The Crooked Hinge Read online

  THE CROOKED

  HINGE

  JOHN DICKSON

  CARR

  Introduction by

  CHARLES TODD

  AMERICAN

  MYSTERY

  CLASSICS

  Penzler Publishers

  New York

  OTTO PENZLER PRESENTS AMERICAN MYSTERY CLASSICS

  THE CROOKED HINGE

  JOHN DICKSON CARR (1906-1977) was one of the greatest writers of the American Golden Age mystery, and the only American author to be included in England’s legendary Detection Club during his lifetime. Though he was born and died in the United States, Carr began his writing career while living in England, where he remained for nearly twenty years. Under his own name and various pseudonyms, he wrote more than seventy novels and numerous short stories, and is best known today for his locked-room mysteries. His beloved series character, Dr. Gideon Fell, was based on author G. K. Chesterton and appeared in twenty-four novels.

  CHARLES TODD is the bestselling mother-and-son writing team behind over thirty co-written novels. The Todds’ work has received numerous awards, including an Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel, a Barry Award, and, most recently, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and has been nominated for several more accolades. While most of their fiction is set in England, informed by extensive travel through the English countryside, the authors are both located on the east coast of the United States.

  INTRODUCTION

  JOHN DICKSON CARR HAD a way with titles, and The Crooked Hinge is a great example, capturing key elements of his plot but leaving enough unsaid to spur the reader’s curiosity. In a way, this is indicative of the creative mind that is behind all of his writings.

  Carr was prolific, but his books didn’t suffer from that. There is a high level of quality in each and every one of his novels, a characteristic that has allowed them to remain popular for decades, remaining as accessible today as they were when they were originally published over a half a century ago.

  Now it’s time for a new generation to meet Carr—and in this book to meet our favorite detective of his as well: Dr. Gideon Fell. It’s said that his name came from an old English rhyme and that his appearance was derived from that of G.K. Chesterton, the creator of the priest detective Father Brown. But Carr transforms those sources into his own creation, crafting a singular character quite unlike the series sleuths that came before.

  It was popular in early mysteries to have a detective who didn’t need to go into the field to solve a case. Look at Poirot’s little gray cells, leaving the action to Captain Hastings and his revolver. There’s Wolfe’s orchids and Archie, Holmes’ violin and seven-percent solution with Dr. Watson and his revolver. Mike Hammer and Marlowe were always in the thick of the chase. But they were also more noir in style while Dr. Fell enjoys an English village instead of the mean streets. It was probably more Dr. Fell’s size and indolence that kept him from rigorously pursuing villainy in the way of modern detectives, but his colleague Detective Inspector Evans is on the job.

  It was also popular to have unusual detectives—some eccentricity that set him or her apart. Poirot’s egg shape head and dapper dress. Wimsey was described at one point as a rabbit-y sort of man. Hardly the image of Magnum P.I., tall, dark, hairy-chested and handsome. Dr. Fell’s unusual appearance comes from his cloak, shovel hat, and pair of canes—quite a visual description yet somehow sinister at the same time. Once he was on the case, you were toast.

  We were introduced to Carr and Dr. Fell by a friend for whom the Golden Age detectives were the epitome of the mystery genre. What’s more, Carr was an American setting his books in England, much as we have done. And so we have a special fondness for both Carr and Fell.

  Dr. Fell may have been distinct from these other characters, but what really sets Carr apart from other mystery writers, and what puts him in a class all of his own, is his unparalleled mastery of the locked room mystery. If you aren’t sure what a locked room mystery is, think about Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.” Holmes faces what seems like an impossible murder, occurring in a bedroom which nobody could have entered. Yet once you know the answer, how the victim was killed, it seems so very simple.

  We tried writing an impossible crime story ourselves once in one of our own novels, using a blizzard to shut everyone into a single Lake District valley where a vicious crime has just occurred. It’s not as easy to find a clever way out of a predicament of your own creation as you’d think—neither for the author nor his or her detective. We’ve always believed it was a test for Carr—to see if he could outwit himself and, to our knowledge, he never did.

