The Three Coffins, or The Hollow Man

This book was titled The Three Coffins when it was first published in the US in 1935, then in Great Britain was renamed The Hollow Man. The latter title seems more apt to the subject, but perhaps there is a risk of confusion with T.S. Eliot's poem. Whatever, this mystery very soon achieved the reputation of being the best 'locked-room' plot ever written, even though except for an unconvincing bit of hocus-pocus using a large mirror, and an accomplice, to boot, it is not really a LOCKED-ROOM mystery at all. (In fact, the murderer never intended that; rather, it was an alibi; what happens is a matter of bad luck, fate, or whatever you want to call it -- the 'cussedness of things'.) That, of course, means that the noted locked-room lecture becomes somewhat irrelevant to the plot except as a distraction from the solution. As you would expect from that comment, none of the classified types of hermetically sealed rooms Dr Fell expounds upon applies categorically to the solution of this story, since nobody, it turns out, was actually killed in that room. What it DOES depend upon is misdirection, as all convincing magic tricks do.

The major obfuscation (and I don't mean that nonsense with the mirror necessarily) is an authorial trick: The two murders occurred in reverse order chronologically compared to the order they were presented in the book, apart from the implausible coincidence that both victims lived for a long time after they were mortally wounded. The 'clues' were there, but very well-buried -- the mistimed clock in the jewellery store and the ringing of the church bells. Is that "fair play?" No! As Fell would say, "This is jiggery-pokery, Sir" (harrumph: Dr Fell did a lot of huffing and puffing, but he never farted, and that's probably only because Carr was writing before that kind of thing could be expressed in print). The supposed second murder was actually the first one, but Carr puts the descriptive chapters in a different order. This works in a subsidiary way, because the author uses 'point-of-view' characters so the events are presented the way they perceived them. It would not have misled Scotland Yard, or any competent police department, for very long at all -- not even requiring any deduction, just normal routine investigation. The fact that the clock the witnesses depended on was 40 minutes fast (not 5 or 10) is incredible, especially considering that one of them was an experienced police constable on his beat!

Is that bad, representing the police as dunderheads, baffled without the help of the brilliant amateur detective? Not really. It is a convention in Golden Age mystery novels and supports the good old Anglo-Saxon distrust of state officials. And the police in real life do screw up a lot, so that is not just a subversive attitude on my part. Even so, how come the mirror used in the trick was not discovered shoved up inside the chimney until nearly the end of the book (and only then by the efforts of one of the prime suspects -- so much for Perkins, Scotland Yard's expert searcher)? This is all manipulation by the master puppeteer, the author. While the writer of any book, especially a detective story, is properly allowed to cut up a picture into jigsaw pieces and scramble them how he will for the reader to reassemble, it makes little sense if that means that some characters act out of character, if you know what I mean. And the clue of the chiming church bells is so subtly tossed in as to be almost imperceptible. Good God, one might as well read a book solely for the purpose of spotting misuses of 'which' vs 'that' or checking for it's that should be its. To be fair, I must say Carr usually dispenses his clues well. In this case, he went too far because he was trying to disguise the weakest element of his plot.

The good elements of this book remain after one picks at the sloppiness and implausibility of the plot. The Locked-Room Lecture is justifiably famous, although it turns out to be irrelevant for the most part. It really should be engraved on gold tablets. And the jokes about "we are in a detective story, and don't try to pretend otherwise" are good. There are two other good 'lectures' too (ghost stories and staged magic tricks). The Transylvanian background stuff is excellent, and actually gives a semblance of real character to the two brothers. Given that the mirror trick is superfluous -- the scene could have been re-engineered to work without it, and far more convincingly (not by me, but Agatha Christie could have) -- it is very ingenious, as was all that business about the overcoats. Still, the mirror thing rankles, depending on the angle of a lamp and the manipulation of the intended witness to be sitting JUST SO, not a foot to the left or looking out the window. If I were to commit a murder that would be a ridiculous way to go about it -- better just waylay your victim with a blunt instrument in a dark alley (and have a good alibi prepared).

Of course, this book has no pretensions to being a realistic crime story; it is admittedly pure fantasy and entertainment operating under its own rules, and as such is one of the best of its sort ever written. Whether the author plays totally fair with the reader in presenting all of the clues (one of the rules of the genre) can be debated, although in hindsight or rereading one can say they are all there. Question is, was it really fair in some cases? Carr has a habit of stating, or having someone state, something, then contradicting it later, saying, you will note it was a 'perceived' fact (e.g., the witnesses swore this event occurred at that time of night, but it was never explicitly stated that they had the correct time), or that while it was mentioned so-and-so was telling the 'strict' truth, there is always a second side to every coin (madame made a sudden lurch as the door was slammed, but not because she was startled). If Carr uses a phrase like 'it was said with sincerity and obvious truth' you know damn well he is begging an issue! The cautious reader should note every word, especially when something is expressed very precisely with an adjective or adverbial qualification that is unnecessary to convey the simple meaning. Beware of falling into the kind of trap where Dr Fell says 'no woman could have fired that pistol' and it turns out the murderer is a woman who fired a rifle (you are meant to assume the killer is a man). This, like all his mysteries, is full of such misdirection, which is perfectly fair in stories of the type.

I will probably have regrets about debunking this famous mystery novel (and tsk, tsk, revealing most of the plot on the Internet), but have felt for a long time that it has been overrated as being perfect. May post some reviews of books Carr did really much better one of these days. See, for example, Deconstruction of a Carr Plot. But probably not, although maybe a Merrivale should be analyzed, even a Bencolin. He Who Whispers is the PERFECT John Dickson Carr Dr Fell mystery, and I would never want to spoil it by giving away the details.