She Died a Lady

Sir Henry Merrivale #14

by Carter Dickson

"Dr. Luke," said Rita Wainright, "I'm terribly, horribly in love with Barry Sullivan."

"What about your husband?"

"He doesn't know!"

But was Alec Wainright ignorant of the fact that his beautiful young wife was having an affair? And what possible solution was there for Rita and Barry with Alec standing in their way, so old, so ill, and so devoted?

Then one black night the unexpected happens. and that's where Sir Henry Merrivale comes in. The great H.M. has a nasty time with this ironclad puzzle.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Detective, Fiction, Classics, Mystery Thriller, Thriller

266 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Carter Dickson is a pen name of writer John Dickson Carr.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 3.5. The plot was excellent. The characters aside from HM needed more background especially Tom the son of Dr Luke who narrates most of the story. The story revolves around an apparent double suicide. Rita Sullivan the younger wife of Alec a retired university Mathematician and her lover Barry apparently leap off a cliff called Lovers Leap. Their footsteps lead to the cliff edge.

The suspects are few with lots of red herrings. It is humorous in parts with HM the detective in a motorized wheelchair that creates chaos in a pub and cliff edge danger. Quicksand, a drunken gardener who imagines Nero and a widow who rebounds well set the atmosphere. Garden rollers, pirate caves all make for an atmospheric tale.

There are clues to the murderer who manages to escape justice. A good read on a wet and damp Boxing Day. The story is also set in North Devon at the beginning of WW2.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The murderer turns out to be Dr Lukes son Tom who also is a doctor. He was having an affair with Rita and was madly jealous of her and finds out that Barry her new lover are running away to America. He pretended to help them steal the diamonds and shot them. He returned the diamonds and made it look like a murder suicide. Sir Henry Merivale explains it all after Tom is killing heroically during the war and awarded a posthumous VC. Once again a doctor is the murderer!

[Jini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect and perfectly tragic in every way.

[Calum Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

A:

Practically perfect in every way. I think I have a real thing for whodunits set during wartime Britain, but this is probably the best of them.

I had put off reading more of Carr/Dickson's work after "The Case of the Constant Suicides," which was entertaining but felt a bit throwaway and silly with the methods of murder (I'm not a great lover of the "locked room" concept). This one really did float my boat. A double-murder mystery tinged with sadness, a neutral narrator with a compelling viewpoint, a reveal that turns out to be incorrect, and an unconventional, gasp-inducing epilogue that tied everything together beautifully. Top book.

[JDL · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Major Spoilers about the end of the book - not how the impossibility happened, but who the murderer is and how that changes our perspective of the whole story in a specific way.)

Again, I am just floored by Carr's mystery-writing ability. The way he clues it, the way he hides a killer, the way he fills in the rest of the details as if this were a real British town in 1940...


The setting is that classic English town. In this case it's Lyncombe. From Dr. Luke Croxley's point of view - he lives near the town centre with his doctor son Tom - we see this town come alive with its characters: The seemingly rich Wainwright couple, math teacher Alec and his wife Rita, Steve Grange the lawyer and his daughter Molly, Willie Johnson the drunk gardener, Paul Ferrars the Bohemian artist painting Sir Henry Merrivale himself, and the recently arrived actor Barry Sullivan and his wife Belle (the latter of whom does not figure into the story until about halfway through.)

Our problem is that Rita Wainwright, classic femme fatale, and her extramarital lover who happens to be Barry Sullivan, have seemed to jumped off a cliff to their deaths; a suicide pact. This tragic theory is shattered when their bodies wash up with bullets in them, clearly being the true cause of death, and the gun, which couldn't have been fired by either of the victims for several reasons, being found half a mile away. How did the killer shoot the victims point-blank, besides being able to float?

H.M. in this title becomes strangely comic, turning into a wheelchair-bound Roman Senator for a good part of the book. Some people think this detracts from the story, and while parts of it did make the story drag (there was a tantalizing mystery to solve, after all), it still got a chuckle out of me. Although the funniest part of the book was not H.M.'s escapades but rather Dr. Luke Croxley's comment about the inanity of math problems.