  One thing that intrigues us when reading Carr, and Dr. Fell in particular, is the effect the English village had on his work. He, like both of us, wrote about a country not his own, an American trying to find the pulse of the small English town. There’s a trick to it—no two villages are exactly alike, even if they’re in the same county. And this gives the writer a great deal more room to maneuver, to find what baseball fans call “the sweet spot on the bat.” Not all villages lend themselves to murder, not all offer the same motives for murder, and so, in this case, the sweet spot is actually the why of a murder in a particular village. Murder in England is very different from murder in Chicago, Los Angeles, or St. Louis, where dark streets (an American invention) bring a unique tone and substance . . .

  As you’ll see in this particular book, the citizens of England murder to a different beat. Their crimes aren’t as prolific, and they grow out of some very specific English traits. One is that the English are prone to minding their own business—a trait which can play the very devil in questioning potential witnesses. One doesn’t look over a hedge into a neighbor’s garden; they prefer to stay out of something as nasty as murder, and look the other way when they can. What’s more, when an Englishman—or woman—feels he’s been taken advantage of in some fashion, he tends to view it quite seriously, and often the only way to deal with what he feels has been done to him is to rid himself of the problem. Nothing too splashy, you understand—one shouldn’t shock one’s neighbors—but there’s always something quite personal about it. And that’s what makes English murder so intriguing. Take it one step farther and make it seem impossible to have been done and the reader is well and truly caught. Or in publishing parlance, hooked. Carr absorbed this world, and made it his own.

  But what about the story itself? There is a challenge to the throne, only in this case, someone who claims to be the real owner of Fairleigh Close. The Titanic. Possible witchcraft. Definitely superstition. Ugly murder—or was it suicide? And, even in 1938, a robot. An unlikely combination? Not in an English village, where the past is never quite far away, and anything can happen. In the hands of a master, where perception is everything, and what you think you know may have nothing to do with the truth, the author’s sleight of hand is unseen, like the work of all great magicians. And that’s the fun of reading a classic Carr.

  If you’ve never read him, or if you’re ready to renew your acquaintance with him, The Crooked Hinge is a good place to start. It has his best known character in full force, it has his English backdrop, and it is a rousing good tale. Carr surely wrote not just for his audience of the day, but for the sake of writing, and so Dr. Fell survived in new books as far along in time as the 1960s. Like all great characters, he survives still.

  —CHARLES TODD

  I

  Wednesday, July 29th

  THE DEATH OF A MAN

  The first rule to be borne in mind by the aspirant is this: Never tell your audience beforehand what you are going to do. If you do so, you at once give their vigilance the direction which it is most necessary to avoid, and increase tenfold the chances of detection. We
will give an illustration.

  —PROFESSOR HOFFMANN, Modern Magic

  Chapter One

  AT A WINDOW OVERLOOKING a garden in Kent, Brian Page sat amid a clutter of open books at the writing-table, and felt a strong distaste for work. Through both windows the late July sunlight turned the floor of the room to gold. The somnolent heat brought out an odor of old wood and old books. A wasp hovered in from the apple-orchard behind the garden, and Page waved it out without much animation.

  Beyond his garden wall, past the inn of the Bull and Butcher, the road wound for some quarter of a mile between orchards. It passed the gates of Farnleigh Close, whose thin clusters of chimneys Page could see above rifts in the trees, and then ascended past the wood poetically known as Hanging Chart.

  The pale green and brown of the flat Kentish lands, which rarely acquired a harsh color, now blazed. Page imagined that there was even color in the brick chimneys of the Close. And along the road from the Close Mr. Nathaniel Burrows’s car was moving with a noise audible for some distance, even if it was not moving fast.

