A Bolt from the Blue

"What was that somebody said about a bolt from the blue and death coming out of the sky?"

- Father Brown (G.K. Chesterton's "The Arrow of Heaven," from The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926) 

Ernest C. Elmore was a theatrical producer, stage director and playwright, who wrote half a dozen fantasy novels, but abandoned both the stage and the fantasy genre to become a prolific writer of detective stories – which he did under the alias "John Bude." Over a period of twenty-five years, the penname of John Bude appeared on the book covers of thirty mystery novels. A literary legacy that, until now, consisted entirely of very rare, often expensive and highly collectible editions. So these detective stories were long overdue for a second trip through the innards of a printing press!

Thankfully, the British Library Crime Classics, an imprint of the Poisoned Pen Press, have made a dedicated effort to pull his work from the bog of obscurity, five of them so far, of which two have been reviewed on this blog – namely The Cornish Coast Murder (1935) and Death on the Riviera (1952). I found them both to be pleasantly written and highly entertaining mystery novels, but the plots were, alas, not of the same grade as the writing or characterization.

However, the latest book to make a reappearance in this series of reissues, The Cheltenham Square Murder (1937), received some good notices and the plot sounded solid enough. I was not entirely wrong in my presumption.

The Cheltenham Square Murder is Bude's fourth mystery novel, but only the third one to feature his series character: Superintendent Meredith of the Sussex County Police. During his third recorded case, Meredith finds himself in a textbook example of the proverbial busman's holiday. Meredith is invited to spend a portion of his holiday in the company of a well-known crime writer and personal friend, Aldous Barnet, who wants draw on the expertise of the superintendent for the book he's writing. As luck would have it, Barnet's sister went abroad and she placed her home at the disposal of her famous brother. So he could work in peace.

The home of Miss Barnet is situated in Regency Square, one of the iconic squares of Cheltenham Spa, "that famous and lovely town," which exhales "an atmosphere of leisure, culture and almost rural tranquility."

Regency Square consists of ten houses, "erected in the form of a flattened U," but the architecture of these exclusive looking abodes is not uniform. However, the effect is not disharmonious and gives the impression "of a quiet, residential backwater," where old people can grow becomingly older, undisturbed "by the rush and clatter" of the modern world – which has left them nothing more than "the memories of a past epoch." As noted in the opening chapter, outward appearance can be very deceiving and the inhabitants have their fair share of problems. Problems that range from small annoyances to the kind of intrusions that could bring someone to murder.

The scene of the crime

Some of the small annoyances consist of "a minor war" about an elm tree, which divided the square in two camps: one side wants the tree removed, while the others wants to the tree to remain where it has stood for over a century. Other irritations include the insistent hymn-singing of the Watt sisters, the yapping of Miss Boon's pack of dogs and the eternal ringing of Dr. Pratt's telephone-bell, but the real trouble can be found in the household of Arthur West – who was deserted by his wife, lost most of his money and had to put his house up for sale. There are two people at the heart of West's precarious situation: a retired stockbroker, Mr. Edward Buller, who made money off his bad advice to West and a really villainous character, Captain Cotton, who had been swarming around his wife.

So you can almost understand when the news reaches that a murder has occurred at the home of Buller, but the true surprise comes when everyone learns the victim is Captain Cotton and the manner in which he died. After all, it did not occur very often that a policeman was confronted, these days, with "the dead body of a man with an arrow embedded in the back of his head." The shaft had entered the room through an open window and the murder weapon, in this instance, does not decrease the pool of potential suspects, because the square is teeming with fervent (amateur) archers – half of them members of the Wellington Archery Club.

This aspect of the plot reminded me of Leo Bruce's Death at St. Asprey’s School (1964), which uses a similar craze for archery, at a boy's boarding school, as a convenient excuse to use the classic bow-and-arrow as a murder weapon. It saddles the detectives of both books with a similar type of problem: who was in a position to loosen the fatal arrow and, in the case of this story, how did this person manage to lug around a cumbersome, six-feet bow. But we're getting ahead of the story.

First of all, the congenial Inspector Long is the man officially assigned to the case, but he's aware of Meredith's past successes and of the opinion that "two heads are better than one," which makes for a pleasant makeshift investigative duo. Long and Meredith have a mish-mash of case to untangle: such as unearthing all of the potential motives and figuring out who knew Cotton was dropping by Buller. Or if the murderer took out the wrong man by accident. However, the wall safe in Cotton's home was opened and sifted through after his death and this puts both policemen on a small trail of blackmail. They also have to consider if the felled tree had to make way, so the murderer could have a clear shot, and who had access to the empty home of West.

So, all of this, makes for a pleasantly busy and engaging mystery novel, but the strongest and weakest point of the plot is the how-aspect of the murders: there are two identical murders, which pose a number of questions to Meredith and Long, but they clever and deceptively presented – only smudge on this is the lack of fair play. You can figure out who the murderer is, but the, admittedly clever, methods this person employed can only be really guessed at. I made a fairly accurate stab in the dark, but only because a pair of short stories, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and R. Austin Freeman, kept popping into my head.

