Death of a Beauty Queen (1935) by E.R. Punshon

Last month, I reviewed Brought to Light (1954) by E.R. Punshon, a late entry in the series, which saw Bobby Owen at the tail-end of his career when he had reached the rank of Deputy Commander of the Metropolitan Police. The story was excellent, full of zest and vitality, but ended my post with commenting that I preferred the early period novels when Owen was a young, fresh-faced policeman moving through the ranks – traveling the British countryside on his motorcycle. So I decided to return to one of the earlier novels when Owen was still working under the guidance of Superintendent Mitchell of Scotland Yard.

Death of a Beauty Queen (1935) is the fifth novel in the Bobby Owen series and begins with a beauty contest in the Brush Hill Central Cinema, organized by Mr. Sargent, who's the manager of the cinema.

Before I go on, a brief aside on the setting of the story: last year, I wondered in my review of John Russell Fearn's One Remained Seated (1946) how many detective novels or short stories had a cinema as setting, because it looks as if they are few and far between – only P.R. Shore's The Death Film (1932) and Fearn's Pattern of Murder (2006) came to mind. Now we can add Punshon's Death of a Beauty Queen to the list. Even if the cinema was only used here as the stage for a beauty contest.

The dead-on favorite to win the contest is Miss Caroline Mears, "a veritable goddess of old Grecian dream," whose only flaw are her hard, blue eyes, but her overall beauty silenced the dense crowd for a minute before bursting into applause. Before she can be announced as the winner, Mears is found fatally wounded in her private dressing room and is rushed to the hospital. Where she died upon arrival.

Superintended Mitchell and Sergeant Bobby Owen quickly come to the conclusion that there were several people in the "regular pandemonium" backstage with a potential motive for murder. Mears played a dirty trick on one of the contestants, Lilian Ellis, which effectively ruined any chance she might have had. Ellis had been promised a job as permanent mannequin at the Brush Hill Bon Marche, if she met with any success, but Mears spoiled those plans. And she was known to have a temper. Mr. Sargeant has been flanked the whole evening by Paul Irwin, an influential member of the borough council and a hard-line Puritan, who's only son, Leslie, is sweet on Mears and wants to marry her – much against his wishes. They discover Leslie in Mears' dressing room and he flees. Shortly after the murder, a man arrives at the cinema, named Claude Maddox, introducing himself to Mitchell and Owen as the fiance of Mears.

And then there are such complications as to what happened to the victim's handbag, who was the "tough looking bloke" looking for one Carrie Quin and why was the murder weapon traced back to the door-keeper, Wood.

So the premise is fairly standard affair: a body surrounded by a small circle of suspects supplied with motives and opportunity. Unfortunately, this is the only problem and the story lacked the labyrinth of plot-threads characteristic of Punshon's work, which made this one of his unusual slender detective stories – much like It Might Lead Anywhere (1946). It didn't help that the murderer was incredibly easy to spot.

Nevertheless, it was, always a well written story and the last half sprung a pleasant surprise on me when it introduced two, (quasi) impossible situations. Firstly, a suspect escapes from the police, in bare feet and pajamas, but, unlikely as it may seem, this person appears to have vanished into thin air. Successfully eluding the posse of constables. This much amuses the British press and the world-wide community who reported and speculated wildly on the matter. Several prominent Nazis in Germany expressed their believe that "the Jews were at the bottom of the whole thing," while French newspapers dispatched special correspondents "to report on this strange manifestation of 'l'hysterie Anglaise.'" A fun little side distraction in the story.

A second, full-blown locked room mystery is introduced in the last three chapters of the book when a murder is committed in a cottage under police observation, back and front, but the only other person on the premise was a maid – who obviously is not the murder. The locked room trick also explains the unlikely escape of the bare-footed suspect, but these closely linked impossibilities are slightly marred by the fact that the ancient solution was cribbed from Conan Doyle. And not clued at all. So, while I appreciate to find two impossible crimes in a book not listed in Locked Room Murders (1991), I could have done without them. You see, I picked Punshon to smear out my locked room reading and have a bit of variation. What does Punshon do? He springs not one, but two, on me. I should have gone with The Dusky Hour (1937) or Suspects – Nine (1939). Oh, well.