  There was, Brian Page thought lazily, almost too much excitement in Mallingford village. If the statement sounded too wild for belief, it could be proved. Only last summer there had been the murder of buxom Miss Daly, strangled by a tramp who had been dramatically killed while trying to get away across the railway-line. Then, in this last week of July, there had been two strangers putting up at the Bull and Butcher on successive days: one stranger who was an artist and the other who might be—nobody knew how this whisper got started—a detective.

  Finally, there had been today the mysterious running to and fro of Page’s friend Nathaniel Burrows, the solicitor from Maidstone. There seemed to be some general excitement or uneasiness at Farnleigh Close, though nobody knew what it meant. It was Brian Page’s custom to knock off work at noon, and go over to the Bull and Butcher for a pint of beer before lunch; but it was an ominous sign that there had been no gossip at the inn that morning.

  Yawning, Page pushed a few books aside. He wondered idly what could stir up Farnleigh Close, which had seldom been stirred up since Inigo Jones built it for the first baronet in the reign of James the First. It had known a long line of Farnleighs: a stringy, hardy line still. Sir John Farnleigh, the present holder of the baronetcy of Mallingford and Soane, had inherited a substantial fortune as well as a sound demesne.

  Page liked both the dark, rather jumpy John Farnleigh and his forthright wife, Molly. The life here suited Farnleigh well; he fitted; he was a born squire, in spite of having been so long away from his home. For Farnleigh’s story was another of those romantic tales which interested Page and which now seemed so difficult to reconcile with the solid, almost common-place baronet at Farnleigh Close. From his first voyage out to his marriage to Molly Bishop little more than a year ago, it was (thought Page) another advertisement for the excitements of Mallingford village.

  Grinning and yawning again, Page took up his pen. Got to get to work.

  Oh, Lord.

  He considered the pamphlet at his elbow. His “Lives of the Chief Justices of England”—which he was trying to make both scholarly and popular—was going as well as might be expected. He was now dealing with Sir Matthew Hale. All sorts of external matters were always creeping in, because they had to creep in and because Brian Page had no wish to keep them out.

  To tell the truth, he never really expected to finish the “Lives of the Chief Justices,” any more than he had finished his original law-studies. He was too indolent for real scholarship, yet too restless-minded and intellectually alert to let it alone. It did not matter whether he ever finished the Chief Justices. But he could tell himself sternly that he ought to be working, and then with a sense of relief go wandering down all sorts of fascinating bypaths of the subject.

  The pamphlet beside him read, A Tryal of Witches at the Assizes Held at Bury St. Edmonds for the County of Suffolk, on the Tenth Day of March, 1664, before Sir Matthew Hale, Kt., then Lord Chief Baron of his Majesty’s Court of Exchequer: printed for D. Brown, J. Walthoe, and M. Wotton, 1718.

  There was a bypath down which he had wandered before. Sir Matthew Hale’s connection with witches, of course, was of the slightest. But it would not prevent Brian Page from writing a superfluous half-chapter on any subject which happened to interest him. With a breath of pleasure he took down a well-worn Glanvill from one of the shelves. He was just beginning to muse over it when he heard footsteps in the garden, and somebody “oi’d” at him from outside the window.

  It was Nathaniel Burrows, swinging a brief-case with unsolicitor-like gestures.

  “Busy?” demanded Burrows.

  “We-el,” Page admitted, and yawned. He put down Glanvill. “Come in and have a cigarette.”

  Burrows opened the glass door giving on the garden and stepped into the dim, comfortable room. Though he held himself well in hand, he was excited enough to look chilly and rather pale on a hot afternoon. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had handled the legal affairs of the Farnleighs. Sometimes it might have been doubted whether Nathaniel Burrows, with his enthusiasms and occasional explosive speech, was the proper person for a family lawyer. Also, he was young. But as a rule he had all these things under control; and managed, Page thought, to look more frozen-faced than a halibut on a slab.

  Burrows’s dark hair had a wide parting, and was smoothed round his head with great nicety. He wore shell-rimmed spectacles on a long nose; he was peering over the spectacles, and his face at the moment seemed to have more than the usual number of muscles. He was dressed in black with great nicety and discomfort; his gloved hands were clasped on the brief-case.