As to the mystery itself, some people seem to think that this is not one of Carr's best of most polished. I will concur that his locked-room solutions have usually been better than his no footprints / killed in open air impossibilities. But this one stands pretty well. The clues as to how the victims, not the murderer, created the impossibility were nicely laid and surprised me when I read Dr. Luke's explanation. When H.M. said it was all balderdash I had the shock of seeing a false solution that I didn't get with the one from The Crooked Hinge (having known that was a false solution). So when H.M. revealed that Dr. Luke was right, I was a bit disappointed... until I learned why he had said that.

And here we get to the greatest part about the story: The narration and how that ties in directly to Carr's misdirection. Dr. Luke, is a general practitioner in his 60s, and he records the events as truthfully as he can. Some questions about his veracity coming from the characters eventually led me to believe that dear Dr. Luke was our killer; a classic unreliable narrator! But I still had my doubts, because I couldn't see Carr ripping off of Christie so blatantly, and also I'd read that while there was a trick with the narration, it wasn't outright unreliability. So I thought, a.) he's lying to protect someone, or b.) he got amnesia after killing them and thinks he is telling the truth (this second one, by the way, apparently happens in some book, I'm not sure what book though.) Both my theories here were wrong, however.

THE BIG SPOILERS START IN THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH

I'll be spoiling what are a couple of great surprises, very clearly for once so here goes: What's interesting about Croxley's narration comes in two parts: First, we learn from one of the other characters (and our new narrator) that Dr. Luke's record of the murders is unfinished - he has become a victim of the Blitz. The second (and greater) surprise which comes right after this one, is that as the narrator he has unwittingly protected the killer by not suspecting them in the first place and making them seem like a minor figure in the story. It is, inevitably, his own son Tom Croxley who has killed the lovers.

From hereon out we get what has rightly been called one of Carr's most chilling endings, as we see just how the truth has affected our characters in a way reminiscent of Christianna Brand's denouements. Of course, the way Tom's guilt is hidden by Carr - by having his narrator see Tom as a beloved fixture around the house rather than a fully-fleshed character - is just brilliant. From there, we get a couple of hauntingly beautiful moments,: H.M. revealing how he found Tom, distraught with the belief that he's killed his father, and then helped him bring Dr. Luke back to the house all the while destroying the incriminating evidence against Tom in order to protect Dr Luke from such a harrowing realization; and the reveal that not only has Dr. Luke died heroically during the blitz, but that Tom has been killed in action in Libya and given a posthumous honor... we see that the Croxley family has been fated to end, but that despite one of them being a cold-blooded murderer, they were on the whole good people. However, unlike He Who Whispers which strikes you with its poignancy until the very last sentence, She Died a Lady ends on a lighter note: H.M. reveals that his worst fear has come true: He's being inducted into the dreaded House of Lords! The reader leaves him as he tries to decide what his title should be (Lord Ticklebury is suggested by Molly.)

Overall this is a very strong title from Mr. Carr, although I'm not too sure whether this or Judas Window counts as the best Merrivale. This has the better murderer-reveal and ending, but the humor, pacing, and explanation of the impossibility is better in Judas. In the end, they are both worth one's time to read.

[John Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Master at his best.

I’ve been reading Detective Fiction for nearly 30 years now, since I was around 14-15. I’ve read a lo - Christie, Chandler, Conan Doyle, right up to the modern day. I’ve always had a particular soft spot for Carr. His solutions are ingenious, not only requiring deduction, but also some lateral thought. I thought when I read The Judas Window in 2004 that I’d read the best detective novel ever written, until tonight.

This is, for me, perfection. Carr’s usual colourful characters, a perplexing mystery and a solution that hangs together with the clues. But like the best of Carr’s work there is also a psychological element to the deduction.