All in all, Death of a Beauty Queen is a mixed bag of tricks. It was good to see Owen back at the side of Mitchell and him playing a secondary role suddenly reminded me of those written by Christopher Bush, in which Ludovic Travers plays the shadow of Superintend George Wharton. The book was as well written and characterized as any of Punshon's best detective novels, but the plot was unable to sustain itself pass its strong opening. On a whole, not too bad, but Punshon has written better.

Well, I was planning to take a short break from the locked room mystery and spread them out a bit, but now that Punshon has ruined that, I'm going to return to Fearn for my next read. Hey, I have to moral compass of a heroin addict when it comes to impossible crime fiction. Why wouldn't I use kindly Mr. Punshon as an excuse to indulge in my locked room vice. I would sell your children's soul to the devil to get back the lost manuscripts of Hake Talbot and Joseph Commings. :)

Brought to Light (1954) by E.R. Punshon

Brought to Light (1954) is the thirty-second detective novel in the estimable Bobby Owen series, published when E.R. Punshon was an octogenarian and had only two years left to live, but the characters, plot and story-telling still bristled with the vitality and inventiveness of the early novels – barely any wear or tear. I think Nick Fuller described the story perfectly when he called it the work of a man half Punshon's age.

Punshon not only retained his vitality as a story-teller, but also remembered how to design a maze-like plot out of numerous, intertwined plot-threads and manipulated those strands like a nimble-fingered puppeteer. This is what makes even late-period Punshon a treat to read.

Reprinted by Dean Street Press

Brought to Light brings Bobby Owen, Deputy Commander of the Metropolitan Police, to the pleasant country town of Penton, "once upon a time the capitol of the Kingdom of Mercia," where he had been given a course of three lectures to the West Mercian Police. The West Mercian Chief Constable, Major Rowley, had offered modest prizes to his men for the three best essays on these lectures and Owen was tasked with picking the winners, but his attention is drawn away to the lingering residue of a tragic, long-buried love story in a nearby village – involving grave robbing, lost poems and murder.

Hillings-under-Moor is "a scattered, lonely sort of place" laying on "the fringe of the Great Mercian Moor." The only claim to fame this tiny village has is a lonely grave in the churchyard.

Janet Merton was the lover of a celebrated poet, Stephen Asprey, who placed his love-letters and unpublished poems in her coffin when she passed away, because one day, he wanted the world to know what it owed the woman who had rekindled his Muse. So the grave began to attract coach parties, American tourists and passing motorists, who often "try to chip off bits of the tombstone for what they call souvenirs," but there has also been much talk about opening the grave to retrieve the letters and poems. A proponent of opening the grave is Edward Pyle, of the Morning Daily, who has a lot of back-room pull and even got a question asked about it in Parliament – prompting the Home Secretary to promise a request for opening the grave would receive "favourable consideration." However, Pyle faces stiff opposition.

The grave is a freehold of the Merton family and is now in name of Miss Christabel Merton, a niece of Janet Merton, who says she will never agree to its opening.

The Duke of Blegborough also has his personal reasons why he would prefer the Merton grave to remain undisturbed. His wife had died from taking an overdose of sleeping pills and, locally, there were whispers the Duchess was poisoned by the Duke, because he believed she had cheated on him with the famous poet, Asprey. The Duke is afraid that the love-letters mentions his late wife and fan the flames.

However, if you think this is the whole premise of Brought to Light, you're sorely mistaken and need to read more Punshon. This is only the beginning.

Several years ago, the previous rector, Mr. Thorne, left the rectory one night for an evening stroll and has never been seen or heard of since. There were gossip that Thorn was heavily in debt or got himself involved with a woman who had disappeared around the same time, but other simply assumed he has lost his way on the lonely, desolate moor when he was caught in one of the moor mists that can come up out of nowhere – simply walked circles until he died from cold and exposure. The present curate-in-charge, Mr. Day-Bell, wants Owen to take charge of the Thorn case in the hope that it will smother the rumormongers. Mr. Day-Bell also worries the Merton grave might be opened without permission.

The widow of the poet, Mrs. Asprey, lives nearby the churchyard in "an old, half-ruined house" and is "a formidable old lady." She had chased Pyle from her home with a revolver and she has been making the victory sign above the grave of Janet Merton. There's a Samuel Chrines, a "petty scribbler," who claims to be the love child of Asprey and Pyle has brought a hard-bitten, unsavory character, named Item Sims, with him from London.