Well, I guess John Bude was one of those writers who wrote stories about detectives instead of detective stories. Regardless, I still found The Cheltenham Square Murder to be a pleasantly written, well characterized and reasonably plotted. It was perhaps not one of the fairest mysteries ever conceived, but the plot was noticeable cleverer and stronger than those from the previous two I've read. So I was not entirely dissatisfied with the end result and would recommend new readers, if they're interested, to start with this one.

Hidden Under the Sun

"But, man alive, don't you feel it in the air? All around you? The presence of evil."

- Stephen Lane (Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun, 1941) 

At the end of my blog-post about Death of My Aunt (1929) by C.H.B. Kitchin, I asked if anyone, based on the review, could guess my next read, which, logically, was Richard Hull's The Murder of My Aunt (1934), but Ho-Ling made a clever and perceptive prediction about this blog-post – based on a pattern he had observed.

Lately, the book titles of the mystery novels I reviewed followed an alternating pattern, which goes as follows: John Rhode's Death in Harley Street (1946), Basil Thomson's The Milliner’s Hat Mystery (1937), Alan Melville's Death of Anton (1936), E.R. Punshon's Four Strange Women (1940), C.H.B. Kitchin's Death of My Aunt and Richard Hull's The Murder of My Aunt. So, following this sequence, the subject of this blog-post should have "death" in the title.

First of all, I had not created this pattern with intent or purpose, but I’m enough of an obsessive-compulsive autist to go along with it and lifted John Bude's Death on the Riviera (1952) from the big pile.

The first detective story I reviewed this year was Bude's debut novel, The Cornish Coast Murder (1935), which had all strength and weaknesses one expects to find in the apprentice work of a promising, first-time novelist – such as an engaging writing style, interesting character and an obvious appreciation for the genre. But the plot also suffered from one or two imperfections. One of them being a disappointing lack of fair play.

Death on the Riviera was written two decades after the publication of The Cornish Coast Murder and Bude had evidently grown as a novelist in those intervening years. As Martin Edwards observed in his introduction, Bude was "at the height of his powers" when he wrote Death on the Riviera and "the assurance with which he blends the plot-lines" reflects "his experience and confidence as a writer" – which is demonstrated here in the way Bude knotted the ends of two separate plot-threads together. Essentially, the book consists of two novellas with a conjoined plot and a shared cast of characters, which is always an interesting approach to tell a detective story (c.f. Robert van Gulik).

The first plot-strand brings Bude’s series character, Detective-Inspector Meredith of the CID, to the golden beaches of the French Riviera, where "the blue waters of the Mediterranean" lapped "at the sun-drenched coastline," but he's not there for a relaxing holiday.

Detective-Inspector Meredith and Acting Sergeant Freddy Strang are en route to the warm, glittering Mediterranean to extend a helping hand to the local authorities, represented by Inspector Blampignon, which concerns a ring of counterfeiters operating along the coastline. The gang left a trail of false banknotes and they had been largely exchanged for British pounds, but that's not the only link to England: all of the forged notes bore "microscopic details of craftsmanship" that read like the signature of Tommy "Chalky" Cobbott – one of the best "engraver of notes." He seems to be the beating heart of this organization.

I found this particular plot-thread to be somewhat reminiscent of Basil Thomson's The Milliner's Hat Mystery, in which the English and French police are breathing down the necks of a gang of smugglers.

The second plot-thread leads to the doorstep of Nesta Hedderwick, called Villa Paloma, which puts a roof over the head of several family members, acquaintances and even a live-in artist – who creates monstrous, post-modern atrocities in his attic-room. Or so everyone assumes. But he's not the only one who’s not exactly been telling the truth: secret marriages, unwanted pregnancies and the counterfeiting case all hover in the background of the villa, which often read as one of those daytime soap operas. A comparison that was also made by the Puzzle Doc. However, this eventually resulted in a very classic murder when someone goes missing and a smashed, faceless body is found at the foot of a cliff.

Well, I have to praise the author here for respecting the intelligence of his audience in regards to the defaced features of the victim. As one of the characters states, "whenever a corpse turns up in a crime story with its face battered beyond recognition" you can safely assume that "it isn't the corpse you think it is," which is acknowledged by them as "a well-worn double-cross." I also appreciated Bude attempt to find a new angle to tackle this problem, but, overall, the explanation was fairly simple and basically it was a short story that was absorbed into a full-length novel. It's also why I remained on the surface of these two cases, because they're extremely simple and lightweight.

The book as a whole is very well written and fun to read, but the plot-threads lack complexity. So there's not much to go on about without giving those few essentials away. Well, there's one thing that should be mentioned: both plot-threads contain borderline impossible material. One of the objects that hold the police's interest in the counterfeiting case is a hidden printing press, which turns up in a place that had been previously searched without result. The hiding place was one of those so-called "invisible cubbyholes" that can also be found in "Nothing Up My Sleeve," a radio-play by John Dickson Carr, and "Cache and Carry," which is a short story by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller from The McCone Files (1995). Unfortunately, it was not used for an impossible crime sub-plot, which could have added some substance to the counterfeiting case.

