To Wake the Dead by John Dickson Carr

On January 31st, young Christopher Kent was standing in front of the Royal Scarlet Hotel, and he had no money and he was very hungry. Kent was from South Africa and he had access to a considerable amount of money from his stake in Kent's South African Ales, his father's company.  Christopher had not wanted to spend his life brewing ale and instead wrote mystery novels. His friend Dan Reaper had told Christopher that he knew too little about real life and real people to write novels, and he challenged Christopher to work his way from Durban to London in four months without using any of the family funds. They were to meet at the Royal Scarlet Hotel at 10 am on February 1st.  As he stood there a room assignment card for room 707 blew past him. It guaranteed a room, bath, and breakfast. Christopher decided to try to use this card to get breakfast. He did get breakfast and a lot more then he had bargained for.

Christopher had gone to room 707 at the Royal Scarlet and had found the body of Jenny Kent. She had been strangled and beaten about the face. Christopher panicked, fled the hotel, and went to the home of Gideon Fell with whom he had corresponded. There he also found Inspector Hadley who told him about the murder of his cousin Rodney Kent. Dan Reaper's party from South Africa had been staying in the home of Sir Gyles Gay in Kent.  Rodney had been very violently strangled in his bedroom. The only witness to any thing connected to the strangling was Ritchie Bellows who was the son of the builder of the house. Ritchie was a drunk who seems to have come to the house after a binge, and fallen asleep on the couch. He said that he had seen a mysterious person in the uniform of a hotel employee walking down the hall. Rodney's wife Jenny was not in the house as she was visiting aunts elsewhere.

Reaper's party and Sir Gyles Gay left Kent and came to the Royal Scarlett early for the meeting with Christopher. Reaper's party consisted of his wife, Matilda, Jenny Kent, Francine Forbes, Reaper's niece, and Harvey Wrayburn. They had all taken rooms on the same floor of the hotel, and there was nobody else on that floor. Even the employees of the hotel would not be on that floor after midnight which was the time when Jenny had died.

Now Gideon Fell had two murders to solve in two separate locations. The members of the party spent a great deal of time developing suspicions of each other, and the manager of the hotel. Fell, of course, came through with the solution which will depended a great deal on keys and locks.

I was not quite happy about this book. Fell has information important to the solution of the crimes which is not given to the reader which is not playing fair. The mysterious room assignment card for room 707 which seems like it would have much significance is merely attributed to the wind blowing through a room. There are some other things which seem a bit contrived but I do not want to give any spoilers. This book was published in 1938, and is still in print.