Reprinted by Ramble House

So, there you have, as I remember them, all of the plot pieces and, towards the halfway mark of the story, a burned-out caravan with a body inside is found on the Great Mercian Moor.

Deputy Commander Owen takes charge of the investigation and calmly, but competently, traces down the murder weapon and talks to everyone involved with grave, which actually reminded me of Ngaio Marsh. However, Brought to Light is not guilty of, what Brad of Aw, Sweet Mystery calls, "dragging-the-marsh." The characters he talks to are interesting or unusual. Such as John Hagen, church sexton and a passionate, self-taught classical scholar, who only lives for his books. Combine this with a pleasantly tangled plot, rich writing and an equally rich backdrop brimming with ancient history – which has always been one of Punshon's strong points. Death Comes to Cambers (1935) and Ten Star Clues (1941) are good examples of Punshon's sense of time-and place.

I mentioned in my opening that there was barely any wear and tear, but the keyword there is barely and there a little bit of wear in these very late-period Bobby Owen stories that should not go unmentioned. At this late hour, Punshon evidently had become less adept at hiding the murderer from his readers. I spotted the murderer here even sooner than the one in Punshon's swan song, Six Were Present (1956), but hardly something to complain about in this case. Brought to Light is an impressive and imaginative piece of detective-fiction from a 82-year-old man. So I can forgive Punshon here for having failed to pull the wool over my eyes.

However, I do prefer early-period Bobby Owen to the high-ranking, battle-tested Commander of the Metropolitan Police. Owen was at his best when he was young, fresh-faced policeman, slowly climbing the ranks, while traveling the countryside on his motor cycle to go from one murder to the other. Or the period when he was working for the Wychshire County Police (e.g. Diabolic Candelabra, 1942). But that is a personal preference. Not a complaint. 

 

So, all in all, Brought to Light turned out to be a worthy addition to this excellent series. It was perhaps not entirely flawless, but Punshon had barely lost a step in nearly half a century of writing, beginning with The Mystery of Lady Isobel (1907), which is a welcome change from the dramatic decline in quality that usually befalls prolific writers towards the end of their careers – which unfortunately happened to my favorite mystery writer, John Dickson Carr. So it was nice to see that one of my other favorites had remained (nearly) at the top of his game towards the end.

The Golden Dagger (1951) by E.R. Punshon

The Golden Dagger (1951) is E.R. Punshon's twenty-ninth title about his longtime series detective, Bobby Owen, who started out as a police constable (Information Received, 1933) and climbed to the rank of Commander, which is a position he held during the last period of the series – beginning with So Many Doors (1949) and ending with the wonderfully introspective Six Were Present (1956). This story is part of that last stretch in the series and sees Owen doing more, as a Commander of Police, than his rank would probably allow him to do outside of the printed page.

Reprinted by Dean Street Press

The story opens with Commander Bobby Owen sitting in his office, "almost as busy indeed as bored," as he sifts through the daily accumulation of paperwork and reports on his desk. A dull routine of bureaucratic procedure disrupted by the arrival of Detective Constable Ford.

An anonymous phone message was received from a call-box in Lower High Hill, reporting a murder at a place called Cobblers, which is the home of Lord Rone, who possesses one of "the finest art collections in the world" and lately has been filling the pages of the Daily Trumpeter – who insist on labeling him an "Export Dictator." A followup report brought to Owen's desk informs him that a constable has found fancy-handled, ornamental dagger in the call-box with bloodstains on the blade. The handle of the dagger was in the shape of "a nude woman in ivory and gold," a 16th century piece of metal work by Benvenuto Cellini, which has "a smile of evil, secret joy." Obviously, a fine piece of art like that could have only come from the collection of Lord Rone.

As noted above, The Golden Dagger was published during the twilight years of the series, when Punshon was 79 or 80, but the intricacies of the multi-layered, maze-like plot showcase the same vitality that can be found in his earlier novels. One of the puzzling, intricate problems of the plot is the apparent lack of a murder victim.

Nobody appears to have actually died in Lower High Hill, let alone murdered with an ornamental dagger, but there are two men with (tangential) ties to Cobblers who have gone missing.

