Till Death Us Do Part
A review of Till Death Us Do Part by John Dickson Carr
This is the fifteenth in Carr’s Dr Gideon Fell series, originally published in 1944 and now reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics collection. Carr made his name in the world of Golden Age detective fiction as the master of locked room mysteries, and it will come as no surprise to the reader that he treats them with several locked room deaths as well as a shoal of red herrings in what is an entertaining and enthralling story.
Two of the leading protagonists are a femme fatale, Lesley Grant, who moved into the village of Six Ashes some six months earlier, and a mildly successful playwright, Richard (Dick) Markham, who inevitably falls head over heels in love with her, so much so that they are engaged to be married. Much of the story is seen from Dick’s perspective and his reaction to the suggestion that his fiancée may not be all that she seems to be.
At the village fete Lesley is anxious to have her fortune told and clearly receives bad news from the clairvoyant. Although shrugging off her temporary alarm, Lesley accidentally discharges a rifle, the bullet entering the fortune teller’s tent and injuring the clairvoyant, who purports to be the famous Home Office pathologist, Sir Harvey Gilman. Lesley is led to believe that Gilman is unlikely to survive his injuries.
When Sir Harvey is alone with Dick he tells him of Lesley’s past and how her two former husbands had apparently committed suicide, injecting themselves with prussic acid in locked rooms, as had a subsequent boyfriend. The deaths were passed off as suicides, but the police had thought that they were murders, although they could not prove their suspicions. The key to discovering how Lesley had committed the crimes, according to Sir Harvey Gilman, was to lay a trap for Lesley by Dick inviting her to a meal à deux.
While all this is going on, the local doctor has suspicions as to the true identity of Sir Harvey and brings in Carr’s regular amateur sleuth, Dr Gideon Fell, in to confirm his suspicions. Fell immediately recognises him as a notorious con man and thief, but before “Sir Harvey’s” real identity can be exposed, he too dies, in a locked room, having seemingly committed suicide by injecting prussic acid. However, as the modus operandi of the death was identical to those attributed to Lesley, was the con man another of her victims? By this time, Dick is suffering a dilemma; does he still believe in his fiancée or is she really a serial killer and, if so, is he next on her list?
Of course, what has really happened is more nuanced than that and Gideon Fell sets out to reveal the truth. The case against Lesley gets blacker as Fell starts digging. While professing to have no love for jewellery, Lesley insists on having a safe in her room. What is in it and why did she, allegedly, knock Cynthia Drew out with a hand mirror when she was enquiring about the safe’s contents? Is this where she kept her supply of prussic acid?
The key to unlocking the mystery is solving the howdunit aspect of the locked room death. The solution is ingenious and, for once, I missed a Freeman Wills Crofts style diagram which would have helped me visualise how it was done more clearly. Once Fell had solved that, the identity of the culprit and their motivation becomes clear. Fell, though, is not one to show his cards and much of his deductive process is kept from the reader. He is also a bit bumptious and is difficult to relate to.
That aside, Carr has constructed a tale which as well as demonstrating his talent for locked room mysteries takes time to explore the psychology of someone who is in love and who begins to have doubts about his intended and how the rumour mill, once its wheel starts turning, can soon run out of control.
