England. The man has more obscure, useless, and fascinating information than any person I ever met…”. Not only are his tastes eccentric, but his physique:
Dr. Fell wheezed a little, even with the exertion of filling his pipe. He was very stout, and walked as a rule, with two canes. Against the light from the front windows his big mop of dark hair, streaked with a white plume, waved like a war-banner. Immense and aggressive, it went blowing before him through life. His face was large and round and ruddy, and had a twitching smile somewhere above several chins. But what you noticed there was the twinkle in his eye. He wore eyeglasses on a broad black ribbon, and the small eyes twinkled over them as he bent his big head forward; he could be fiercely combative or slyly chuckling, and somehow he contrived to be both at the same time.
A Man’s Castle
Dr. Fell dwells in a typically English house in Chatterham, near the haunted prison of the first novel. “The mornings and a part of the afternoons Dr. Fell usually devoted to the composition of his great work, The Drinking Customs of England from the Earliest Days, a monumental labour into which he had put six years of scholarly research…” This work is done in: “A room…like an illustration out of Dickens. Under the oak rafters, with smoke-blackened plaster between, it was large and dusky; there were diamond-paned windows above great oak mausoleums of bookshelves, and in this room, you felt, all the books were friendly. There was a smell of dusty leather and old paper, as though all those stately old-time books had hung up their tall hats and prepared to stay.”
Though Fell seems oddly harmlessly, Rampole notices a keen mind behind the eccentric figure. “…this swilling, chuckling fat man had seemed as hearty as an animated side of beef; now he seemed subdued and a trifle sinister…Dr. Fell was plodding through these gruesome anecdotes because something worried him. He talked to relieve himself. Behind the shiftings of his eyes, and his uneasy rollings in the chair, there was a doubt—a suspicion—even a dread…”
Mrs. Fell
Fell does not live alone in his house, which Rampole finds barbaric at times compared to his New York apartment. Fell lives with his wife, the only person to call him by his Christian name, and usually to his regret:
…Here was Mrs. Fell, a very small and bustling and cheerful woman who was always knocking things over. Twenty times in a morning you would hear a small crash, whereupon she would cry, “Bother!” and go whisking on with her cleaning until the ensuing mishap. She had, moreover, a habit of sticking her head out of windows all over the house, one after the other, to address some question to her husband. You would just place her at the front of the house when out she would pop at a rear window, like a cuckoo out of a clock, to wave cheerfully…and ask her husband where something was. He always looked mildly surprised, and never knew. So back she would go, previous to her reappearance at a side window with a pillow or a dustcloth in her hand…
Dr. Gideon Fell, the Detective
Hag’s Nook is a family curse story. The Starberth family was once headed by an evil man, Sir Anthony, who was lord and master over Chatterham prison. The old scoundrel died, hating his family, hiding away his fortune. He also started a tradition: the heir to the family fortune had to spend an hour at midnight in the Governor’s Room of the old prison. He also died of a broken neck, as did his son after him, starting the local legend of the Starberth curse.
Another Starberth to die that way was Timothy, the last heir of the Starberth fortune. Martin, who has been living in America, is coming home with his cousin Herbert, to claim his inheritance. Martin is found that night beneath the balcony of the Governor’s room with his neck broken. Herbert has fled and is sought for the killing. Dr. Fell and his new friend, Rampole the American, must solve the mysterious deaths and the old family curse, for a cunning murderer lies behind all these events. The answers to that mystery are in an old well…
M. R. James
Carr’s inspiration for Hag’s Nook is, appropriately enough for a story so English in its setting, England’s greatest ghost story writer, M. R. James. James’ story “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas” is the obvious source, with its evil clergyman (changed to a prison warden), crytpograms, and a treasure in a well. Carr does not include the sinister guardian for he has a murderer in his tale, but the story of Sir Anthony and the ghosts of the men he hanged and threw in the well, is a very creepy little story on its own, even worthy of M. R. James.
I have tried to avoid giving away the ending of their of these tales, so you can enjoy them for yourselves. Read the together for an added thrill, beginning with James since his story appeared thirty years earlier.
