A review of He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr – 230821

Originally published in 1946 and recently reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, He Who Whispers is the sixteenth in Carr’s Dr Gideon Fell series. While some of the British Library’s excellent programme of reissues can be a tad variable, there is little doubt that this book deserves to be considered a classic. As well as Carr’s trade mark of an impossible locked room Murder, it also explores his obsession with the gothic, mixing crime with the supernatural with the very real possibility that a vampire is involved.

After all, how else other than by an intervention from a diabolic agency can a man, Howard Brooke, be murdered on the top of a tower, when at the time of his death no one entered or left the building? This happens six years earlier and is the tale that the eminent academic, Professor Rigaud, was going to regale a meeting of the Murder Club with. However, to his consternation, none of the members show up, the only other attendees being Miles Hammond and Barbara Morrell. Nevertheless, he tells the story and shows his auditors the sword stick, with which the murder was committed. A woman, he tells them, by the name of Fay Seton reacted with horror on seeing the dead man’s body and fled the scene.

Miles and his sister, Marion who is engaged to Stephen Curtis, have just inherited their uncle’s estate, which includes a library that needs cataloguing. To assist in the exercise, he has hired a librarian who by an amazing coincidence that is par for the course for the genre, Fay Seton. Stephen Curtis reacts adversely to the news, telling him that he is bringing trouble to the house. Shortly afterwards, there is a second supernatural encounter where Marion in bed hears someone whispering to her and in her fright fires a shot, presumably at something she has seen. She collapses from the shock of the encounter and almost dies. This is Carr at his chilling best.  

Gideon Fell is intrigued by the chain of events and while superficially there does seem to be a supernatural connection to the crimes, he looks for a more prosaic explanation, believing that understanding the role of Fay Seton in the story and her relationship with Brooke’s son, Harry, might reveal a more believable solution to the riddle. And, of course, he is right, unearthing a story of thwarted ambitions, hidden identities, and a desperate attempt to cover up an earlier crime.

Throughout the narrative there are references to the 18^th century Italian adventurer and self-styled magician, Alessandro Cagliostro, about whom Rigaud has just published a book. The relevance of these references becomes apparent when it emerges that the thwarted attempt to murder Marion Brooke followed the template of one of Cagliostro’s tricks.

This is a difficult to write about without giving the game away as each supernatural element of the crime has its more mundane mirror image. Suffice it to say, it is astonishing how much you can accomplish in your death throes and never announce a change to the room arrangements if you are not going to go through with it.

This is a page-turner, a thriller with train and tube chases, full of suspense and spine-chilling moments, and a remarkable denouement, written in an easy style. There are some wonderful images that will stay long in the memory, not least the flashing dentures illuminated as an advertisement in the building opposite the room in which the denouement unfolds as the action transfers to London.

Classic is a term banded around too loosely these days but this fine book merits the accolade. I urge you to read it.