Sun 28 Nov 2021
Locked Room Mysteries I’m Reading: CLAYTON RAWSON “From Another World.†— THE SOLUTION.
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[18] Comments
I reviewed this story in my previous post on this blog, stating that I saw a couple of possible flaws in the solution. In the first comment to this followup post, I will attempt to explain why I wasn’t completely convinced. Please don’t read my comment until you’ve already read the story or if you don’t plan to anytime soon.
Responsible and even opposing points of view are, as always, welcome.
November 28th, 2021 at 6:56 pm
Now that I hope you’ve gone back to refresh yourselves as to the story as I outlined it earlier, let’s take a look at a couple of aspects of the solution.
As you will recall, two people were in the room: the victim and the female psychic (dressed only in a bathing suit) who was trying to convince him that her telekinesis powers were real. The thrust of her demonstration was that there was nothing in the room that could be of use to her. They were the only two people in the room, and they had sealed the edges of the window and door frames with gummed paper tape.
When Merlini’s friend Ross and one other man break into the room (the door of course is locked), he hears the sound of ripping paper. When they get in, the see the man dead and the woman knocked out, unconscious (and she is, for real). There is no one else in the room and the knife that killed the victim is nowhere to be found.
SOLUTION: The killer was in the room with the two others while the woman’s demonstration was going on. He was standing behind a tall folding screen. After committing the murder, he pushed his way out the door, tearing the paper tape, taking the murder weapon with him. When Ross broke in, they found only the woman and the victim, with the torn tape making it appear than it was torn when they broke in, not when the killer made his way out.
NIT PICKS. I find it hard to believe that the killer standing behind the screen would not have been discovered there, after all the attempts by the other two to make sure there was no way any assistance could be given the psychic, from either inside or out.
But wait, there’s more. Remember the sound of the ripping paper as Ross and the other fellow broke in? Well, the other fellow was the killer, and sound of the paper that being torn came from the pages of a medical journal he had in his possession.
It’s a clever bit of misdirection on the killer’s part, but my quibble is this. First, the killer was behind Ross when they broke in, and I submit to you that tearing paper located in one spot behind you does not sound the same as paper being torn away from the frame of an entire door in front of you, no matter how distracted you are.
November 28th, 2021 at 11:32 pm
Strictly regarding the sound of the torn paper, as a former Pinkerton I can assure you eye and ear witnesses hear and see what they expect to hear and see, not what they actually hear and see. Based on actual experience I have to give Rawson that part.
Ross hears what he expects to hear, not what actually happened. It’s a common occurrence even among trained observers. Our brains aren’t half as objective as we like to think.
November 28th, 2021 at 11:35 pm
And since we are discussing a magician sleuth here and that was Rawson’s specialty, I should add that magic relies on people misreading cues and seeing what they expect rather than what is actually happening.
November 29th, 2021 at 12:03 am
I don’t disagree with anything you say, David, and I’ve been going back and forth over it off and on since yesterday. I will concede that everything could happen the way Rawson describes it, and you say, misdirection is stock in trade in what what magicians do. But what it came down to when I wrote this critique of the solution, I don’t *think* it would fool me, for the reasons I said, and so I’m still not convinced.
On the other hand, maybe you had to be there!
November 29th, 2021 at 2:00 am
I’d be okay with “one of the two discovers of the crime” cleverly duping the other by assuring him (falsely) where he heard the sound of paper tearing. He might pull it off.
But it’s hard to swallow he that wouldn’t have been discovered in the room earlier by the two people conducting their convoluted experiment. (Gee, let’s seal up this room to ensure we’re alone –by the way, ought I look behind this folding screen? Nooo, don’t bother).
Also: what was the monetary incentive in the first place? A millionaire is undecided whether to fund some research, why is that motive to *murder* him? Why expect some benefit to fall exactly in the murderer’s pocket? Why expect a gain when anyone’s knifed? Locked-room mysteries often seem to me, lacking in authentic emotional motives and awareness of how unlikely success is in such schemes. Simple crimes are the hardest to solve.
If it’s “The List of Adrian Messenger”, okay. Maybe that murderer had some reason for such wild overconfidence. He was on a tear. But some of these other yarns…seem a real stretch.
November 29th, 2021 at 9:50 am
Even Merlini found it difficult to come up with a motive for the killing. It turns out the killer was a doctor, and the victim was going to use his money to set up a caner research foundation. The killer did not want to see him switch and waste it on phoney ESP investigation instead.
