Christopher Bush's 42nd Ludovic Travers novel, The Case of the Burnt Bohemian (1953), takes place during the period in the series when Travers juggled between his positions as chairman of the Broad Street Detective Agency and, what they call, "an unofficial expert" to Scotland Yard – whenever Chief Superintendent George Wharton has a case requiring more than routine police work. A specialist with an agile mind "to theorise and suggest." Bush neatly used this juggling between positions to present Travers with two separate, apparently unconnected cases that quickly turn out to be closely intertwined.
Dr. Arthur Chale, a psychiatrist, believes his life is in danger ("we deal with all sorts of queer people, you know") and wants to know whether the agency can "supply some sort of bodyguard." Travers advises Chale to go to the police for protection, "it's their business to do the job for nothing," but he doesn't want publicity nor name the person who's threatening him – agreeing to discuss the matter personal the following day. This strange phone call does not sit well with Travers who immediately begins to dig around for background information on the psychiatrist, which "produced a story of blackmail, hypnotism, collaboration with Germans and a probable shooting against a wall" ("all the ingredients needed, in fact, for a popular thriller"). That's only one-half of his problem. The other half comes when Wharton calls to ask him come to a place called Borden Walk in Chelsea.
A reclusive, completely unknown painter, Vandyke Sindle, is found stabbed to death and badly burned in the north top studio of the Chelsea flat in Borden Walk. Sindle was found lying face down in a little bonfire, but the fire was discovered in time to prevent it from consuming the whole place. And the body. However, Sindle's back was badly burned with his face and hands entirely destroyed ("even the dental plates had gone"). So was the fire started to conceal the cause of death or the victim's identity? Travers then begins to uncover links between the case of the so-called nervous psychiatrist and the burnt bohemian cemented when a second murder comes to light and Chale failed to meet his appointment. A problem as pretty as it's tricky!
I recounted in past reviews how Bush pivoted from the traditional, 1930s British whodunits to the realism of the American hardboiled school, of Raymond Chandler, slowly transforming Travers from an amateur detective into a private investigator – who narrates his own cases. This transition was not without some rough spots or growing pains resulting in a few poorly plotted novels (e.g. The Case of the Fourth Detective, 1951), but Bush rebounded around the mid-1950s. While the plots were trimmed down affairs compared to the elaborately-plotted 1930s titles, the plots began to resettle along classical lines (e.g. The Case of the Three Lost Letters, 1954) and Bush appeared to draw on the detective stories he probably enjoyed reading earlier in the century. The Case of the Flowery Corpse (1956) feels closer to the work of J.J. Connington and R. Austin Freeman than his own work from the '20s and '30s. You can say practically the same about The Case of the Burnt Bohemian with the emphasis on the problem of blurred, destroyed or faked identities rather than picking alibis apart. The term alibi is probably uttered fewer than a half dozen times, but the problem of identification, obscured pasts and possible motives offer the two detectives with plenty of material to check up on or theorize about. Props to Bush for revealing that one “twist” well before the ending, because that possibility should be gnawing away at every reader at that point. So instead of trying to draw out a cheap surprise, Bush used it to send Travers and Wharton back to the drawing board to start again from scratch.
The Case of the Burnt Bohemian is an engrossing, fairly clued and cleverly constructed detective novel, but even more than that, I enjoyed seeing Travers and Wharton back together again – both of whom can be counted among my favorite detective characters. When this series and the genre was its height, Bush nailed the relationship dynamics between the amateur detective and professional policeman perfectly with Travers and Wharton. Travers even gets upstaged a couple of times by the theatrical Wharton to show he's no Lestrade. Travers describes their collaborations as "a peculiar, haphazard, spasmodic kind of association" in which Wharton ("as Grand Inquisitor") takes care of the routine, while Travers "supposed to have the right kind of manners to interview the right kind of people" and permitted under Wharton's scrutiny to theorize. Travers explains: "if I'm wrong, the theory was mine. If it looks promising, it's ours. If it happens to be a winner, I ultimately discover that it was his." Or, when Travers points out the clues/tells they missed, Wharton nonchalantly responds, "funny you should miss a thing like that."
It's one of the elements making the 1930s and early '40s titles a highlight of both this series and the Golden Age detective story. It's therefore sad to see Bush had obviously grown tired of Wharton and had no more need for him as a character. Travers is even becoming tired of his shenanigans. Bush began to fade him out of the series, before quietly retiring him after his brief appearance in The Case of the Russian Cross (1957). Wharton in these 1950s novels does feel a bit like a relic from the series past, but I'll always appreciate the "Old General" and it was good to see him back again with Travers this late in the game. And tackling a worthy case to boot. Highly recommended to fans of the series.
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