Same goes for the semi-impossible material in the Villa Paloma murder case, but that one is a lot harder to describe, because, again, I run the risk of giving too much away. It concerns something a witness saw and this plot point could have been cobbled into an impossible crime, but Bude evidently decided to keep things plain and simple.

Nevertheless, Death on the Riviera is a very readable and enjoyable detective story, but not one you should read if you want to be baffled by a particular ingenious or complex plot. Otherwise, this one can be recommended for what it is and perfect for people who want something to read while launching in a beach-chair.

On a final note, I hope Poisoned Pen Press will consider reissuing Bude's Death on Paper (1940) and Death Knows No Calendar (1942). Why these two? Oh, no particular reason. What's that you say? They were listed by Robert Adey in Locked Room Murders (1991)? Well, I had not noticed that myself, but that would be pretty good reason to reprint them as well.

Die Like Thunder

"Detectives never guess... they draw exact deductions from given premises."

- Bobby Owen (E.R. Punshon's Ten Star Clues, 1941) 

Writing as "John Bude," an English theatrical producer and director by the name of Ernest C. Elmore penned and published thirty detective novels over the span of nearly twenty-five years – all of which are reputedly to be very rare and highly collectible.

Fortunately, the British Library has reissued a handful of books from Bude's impressive body of work: The Cornish Coast Murder (1935), The Lake District Murder (1935) and The Sussex Down Murder (1936). Death on the Riviera (1952) is scheduled for release in March of this year.

These brand new editions are introduced by Martin Edwards, an accomplished crime writer and genre historian, who observes that Bude's debut novel contains several clues that help to explain his growing popularity more than half a century after his death – which has partially to do with a "writing style" that is "relaxed and rather more polished than one would expect from a first-time novelist." I also believe Bude's poorly masked love for the detective story played a part in being embraced by a contemporary and appreciative reading audience, which is especially noticeable in the opening chapter of The Cornish Coast Murder.

Reverend Dodd, Vicar of St. Michael's-on-the-Cliff, Boscawen, has a tradition Monday evening ceremony with Doctor Pendrill. They smoke and have metaphysical arguments, but the true purpose of their weekly tradition is to indulge in their vicarious, but perfectly commonly, "lust for crime stories." Every week, they borrow and share pieces of crime fiction from the local library and Reverend Dodd compiled an interesting selection for their latest meeting: Edgar Wallace, "the new J.S. Fletcher," J.J. Farjeon, Dorothy L. Sayers and Freeman Wills Crofts – some of them I have yet to read myself. I guess that's why I've never been able to shake off the feeling that I have only scratched the surface of the genre.

Anyway, Reverend Dodd and Dr. Pendrill are provided with an opportunity to put all that accumulated knowledge from fiction into practice when a phone-call comes in for the doctor.

The local squire of the small, isolated village of some four-hundred souls, Julius Tregarthan, was found dead in his study: someone had fired several shots under the cover of a raging thunderstorm and one of the bullets "went clean through the brain." It's a strain on the brain of the local police force, Constable Grouch and Inspector Bigswell, because viable suspects, motives and evidence are thinly spread around.  

Firstly, there's a niece, Ruth, who was nurturing an intimate friendship with a local writer and World War I veteran, Ronald Hardy, but her uncle disapproved of the friendship. An admittedly weak motive, but one that has to be taken seriously by the police after both Hardy and his service revolver disappeared – coupled with the obvious prevaricate behavior of Ruth. Secondly, a local black sheep and village bad man, Ned Salter, who had been imprisoned by Tregarthan and evicted from his cottage was seen arguing with the victim on the day of the shooting and there's gambling servant who had a monetary motive.

However, it's the Reverend Dodd who figured out answers to several of the most nagging questions blocking the path to the entire solution, which include the "strange lack of footprints on the cliff-path" and a logical explanation for "the widely scattered shots" that "starred the glass" of the study-windows.

I can only praise this part of the story for being both original and logical, but the overall quality of the story was marred by a combination of two flaws: the murderer is a minor character that hovered in the background and the motivation of this person was never properly hinted at. That left me with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I enjoyed the smooth writing, the characters and some of the ideas, which was somewhat reminiscent of E.R. Punshon, but the ending felt like an absolute cheat. I wish I could end this review on a far more positive note than this, but the ending was what it was.

So if you, like me, attach some importance to the Golden Age rules of fair play, you'll probably end up a little bit disappointed that The Cornish Coast Murder did not sustain itself as a proper, fair play Golden Age mystery right up till the ending. However, I agree with Edwards that, as a debut novel, it's an extremely well written and characterized novel. There have been A-list contemporaries of Bude who fared far worst in their first outing. So I'm still tempted to explore his later work as well.

Well, that's the first review for 2016 and I'll be dipping in some impossible crime material for the second one, which should come as a complete and utter surprise to you. Anyhow, I wish each and every one of you all the best for this year!