  “Brian,” he said, “are you dining in tonight?”

  “Yes. I______”

  “Don’t,” said Burrows abruptly.

  Page blinked.

  “You’re dining with the Farnleighs,” Burrows went on. “At least, I don’t care whether you dine there; but I should prefer that you were there when a certain thing happens.” Something of his official manner came back to him, and swelled his thin chest. “I am authorized to tell you what I am going to tell you. Fortunately. Tell me: did you ever have reason to think that Sir John Farnleigh was not what he seemed?”

  “Not what he seemed?”

  “That Sir John Farnleigh,” explained Burrows carefully, “was an impostor and a masquerader, not Sir John Farnleigh at all?”

  “Have you got sunstroke?” asked the other, sitting up. He felt startled and irritated and unwarrantably stirred up. It was not the sort of thing to spring on a person at the laziest period of a hot day. “Certainly I never had reason to think any such thing. Why should I? What the devil are you getting at?”

  Nathaniel Burrows got up from the chair, depositing the brief-case there.

  “I say that,” he answered, “because a man has turned up who claims to be the real John Farnleigh. This isn’t a new thing. It’s been going on for several months, and now it’s come to a head. Er—” He hesitated, and looked round. “Is there anybody else here? Mrs. What’s-her-name—you know, the woman who does for you—or anyone?”

  “No.”

  Burrows spoke as though entirely through the front of his mouth and teeth. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I know I can trust you; and (between ourselves) I am in a delicate position. This is going to make trouble. The Tichborne case won’t be a patch on it. Of course—er—officially, as yet, I have no reason to believe that the man whose affairs I administer isn’t Sir John Farnleigh. I am supposed to serve Sir John Farnleigh: the proper one. But that is the point. Here are two men. One is the real baronet and the other is a masquerading fraud. The two men are not alike; they don’t even look alike. And yet may I be damned if I can decide which is which.” He paused, and then added: “Fortunately, though, the affair may be settled tonight.”

  Page had to adjust his thoughts. Pushing the cigarette-box across to his guest, he lit a cigarette for himself and studied Burrows.


  “This is one clap of thunder after another,” he said. “What started it, anyhow? When has there been any reason to suppose that an impostor stepped in? Has the question ever come up before now?”

  “Never. And you’ll see why.” Burrows got out a handkerchief, mopped his face all over with great care, and settled down calmly. “I only hope it’s a mare’s nest. I like John and Molly—sorry, Sir John and Lady Farnleigh—I like them enormously. If this claimant is an impostor, I’ll dance on the village green—well, maybe not that, perhaps—but I shall make it my business to see that he gets a prison sentence for perjury longer than Arthur Orton’s was. In the meantime, since you’re going to hear about it tonight, you’d better know the background of the whole thing, and why the infernal mess has come up. Do you know Sir John’s story?”

  “In a vague general way.”

  “You should know nothing in a vague general way,” retorted Burrows, shaking his head disapprovingly. “Is that the way you write your history? I hope not. Listen to me; and keep these simple facts firmly fixed in your mind.

  “We are going back twenty-five years, when the present Sir John Farnleigh was fifteen. He was born in 1898, the second son of old Sir Dudley and Lady Farnleigh. There was no question then of his inheriting the title: the elder son, Dudley, was his parents’ pride and joy.

  “And they required something noble in the way of sons. Old Sir Dudley (I knew him all my life) was a late-Victorian of the most rigid sort. He wasn’t as bad as the romances paint such types nowadays; but I remember as a kid that it always surprised me when he gave me a sixpence.

  “Young Dudley was a good boy. John wasn’t. He was a dark, quiet, wild sort of boy, but with so much sullenness that nobody could pardon the least offensive things he did. There was no real harm in him; it was merely that he didn’t fit and wanted to be treated as a grown-up before he had grown up. In nineteen-twelve, when he was fifteen, he had a fully-grown-up affair with a barmaid in Maidstone­______”