November 29th, 2021 at 7:07 am
I completely forgot about the screen and since the murder happened during a psychic demonstration, you have a point there. A better alternative would have been the presence of a double bottomed chest, or a magician’s trunk, which would appear empty upon inspection. Merlini naturally recognizes a prop when he sees one and knows how the first part of the locked room-trick was pulled off. David already answered why the misdirection with the sound of tearing paper would absolutely work here. They heard what they expected to hear regardless of direction. But you made me wonder… would the absence of the sound have been a better clue like the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime?
By the way, you can use the ROT13 website to code, or de-code, spoiler heavy posts or comments. For example, here’s my comment in ROT13:
V pbzcyrgryl sbetbg nobhg gur fperra naq fvapr gur zheqre unccrarq qhevat n cflpuvp qrzbafgengvba, lbh unir n cbvag gurer. N orggre nygreangvir jbhyq unir orra gur cerfrapr bs n qbhoyr obggbzrq purfg, be n zntvpvna’f gehax, juvpu jbhyq nccrne rzcgl hcba vafcrpgvba. Zreyvav anghenyyl erpbtavmrf n cebc jura ur frrf bar naq xabjf ubj gur svefg cneg bs gur ybpxrq ebbz-gevpx jnf chyyrq bss. Qnivq nyernql nafjrerq jul gur zvfqverpgvba jvgu gur fbhaq bs grnevat cncre jbhyq nofbyhgryl jbex urer. Gurl urneq jung gurl rkcrpgrq gb urne ertneqyrff bs qverpgvba. Ohg lbh znqr zr jbaqre… jbhyq gur nofrapr bs gur fbhaq unir orra n orggre pyhr yvxr gur phevbhf vapvqrag bs gur qbt va gur avtuggvzr?
If you copy/paste it to the ROT13 website, it de-codes the comment and vice versa.
November 29th, 2021 at 10:04 am
When my brother and I talked it over, we agreed that the tearing paper gimmick was so questionable that it really wasn’t needed and the story would have been better based in reality without it. As Lazy suggests, having the doctor reassure Ross that he heard the tape tearing would be enough. The picture in my mind of him standing behind Ross tearing pages from a magazine while the other is breaking the door down is still very hard for me to swallow.
As far as ROT13 is concerned, I’m familiar with it, but I’m sure a lot of readers aren’t. It’s cumbersome and takes too much effort to use. I decided that this use of a followup post would work a lot better.
November 29th, 2021 at 9:41 pm
My web site has long panned this story. And complains that the tale is “disappointing in its treatment of witnesses”. I no longer remember why exactly I was thinking of many years ago, when writing this. But a guess is that I had some complaint like Steve’s.
I also complain about Rawson’s solutions in general being much less imaginative than Carr’s. Even if the idea in this tale would work – it still seems like a pretty simple gimmick.
By the way, the narrator-witness has NO expectations when he enters the house. He’s just a reporter come to get an interview, who knows nothing. He is startled when he hears paper tearing.
November 29th, 2021 at 9:52 pm
That last paragraph of yours, Mike, is a key one, in terms of expectations and misdirection. Ross would not be expecting to hear paper tearing, and so more likely to wonder what the doctor is doing behind him.
November 30th, 2021 at 8:32 am
My memory of this story didn’t quite match up with the description and I had to go back and check.
Merlini says – although it’s not confirmed – that the killer was asked to be there by Drake, as a witness. I don’t think it’s explained but it would be easy for Drake to make sure he was the one who checked behind the screen.
Unless I’ve got it wrong and it was contradicted later there isn’t a problem with the killer not being found.
As for the paper tearing – well, I had thought that the killer wouldn’t account for Ross Harte breaking the door down and not him, but he actually asks Harte to break the door down! So no excuse for that, really. But I wouldn’t go out of my way to say he should have noticed the sound coming from the wrong place.
I don’t think Carr’s solution to this same problem was much more imaginitive. I really like He Wouldn’t Kill Patience, but I think I prefer the solution used here.
November 30th, 2021 at 9:56 am
I’ve gone back and read the relevant passages again, but it’s still possible I missed something. Drake, by the way, was the name of the victim. I don’t anyone has mentioned it before, including myself.
What I have have discerned is that the doctor (the killer) was specifically asked not to examine the room (though this is his words). Since he was a non-believer, the psychic woman did not want him in the room. But what Merlini deduces is that Drake did want him in the room and specifically gives him a key to let himself in to wait behind the screen before Drake and the psychic begin their “seance.”
