The Burning Court

The Burning Court (1937) is a famous locked room mystery by John Dickson Carr. However, it contains neither Gideon Fell nor Henry Merrivale, Carr's two major detectives. It was published in the United States, and was highly controversial upon its first printing, due to its unorthodox ending. Today, it is hailed as Carr's best non-series novel. Plot summary Edward Stevens, an editor at Herald and Son's publishing house, is on the train home, recounting the story of the death of the rich uncle of his neighbor, Mark Despard. Uncle Miles had succumbed to gastroenteritis, which had left him bedridden for days. Although this was considered death from natural causes, two strange things were reported surrounding it. A housemaid had spied into Miles's room, around the shade of one of the glass doors leading in, and reported that a woman had been visiting him, who left through a door that had been bricked up for years. And after he died, under his pillow was found a strange piece of string, tied in nine knots, a witch's ladder. Stevens shrugs both events off. Instead, he opens the book he is bringing home to edit. The book, by noted true crimes author Gaudan Cross, is on murders by poison, and it begins with the trial and execution of Marie d'Aubray in 1861. There is a daguerréotype of her attached to the chapter, which causes Stevens to gasp. The antique photograph is an exact image of his wife, Marie Stevens.