Forgotten Book - The Ten Teacups

The Ten Teacups is the UK title of The Peacock Feather Murders, and it was first published in 1937. The author was Carter Dickson, the pen-name under which John Dickson Carr wrote over twenty novels featuring Sir Henry Merrivale. This is one of the most widely acclaimed.  Indeed, back in 1981, it made tenth place in a list of all-time classic locked room mysteries voted for by a panel convened by Edward D. Hoch at the time he compiled his locked room anthology All But Impossible...

The Ten Teacups is a very good ‘impossible crime’ mystery, written when Carr was at his peak. There are two distinct and equally baffling puzzles to solve. The first concerns a death by shooting in a locked and guarded room. The second involves murder by stabbing, committed by an invisible murderer. But there's more to the book than these teasing and ingenious situations.

In particular, the opening premise of the story is one that strikes me as quite wonderful. Masters, the CID detective who serves, in effect, as Merrivale's sidekick, is aghast to receive an anonymous message which reads: 'There will be ten teacups at number 4, Berwick Terrace, W. 8, on Wednesday, July 31, at 5 p.m. precisely. The presence of the Metropolitan Police is respectfully requested.’ It seems absurd, but two years earlier, the arrival of a very similar message had presaged an extraordinary murder that had Scotland Yard baffled. And guess what? This message is also followed by a murder, despite the presence of a reliable detective outside the locked room in which the crime takes place. When shots are heard, the policeman breaks in, only to find a dead man and a gun - but no murderer...

A tantalising beginning, so marvellous that I imagine Carr found it rather hard to keep up the same standard throughout the book. I wouldn't say this is Carr's masterpiece, because the middle section is just a touch ponderous (this was one of his failings as a novelist, I must admit, and illustrates the challenge posed by writing a full-length locked room mystery novel) while the solution to the main crime does require suspension of disbelief on a heroic scale. There are some excellent discussions online, especially - albeit inevitably with spoilers - on Jim Noy's Invisible Event blog. But there is a lot here to enjoy nonetheless - including an excellent cluefinder in the form of more than thirty footnotes!