Why the psychic didn’t see him there is not quite clear, as he had to be there before they sealed the window and door with the paper tape. Surely they must have seen him behind the screen while that was being done.
Note: This is the second version of this comment. There may be a third after I have a chance to read the story again!
December 1st, 2021 at 11:12 pm
In the genre there is the infamous “unreliable narrator”, and in the real world I will only point out eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable.
Fiction, and certainly fair play detective fiction usually depends on being able to rely on what witnesses hear and see even if it turns out they interpreted it wrong, so in that sense I see what everyone is getting at, but much as prosecutors love eye-witness testimony any investigator can tell you it’s unreliable and the more certain the witness the more likely it is unreliable.
As I said before if the writer entertained me and more or less sold me I tend not to go back and autopsy the practicality of the solution. Let’s be honest, in that way Raymond Chandler is absolutely right about Agatha Christie and MURDERS ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, the solution is absurd.
Carr at his best often falls in the same category. Coffins have been tossed around and everyone thinks it is supernatural but of course Dr. Fell knows it was a flood long since dried that tossed them about, but not one person can see marks of a flood or smell the musty scent in a closed tomb that gives away the past flood?
In the real world Sam Spade just points out the clue to Miles Archer’s murder to the police, lets them sort out the murderous crackpots and goes back to peeping in windows. There is no story that way, but it’s what any real private detective would do rather than lose money avenging their partner they hated anyway.
Most genre fiction doesn’t pass the reality test so my patience when picking it apart is too easily tested and shouldn’t be. It’s just in all fairness there isn’t much in the genre or any fiction genre that really stands up to that test particularly well.
Start down that path and you can end up unable to read even the best the genre has to offer because frankly very little makes a lot of sense in practical terms.
All I ask is the writer makes it vaguely believable enough to get me from one page to the next and pleasurably finish the story without throwing anything across the room.
For me this minor Rawson effort managed that. Obviously, it did not for some of you.
December 1st, 2021 at 11:32 pm
You’re right. A lot of detective fiction, and their solutions in particular, require a good deal of hand-waving here and there on the part of the author, some more than others. If the ending “makes sense” I seldom (almost never) go back and read (in this case re-read) it again.
In this case, though, as soon as I read the solution, it just didn’t pass my “makes sense” test. It was just me, I know. Everyone’s different and they read stories in different ways.
I enjoyed everyone’s comments very much, pro and con, especially the con Thank you all!
And besides, no post should have exactly 13 comments.
PS. I threw my copy of ORIENT EXPRESS across the room when I finished it.
December 3rd, 2021 at 8:09 pm
“By God, old man Drake is NOT going to disburse that research money to anyone else but me. I deserve that grant! He’s got to be stopped. But how? Wait –ah yes, that’s right –he’s holding a seance this weekend in a sealed room. Perfect opportunity! Everyone will assume supernatural forces were responsible. I’ll get away scot-free with the funds…”
o_0
December 3rd, 2021 at 8:14 pm
Well, yes, when you put it that way, Lazy …
January 13th, 2022 at 10:36 am
Funny. I wonder what sort of paper tape might have been intended. I was fiddling with strips of old style masking tape (like painters tape only harder to unroll without tearing) and the sound of opening a door so taped was rather distinctive… Distinctive in that the tape didn’t tear to any extent but mostly peeled off with a rasping sound. Seems like the force applied opening a door is somewhat different from that used to tear the tape from the roll. Not that this makes much sense in any other way.
January 12th, 2023 at 7:35 am
I don’t really agree with the objections offered:
1 .The murderer hiding behind the screen can be explained since it was the victim, not the medium, who insisted on all the safety protocols, and he specifically wanted him to hide in the room. As someone mentioned, we can imagine that he simply looked behind the screen and pretended there was nobody there. There would be no reason for the medium to double-check.
2. If you hear the sound of ripping paper just as you break down a door, I think it is perfectly plausible that you would associate the sound with the action, and assume it was caused by it. In the general din, I think you would be hard pressed to localize the sound.
It did occur to me that the murderer’s plan relies (at least to some extent) on him NOT being the one who breaks into the room, so that it was his good fortune that the narrator shows up at the right time (apparently unexpectedly). But of course, we only have his word for it that he didn’t know in advance that the victim had invited a reporter for an interview.