Sun 14 Aug 2022
An Archived Locked Room Mystery Review by Maryell Cleary: CARTER DICKSON – The Judas Window.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
CARTER DICKSON – The Judas Window. Sir Henry Merrivale #8, William Morrow, hardcover, 1938. Reprinted as The Crossbow Murder, Berkley, paperback, 1964. Many other reprint editions exist, both in hardcover and paperback.
John Dickson Carr, the old maestro of the mystery story has left us forever, but his books go on and on. The Judas Window features Sir Henry Merrivale, another old maestro, as the detective, and what a glorious locked room puzzle it is, with a brilliant solution.
In this one, James Caplon Answell is being tried for the murder of his fiancee’s father, Avery Hume. The two were talking in Mr. Hume’s study, with steel shutters over the windows and the door’ bolted. When Answell responded to the cries of the butler and secretary, he was found with Hume dead on the floor, an arrow through his heart. The victim, an expert archer, had three arrows over the mantel as trophies.
Answell cla1ms to have been drugged, and to have no recollection or what happened thereafter. The police arrest him, his solicitor quits, and Sir Henry is left to defend him all alone. Well, not quite. He has his secretary Lollypop and two old friends to run errands and keep an eye on proceedings.
Sir Henry establishes that there was a case of mistaken identity., that Mr. Hume had mistaken Answell for his cousin of a similar name who had been blackmailing Miss Hume. Hume and his brother, a doctor, had cooked up a plan to remove the blackmailer and get his documents.
But the plan misfires in more than one way. In a tour de force of reasoning, Sir Henry recovers the missing crossbow, complete with piece of feather from the arrow-weapon, and shows how a crossbow could be shot so as to kill a man in a looked and bolted room.
Readers are challenged to realize where the “Judas Window” in every room is; this one reader was stunned to find that she should have known it all the time!
August 14th, 2022 at 7:50 pm
I remember this one well. My wife and I were both going through a John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson binge and Kitty was reading an old paperback copy of THE JUDAS WINDOW. she said, “You’ll have to read this one next,” and thrust the book on me. I was enjoying the book greatly until I got about a third of the way through. The copy we had had been misprinted — the entire middle of the book was missing and had been replaced with another iteration of the first third of the book. When this dawned on me, Kitty laughed maniacally. I never forgave her. (Eventually, I did find a proper copy of the book and we both read it.)
August 14th, 2022 at 9:14 pm
A great story, Jerry. Thanks for telling!
August 14th, 2022 at 8:52 pm
Mystery aside, and it is a good one, I loved Sir Henry’s courtroom antics. Carr loves his near slapstick comedy and particularly with HM.
Perhaps Carr’s greatest gift is not coming up with clever solutions to locked room mysteries (which he undoubtedly did), but for the length of the book convincing us to accept them and the revelation of how they worked. His love of magic and the fantastic and Chestertonian paradox at play in his best books.
There’s no attempt at realism in most of Carr’s books, instead he spins a tale, pulls us in to the Arabian Nights phantasm, and then playfully teases us to complain.
The Game was seldom played as well or as obviously as Carr does with his sense of adventure, the uncanny, the absurd, and the fantastic and mystery both in its generic sense and the broader one of something inexplicable just out of the corner of the reader’s eye.
Carr can and has stumbled, but when he is on point as he is here the heady mix is one I feel unable to resist.
August 14th, 2022 at 9:17 pm
I read this one so long ago I no longer remember what a Judas window is. Well, I know what it is, but how it comes into play in this one, that’s what’s gone. I do remember enjoying this one, though, and a lot, and for all the reasons you say, David.
August 15th, 2022 at 12:00 am
TJW is a classic. It was my first experience with the Golden Age outside of Agatha Christie.
Everything works well here: set-up and impossible crime are irresistible, Merrivale without the farcical behaviour, brilliant mid-book reveal that included something that must have been risqué for that time period, no sagging in the middle, an engaging court proceeding, etc.
I had to read the ending twice to understand how the culprit accomplished the murder. Despite skepticism that the perpetrator would have the skill, ingenuity or luck for that to have worked, this is an excellent book by Carr and should be read by anyone who is a locked-room mystery fan.
August 15th, 2022 at 8:35 am
Higher praise than this no book nor author could have!
October 16th, 2022 at 11:13 pm
I’ve been a locked room mystery kick lately and just finished The Judas Window. Quite excellent. I rather enjoyed Merrival’s combination of cantankerousness and kindness.
The only odd thing is that Merrivale–who at that point knew the location of the Judas Window and the body–says the distance was approximately 3 feet. Even without looking at the floor plan online, that’s an extremely short distance to place a desk within a room.
Am I missing something?