Like all the best detective stories the initial reaction when the solution is revealed is a moment of “Huh? That’s unfair” followed by the realisation that all of the clues were there.

For me, the best detective novel I’ve read.

[Jameson · Rating 4 out of 5]

“To the female sex, it simply does not matter. Truth is relative; truth is fluid; truth is something to be measured according to the emotional needs, like Adolf Hitler’s.”

The “she” of the title may be a lady but she’s also a right biatch. I wouldn’t compare her to Hitler, though, but I can’t stand imperious, needy people. If a man or woman waltzed into my house and randomly started shouting that “somebody” better give them a drink, they’d get The Boot.

She Died a Lady, from what I’ve seen, sits somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as Carrs go. It’s in no one’s Top/Bottom 5. I’d say it’s a solid B John Dickson Carr. The narrator reminds me a lot of Christie’s Ackroyd. (That wasn’t a spoiler. Was it?) He’s a kindly doctor who’s friends with some doomed people and he even has a gossipy relative. This choice of an older narrator is a nice change of pace. Usually JDCs are narrated by a younger man—so much so they begin to seem like clones of one another. I certainly cannot remember any of them very distinctly but I will remember this doctor.

Another point in this book’s favor, for some reason the prose feels smoother here compared to the last few Carrs I read. There’s a nice rhythm to it. Sometimes Carr can write jerkily, or at least read that way, to me. There’s often a discordant effect. Not the case here.

Yet another strong plus is the village setting. I feel like Carr usually zips us along from one location to another or sets a story nearly entirely in a single building. The setting feels real here. Maybe because it’s set against the backdrop of the Blitz, which Carr himself lived through, I don’t know, but there’s some nice detail and richness to this world. We meet plenty of villagers, we get a sense of where the pubs are, where the houses are, some local nature spots, some local history. I wish Carr had done more of this.

Great read.

———
A fun thing to do in Golden Age Mysteries is take note of any facts that stick out. For example, if a character is introduced as someone who spent sometime abroad, that might be a clue. For She Died a Lady I wrote down these:

-Geometric patterns near Lovers Leap
-The artist lives near the quicksand
-Rita was 43 not 38
-Molly has a crush on Sullivan?
-Why didn’t Ivan put the lawn chairs in?

[Jan C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, he stumped me again. I suspected just about everybody but the one who did it.

This one is kind of a reverse of the "locked room" for the master of the locked room. Here, his victims disappeared off a cliff. There is a roaring sea below. Was it suicide or murder?

You'd expect their bodies to be bruised and battered. Well, yes, they were, but they were also shot. Did they shoot themselves? What did they do with the gun, if they did?

This is really bugging Dr. Luke who was picked as a witness. Lucky for him, Sir Henry Merrivale just happens to be in town getting his picture painted.

There is a lot of humor in this book. H.M. has injured his foot and they gave him an electric wheel chair. He is being chased by dogs and mistaken for Nero. Very funny image.

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent...excellent...hurrumph...hurrumph..
This was the first Henry Merrivale for me and frankly I like him much better than Dr. Fell .While he is just as oddball and larger than life as Gideon Fell,Merrivale is much less mystifying and to the point .While I really liked books like Constant suicides,green capsule,croocked hinge ,he who whispers etc, most of them irritated me at some point or other because of Fells undue mystification and curious mannerisms and spewing of gibberish .
This one uad no such issue...it was thoroughly engrossing from start to finish,had enough mystery to satisfy the ardent detective fans ,gave all the clues but yet managed to surprise at the end. This ,imho deserves its reputation as one of the classics of the genre... absolute gem of a book.

[Gabriele Crescenzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bellissimo. Contiene una bellissima camera chiusa ( ci sono solo le orme delle vittime ma non quelle dell'omicida), ma non è questo l'aspetto più affascinante dell'opera, ma la sua atmosfera. Carr crea uno dei romanzi più umani, dove la presenza del Vecchio è meno opprimente. Si sente la guerra gravare sulle persone, si sente l'alone di tragedia che si avvicina. Un piccolo capolavoro.

