Men for Pieces (1949) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's Men for Pieces (1949), thirty-sixth entry in the Anthony Bathurst series, marks Flynn's second return to print after Dean Street Press temporarily shut down following the death of Rupert Heath, but started back up last December – reprinting the first five of Sara Woods' legal mysteries. Recently, Dean Street Press resumed their reprints of Brian Flynn. Men for Pieces, Black Agent (1950), And Cauldron Bubble (1951), Where There Was Smoke (1951) and The Ring of Innocent (1952) are the first Flynn reprints to appear since the last badge was published in October, 2022.

I mentioned in previous reviews how you can never be quite sure what you get when you open one of Flynn's mysteries, because the style shifts from book to book. Bathurst can be unraveling a classically-styled locked room mystery in one book and the next finds him smack in the middle of a courtroom drama or turn-of-the-century thriller paying homage to the ghost of Conan Doyle. Men for Pieces is simply an old-fashioned detective story with a baffling crime, or rather a potential crime, allowing Bathurst and DCI Andrew MacMorran to take opposite views. So play up their roles as the theorizing amateur and practically-minded professional.

Their problem centers around a young man, named Peter Oliver, who works at the Lombard Street branch of Delaney's bank and recently got engaged to the beautiful cashier in Lambert's restaurant, Stella Forrest – giving him no reason to disappear without a word. First to notice his absence is the bank manager when he fails to keep their appointment to go over an important file and neither did he show up for his lunch with Stella. She begins to fear the worst when her investigation raises more questions than answers. Fortunately, she spots Bathurst and MacMorran at the restaurant and decides to plead for their help. They listen to her story and decide to look around his place themselves, but when they, more or less illegally, enter his house they make macabre discovery. Oliver's body, in full evening dress, lying on the bathroom floor with his throat cut from ear to ear and "in the dead man's left hand was an open, white-handled razor of the old-fashioned type." Oliver was left handed and "the cut is just what a 'southpaw' would inflict on himself."

For the practical-minded MacMorran, everything points towards suicide with the wound being the clincher ("it's that left-handed cut on the throat I can't get over"). Beside, the house was deserted at the time. Oliver's father is in Scotland to attend family business, his mother and sister are in Bournemouth holidaying and his younger brother is on a hiking tour somewhere. Bathurst believes it was murder without much to support his theory, until Oliver's sister Margaret returns home screaming blue murder that her brother had been deliberately killed. Reason why she believes that has all to do with her brother's bathing habits, the position of the bath plug and the water tap ("...the person who used this bath on Monday evening was not my brother Peter... it was my brother Peter's murderer"). Bathurst agrees, however, his evidence remains as infinitesimally small as the tiny piece of fabric discovered in the groove of the razor handle. A microscopic point for Bathurst, but not enough to sway MacMorran. Not yet, anyway.

So the friendly mental sparring and verbal bantering between Bathurst and MacMorran makes for a fun, first-half with an intriguingly-posed central puzzle, but the case doesn't remain static forever as new, unexpected developments begin to pile on – tipping the scales in favor of Bathurst's views. A noteworthy development is the disappearance, and reappearance, of £20,000 worth of San Jonquilo bonds from Delaney's bank. San Jonquilo is the fictitious South American country Flynn introduced nearly twenty years previously in The Orange Axe (1931). Bathurst mentions Sir Beverley Pelham and the Presidency of Sebastian Loredana in passing. This is one of those minor, but attractive, parts of Flynn's detective fiction. While the series wildly differ from book to book, jumping from a chase thriller or hunting for pulp-style serial killer to an old-fashioned drawing room mystery, Flynn always let his readers know they take place in the same universe. For example, the side-characters from his first novel, The Billiard-Room Mystery (1927), turned up or were mentioned in subsequent novels. One of those small touches to help the illusion the series takes place in a universe of its own. Not to mention how it was used to show how Bathurst's reputation grow by word of mouth.

Anyway, the ending and reveal of the very well-hidden, relatively fairly clued murderer was handled with Flynn customary deftness. Only two plot-points left me a little dissatisfied. Firstly, the real motive is hidden too well. You can still identify the murderer, if you pay attention, but most will probably look in a very different direction for the motive. Secondly, I wish there was a single clue to the "quary note" found on Oliver's body (ROT13: whfg fubj uvf ebbz unf n obbxpnfr penzzrq jvgu qrgrpgvir abiryf). That last one is a minor quibble that can be ignored. So other than the perhaps too well-hidden motive, Men for Pieces is an inconspicuously solid entry in the series showing Flynn was still going strong as the Golden Age detective story was about to enter its twilight years. So look forward to going over the other reprints!