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Many readers of classic detective stories appreciate the convention of a floor plan to help in visualizing and solving the mystery. JDC did not provide such in his third book, Castle Skull. Here is an attempt to supply such a lack. It is based on the descriptions provided by the author (although he did not mention any of the ancillary items, such as cellars, kitchens, bedrooms, parlors, and the like, which I have conjecturally included). Certain aspects of the plan are not strictly logical or are confusing -- perhaps the author himself did not have a sketch for his own use! In those cases, I have taken liberties. For example, he describes the walls as being 90 feet thick (no castle in the world has this specification), and I have moved the entrance passage to the right side where it can be more logically described, since it would make little sense to have it facing the river so high up from its surface. The staircase arrangement is very confusing in the book, so I have 'rationalized' it. As described in the book, there is a hallway leading from the middle of the gallery ('teeth') that goes to the staircase down to the dining room and up to the top of the dome, but this is impossible because it would be right under the 'nose' window, in which case there could not be a curved staircase from which Bencolin could observe the dummy window, and up which Myron's dying body was carried. Hence it has been shifted to the left-hand side.
He mentions in passing that the roof of the dome has a skylight over a conservatory or music room; that is what that yarmulke-like thing at the top is. This place is used in the denouement. How one would get to such a room is not said, so you can assume it is by the spiral stair at the upper right corner of the dome, although it could also be entered from the upper part of Maleger's suite; I have made the assumption that the main access would be by the dining-room staircase. It would be above the 'eyes' of the skull, otherwise the Great Hall or Rotunda would be very dimly lit by windows. Note that I have made no real attempt to scale the building, which he describes as 'huge', and have thus made it a more typical size for a Rhineland castle, of which Drachenfels is probably the largest. A grayscale version of the plan is provided for you to download and print if you are going to read the book (best to print it in landscape orientation).
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