Murder in the Submarine Zone (1940) a.k.a. Nine and Death Makes Ten by Carter Dickson

I picked up a copy of this book last September for £2, which I was quite chuffed with, as I have not had a charity shop find like that for a while. It has not languished on my TBR pile for too long either, as it is this month’s book group read. One of the things which intrigued me about this mystery was its at-sea-war-time setting, which is reflected in its dedication:

‘This story is dedicated, as it should be, to fellow-passengers aboard M. V. Georgic, in memory of a crossing we made from New York to ‘a British port’ during the early days of the war.’

Carr’s experience of travelling by sea during WW2 comes across well in the setting of this book and I enjoyed how the wartime conditions are manipulated by the killer in this novel.

On the dust jacket of my edition (pictured above) it is written: ‘By an accident of publishing history, Murder in the Submarine Zone has, for a long time, been one of the rarest of Carter Dickson’s incomparable mysteries.’ Do any Carr experts know why this was the case? My edition is Tom Stacy Reprints from 1972.

Synopsis

‘As the M. V. Edwardic slipped out of New York harbour, en route for England, everybody on board knew they were sailing into desperate peril. For this was 1940. One attempt had already been made to sabotage the Edwardic. Her holds were full of munitions, and out in the Atlantic the U-boats were waiting. There were just nine passengers, all with their own good reasons for risking their lives to get to England. What they did not anticipate was that, to the dangers of the submarine zone, would be added the presence of an apparently invisible murderer loose in the ship. And yet that was the frightening situation which soon faced them. Murder has been committed, and the murderer’s fingerprints, clearly marked in blood, were there for all to see. Chemical analysis showed that these had not been forged; they had been made by a living hand. But the fingerprints belonged to nobody on board. Here was a bizarre and baffling problem for one passenger, who, so far, had been keeping uncharacteristically quiet – Sir Henry Merrival, master of locked room mysteries and impossible crimes. As the blacked-out ship ploughed on through those submarine-infested waters, H. M. reasoned his way towards finding the Murderer Who Didn’t Exist, a murderer who might strike again at any moment: and nerves were stretched to breaking-point.’

Overall Thoughts

Thinking back to other boat-set mysteries that I have read I would say a common way for them to begin is to have a scene in which passengers are boarding or still waiting at the dock etc. Carter Dickson adopts a similar strategy, yet I would say he gives it an added air of menace:

‘Grey decks, grey masts, grey ventilators, even grey port-holes: blacked-out and screwed down against light. The dock police shivered beside dirty water. You were not allowed to smoke anywhere on the dock even in the big dank waiting room. Though the Edwardic had been loaded long ago, the number of guards made it difficult to take a step anywhere without being challenged.’

The repeated use of the word ‘grey’ eases us into the menace but as the other parts of the scene come into play, it only takes the author a few sentences to build up a semantic field of feared threat or danger. WW2 is naturally the reason for all of this as it means the ship is ‘carrying munitions to “a British port.” Her cargo consisted of half a million pounds’ worth of high explosive, with four Lockheed bombers on the top deck.’ It is made clear to the reader that this is a high-stakes trip:

‘For the next eight days (or nine or ten or eleven, according to January weather and the directions of the Admiralty) he would be living inside a floating powder-magazine. One well-placed torpedo would blow the whole mass to pieces, together with every living organism inside.’

It makes you wonder (and even makes some of the characters wonder), why people have chosen to be passengers on such a risky vessel. This introduces a note of suspicion from the very beginning of the book. Throughout the story the writer keeps reminding us of these wartime dangers beyond the murderer who is on the loose. These reminders might be small ones such as gas mask fittings and emergency drills, but as the novel unfolds these reminders become stronger and more intrinsic to the plot. An additional effect of this, is that these moments contribute to the tension of the mystery. For example, we are made aware that due to the dangers of U-Boats, if a person goes overboard then no rescue can be mounted; the boat cannot stop, it cannot use searchlights. It simply has to carry on. And when you’re in a mystery novel those sorts of conditions are liable to crank up the tension.

I would also say that this narrative creates a feeling of claustrophobia with its closed setting. This could be seen as akin to a snowed-in country house, but I think the psychological landscape is different between the two as on the boat all the windows have to be closed and blacked out and the main character comments on the sensory impact that it has. I found this made the opening of the book quite interesting.

The voyage has not advanced too much before we get this almost had-I-but-known passage about our main character’s (Max) regrets:

‘He has since admitted that if he had paid more attention to his fellow-passengers during the first twenty-four hours out, if he had studied more than the one or two he did study, much blood and brutality might have been avoided. But that is the whole point. You never do notice much of your fellow-passengers at the onset. You are tired, or depressed, or wrapped up in your own concerns. You see people only as blank faces with whom it is later difficult to associate the personalities you come to know. Even after several days it is sometimes difficult to sort them out. Of course, the Edwardic was so thinly populated that the passengers might have been ghosts wandering about in an over-decorated haunted house, and observation should have been easy. The answer lies in a cargo of high explosives, which is apt to distract the best detective instincts from watching the behaviour of a murderer.’

I found this an interesting section as I didn’t expect to find something written in that HIBK vein. However, it does raise a setting-specific point concerning the effect of having explosives in the hold. It does seem natural for that to have a silent but looming presence in the ship. The passage also comments on the much-reduced number of passengers. Due to the small cast of characters, I expected much more time to be spent with the suspects, with Max, Sir Henry Merrivale or another crew member being in conversation with them. However, I felt we didn’t get that and in fact we were more kept at a distance from them. In turn I thought this affected the plot from the mid-way point and this chimes in with the review made in The Saturday Review of Literature. They describe the book as a ‘customarily excellent Dickson example of turning the incredible into cold fact.’ Yet they also remark that the ‘story runs a bit thin’ and this is an opinion I would agree with. This issue combined with the minimal time spent with suspects effected the final solution and the ending for me. The solution had less of an impact for me and due to its convoluted nature, I didn’t feel bad about not solving it. It is not a palm-to-face obvious solution that the reader should have spotted. It is a quick, pacey read, although the denouement is marred slightly by the romantic note it ends on as the romance is dissatisfying because it is poorly built up to.

Nevertheless, there was one earlier scene which had me cheering from the rooftops (metaphorically speaking). It is after the first death and Max discovers that a female passenger called Valerie has been acting suspiciously and hiding in his cabin. She is enraged when he does not agree to open the ship’s safe to retrieve private items. She is surprised that he might want further information, information she naturally does not want to give. Max’s response to all of this though is perfect.

‘But you do understand? You will trust me, won’t you?’

Max Said:

‘Candidly, I will not. I have come across this sort of thing in books and films; but, by all the gods, I never imagined it could happen in real life. do you seriously imagine that you, or any other woman outside a story, can get away with that? Do you think you can tell what you choose to tell, and keep back what doesn’t suit your purpose; and then look like a martyr and say you’re sure some poor goop will trust you? They ruddy well won’t.’

Young men who incriminate themselves and impede investigations all for the love of a beautiful woman is a trope which does peeve me, so I was pleased to find no gallant knight in shining armour in Max. Valerie though was not a favourite character of mine. I found her rather annoying in her reticence. Her role in the plot is ultimately clever, but her impact on the plot getting to that point lowered my enjoyment of the story.

Rating: 3.75/5

See also: The Puzzle Doctor enjoyed this one more than me and you can read his review here.