Penguin no. 816: She Died a Lady by Carter Dickson

Though it is dangerous to make generalities, this was far from the first time in my life when I have observed the absolute incapacity of any woman for telling the truth when truth becomes unsuitable. There is no intent to do wrong in this. To the female sex, it simply does not matter. Truth is relative; truth is fluid; truth is something to be measured according to emotional needs, like Adolf Hitler's.

At first it is assumed to be a suicide pact. Rita Wainwright and her young lover vanish one evening from a small gathering, leaving a crumpled farewell note in the kitchen, and a trail of footprints ending abruptly at the cliff's edge. But when their bodies are recovered a few days later, things no longer seem so simple. It becomes clear that the pair fell from the cliff after being shot with a weapon later recovered some distance from the coast. But why would someone murder a couple who seemed so intent on suicide anyway? And how is murder even feasible? There are no other footprints at the scene, and the cliff provides a natural barrier to escape. There are only two possibilities, and yet each seems impossible: if it was suicide, how was the gun removed from the scene of the crime; if it was murder, how did the murderer leave?

This was my first exposure to Carter Dickson or John Dickson Carr, and so I am unaware if this is a common theme in his books, but the mystery at the centre of this book is very firmly focused on the mechanisms of the crime. There is an answer to the conundrum that will transform the impossible into the possible, and once it is revealed, the identity of the murderer seems almost secondary. I suspect a convincing case could have been made against almost any character in the book, as the motive is only revealed in retrospect. I don't see this as a flaw, only an observation: it is the solution to the puzzle which is impressive; a different motive and a different suspect would have worked just as well. And the author plays very fair: the clues are not hidden, and the important elements are mentioned again and again.

Four people think they have an idea about the answer: two favour suicide as an explanation, and two are not so certain, leaning more towards murder, and so both solutions are explored. The most perceptive of the investigators is Sir Henry Merrivale, an old, bald, coarse and curmudgeonly figure, frequently described as wearing a malignant expression, and here confined to a motorised wheelchair on account of an injured toe. The key to his perceptiveness seems to be his doubt, his willingness to admit he doesn't know, or at least doesn't know yet. And his intuition that things that appear impossible are not necessarily so.

In this he is contrasted with the Superintendent and the local solicitor who are so certain that they do know, so convinced of the correctness of their conjectures, that they invert the conventional processes of inference and set about contorting the facts to fit their theory, or at least pressuring a witness to do it for them. And this I found perplexing: there seemed no limit to what they were willing to believe rather than to give up their theory. I found myself looking at the characters and longing for someone to behave rationally.

In this way the book seemed a little inconsistent, an uneven mix of inventiveness and incongruity. I found repeatedly that the author would engage my attention, but then fail to sustain it, by having the characters behave in ways that made little sense, or offering up Sir Henry Merrivale in his motorised wheelchair as a buffoon. And yet the final chapters of the book are compelling. From the moment at which the narrator sits down to think through the puzzle, the book is hard to fault. An interesting story that could have been much better.

Also by Carter Dickson:
Penguin no. 814: And So To Murder