[Carsten Nielsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read with a (for JDC) unusual protagonist and narrator. And the final reveal is amazing.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: was Alec Wainright ignorant of the fact that his beautiful young wife was having an affair? Then one night Merrivale was needed.

[Steppikenka · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a easy to read book, every time it got "slow" it revealed something more.
Really kept me interested till the last page!

[BrokenTune · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had such a promising start but once the main plot event happened and the police investigation gets under way, the story becomes ridiculously convoluted and stops making sense.

It was almost as if Carr had a really novel idea and then suddenly balked at executing it. Instead of a well-thought-out plot with a sound motive and fleshed out characters, we get caricatures and snippets of plot that seem to be formulaic. The only characters that I felt were truly well crafted were the two victims.

The ending was a let-down, too, I felt. There are certain similarities in the structure of this book with one Dame Agatha’s and even tho I suspected that Carr had not copied the entire idea, it gave me enough pause to suspect the culprit reasonably enough.

There was no way I could figure out the motive, tho. There was just way too much going on in this plot to figure out any logical conclusions, and to be honest, the conclusion that was presented seemed to have been magically drawn out of a hat.

It just did not work for me. However, I look forward to trying some of Carr’s other titles.

[Alonzo Church · Rating 3 out of 5]

I generally like golden age mysteries, and John Dickson Carr is one of the giants of that field. However, this one just didn’t hold together for me, even though all the Carr trademarks are there (narrative audacity, a couple of attractive bad girls, an impossible crime that still comes with explanation.) I think the problem is that Carr often allows his detective to be a loud, fat, slapstick comedian, and here, he adds a comic drunk who may or may not be going through the DTs. Since Carr has gone for a moody setting — 1940 Britain at the height of German bombing raids plus a May September marriage gone badly wrong — the stupid comedy antics are aggravating.

I figured out the main thing that made the the crime "impossible" long before the detective -- not typical for me, and that may have been part of the reason I was bored through a lot of this. I did not get the killer though, and thought that was pretty well handled.

If you have this; read this. But it’s not this author’s best.

[Sakshi · Rating 4 out of 5]

*MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*
Great read overall. Very clever resolution of the impossibility. And the characterisation was better done than a lot of other Carrs I've read. The setting was brilliant as well, and the atmosphere positively chilling. The loneliness, the cliff, the war in the backdrop, the adulterous young wife... very fun read.

This one tries to pull an almost-Ackroyd on us, but somehow, it didn't pack that same punch. That "omg" moment I had when I read Ackroyd, this reveal wasn't anything close to it. I guess a lot of my Carr reviews are biased because I prefer the Christie method of writing, where the focus is on the people rather than the actual mechanics of the crime.

But, this was a great book nonetheless. The impossibility was great as usual, and the narrator was a fresh breath of air from the usual 20-something yuppie to be married off by the end of the usual Carr.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...

[Rik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ik kreeg detective-cravings dus zette Kurt even opzij; beloof dat die hierna komt (onder het mom van: een week te laat is erg, maar als je die week komt na twee maanden van te laatheid maakt die extra week geen bal meer uit).

Dit is denk ik mijn favoriete detective die ik tot nu toe gelezen heb (tenzij And Then There Were None telt). Een stel wordt dood aangetroffen in de zee, waarvan ernstig wordt vermoed dat zij zelfmoord hebben gepleegd door samen van een klif af te springen. Niets blijkt minder waar. De plot twist aan het einde zal nog wel even bij blijven. Als je even iets anders wil dan Christie, zeker een aanrader!!

[Liam Berry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This crime novel has not aged well. From the casually misogyny which runs through the entire book to the simply ridiculous character of Henry Merivale, a manuscript of this nature submitted today would go straight into a pubisher's bin. Or at least I hope it would. Awarding it one star above the bottom rung because of the final chapter and the way the mystery ties up by trying to use really quite subtle aside moments from the rest of the book. A very engaging idea if not wholly successful of impact here, and one deserving a place in a better book by a better author.

