There had always been whispers of ghosts when people spoke of the deserted and sinister old mansion in Plague Court; and when Chief-Inspector Masters, genial ghost-layer of the London police, broke into the little stone house in the rear court, he found the body of Darworth, the medium, stabbed to death on the floor. The door had been bolted from within and locked from without, and there was no other means of getting in or out. Yet there lay Darworth - and besides him the dagger that had belonged to Plague Court's most evil and persistent ghost. It was a question that was not to be answered that night either by Masters, or by any of that strangely assorted group which had congregated at Plague Court. They began to ask themselves if the ghost of Louis Playge, one time assistant to the hangman, had not really come back to haunt the slime and decay of the court that bore his name.

Time: Present Place: London and the famous old house, White Priory, nearby. Main Characters: MARCIA TAIT, glamorous film star who has broken her Hollywood contract to open in a London play, "The Private Life of Charles II"; the eccentric MAURICE BOHUN, author of the play, and master of White Priory; JOHN BOHUN, his brother, in love with Marcia Tait; EMERY (publicity) and RAINGER (production) who have rushed after Marcia Tait from Hollywood - trying to persuade her to return; mouthy old LORD CANIFEST, backer of the play, and his subdued daughter, LOUISE; the lovely niece of the Bohuns, KATHERINE BOHUN; young JAMES BENNETT, American, and nephew of SIR HENRY MERRIVALE - that obese, sleepy old bear whom CHIEF INSPECTOR MASTERS routed out of his lair in whitehall to solve that baffling mystery.

The Red Widow Murders is a modern mystery with a shuddering historic background. The scene is laid in Lord Mantling's mansion on Curzon Street, in a room called the Red Widow's Chamber. In 1802, a man had died there; in 1825, a girl; in 1870 and 1876, two gentlemen were mysteriously found dead. Then the room had been sealed up. Now, many years later, eight men and a woman gathered around a table for a sinister experiment. Among them are Sir Henry Merrivale, the rumbling, grumbling, grand old man who has become one of our best-loved detectives; Lord Mantling of the flaming hair and booming voice; Guy Brixham, his brother, sardonic and uneasy behind his glasses; Ravelle, the blond Frenchman, smiling and debonair; little, inoffensive Bender. Which one of them would draw the Ace of Spades and be escorted into the Red Widow's Chamber? Is it a death trap? ...Poison? ... Or WHAT?

Gasquet, France's best policeman, pursues Flamande, France's greatest criminal, on a flight from Marseilles to Paris and when the plane makes an emergency landing and a murder takes place, it is Sir Henry Merrivale's job to identify both men, each a master of disguise

Sir Henry Merrivale (better known to the public, and to his co-workers of the Military Intelligence Department as "H.M.") had disappeared. Two of his young friends were to be married the following day. Then a telegram arrived: MEET ME IMPERIAL HOTEL TORQUAY IMMEDIATELY EXPRESS LEAVES PADDINGTON 3:30 URGENT MERRIVALE. At once everyone was precipitated into the Punch and Judy Murders... Hours later, the prospective bridegroom, now a fugitive from justice, and dressed in an unlawfully appropriated policeman's uniform, stood at the open door of a small library, confronted with a corpse. He was wondering how he could escape from the house before the bona fide police arrived...

The murderer sent a formal invitation to Scotland Yard telling them the time and place of the murder. Incredulous, and astounded at the audacity of such a note, the Yard recalled a similar, and still unsolved, case of two years previous. Sir Henry Merrivale and Chief Inspector Masters accepted the invitation and had the house surrounded. Upstairs in an otherwise empty house was a furnished room. A man entered the house. Promptly at the time set by the murderer a shot rang out. The police rushed in and discovered that same man on the floor with a bullet through the back of the head and another in his spine... but no one else had entered the house! It was an impossible situation, but it DID happen.

