The Ghostbreakers: Vampire Tower

Master of Mystery

The Ghostbreakers bring you some autumnal awesomeness…”Vampire Tower”. John Dickson Carr’s style of Mystery is perfect for the Halloween season. He always peppered his locked room mysteries with Gothic trappings that make his stories feel like horror stories at least until half way. Carr put it this way: “Let there be a spice of terror, of dark skies and evil things.” There is always an intrepid detective to run down the appearances of the supernatural, but that’s the deal. Following in G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown’s footsteps, Dr. Fell, Sir Henry Merrivale, Henri Bencolin or Colonel March are going to pull the carpet out from under that ghoulie or ghostie’s feet.

The Man in Black

“Vampire Tower” aka “Terror’s Dark Tower” from Detective Tales, October 1935 was the perfect Halloween treat for readers of the detective Pulps. The story got a title change when it appeared on Appointment With Fear, the BBC anthology that began on the radio but eventually ended up on television in 1949. (I found it in Peter Haining‘s The Television Late Night Horror Omnibus (1993). The radio show was originally introduced by Valentine Dyall as The Man in Black. Carr’s association with radio, both in the US and UK is well known.

New Title

“Vampire Tower” does not feature one of Carr’s famous detectives. Instead, Sir James Fenwick will do the honors. The story begins when the two Mortlake girls want to marry. Unfortunately, like Henry Baskerville, there is an evil family curse hanging over them. In 1621, Rupert Henley and Vivian Mortlake were forced into marriage. The bride had her man bandaged up like a mummy and placed inside a scarecrow. Only his nose and eyes were exposed. The crows ate away most of his face but he cursed Vivian before he died, promising he would come for her a week before she re-married.

A Family Curse

This ancient tale led to the Mortlake women being afraid to marry against the wishes of their guardians. The two present day women hate their Uncle Henry, who lives off their combined trusts. (He has a wife named Kate and a son named Richard.) He has not approved of the current fiances. Henry can remember as a boy what happened to Ellen Mortlake. Choosing to marry against her guardian’s wishes, she was attacked in the tower of the family manse, Moat Hall. Her eyes were horribly torn out by birds. Anne and Louise, who wish to marry now, worry about suffering the same fate.

To prove the curse a lie, Anne, a week before her wedding, goes to the tower alone at eleven o’clock as her relatives listen down below. She too suffers the terrible fate, and dies of shock with her eyes gone!

Eyes of Bloody Death

The narrator of the story is Louise’s fiance, Tom. His friend, Sir James Fenwick. begins collecting evidence to prove the oily Uncle Henry is the killer and that there is no supernatural agency here. He learns that Henry had spoken to Anne as she climbed the stairs, though he did not follow her up. He learns that Henry stood by the window in the parlor below while Anne died. He examines the tower room but finds no hidden doors or evil trick devices. He learns that a great beating of wings was heard when Anne died. (Carr lets it hang for a moment like evil bat wings of some terror, before one of the witness tells him it was caused by the swans in the moat.) He takes note of a swan that was killed in the moat. The last import clue, the father of Ellen Mortlake had been a jeweler. Carr clearly states his three clues that should be enough to solve this case: The time of day-the jeweler–the dead swan.

A Desperate Plan

Fenwick now plays a dangerous game. He knows Henry Mortlake is behind the crime, but he needs to position him for exposure. To do this, he declares that Tom and Louise were to marry the same day as Anne. He gets Tom to follow his bluff. He also says that Louise and Tom will keep the date in honor of Anne. This spurs the murderer to act fast.

Next, he has Louise go up to the tower at eleven o’clock rather than steer clear.   She is to look over to Fenwick’s estate next door. Fenwick will send her a message with a signal. If there is one light she is to stay and wait. If there are two, she is to run. Fenwick makes sure they are overheard. In secret he tells Tom to sneak up into the tower fifteen minutes before eleven.

Events in the Dark

All goes to plan. Tom waits for a long dull time before sneaking up. Louise enters and waits with her man. Someone is coming! It proves to be Richard Mortlake, bearing a pair of binoculars for Louise. Fenwick shows up suddenly and tells her not to use the binoculars. They grab Richard. The young man claims he only wants to help Louise.

Someone else is approaching. It is Henry Mortlake. He is armed with a special gun that uses compressed air. He uses it to take out Fenwick’s leg. The detective is down but not out. The Uncle plans to kill all of them using the device that killed Anne. The binoculars! The eyeglasses were created by Mortlake’s ancestor who had been a jeweler. The spyglass, using the same air pressure as his gun, shoots spikes into your eyes when you turn the focus knob.

Revelations

Sir James explains this for the villain because he has figured it all out. He also explains the rest of the evil plot. The windows of the tower have bars in them. Anyone using the binoculars has to place them past the bars. When the spikes fly out, the binoculars fall to the moat below. When Anne did this, the binoculars killed one of the swans by accident. Mortlake had stationed himself by the window in the parlor so he could see the glasses fall into the water. The death of the swan had kicked up a fuss among the birds causing the loud beating of wings. Fenwick also reveals he cooked up the signal fire idea to please the murderer. Louise would want to use the binoculars. When Henry killed Anne, he told her of the binoculars he had left in the tower when he went up the stairs. This time, with Louise, he had had to use Richard as his unwitting accomplice.

Rough Justice

Henry explains he has a second pair of binoculars (without killing device) to substitute for the glasses if they don’t fall in the moat. He demands of Fenwick what his plan was for the signal fires. Fenwick tells him to look for himself. He does. Too bad for the murderer, Richard kept his promise. He only wanted to help Louise. He had switched the binoculars earlier in the day! Henry Mortlake dies by the same a death he used on his own niece.

Connections

The stories that inspire John Dickson Carr are sometimes obvious. His novel, Hag’s Nook, has a clear origin with M. R. James’s ghost story “The Treasure of Thomas Abbott”. “Vampire Tower”, I think, was partly inspired by Grimm’s Fairy Tales, in particular the story of Cinderella. In that tale, the evil stepsisters are punished by birds pecking out their eyes. (Suzanne Pleshette having her eyes pecked out in The Birds (1963) was still decades away.) Other influences are Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles or “The Speckled Band” where relatives try to kill off those with cash by supposedly supernatural means. Where there’s a will…

Conclusion

I quite enjoy Carr’s Gothic trappings. The tower of Moat Hall is a perfectly creepy castle for such a tale. Mysterious signals at night, gory methods of death, greasy villains and murderous relatives, all have a history in the Gothic novels and horror fiction of the Victorians. Much of this type of story furniture was considered old-fashioned by the 1930s, but Carr finds a way to use them all the same. Sir James Fenwick only gets one adventure but he is a ghostbreaker all the same, of the false monster variety. The choice of “Vampire Tower” for a title seems a little odd, since there are no vampires or any blood-sucking anything in the story. I guess it just sounds good. Especially on TV.