BY THE TIME John Dickson Carr (1906–1977) turned twenty-four, he had seen more than fifty of his stories and poems published in high school and Haverford College magazines and his first novel, It Walks by Night (1930), released by Harper & Brothers. He went on to write nearly ninety books, three dozen short stories, seven plays, and more than ninety radio dramas. Most of his output was written under his own name, but he produced a historical adventure novel, Devil Kinsmere (1934), as Roger Fairbairn; a mystery novel, The Bowstring Murders (1933), as Carr Dickson; and twenty-six books as Carter Dickson, mostly in the series about Sir Henry Merrivale. The series of twenty-two novels begins with The Plague Court Murders (1934), one of the greatest locked-room mysteries of all time. Carr also enjoyed collaborating with other writers, producing Fatal Descent (1939; British title: Drop to His Death) with Major C. J. C. Street (using the pseudonym John Rhode), on whom he based one of his detectives, Colonel March of Scotland Yard, and The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1954) with Adrian Conan Doyle.
Merrivale, who liked to refer to himself as “The Old Man,” was Carr’s personal favorite among his protagonists. Although it has often been suggested that the barrel-shaped, cigar-chomping detective was based on Sir Winston Churchill, Carr denied it, though it may be easily perceived that Merrivale becomes more and more like the distinguished prime minister as the series progresses.
“Blind Man’s Hood” was first published in the April 1938 issue of The Strand Magazine; it was first collected in The Department of Queer Complaints (London, William Heinemann, 1940).