Persons this mystery is about: Sir Henry Merrivale, of the Secret Service, is a tremendous, bald-headed Englishman who curses with a vengeance, looks malevolently over his spectacles, and is known and respected by the whole London Police Force as H.M. Chief Inspector Humphrey Masters, is ruddy of face, bland as a car-sharper, and wears his grizzled hair carefully brushed to hid his bald spot. He has shrewd eyes and a disconcerting way of using them. To be suspicious of everything and take nothing for granted is his simple code. Doctor John Sanders, a serious-faced young man who is so wrapped up in forensic medicine that he hasn't had time to look at life. There is not a suspicious bone in his body, but he hates bluff with a scientist's hatred. Peter Ferguson, the queer old blighter who is interested in Egyptian art, is clerkly in appearance - with a fringe of gray hair on his bald head, and a look of dour tolerance on his face. He once received the Egyptian Order of Merit, and is duly proud of it. Charles Drake, junior partner in the law firm of Drake, Rogers & Drake, is a brisk man of fifty-odd, with a rolling walk like a sailor, and a pince-nez which pushes the bridge of his nose up into a hump and makes his eyes look big and gray. Sir Dennis Blystone, tall and impressive, has a personality which seems at once forceful and hesitant. He is a famous London surgeon whose carefully tailored clothes and fine hands inspire confidence and ease. Marcia Blysonte, a very pretty girl of twenty-one, has brown hair, a short, straight nose, and eyebrows that turn up at the corners. There is a particularly luminous quality about her fine brown eyes, and she is terribly curious about everything. Bernard Schumman, old and mild-tempered, has something of the air of a clergyman or a minor statesman. His eyes are candid, pale blue and troubled. His hands, very delicate, are obviously the hands of a scholar. Felix Haye, an immense, jovial-looking man, wears a tonsure of red hair that gives him the look of a dissipated monk He is an investment broker, a bachelor, and an authority on parlor tricks. Bonita Sinclair, soft, sleek and long of limb, has very dark, glossy hair and a face that is full of great beauty and sensitiveness. Her small mouth and strong round chin give her a humorless look of earnestness and imagination.

Avory Hume is found stabbed to death with an arrow - in a study with bolted steel shutters and a heavy door locked from the inside. In the same room James Caplon Answell lies unconscious, his clothes disordered as though from a struggle, his fingerprints on the damning arrow. Here is the unique Carter Dickson "impossible situation" - yet the great, explosive Sir Henry Merrivale gets down to serious sleuthing and at last startles the crowd in the Old Bailey with a reconstruction of the crime along logical, convincing lines. H.M. in his most exciting case - an original, unconventional mystery, with a rich story background and a thrilling trial scene.

"The basis of the idea," said Pennik, "is roughly that thought has a physical force like sound. Notes in sound can shatter glass or even kill a man. The same applies to thought."... Sam Constable entered the conservatory. "You have probably heard what happened - accident to the car, servants in the hospital. You will be lucky to get anything to eat at all tonight." "I will get you a meal if you like," offered Pennik. Sam Constable looked at him. "You are a cook, in addition to your other accomplishments?... I must thank you, my friend, for your offer. Shall we say, then, that you can have it ready as soon past eight o'clock as possible?" "If you like," said Pennik. "But I do not think, Mr. Constable, that you will get any dinner." "Not get my dinner? Why the devil shouldn't I get my dinner?" "I do not think you will be alive at eight o'clock."

John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective fiction, who also wrote using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn. He is generally considered one of the greatest writers of so-called Golden Age of mystery fiction, and a master of the locked room mysteries, in which a detective solves crimes seemingly impossible to solve as they take place in a room with no apparent means of entrance or exit for the perpetrator. Often regarded as a British-style mystery writer, Carr resided in England for a number of years, and his novels have an English setting and English characters. His two best-known detectives, Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, are both English. In "And so to Murder," the daughter of a British clergyman, writes a surprisingly scandalous best-seller and, as a result, is hired as a script writer. But, rather than working on her own novel, she has to help another writer to adapt his latest detective novel, “And So to Murder.” Inexplicably, several mysterious attempts to her life are made, and the world highest paid scenario writer, who was brought in from Hollywood to "punch up" the screenplay on another film, is nearly killed when smoking a poisoned cigarette. Sir Henry Merrivale helps Chief Inspector Masters to bring home the crimes to their unlikely perpetrator.

Death sails aboard the Edwardic. "Douse that light!" bawled a voice almost directly in his ear. He had not realized he was in the midst of a small crowd, until the bitter air was agitated by a dozen movements. Something hard, a shoulder or hand, struck him under the left shoulder-blade, pitching him forward. He knew a second of panic as the rail rushed at him, tilting over deeply to show him the phosphorescent wash boiling below. Just ahead of him, somebody reached out of darkness and struck at the hand that was holding the match. Its light went out. "Don't you know better than to show a light on deck?" demanded the voice of the third officer. "Theres a man overboard," Hooper managed to stutter out. "Spang down he went, splash bang, with a bullet in the back of his head. I evan saw the chap who shot him. For God's sake don't stand there and fuss about matches. There's a man overboard."