The first of these two men is a writer of popular romantic "slush," calling himself "Tudor King," but he shuns the public and publicity like a leper, which only enlarged his popularity as a novelist and this vexed his secretary/housekeeper, Charlotte Cato – an "extremely realistic novelist of former days" who never achieved the commercial success of her current employer. Sour grapes, spiked with envy, can be a motive for murder. The second person missing from the scene is Baldwin Jones, who had been brought to Cobblers by the brash, outspoken daughter of Lord Rone, Miss Maureen Carton, but she send him packing with a black eye when he tried to kiss her.

However, one of Maureen's admirers, Jack Longton, insists it was him who gave Jones a shiner and this lead is further complicated by the fact that Jones turns out to be a petty, two-bit blackmailer. And there are more people who could be involved in this possible murder case. Most of them are staying at Cobblers as either guests or employees of Lord Rone.

Richard Moyse is hoping to the secure the vacant position of personal secretary and Lord Rone suggested he stayed a day, or two, with him so that he can consider him for the post and Moyse conveniently saved Lord Rone – when a man snatched his dispatch case and threw him in front of car. Moyse not only stopped the car, but was able to retrieve the stolen dispatch case. The second person is a young art critic, Norman Oxendale, who asked permission to stay at Cobblers to inspect the famous pictures and miniatures. Or is there an ulterior motive for his visit? After all, there had been previous attempt at theft and someone had succeeded in taking the Cellini dagger from the Long Gallery.

Finally, there's one of "the best-known historians and archaeologists in the country," Sir William Watson, who doubles as a doormat for his wife, Lady Watson, who likes male lap-dogs and lately she had her eyes Oxendale – after Jones had disappeared from the stage. Add to all of that "a very illusive kind of clue," namely a journeying black Homburg hat, burned letters and a body found in a haunted forest and you got yourself a late, but fairly typical, Punshon-style detective novel.

As you would expect from Punshon, even at this stage in his life, he works, pulls and manipulates the strings of all these plot-threads with the nimble fingers of a practiced puppeteer. However, it must be said that the plot-complexity here comes mainly from pulling all of the plot-threads together, because, taken by themselves, they tended to be rather simple. You can especially see this weakness in the murder that's at the heart of the plot, which turned out to be as simple as it was sordid, but the numerous plot-threads that were tied around it completely obfuscated the simplistic solution – which was also done by the meddling behavior of one particular character.

This helped obscure the fact that the murderer's identity was weakly clued, which Owen's admitted at the end when he said that the clues, while present, were very small. So small that the case, officially, ended with a verdict of murder against "person or persons unknown." We know who the murderer's identity and motive, but Owen lacked the conclusive evidence to file the case away as solved.

Nevertheless, while arguably not the best or strongest entry in the Bobby Owen series, The Golden Dagger is still a pleasantly busy, fairly clever detective novel that will please loyal, long-time readers of Punshon.

So the plot, while not perfect, was far from a crushing disappointment, but there was another aspect of the story that depressed me and relates to the depiction of the bleak, depressing state of post-World War II Britain – which strongly reminded me of Cyril Hare's When the Wind Blows (1949) and Leo Bruce's Cold Blood (1952).

There several references to taxes, like a super tax, which is supposed to leave nobody with more than six thousand pounds a year and this made it very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a large, fully staffed estate. It's even mentioned that, by then, the attire of an old-fashioned housemaid "considered rather worse than the wearing of handcuffs and leg-irons." Or how, years after the war ended, rationing is still going on and the reader is treated to a brief scene in which Owen eats his share of "the week's bacon ration." These references, littered throughout the story, gives the book a slight hint of gloom and doom, because you realize that an era had definitively ended. An era in which our beloved mystery writers and detective characters had thrived.

I suppose that's something that will always cast a gloomy, depressing pall over these British mysteries from the 1950s. Anyway, I'll try to picking uplifting for my next read. Probably Case Closed. A series that has never failed to lift my spirits. So stay tuned!

Wages of Sin

"Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil."

