the burning court    john dickson carr When the family found an odd piece of string tied at equal intervals into nine knots under Miles Despards pillow they dismissed this trifle from their minds But then the housekeeper a normally sensible woman told an incredible story of a beautiful woman in the old mans room  a woman who had walked through the wall Who could go through a door which had been bricked up and paneled over for two hundred years leaving an old man to a hideous death Edward Stevens smiled at their fears of the supernatural  until he read a manuscript on female murderers On one of the pages was a clear photograph of a woman Under it in small letters had been printed Marie DAubray Guillotined for Murder 1861 Edward Stevens was looking at a photograph of his own wife