Sir Henry Merrivale vs. the Impossible. "Victoria Fane," said Dr. Rich, "you hate the man sitting in front of you. He has done something which you consider unforgivable. You wish him dead. I order you to kill him... The weapon you hold is deadly. Strike." Moving like an automaton, Vicky raised the dagger and struck at Arthur's shirt front. Like a satisfied showman, Dr. Rich looked around. Nobody in the little group moved. Their eyes were glued on the spreading red stain on Arthur's shirt front. As they watched, he coughed once and fell dead. It was fantastic that Vicky Fane should have killed her husband. The whole episode had been staged as an experiment in hypnotism. Vicky, as the subject, had been ordered to "kill" her husband with a rubber dagger. It was impossible for anyone to have substituted a real dagger. Impossible - but it had been done.

H.M. and the Masked Death. There were only two guests at the Stranhope mansion. Vincent James was a weekend perennial - charming and a little thick. Nick Wood, the other guest, was undoubtedly attractive, but it was odd that no one knew anything else about him. It was odd too that the fabulous Stanhope paintings had been moved from the burglarproof gallery to the main floor. And the Stanhope daughters had the jitters. Then, late at night, came a frightful noise - and a masked man was found on the dining room floor, stabbed by a long, thin fruit knife. That was how things stood when crusty, uproarious, irrepressible H.M. arrived on the scene. From then on things moved as only H.M. can make them move - at break-neck speed - with mystery, humor, terror, and a hair-raising climax that revealed the master hand of a killer.

"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.

What this mystery is about: An ingenious suicide, which somehow smells of murder, in a sealed room on the zoo grounds... A pair of professional magicians (young, hot-headed, assorted male and female) with a grudge against each other that dates back four generations... A Bornese tree-snake named Patience... A pistol shot that wrings an eager smile from a devoted relative... A dinner rapidly becoming charcoal in a very empty house all decked out for a party... A reptile house which becomes the scene of increasingly amazing events... A photograph that causes an unaccountable shock... Excitement on the catwalk of an empty theater... A burned paper match that incites a frenzied attempt upon the life a beautiful girl. Wouldn't you like to know: \* How a murderer manages to put to shame two famous families of escape artists? \* Why Agnes Noble seems to regard the victim's death as a deliberate of discourtesy? \* How a dead snake points to a murder? \* How to get away from a Gila monster? \* The secret of Fatima, the card-playing dummy? \* How to get a confession from someone who is dead sure it can't be done? \* What happens when old Sir Henry Merrivale become the unwilling roommate of two deadly snakes and a murderer?

A curse shall befall anyone who takes the bronze lamp out of Egypt, so a seer has said. Lady Helen Loring thinks such tales are sheer poppycock. She takes the lamp back to England, she places it on the mantelpiece at Serven Hall, and she disappears, just as the seer said.

Voodoo Drums! Dennis' dreams vibrated with their message of death... Suddenly a hand touched his heaving body. He was shocked awake. Beryl West was standing over him. "Bruce has disappeared," she sobbed. Dennis stared at the girl. Her cry echoed in the eerie light of the half-darkened room. An unknown author had written a play about a murderer and sent it to actor Bruce Ransom. Bruce like it, but his friends Beryl West and Dennis Foster thought the ending unreal. To prove that they were wrong, Bruce proceeded to impersonate the killer in real life. Suddenly his part got out of hand. He had rung up the curtain on a scene called Murder!

Book by Dickson, Carter

The drowning Four persons dived into the swimming pool. Three came out. Manning had to be dead, and if he were dead, Elizabeth Manning wasn't interested in coming back to life. Only Sir Henry could make sense of the mystery, drain the pool, and find the key to the locked-up graveyard.

Horror was quietly taking over the village. On the edge of town, a fantastic stone ruin gave its name to a malicious killer: the Widow... a killer diabolically clever.. or so crazed with hate... that the victims were notified by mail of their coming doom. One had died. Others had been warned that they were marked to die. And no one, not even the fabulous Sir Henry Merrivale, could say if the Widow were man... woman... or phantom!

Trouble in Tangier... There was Paula, a lively, lovable English blond... and Bill, her adoring husband, intelligent, tough, and an expert pistol shot. There was Maureen, a fiery American Brunette... and Commandant Alvarez, a handsome Spaniard whose sense of honor was only exceeded by his courage. And of course there was the incomparable Sir Henry Merrivale, who had promised to solve another "impossible" case in forty-eight hours. And somewhere in Tangier was the mysterious Iron Chest... and the fabulous thief who went with it... the thief who had never been seen, and who was about to walk into the trap they had set for him, and walk out again, still unseen...!

Sir Henry Merrivale investigates the case of a valuable antique sword which appears to have been removed from a safe by the ghost of Sir Byng Rawdon