The Curse of the Bronze Lamp by Carter Dickson (William Morrow, 1945) is the 16th appearance of Sir Henry Merivale, man of many talents including physician and barrister. He encounters Lady Helen Loring at a hotel in Cairo where he is staying supposedly for his health. Helen is part of an archaeological expedition led by her father, Earl of Severn. The group has discovered a tomb filled with priceless artifacts and the publicity has been overwhelming. Helen is returning to England at the end of the season and takes a small bronze lamp with the consent of the Egyptian government. At the train station a local soothsayer who objects to the lamp leaving the country predicts that Helen will not live to see the lamp in her home, and the reporters go all out foreseeing doom for the members of the dig team.
Helen is accompanied by friends to the family country home Severn Hall. She enters the mansion, and that’s the last anyone sees of her. When her friends follow her after a few minutes, her coat and the bronze lamp are on the hall floor. The building is searched from top to bottom and she is nowhere to be found. Benson the butler had hired a squad of gardeners to get the grounds ready and they surrounded the mansion. They could say with confidence that Helen had not left by any of the many exits. The manor house is a gothic creation of an early Countess of Severn and has a dungeon, anterooms, and nooks and crannies galore. Hundreds of places she could be hidden.
Thus begins a classic locked room mystery. It capitalizes on the legends that arose around the discoverers of the Tutankhamun tomb in 1922, prophesying death to those who disturbed the rest of the dead king. It also highlighted the surge of influence by spiritualists and fortune tellers in the 1930s with the Egyptian fortuneteller and a Californian psychic who also wants the bronze lamp.
Merivale is in rare form, especially in his confrontation with a taxi driver who cut Merivale’s tie off in frustration. Merivale retaliated by gluing a five-pound note to the driver’s face. Chief Inspector Masters of the local police finds him maddening but at the same time realizes Merivale’s talents at unraveling problems.
I haven’t read enough of the series to assess how this entry rates against the others. I found a couple of reviewers’ blogs who ranked their top five and this one was not on their lists, so apparently it is not among the best. I found it entertaining enough, if dated, and the solution mostly ingenious. As always, Dickson/Carr planted clues in plain sight and I missed them anyway. Recommended for fans of impossible crimes and for followers of classic mysteries.