The Blind Barber

John Dickson Carr The Blind Barber

Introduction by Anthony Boucher

This book is a farce about murder.

I feel I should give you fair warning, because this sort of thing hasn't been common lately. But if your instant reaction is shocked withdrawal, please pause a moment and hear me out.

If I have one major complaint about the 300-odd mysteries that I read each year as a reviewer, it is that none of them are funny. Oh, I admit Richard S. Prather or Carter Brown can be amusing, but only in the trimmings: it's the writing that's funny, rather than the story.

And I long for the days of Craig Rice and Alice Tilton and Richard Shattuck and Jonathan Latimer when there was a wild cockeyed preposterousness in the events surrounding murder and even in murder itself — and not just in the style of the narrator.

I suppose this longing dates me. It's a 1930ish attitude. There was a fine film late in the Depression, starring Carole Lombard and written by Ben Hecht, called Nothing Sacred. It was a rowdy comedy about a (supposed) cancer victim. The 'nothing-sacred' approach seems out of place today; now we take things more seriously, especially death.

But death and laughter are old friends. The medieval Totentanz is comic; and the macabre poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes christened his major tragedy Death's Jest Book. As Duncan sinks in his gore, the drunken porter rises with merry and improper quips. And the murders of real life seldom lack their element of comedy. One of the most terrible days in the annals of American murder opened on a scorching morning with a man named John Vinnicum Morse eating warmed-over mutton soup for breakfast.

I suspect that many readers — particularly the new young readers of mysteries — may relish a more generous ration of comedy-in-murder than publishers have been giving them; this series hopes to bring you, from time to time, Alan Green, Richard Shattuck and other prime practitioners of the criminally absurd,[1] starting now with John Dickson Carr.

There's a strong comic element in many of Carr's books. It's most prevalent in the cases of Sir Henry Meri- vale, by 'Carter Dickson' (and I realize with a sudden shock that it's almost ten years since H. M. has appeared in a new book); but it turns up frequently in Dr. Gideon Fell's cases, too — as in the noble drinking sequences in The Case of the Constant Suicides.

But these are intrusions, like the porter. Just once did Carr set himself to write an all-out farce (with murder as the intrusion). And, being the incomparable technician that he is, he produced something unique.

Wisely, he kept Dr. Fell out of the merry maelstrom and made him act, for once, as a pure armchair detective, in the manner of the Baroness Orczy's Old Man in the Corner. Then he threaded through his fantastic plot a careful set of clues for a faultless formal problem in detection.

Unlike almost all other comedies of terrors, The Blind Barber is a detective story, in the strictest sense. But never was a reader more bedeviled with distractions from detection. Who observes clues while he's wiping his laughter-streaming eyes?

I hope you enjoy the challenge… and the fun.

Anthony Boucher

PART ONE

1 — Strange Cargo

When the liner Queen Victoria left New York bound for Southampton and Cherbourg, it was said that two fairly well-known people were aboard, and it was whispered that a highly notorious third person was aboard also. Moreover, there was a fourth — but inconspicuous— person who will take rather a large part in this rowdy and topsy-turvy chronicle. Although he did not know it, this young man had in his luggage something more valuable than the marionettes of M. Fortinbras or the emerald elephant of Lord Sturton, which partly explains why there were puzzles and high carnival in the sedate bosom of the Queen Victoria, and monkey business not altogether according to the customary pattern.

No more dignified ship than the Queen Victoria flies the house-flag of any British line. She is what is sometimes described as a 'family' boat: which means that no hilarity is permitted in her state- room after 11 p.m., and all the cross-ocean changes in time are punctiliously observed— so that the bar always closes three-quarters of an hour before you expect it, and makes you swear. Melancholy passengers sit in her glazed writing-room and seem to be composing letters to the relatives of the deceased. In the heavily-ornamented lounge there is soft conversation, not so loud as the creaking of woodwork when the green swell lifts and glitters past the portholes; and knitting is in progress before some electric lights arranged to represent a fire. There is a semblance of gaiety when a serious-minded orchestra plays in the gallery of the dining-saloon at lunch and dinner. But there was one east-bound crossing, in the spring of last year, which Commander Sir Hector Whistler will never forget. Under his professional bluff camaraderie Captain Whistler possesses the most pyrotechnic temper of any skipper who has forsaken sail for steam, and the richness of his language is the admiration of junior officers. When, therefore—

The Queen Victoria was to dock at Southampton on the afternoon of May 18th, after the weirdest voyage she had ever made. On the morning of the next day Mr. Henry Morgan was ringing the bell of Dr. Fell's new house at No. 1 Adelphi Terrace. Henry Morgan, it may be remembered, was that eminent writer of detective-stories who took his own profession with unbecoming levity, and who had made Dr. Fell's acquaintance during the case of the Eight of Swords. On this particular morning — when there was a smoky sun on the river and the quiet gardens below Adelphi Terrace — Morgan's long, bespectacled, deceptively-melancholy face wore an expression which might have been anger or amusement. But he certainly looked like a man who had been through much; as he had.

Dr. Fell boomed a welcome, greeted him warmly, and pressed upon him a tankard of beer. The doctor, his guest saw, was stouter and more red-faced than ever. He bulged out over a deep chair in the embrasure of one of the tall windows overlooking the river. The high room, with its Adam fireplace, had been set to rights since Morgan had seen it some months before, when Dr. and Mrs. Fell moved in. It was still untidy, for that was the doctor's way; but the five-thousand-odd books had been crammed somehow into their oak shelves, and the litter of junk had found place in corners and nooks. Dr. Fell has an old-fashioned weakness for junk, especially for bright pictures of the hunting-print or Dickens variety, and scenes showing people getting out of stage-coaches and holding up mugs of beer before country inns. He also likes carved porcelain tankards with pewter lids, curious book-ends, ash-trays filched from pubs, statuettes of monk or devil, and other childish things which, nevertheless — in the sombre room with the oak bookshelves, with the frayed carpet on the floor — formed a fitting background for his Gargantuan presence. He sat in his chair in the window embrasure, before a broad study table littered with books and papers; there was a grin under his bandit's moustache, and a twinkle in his eye as he blinked at his visitor over eyeglasses on a broad black ribbon. And when the cigars had been lighted Dr. Fell said:

'I may be mistaken, my boy, but I seem to detect a professional gleam in your eye.' He wheezed and folded his big hands on the table. 'Is there anything on your mind, hey?'

'There is,' said Morgan grimly. 'I have to unfold just about the rummiest story you've ever listened to, if you've got time to hear it. It's rather a long one, but I don't think it'll bore you. And — if you want any corroboration — I've taken the liberty of asking Curt Warren to come round here… '

'Heh!' said Dr. Fell, rubbing his hands delightedly. 'Heh-heh-hehe! This is like old times. Of course I've got