- Father Brown (G.K. Chesterton's "The Flying Stars," from The Innocence of Father Brown, 1911)

E.R. Punshon's It Might Lead Anywhere (1946) is the twenty-second entry in the outstanding Bobby Owen series, currently the Acting Chief Constable of the Wychshire County Police, which enmeshes him in a religious rivalry and a brutal murder in an otherwise peaceful place – one that actually falls outside of his jurisdiction. But when has that ever stopped one of our beloved detective characters from poking their nose where it doesn't belong? Exactly!

The backdrop of the book is an ancient borough, Oldfordham, with "a charter granted by one of the early Plantagenet kings" and "the mayor's chain of office dated from Saxon times," but has since shrunken in size and importance. However, it still boosts a practically non-existent crime rate and the last person who died there by a murderer's hand was nearly a century ago.

Well, that changed shortly after Owen had to intervene in a neighboring village, Chipping Up, where he managed to quell a near riot between the locals and an ex-boxer turned revivalist preacher, Duke Dell – who constantly preaches about what he calls "The Vision." Dell's preaching had an effect on one person, Alfred Brown, who was a quiet, inoffensive recluse, but recently he has began disturbing church services. A sustained protest against what he called "popish practices." The former prizefighter also had been annoying everyone "by a general and sweeping denunciation" of the villagers and their ways.

So, when Owen first lays eyes on the preacher he stands on the banks of a stream, "roaring defiance," as a hostile crowd surrounds him. Dell promises he would cast anyone in the water who would approach him and Brown had already been flung into the stream, but that was accidental. Regardless, the miser nearly lost his life in the fall and his face is bruised and bloodied.

Owen succeeds in defusing the situation and prevents an old-fashioned free-for-all, but the incident is brought back to his attention on the following day when he reads in the Midwych Courier about the discovery of Brown's body at his home in Oldfordham – brutally beaten to death with a heavy kitchen poker. Oldfordham has its own, small police force and the investigation is in the hands of Chief Constable Spencer. However, the case has piqued the interest of Owen and craftily wormed his way into the investigation, which he eventually completely takes over after Spencer gets sidelined with a splitting headache (i.e. attempt on his life). But the case is far from a cakewalk.

Despite the sudden unset of religious mania, Brown was a lonely recluse and everyone seemed surprise when the police found a stash of gold sovereigns underneath the floorboards of his cottage. So nobody really seemed to have had a motive and the clues were severely lacking. And that's one of the admitted short comings of the book.

More than halfway through the book, Owen acknowledges "that he had not been able to find a single material clue" and all he had to show was "psychological stuff." The role of the various characters played and their hidden, interlocking relationships.

Obviously, the near fatal incident at Chipping Up makes Dell one of the suspects, who may have been guided by his vision, but Brown's railing against Roman practices also placed Rev. Alexander Childs, Anglo-Catholic vicar of St. Barnabas Church, among the suspects – since an attempt of the vicar to make peace ended with a teapot thrown in his direction. Brown also appears to have past ties with a local solicitor, Maurice Goodman, who has a new secretary, Miss Theresa Foote. A pretty, flirtatious young woman who's acquainted with one Mr. Langley Long. Long "bore an odd family resemblance" to a Flight-Lieutenant or the Royal Australian Air Force, Denis Kayes, who was present at the skirmish that opened the book. And he was very reluctant to give his name to Owen.

The plot largely hinges on these relationships and how they could have lead to the barbaric bludgeoning of Brown, however, one or two genuine clues eventually turn up. One of them has to do with the radio broadcast Brown was listening to on his expensive wireless, but completely missed the significant hint Punshon attached to this. So the plot offers an actual detective problem to the reader, but the problems requires experience and intuition as much as deductive reasoning.

Anthony Boucher praised the characterization, gentle humor and the logical working out of the murder, but noted that the story seemed ponderous. I think this has to do with Punshon concentrating on simply one story-line: the reasons for murdering such a harmless old miser as Brown. Usually, Punshon prefers to manipulate multiple plot-threads with the nimble fingers of a master puppeteer, but here the plot is very slender and focused on just one problem. A problem that comes with a number of complications, such as a hoard of gold and the religious angle, but a single problem nonetheless and Punshon has a rather verbose, ornamental writing style – which can easily make a story with a trimmed down plot look ponderous in comparison with previous entries in the series.