[Bryan Perez · Rating 3 out of 5]

A higher three more like a 3.5

Something about this novel is just so pessimistic with its introduction and ending staying true to the time period, or even just being contemporary to the worlds pivotal events despite the books focus being a great locked room mystery.

Apart from not knowing how to differentiate Fell and Merrivale, I really did enjoy the humor and mystery in this one along with the great twists and misdirections.

Truly a great read and one of the better Carrs, though of the estranged family (Henri Merrivale series).

[Yasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rate this a 3.7. I really enjoyed reading this book and the plot twist stunned me.I would have never guessed the outcome.

The book deals with a "double suicide", which turns out to be an assassination/a murder.

The reason I give this a 3.7 is because I had difficulties to keep up with the amount of events and actions, which sometimes lead me to confusion.

Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to people who enjoy reading mystery.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Carr is a writer that I devoured in my youth. I saved this one with my favorite detective until now. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed with the story. Not really an impossible crime so much. And strangely enough, it was solved by another character in the book and not by the detective. The "who-done-it" aspect was a real let down. I felt cheated, since Mr. Carr was not playing fair with the reader.
My score 1.5

[Dmitrii Baltykov · Rating 2 out of 5]

The twist is interesting (in some way resembles murder of Roger Ackroyd, but not completely). The solution does make sense, but I didn’t found it that satisfying. Maybe I pushed my mind too hard to accuse victim’s husband in all wrongdoings. Also many characters are rly dry (maybe except HM himself), the main focus on the mechanics of murder. I would put this book at around same place as the Mystery of the Blue Train by Christie in quality

[Shannon Hargreaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm notoriously fussy when it comes to murder mysteries. I find them hard to get into or easy to solve but this one was a breath of fresh air.

It was funny, that is what held me and the flow of the prose really got me into it. The characters were alright? Hearing a man call a woman wench grows tiring after some time but I was more focused on this impossible case.

Prehaps in the future I'll pick up another book from this series.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Old style ‘locked door’ mystery, very enjoyable despite the obviously dated language; the wartime setting added an extra frisson. I read this straight after ‘The Hollow Man’, commonly regarded as JDC’s masterpiece yet this one held much more interest for me, the characters more believable and the plot not quite so contrived with fiendish explanations.

[Umer Abbas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The identity of the killer got me in this one and only Carr can do that. The solution to the footprints puzzle I half guessed but it is one of his more plausible less complex solutions.This ranked as number 1 Carr in the Puzzle Doctors reader vote but I don't quite agree still a great read but it has competition from his titan pieces from the 30s.

[Rinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this is the funniest of all of the HM books. It also gives one of the gentler kinder views of this illustrious doctor/lawyer/ amateur sleuth. Mind you, there are plenty of evil, malevolent scowls from Merrivale but never is there a doubt that he cares.

[Trung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable "impossible crime" period mystery. This is my first book about Sir Henry Merrivale but he feels much more colorful than, say, Poirot, in how organically he evolves his theory using his intuitions rather than hard logic. The ending was certainly a surprise - there was a certain element of meta commentary on the whodunit itself without requiring too much suspension of disbelief.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming out in 1943 and set for the most part in the summer of 1940 during the early days of WW II so there is a commitment to the British war effort along with a pretty decent mystery. Carr, aka Carter Dickson, is pretty entertaining here – Sir Henry Merrivale is a hoot.

[Emily Shimwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pro Tip: if you’re going to fake a double suicide to start a new life with your secret boyfriend DO NOT tell your ex secret boyfriend (who you dumped to get with current secret boyfriend) every detail of your plan as he may very predictably murder you both :))))))

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

So very good - I actually laughed out loud - the puzzle - his are fabulous - this one was no exception - I was really moved by this one - that I did NOT expect - the reference to "Over The Rainbow" touching , set during the summer of 1940 - the blitz started in September