三口棺材 (1935)

《三口棺材》（英语：The Hollow Man），美国作家约翰·狄克森·卡尔所著的推理小说，1935年推出英国版时名为《The Hollow Man》，后来在美国出版时易名《The Three Coffins》。1981年，此书被选为最佳密室推理小说。

故事简介

热衷神秘学的葛莫里教授在酒吧中被一神秘人骚扰威胁，后来葛莫里被人发现在封闭的密室中被人枪击致死，而最大嫌疑的神秘人亦倒毙在街上。警方查出葛莫里与神秘人其实是兄弟关系，当年他们一起逃狱时，葛莫里抛下兄弟自己离开。最后，菲尔‧基甸博士解开两宗谋杀的谜底，而在谜底揭开前，基甸博士分析推理小说里不同密室杀人的类型，成为推理小说史上著名的“密室讲义”。

The Hollow Man (The Three Coffins in the USA) is a 1935 locked room mystery novel by the American writer John Dickson Carr, featuring his recurring investigator Gideon Fell. It contains in chapter 17 the often-reprinted "locked room lecture" in which Dr Fell speaks directly to the reader, setting out the various ways in which murder can be committed in an apparently locked room or otherwise impossible situation.

The book received high praise from many critics, and in 1981 was selected as the best locked-room mystery of all time by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers.

Plot

Professor Charles Grimaud's meeting with friends at a London tavern is interrupted by the illusionist Pierre Fley, who threatens Grimaud and warns of an even more dangerous brother who seeks Grimaud's life. Grimaud tells him to send his brother and be damned.

A few nights later, a visitor concealing his identity with a false face arrives at Grimaud's house and is shown up to his study by the housekeeper, Mme Dumont. Grimaud's secretary, positioned with a view of the study door, sees Grimaud greet the visitor and let him in; he continues to watch until a shot is heard. Inside the room, Grimaud is found to be dying; but neither visitor nor weapon can be found, and there is unbroken snow outside the only window. On his deathbed, Grimaud makes a confusing statement stating that his brother was responsible.

Gideon Fell discovers that before Grimaud settled in London he was known as Károly Grimaud Horváth, and that he had two brothers, one of whom now calls himself Fley. The three had, years earlier, tried to escape a Transylvanian labour camp by faking their own deaths and being buried alive in their coffins.

A newspaper reports that minutes after Grimaud's shooting witnesses saw Fley walking alone down a snow-covered cul-de-sac, and heard a voice shout "The second bullet is for you!" followed by a gunshot. Fley is found dead in the snow, with the revolver that had killed both him and Grimaud lying nearby. There are no tracks in the snow but his.

Fell receives word from Transylvania that the three brothers had been imprisoned for bank robbery, and that after escaping his coffin Grimaud had deliberately left the other two to die. Fley had been saved and returned to prison, but the third brother had perished.

Fell concludes that Fley had been blackmailing Grimaud and threatening to disclose his part in the third brother's death. It was Grimaud who had in retaliation been planning to kill Fley, not vice versa. Grimaud had carefully constructed the illusion that Fley had gone into the study, fired at him, then escaped from the window and returned to his own flat to commit suicide.

In fact, Grimaud had gone to Fley's flat, shot him, posed him as a suicide with the gun in his hand, then put on a cardboard overcoat and mask ready to impersonate his own visitor. But his plan went awry as Fley had not been killed outright, and managed to get out into the street to seek a doctor. When Grimaud accidentally showed himself, Fley screamed, "The second bullet is for you!" and fired, dying from the effort. Though wounded, Grimaud managed to return to his own house and proceeded with his plan. He had previously positioned a large mirror just inside the study door, and as the door was opened he removed his hat and mask making it appear to the watching secretary that he was already in the room and was coming forward to greet his visitor. Once inside, he burned the cardboard items and hid the heavy mirror up in the chimney, the effort bringing on a final haemorrhage. He had just enough time to set off a firecracker to fake a gunshot.

The seeming impossibility of the crimes arose entirely by accident. Fley's shooting appeared to happen some minutes after Grimaud's because of an incorrectly-set clock in a shop window; and Grimaud had not anticipated snow, making Fley's purported escape from the window impossible.