That being said, I still very much enjoyed It Might Lead Anywhere. But than again, I've become a great admirer of both Punshon and Owen. I think some of the minor shortcomings of this particular title won't deter other fans from enjoying it either, but I would recommend new readers to begin somewhere else in the series. Such as Information Received (1933), Death Comes to Cambers (1935), Ten Star Clues (1941) and There's a Reason for Everything (1945). Or do what I should have done and read them in order, but that's entirely up to you. But you should give the series a shot, because it's one of the great detective series from the Golden Age.

Murder's a Horrid Business

"We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination."

- Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902)

Everybody Always Tells (1950) is the twenty-seventh entry in E.R. Punshon's prolific Bobby Owen series, who's "quite an important person nowadays at Scotland Yard," which tantalizingly promised "a fatal knife-blow" delivered to a patent agent and scientific adviser to a well-known law-firm – a blow that's reportedly delivered inside a locked room. So, of course, the book attracted my attention and assumed it would be a great followup to the recently reviewed Six Were Present (1956).

However, this is not an impossible crime novel in any way, shape or form, but more about the supposed locked room angle later.

Everybody Always Tells opens in a swanky London department store, where Owen plays the role of pack mule for his wife, Olive, but their bargain safari takes a strange turn when a store-detective, Miss Rice, approaches Owen. She just saw how "a peer of the realm," Lord Newdagonby, took a pearl necklace from the jewelry counter and furtively slipped it into Olive's handbag. Owen does not appreciate people "who push necklaces into other people's handbags" and decides to call upon his lordship, but that's where the problems begin to snowball out of control.

Lord Newdagonby resides at Dagonby House, "a wilderness of a place," consisting of a "twisted, twinning labyrinth of passages," corners, alcoves and empty, cobweb strewn rooms, which were vacated during the war – as "footmen turned into guardsmen" and "kitchen maids into munition workers." The post-war years saw the domestic staff of such sprawling estates shrink and eventually vanish forever.

So the Lord now lives there with his sole daughter, Mrs. Sibby Findley, who shed all respectability of the previous generation and scandalously left an Anglican sisterhood on the ground that she had found there was nothing to religion. She even publicly announced her intention to sample sin to see what that has to offer her and reputedly blackmailed her husband into marriage. Mr. Ivor Findley is a patent expert and scientific adviser, who has his own workroom/laboratory in the house, where he prefers to retreat to work in quiet solitude.

There's also a friend of Mrs. Findley present, one Charley Acton, who can be described as a dilettante inventor currently working on "an everlasting razor blade" and wrote a controversial article suggesting envisioning the manufacture of "a smaller artificial sun to accompany the planet Mars in its orbit," which would eventually make the planet available for human habitation. But the great visionary struck Owen as a pet dog (on a leash) trotting after its mistress.

Even for the post-war world, this is not a stereotypical, 1950s-era household and Owen learns the reason Lord Newdagonby tried to attract his attention, with the pearls, is a prospective murder. There were several mysterious phone calls made to the house and they sounded alarming, but Bobby doesn't have to wait long to find out how serious these warnings were: Mrs Findley is unable to get a response from her husband, who has locked himself inside his work room, but swears she could hear him groaning. So Bobby uses his, "quite unofficial," skills as a locksmith to pick the simplistic and token lock on the door of the workroom. And what he finds inside is the mortally wounded body of Findley. The handle of a sharpened kitchen knife was sticking out of his back.

E.R. Punshon

However, as noted in the opening of this blog-post, Everybody Always Tells is not a locked room novel, because the keys to the door were not found inside the room. While it was not explicitly mentioned that the murderer locked the door, as this person fled from the crime-scene, but it appears to be the only logical conclusion as no other feasible explanation was given for the locked nature of the room. So this aspect of the plot was, uncharacteristically, sloppy work on the part of Punshon, but then again, the book does seem to be written in a bit of a hurry.

Usually, Punshon manipulates half a dozen related, and unrelated, plot-threads with the skilled, nimble fingers of a seasoned puppeteer, but, this time around, the plot was surprisingly slender – focusing on this sole murder and the small circle of suspects surrounding it. This makes identifying the murderer a cakewalk for veteran armchair detectives. So in that regard Punshon really under performed, as a writer, in this outing, because (plot-wise) we know can do so much better than this.

