John Dickson Carr Parodies
A WARNING: THESE ARE COMIC EXAGGERATIONS OF CERTAIN TRENDS FOUND IN THE WORK OF JOHN DICKSON CARR, AND ARE NOT INTENDED AS SERIOUS CRITICISM!
CHAPTER XX: THE TRUTH
Dr. Ishmael Rose leant back in his comfortably upholstered armchair, his obese meerschaum pipe held in one hand—gingerly, in case the mixture of dynamite and nitric acid it contained should accidentally go off.
'It was obvious, don’t you see, that Sir George d’Eath was killed by Anstruther Bathtub.'
The audience, comprised of myself, my gorgeous wife, Dotty—a normal, cheery, healthy, girl—the sort of girl who likes to see other women in the nude, the sort of girl who will fight in her underwear in the mud at the drop of a hat, the sort of girl who looks at a man in such a way to make him puff out his chest, and feel six feet high, the sort of girl who likes her swain to get into a fight at the drop of a hat—and the long-suffering Supt. Blockhead, C.I.D., sat there in stupefied silence.
'Harrumph, burble, burble. You remember how before breaking into the room, I heard voices coming from the room, accompanied by a noise of something being slowly moved—something that creaked so much it sounded as though something was being murdered?'
'Yes…' replied Blockhead.
'The truth is, don’t you see, that what you thought of someone being murdered was in fact—harrumph, burble, burble—the sound of the window being opened, accompanied by the profanities of the individual who was attempting to open the window.
'Harry, do you remember when you tried to open the window?'
'Yes,' I replied. 'It opened very slowly—it was stuck fast—but I noticed a smear of oil… Oh!,' I remarked, struck even dumber by the obvious.
'And what did you hear?'
'I heard … I heard screaming just like that of Sir George when I was opening the window. But … I thought that it was Lady Camilla d’Eath, because her body was found dead in the snowy field—her head decapitated and her limbs severed just like her husband’s, and lying in the middle of the snowy field without any footprints around them as well.'
'Ah! But you were wrong there, Harry. Harrumph, burble, burble. You see, just as you were opening the window, Lady Camilla was murdered in her bedroom—and her body was placed in the middle of the snowy field—again without any footprints, except those of the victim himself, leading towards the body…'
Outside it had grown dark.
'You mean that what I heard was not the sound of Lady Camilla’s agonising death throes, but instead the sound of the window opening?'
'Exactly!'
My wife, Dotty, piped in.
'But, Dr. Rose, what I don’t understand is how the murders were committed…'
'You don’t? You wouldn’t—you don’t have the brains.' The ginchlet simpered. 'But that’s the most obvious part of the entire case. Harrumph, burble, burble. That’s how I solved the case.
'Bathtub, besides being Sir George’s secretary, was, in fact, Lady Camilla’s lover.'
Cries of 'Good God!' echoed around the now darkened room. Dr. Rose stood up, and lit the black candelabra on the table—a relic from the witchcraft case, in which Dr. Rose solved the curious problem of how the murderer’s identity was obvious from the beginning, of how his assistant, Dorian Footman, managed to get through life for thirty years without ageing a day, and of how he managed to build up a reputation as one of the most brilliant young lawyers of his day without the slightest modicum of intelligence and an ego the size of Mt. Everest. Ill-illuminated light flooded the room.
'Do you remember the way they talked? The way he offered her the coffee cup, saying, “You'll take coffee, of course.” He did not usually have tea with them—and yet here he was knowing exactly what she liked to drink. And he did not serve her drinks. Yet how did he know what she liked to drink?
'My suspicions were further aroused when she came in, saying that she was looking for her lover, whom she thought was a very jealous man. “How my husband trusts him, I do not know. I used to, but now I do not.” Obviously, then, her lover was someone whom she had once trusted, and who was trusted by her husband.
'Now, do you remember the fuss about the stock market shares?'
'The ones that were stolen?'
'The ones that Bathtub claimed were stolen. Harrumph, burble, burble. That was what Lady Camilla was referring to when she was talking about someone whom her husband had trusted. Sir George had entrusted the stock shares to Bathtub (naturally enough, as Bathtub was his secretary), but Bathtub had stolen them, coming up with a trumped up story of how a man disguised as Waldus von Hackenslacker had attacked him – at a time when von Hackenslacker had an alibi vouched for by…'
'By whom?'
'By the nymphomaniac Lady Camilla. That was how she knew that he had stolen the bonds. That was why she no longer trusted him. That was why he was forced to kill her.'
'This is all very well—but how did he kill them both?'
'I’ll tell you how he did it. Harrumph, burble, burble. You remember how we all thought that Sir George had been walking in the snow when a vampire, summoned out of the very depths of hell by the vengeful Father Mushroom, swooped down and decapitated him?'
'Yes. There were footprints in the snow—Sir George’s, leading towards the place where his body was found. But not those of the murderer.'
'Of course not! Because… The murderer chopped up the body. That was what made me wonder why he chopped up the body. And the answer was startling—and frightening.
'The murderer chopped up the body so that it could fit through the window.'
