The Locked Room Reader by Hans Stefan Santesson

Author:Hans Stefan Santesson [Santesson, Hans Stefan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0394433734
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1968-06-02T21:00:00+00:00

The mystery buff—the fan who has read every novel and every story ever written by the Master—is someone all of us have a special feeling for. But what happens when this fan overidentifies with the author, and thinks he or she has found in these novels a solution to a personal problem?

WILLIAM BRITTAIN

THE MAN WHO READ JOHN DICKSON CARR

Although he did not realize it at the time, Edgar Gault’s life first gained purpose and direction when, at the age of twelve, he idly picked up a copy of John Dickson Carr’s The Problem of the Wire Cage at his neighborhood lending library. That evening after supper he sat down with the book and read until bedtime. Then, smuggling the book into his room, he finished it by flashlight under the sheets.

He returned to the library the following day for another of Carr’s books, The Arabian Nights Murder, which took him two days to finish—Edgar’s governess had confiscated the flashlight. Within a week he had read every John Dickson Carr mystery the library had on its shelves. His gloom on the day he finished reading the last one turned to elation when he learned that his favorite author also wrote under the pseudonym of Carter Dickson.

In the course of the next ten years Edgar accompanied Dr. Gideon Fell, Sir Henry Merrivale, et al., through every locked room in the Carr-Dickson repertoire. He was exultant the day his knowledge of an elusive point in high school physics allowed him to solve the mystery of The Man Who Could Not Shudder before the author saw fit to give his explanation. It was probably then that Edgar made his momentous decision.

One day he, Edgar Gault, would commit a locked room murder which would mystify the master himself.

An orphan, Edgar lived with his uncle in a huge rambling house in a remote section of Vermont. The house was not only equipped with a library—that boon to mystery writers, but something few modern houses possess—but the library had barred windows and a two-inch-thick oak door which, opening into the room, could be locked only by placing a ponderous wooden bar into iron carriers bolted solidly to the wall on both sides of the door. There were no secret passages. The room, in short, would have pleased any of Carr’s detectives, and it suited Edgar perfectly.

The victim, of course, would be Edgar’s Uncle Daniel. Not only was he readily available, but he was a believer in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy of self-reliance, and in order to help Edgar achieve that happy condition, Uncle Daniel had decided to cut the youth out of his will in the near future.

Since Edgar was perfectly prepared to wallow in his uncle’s filthy lucre all the days of his life, it was up to him to do the old man in before the will could be changed.

All of which serves only to explain why Edgar, one bright day in early spring, was standing inside the library fireplace, covered with soot and scrubbing the inside of the chimney until it gleamed.

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