The Case of the Unfortunate Village (1932) by Christopher Bush

Three-and-a-half years ago, Dean Street Press began the long overdue process of bringing all of Christopher Bush's sixty-some detective novels back into a print. A mystery writer who was to the unbreakable alibi what John Dickson Carr was to the impossible crime, as demonstrated in Cut Throat (1932) and The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936), which gave me a whole new appreciation for ingeniously thought out, well executed alibi-tricks – quickly making Bush one of my favorite mystery writers. Bush had more to offer than merely a collection of tricky alibis. 

Bush had a knack for building complicated, maze-like plots out of double murders committed in close proximity, of time or place, in which he was practically alone. J.J. Connington is the only one who comes to mind who specialized in the kind of plots that can be found in Bush's Dead Man Twice (1930), The Case of the Bonfire Body (1936) and The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938) (c.f. Connington's The Case with Nine Solutions, 1928). So he got a lot mileage out of that plot device, but what turned these plot-technical marvels into gold are his series-detectives, Ludovic Travers and Superintendent George "The General" Wharton, who played off each other perfectly. And you can never tell who'll reach the solution first. 

So the 1930s period of the series comes highly recommended to everyone who prefers the simon-pure jigsaw-puzzle detective story, but the wartime years brought a chance to the series and Bush's home front trilogy, The Case of the Murdered Major (1941), The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942) and The Case of the Fighting Soldier (1942), signaled a huge shift – gradually adopting the trappings of the American hardboiled school. The plotting became less baroque and Travers, who became the narrator during the home front trilogy, turned into a genteel private investigator. A transformation that was completed when the 1950s rolled around and the post-war malaise in Britain offered a perfect backdrop for the new tone of the series (e.g. The Case of the Fourth Detective, 1951).

Nevertheless, while not every novel from this period is as good as his 1930s novels, there are still some minor gems to be found. Such as The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel (1952) and The Case of the Flowery Corpse (1956), but my preference goes to his elaborate, baroque-style 1930s novels. I've wanted to return to that period in the series for some time now and to one title in particular. 

The Case of the Unfortunate Village (1932) is the eighth novel in the Ludovic Travers series and, no matter the period, one of Bush's most atypical mysteries. There's nothing showy or particular complicated about the plot. In fact, it's a surprisingly character-driven mystery centering on a series of incidents, personality changes and accidents that have befalling the village of Bableigh.

In this early novel, Travers is still a directors of Durangos Limited, a consulting and publicity firm, who takes "the fact that every question has two sides" as "an incentive to hunt for a third" and has found two outlets for his inquisitive nature – writing books and playing detective. Usually, he sticks his nose in official police business, but this time, Travers has to act as an amateur detective in its purest form as many of the characters aren't even aware an investigation is carried out. The peculiar problem requiring a discreet investigation is brought to him by an old school friend and local magistrate, Henry Dryden, who believes "something sinister or ominous" has descended on his village. Bableigh is really "a hamlet perched on top of a ridge" with a church, post office, tiny school, smattering of cottages and a very small arts colony. Everyone got along swimmingly, until recently, when personalities began to change and the atmosphere was poisoned.

Marian Crome is an ultra-impressionist painter whose "work underwent a sudden and curious change," which Dryden denounced as "utterly repulsive and even bestial." Ashley Mound is a sculptor who "developed into a very annoying kind of hermit" following the passing of his invalid wife. There are two middle-aged living companions, avid gardener Agnes Rose and potter Harriet Blunt, but the spinsters started quarreling and separated. Miss Rose has become unbearable to be around. Lyonel Parish is the vicar and used to be "quite a jolly fellow," but "his change was the worst of all." All of his natural cheerfulness was replaced with "a false and loathsome geniality." This sudden change that has come over the village is punctuated by the death of the impoverished squire, Tom Yeoman, who was found shot with his own hunting rifle. It was ruled an accident, but what happened to his dog?

Dryden doubted the accident explanation at the time, but didn't want to make trouble for the widow and her children, because a suicide verdict would have annulled Yeoman's life insurance.

So Ludovic Travers and John Franklin, head of the Detective Bureau of Durangos Limited, discreetly begin to poke around the village and find all kind of small mysteries that thicken the plot. Who planted the mass of forget-me-nots? Who buried and dug up the dead dog and disposed of it again in someone else's garden? Who tore up Miss Rose's garden? What happened to the clay sculpture of the devil that Travers saw through Mould's studio window? Why is everyone behaving out-of-character? And is there a possibility that there's a coven of witches and satanists in the village?

Since "the whole thing is unofficial," Travers and Franklin can do little more than talk to people, theorize and stirring the pot a little, but, while they're discreetly poking around, villagers begin to die right and left – ruled as either accidents (bicycle crash) or natural deaths (heart failure). You shouldn't expect too much of them, as howdunits, except for an attempted murder very late in the story, which has a clever trick. So the who-and how is not all that important and the former becomes fairly obvious before too long. What's important is the motive and how it dovetails with the bizarre, out-of-the-ordinary happenings in the village with the characters/psychology taking the front seat. This makes the story more like a Gladys Mitchell novel than an Agatha Christie mystery. You can best describe The Case of the Unfortunate Village as Christie Murder is Easy (1938) as perceived by Mitchell. Are you still with me, Jim? Don't close that tab! :)

A warning to the reader: one aspect of the murderer's motivation is not going to be popular with some readers, but rest assured, Bush refused to use it as an excuse to have weak, barely existent motivation to let a murderer go ham on everything with a pulse that moves (I'm looking at you, Philip MacDonald). Bush handled the motive as expertly as a cast-iron alibi and showered the reader with clues. The Case of the Unfortunate Village opens with a challenge to the reader telling the reader they have all the material at their disposal from the outset that the detectives will receive in driblets. And the end of Chapter 9 even gives the reader an opportunity to cheat! It's up to you to decide to accept, or decline, that shortcut. I decided to give it a pass, but the bravado to even dare offering it! I've never seen that done before. Not even Carr was that cheeky.

All in all, The Case of the Unfortunate Village is not as tightly or intricately plotted as Bush's alibi-oriented detective novels with linked-corpses, but the quiet, unassuming plot and storytelling made it one of the more compelling and absorbing entries in the series. A first-rate village mystery!