Cries of “Good God!” echoed around the now-darkening room. Dr. Rose took a mahogany cigarette case out of his pocket, lit a mahogany cigarette, and smoked away in silence for a few hours.
'Now, do you see what happened? He oiled the window, opened it, threw the body parts out into the snow, closed the window, rubbed the oil off, and… Do you remember the missing watering-can which was later found clutched in Lady Camilla’s hand?
“He applied water to the hinges in order to make them rust. That was why they squeaked and screamed as they did.
'Bathtub had removed his victim’s shoes before throwing his carcass out into the snow. He went outside, donned the shoes, walked to the body, and walked backwards in the footprints—do you remember how much deeper they were? He then went back up to the window, and threw the shoes out—remember that he was a first-class cricket bowler.
'And that was how the miracle was created. It was ingenious—harrumph, burble, burble—but…'
'One question, Dr. Rose. Did it gain him any practical purpose?'
'Any practical purpose? Of course not! We should remember that we are in a detective story—and detective stories are not meant to be practical! The less practical they are, in fact—harrumph, burble, burble—the better! Harrumph, burble, burble. He did it merely to mystify us, to throw us off the track. Remember that he was the only one who wasn’t seen going outside in the hours of the murder.'
'But the witnesses saw Sir George going outside! I did, with my own eyes.'
'Exactly! But you did not see Sir George—you saw Bathtub wearing Sir George’s distinctive astrakhan overcoat, scarves and top hat, and carrying his walking stick, move over to where the body lay concealed in the gazebo. You moved away, because you wanted to speak to Lady Camilla about the stocks. He took off Sir George’s clothes, placed them on the corpse, and raced back inside, stepping in the previous footprints, before finally throwing the shoes outside.
'He had to give himself an alibi, you see.'
'But why did he kill his employer and his lover?'
'The stocks, Harry, the stocks. Harrumph, burble, burble. He didn’t want Sir George to discover that he had stolen the stocks, so he murdered his employer. He murdered Lady Camilla because he thought that any minute she was going to give him away—she was the only one apart from himself who knew that he had stolen the stocks. So she had to go.
'When’s the execution going to take place, Harry?'
'Tomorrow, as far as I know, Dr. Rose.'
'He deserves hanging—a more cold-blooded scoundrel than him I never knew. Harrumph, burble, burble. But … Bathtub did something more.'
'What?' we cried, astonished.
'Yes. You remember that he was a master hypnotist, having studied in Nepal under the Dalai Lama. Well! He hypnotised his victim into believing that he was Anstruther Bathtub, before taking the identity of his victim who would go to the gallows in his place.
'Bathtub looked very similar to one other man. They were both tall, slim and were dark-headed. They were of the same height, and the same build—in fact, I, in my wool-gathering way, had even remarked upon it.
'Anstruther Bathtub impersonated Harry Morland.'
Dotty leapt to her feet, one hand clutched to her mouth. She swayed, and fainted.
'Yes!' I cried. 'I’m Anstruther Bathtub, you gargantuan goblin! I killed Sir George and Lady Camilla d'Eath. I hypnotised Harry Morland. And I’d do it again. I’d do it a thousand times over, even if my eternal soul were to rot in hell for a thousand times that long! I enjoyed it, d’you see?'
Outside it had grown dark. And if a watcher had stood outside, peering in through the window, he would have been able to see the figure of a tall, slim and dark young man raise one hand to his mouth, before falling over; the high-pitched noise of a woman screaming; and the avalanche of Dr. Ishmael Rose rising to his feet, with a cry of “Harrumph, burble, burble”.
THE END
Extract from The Blood-Stained House of a Thousand Screams, L. Priestley, Wenham & Geraldine, 1931.
Outside it had grown dark. The trees, bare and outstretched like the horrible claws of decaying and leprous witches rotting in eternal hellfire, scraped against the window-panes. The great detective M. Putain turned to us.
‘Throughout this case, my friend, I have had inklings of the truth—only inklings, but inklings nonetheless. And now, it is clear my friend, that the…’
I do not know for how long I had had the impression that somebody had been listening at the door, but at that moment the door was flung open, with a resounding crash, and Marguerite, Baroness Death, swept into the room, a carved Assyrian dagger in her begloved hand.
‘Sir Leopold! I have news of the utmost importance to tell you! Outside in the garden, while investigating the explosively pneumatic potentials of bird-baths, I saw…’
She got no further in her statement however, for at that moment, the window-pane smashed, and, through the gaping hole, Cyril Knode crawled, his head covered with blood.
‘My God, Sir Leopold! The most dreadful thing has happened. Do you remember how Mrs. Smith told us that “in the kitchen, there was…” before she was interrupted by the cat pushing over the priceless Ming vase in the drawing-room? I now know what it was that she was going to tell us! I was in a certain room, the identity of which I will later disclose, when I was…’
It was at that moment that a hideous scream echoed through the house. The party turned and looked at one another. What dreadful calamity had befallen this poor group of benighted guests now? What, indeed? As one, the party turned and dispersed throughout the house.
We never saw any of them again.