Luckily, Everybody Always Tells still reflects Punshon's talent as a story-teller and plotter, which is, perhaps, best shown in the unusual clue of the empty guinea pig cage. A cage that had fresh food and water, but the two guinea pigs were nowhere to be found and their fate is directly tied to the stabbing and the somewhat unusual motive. I'm not entirely sure how (scientifically) accurate one aspect of this clue and motive actually is, however, it shows Punshon (in his late seventies) was still very much aware of the world around him. You can say this part of the story is a stereotypical plot-device of the fifties, but the book was published when that decade had only just began and this may very well be one of the earliest examples of it turning up crime-and thriller fiction from the era.

So not bad for a man whose formative years took place in the last period that preceded the Age of Electricity!

Finally, it has to be pointed out that Punshon, similar to John Dickson Carr, would probably have found equal success as a writer of ghost stories. There's a delightful and haunting scene towards the end, which takes place over an open well, that recalls a similar scene, involving an open grave, from The Dark Garden (1941). Punshon's talent for macabre, old-fashioned set pieces is the only thing that betrayed his heart and soul matured during the nineteenth century.

All in all, Everybody Always Tells is not one of Punshon's topnotch performances as a mystery novelist, but this will not deter fans of Bobby Owen from enjoying this specific entry in the series.

Well, as things stand now, my pick for favorite Punshon on my best-of list for 2017 is going to be a three-cornered fight between Diabolic Candelabra (1942), There's a Reason for Everything (1945) and the previously mentioned Six Were Present.

The Great Beyond

"You can't evade ghosts in any case, and it looks as if they're going to play a big part in this mystery. The air here is full of them."

- Anthony "Algernon" Vereker (Robin Forsythe's The Spirit Murder Mystery, 1936)

Back in June(-ish) of 2015, the Dean Street Press and Curt Evans embarked on the arduous task of salvaging the legacy of the criminally neglected E.R. Punshon, once a giant from the genre's Golden Era, who wrote thirty-five police novels about Bobby Owen – a once humble constable who climbed to the rank of Commander of Scotland Yard. Over the course of a year and a half, this collaboration brought the entire Bobby Owen-series back into print and these brand new editions were introduced by Evans, which also offered glimpses at the life and work of Punshon's colleagues.

On January 2, 2017, the Dean Street Press is going to complete their reissue program of the entire series and comprises of the last ten novels Punshon wrote during the last years of his life. A period that covers the years between 1949 and 1956. Interestingly, this last batch of Punshon's "contain lots of extra goodies," such as short stories and an entire script of a never before published BBC radio-play, but also a newly written and slightly depressing introduction.

Under the title "Detective Stories, the Detection Club and Death: The Final Years of E.R. Punshon," Evans describes how "time had wrought cruel changes" on the members of the London-based Detection Club after the long interval of the war years. John Dickson Carr noted how everyone looked decidedly "greyer and more worn," but, by that time, eight of the original club members had already passed away and the relentless march of time would continue to thin their ranks – eventually taking Punshon in the mid-1950s. But the introduction also contains such snippets of information about his scrap with Anthony Berkeley, one of the "crankiest and most cantankerous," or how Christopher Bush allowed him recuperating from an operation at his home.

However, the bits and pieces on the final days of some of our favorite mystery writers are overwhelmingly depressing. Such as Sayers' passing, who was found a week before Christmas, at the foot of her stairs, "surrounded by bereaved cats."

Only a few months before her death, Sayers received a copy from Punshon's widow of his last published detective novel, Six Were Present (1956), which Evans described as "charmingly introspective," since she always appreciated her husband's books – famously asking "what is distinction?" and then pointing to a stack Bobby Owen mysteries. One distinction that's undeniable is the amazing consistency in the quality of his plots and writing. Six Were Present was written by a man in his eighties and who was probably already on Death's doorstep, but there's hardly any wear and easily one of my favorite Owen novels so far.

You see, Six Were Present is Punshon's take on the Carr-Talbot School of (Impossible) Crime-Fiction. So, yes, the book sort of catered to my personal taste.

Six Were Present is the thirty-fifth and final entry in the Bobby Owen-series, which saw him rise to the rank of Commander, but in his last recorded case he acts in an unofficial capacity in what is, essentially, a family affair – as a message from his cousin brings him back to the place of his childhood.

