Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 10, No. 48, November 1947
The House in Goblin Wood
by Carter Dickson
About the author: As everyone knows (or should know), Carter Dickson and John Dickson Carr are one and the same. Creator of two of the most famous sleuths in contemporary fiction — Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale (H.M.) — John Dickson Carr grows in stature with each passing year. Long ago the English critic who calls himself Torquemada rated Mr. Carr as “one of the Big Five.” Torquemada probably meant “one of the Big Five” among English writers; actually it is true among all writers of the detective story, past and present. And still John Dickson Carr keeps growing... Born in 1905 at Uniontown, Pa., John is the son of Wooda Nicholas Carr, formerly a United States Congressman. “At the age of eight,” writes John, “I was hauled off to Washington. While my father thundered in Congress, I stood on a table in the members’ anteroom, pinwheeled by a God-awful collar, and recited Hamlet’s Soliloquy to certain gentlemen named Thomas Heflin and Pat Harrison and Claude Kitchin.” At the same tender age John sat on “Uncle Joe” Cannon’s knee listening to ghost stories, learned the great American game of crap-shooting from the legislative page boys, and met Woodrow Wilson. John’s earliest fictional heroes were Sherlock Holmes, d’Artagnan, and the Wizard of Oz, and all three exerted subtle influences on his later creative development. J. B. Priestley has said that John possesses “a sense of the macabre that lifts him high above the average run of detective story writers.” Your Editor once wrote that “despite his preoccupation with Anglo-materia, Mr. Carr is in no sense an expatriate. Rather, he occupies the enviable and eminent position of being our first literary lend-lease: he is the perfect example in the field of the modern detective story of Anglo-American unity.” In April 1947 we published John’s first book of short stories about Dr. Fell. Now we bring you John’s first short story about H.M. ever to appear in print — one of the most distinguished “firsts” it has been your Editor’s privilege to introduce to American readers. “The House in Goblin Wood” won the Special Award of Merit in EQMM’s Second Annual Contest — an honor it literally created for itself because of its outstanding excellence. It is safe to predict that “The House in Goblin Wood” will become one of the anthological favorites of all time.
In Pall Mall, that hot July afternoon three years before the war, an open saloon car was drawn up to the curb just opposite the Senior Conservatives’ Club.
And in the car sat two conspirators.
It was the drowsy post-lunch hour among the clubs, where only the sun remained brilliant. The Rag lay somnolent; the Athaneum slept outright. But these two conspirators, a dark-haired young man in his early thirties and a fair-haired girl perhaps half a dozen years younger, never moved. They stared intently at the Gothiclike front of the Senior Conservatives’.
“Look here, Eve,” muttered the young man, and punched at the steering wheel. “Do you think this is going to work?”
“I don’t know,” the fair-haired girl confessed. “He absolutely loathes picnics.”
“Anyway, we’ve probably missed him.”
“Why so?”
“He can’t have taken as long over lunch as that!” her companion protested, looking at a wrist-watch. The young man was rather shocked. “It’s a quarter to four! Even if...”
“Bill! There! Look there!”
Their patience was rewarded by an inspiring sight.
Out of the portals of the Senior Conservatives’ Club, in awful majesty, marched a large, stout, barrel-shaped gentleman in a white linen suit.
His corporation preceded him like the figurehead of a man-of-war. His shell-rimmed spectacles were pulled down on a broad nose, all being shaded by a Panama hat. At the top of the stone steps he surveyed the street with a lordly sneer.
“Sir Henry!” called the girl.
“Hey?” said Sir Henry Merrivale.
“I’m Eve Drayton. Don’t you remember me? You knew my father!”
“Oh, ah,” said the great man.
“We’ve been waiting here a terribly long time,” Eve pleaded. “Couldn’t you see us for just five minutes? — The thing to do,” she whispered to her companion, “is to keep him in a good humor. Just keep him in a good humor!”
As a matter of fact, H.M. was in a good humor, having just triumphed over the Home Secretary in an argument. But not even his own mother could have guessed it. Majestically, with the same lordly sneer, he began in grandeur to descend the steps of the Senior Conservatives’. He did this, in fact, until his foot encountered an unnoticed object lying some three feet from the bottom.
It was a banana skin.
“Oh, dear!” said the girl.
Now it must be stated with regret that in the old days certain urchins, of what were then called the “lower orders,” had a habit of placing such objects on the steps in the hope that some eminent statesman would take a toss on his way to Whitehall. This was a venial but deplorable practice, probably accounting for what Mr. Gladstone said in 1882.
In any case, it accounted for what Sir Henry Merrivale said now.
From the pavement, where H.M. landed in a seated position, arose in H.M.’s bellowing voice such a torrent of profanity, such a flood of invective and vile obscenities, as has seldom before blasted the holy calm of Pall Mall. It brought the hall-porter hurrying down the steps, and Eve Drayton flying out of the car.
Heads were now appearing at the windows of the Atheneum across the street.
“Is it all right?” cried the girl, with concern in her blue eyes. “Are you hurt?”
H.M. merely looked at her. His hat had fallen off, disclosing a large bald head; and he merely sat on the pavement and looked at her.
“Anyway, H.M., get up! Please get up!”
“Yes, sir,” begged the hall-porter, “for heaven’s sake get up!”
“Get up?” bellowed H.M., in a voice audible as far as St. James’ Street. “Burn it all, how can I get up?”
“But why not?”
“My behind’s out of joint,” said H.M. simply. “I’m hurt awful bad. I’m probably goin’ to have spinal dislocation for the rest of my life.”
“But, sir, people are looking!”
H.M. explained what these people could do. He eyed Eve Drayton with a glare of indescribable malignancy over his spectacles.
“I suppose, my wench, you’re responsible for this?”
Eve regarded him in consternation.
“You don’t mean the banana skin?” she cried.
“Oh, yes, I do,” said H.M., folding his arms like a prosecuting counsel.
“But we... we only wanted to invite you to a picnic!”
H.M. closed his eyes.
“That’s fine,” he said in a hollow voice. “All the same, don’t you think it’d have been a subtler kind of hint just to pour mayonnaise over my head or shove ants down the back of my neck? Oh, lord love a duck!”
“I didn’t mean that! I meant...”
“Let me help you up, sir,” interposed the calm, reassuring voice of the dark-haired and blue-chinned young man who had been with Eve in the car.
“So you want to help too, hey? And who are you?”
“I’m awfully sorry!” said Eve. “I should have introduced you! This is my fiancé. Dr. William Sage.”
H.M.’s face turned purple.
“I’m glad to see,” he observed, “you had the uncommon decency to bring along a doctor. I appreciate that, I do. And the car’s there, I suppose, to assist with the examination when I take off my pants?”