Bobby has taken leave from Scotland Yard and took his wife, Olive, for a motoring tour of the English countryside, which brought him to a bewildering standstill at the remnant background decor of his childhood days. However, as bewildering as the changed landscape is the household he finds: his cousin, Myra, is married to Val Outers, a retired Colonial Officer from South Africa, who is a specialist in African folklore and the dubious owner of a genuine Witch-doctor's medicine bag – which is said to contain a moldering dead man's hand and a hand drawn map of an unclaimed uranium field. Sadly, Outer's fascination for "the Unknown Powers the Africans believe in" may have caused the death of his twin sons. Myra and their daughter, Rosamund, always suspected Val of having ordered the boys to spy on a secret initiation rite. And when they were found out by the Natives, they were sacrificed to "The Dark Ones."

So that kind of baggage might make family dinners around Christmastime a bit tense, but now a psychic medium, Teddy Peek, became a regular visitor to the household. And in the background, Rosamund as three admirers moving around: a guy known as BB, Ludo Manners and a hunchback, named Dewey James, who lives with his invalid, but nimble, mother.

I think this cast-of-characters, background props and premise show Punshon's imagination was unaffected by old-age, but the storytelling, however, was affected. There's about of fuzziness about the details and the best example of this is the haunting memory of the twins, which hang as a pair of silent ghosts over the plot, but their names are never mentioned. They're always referred to as "the boys." The strongest aspect of the plot is the impossible murder and the plot-threads that were woven around it were not as firmly grasped as in previous books. Some of them appear to be nothing more than window dressing and disappeared (unresolved) into the background (e.g. the African seen by the side of the road). However, the murder plot is a wonderful take on the impossible stabbing during a séance inside a locked (tower) room.

Bobby is informed by Mr. Nixon, who's not a crook, but the West Midshire Chief Constable, about the murder of Val Outers. During a sitting in the Tower Room of the estate, Val was violently stabbed and the weapon vanished from locked and watched room. The room was pitch-black and the door were both locked bolted, while the windows were heavily curtained. Everyone was sitting around a round table. And in these conditions someone struck a deadly knife-blow, which killed instantly. But how did the knife manage to vanish from the room? And how did the killer manage to strike such a precise and powerful blow?

E.R. Punshon

Well, I actually (brag, brag) managed to solve the impossible angle very quickly and this is another case, when you know how it was done, you know who has done, because the method fitted this character like a glove. After that, you can easly guess why it was done. Or roughly guess. However, the killer and motive were absolute grand, which fitted the method very well. One that hinges on the Chestertonian paradox of "when is a knife not a knife?" So, perhaps not a stone-cold classic locked room mystery, but overall, a very competent and spirited effort for the annals of the impossible crime story. For someone like me, that's not a bad way to bow out of this world as a mystery novelist. Yes, I'm biased in favor of authors who made a genuine effort at writing a good locked room. It makes you sort of family.

So, all in all, Six Were Present is a wonderfully lucid mystery novel, with flashes of originality, from a writer who was in his eighties and published his first novel in 1907. Some of Punshon's colleagues have bowed out on less gracious terms. Agatha Christie's muddled Postern of Fate (1974) stood in stark contrast to the work that garnering her the reputation as the Queen of Crime. Luckily, she had prepared Curtain (1975) and Sleeping Murder (1976) well ahead to cover up that abortion of a novel. Speaking of abortions, the reputation of Carr's sad swan-song, The Hungry Goblin (1972), has always prevented it from being reprinted and turned it into one of his rarest novels. Edmund Crispin's The Glimpses of the Moon (1977) was, at best, an unnecessary afterthought to an otherwise excellent series.

Well, you get the idea. Six Were Present ended the series on a high-note and that was not always the case for even the best of the Golden Agers. And as a fan of the series, locked rooms and Carrian plot-devices, I would even place the book among my personal favorites in the series. So perhaps not recommended as a starting point in the series, but one you must read once you have become a fan. It gives a nice sense of closure. Luckily, I still have about twenty of them left on the TBR-pile and at least one other is a locked room mystery! So, I guess my next stop in the series will be Everybody Always Tells (1950). 

Finally, the book also contains the script of a radio-play, "Death on the Up-Lift," which I'll safe for a separate review (read: filler-post).