The Case of the Dead Man Gone (1961) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Dead Man Gone (1961) is the third of the last ten Ludovic Travers mysteries published during the "Dark Age" that came after the abandonment of the Golden Age, known as the Swinging Sixties, during which many of yesteryear's greats penned their lasts – not all of them bowed out gracefully. Curt Evans wrote in his introduction to this last batch of Dean Street Press reprints how Bush's surviving contemporaries struggled to understand and adept to the changes of the post-war world. John Dickson Carr's response to a decade "capable of producing psychedelic psychopaths like Charles Manson" was to "prudently beat a retreat from the present into the pleasanter pages of the past." Christopher Bush and Ludovic Travers, on the other hand, were chameleon-like in adjusting themselves to those changes.

Ludovic Travers stepped out of the murky twenties as a 1930s amateur detective, or special consultant, whose early cases are elaborately baroque, densely-plotted affairs centering on closely-linked murders and unbreakable alibis. Dead Man Twice (1930), Dancing Death (1931) and The Case of the Chinese Gong (1935) are good examples of Bush's baroque period. Over the next few years, Bush matured as a writer and produced some of his finest contributions to the British Golden Age detective novels like The Case of the Missing Minutes (1937) and The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939). This is also the period in the series which introduced the future Mrs. Travers (The Case of the Leaning Man, 1938). But the first radical changes to the series came along with the outbreak of the Second World War. The series went from third-person to first-person narration and Bush began to trim the baroque to create leaner plots and puzzles. While still keeping most of the distinctive elements of the earlier novels. Travers slowly transitioned from a private consultant into a private investigator who would eventually become the head of the Broad Street Detective Agency.

A regrettable side-effect of moving the series into an altered, post-WWII Britain is a very rough, transitional period during the late 1940s and early '50s when the overall quality was severely lacking – e.g. The Case of the Seven Bells (1949) and The Case of the Fourth Detective (1951). Bush rebounded as the fifties moved on and began to write some excellent mystery novels, but sleeker and less ornamental than those he wrote in the 1930s. The complexity usually comes from two, or three, minor cases tightly twisted together (The Case of the Russian Cross, 1957) or the circumstances in which the murder is committed (The Case of the Flowery Corpse, 1956). The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954) is Bush's most successful attempt to balance the Golden Age whodunit and the post-war private eye novel.

So the post-1940s Bush novels proved to be more rewarding than their reputation suggested. Just very differently from those 1930s novels. The Case of the Dead Man Gone is a fine example of the differences and similarities between Bush's early and late-period novels. The Case of the Dead Man Gone begins, as usually at this point in the series, when an apparently routine job comes knocking at the door of the Broad Street Detective Agency.

Ludovic Travers had never seen a woman quite like Mrs. Hugh Wilson enter their office and she has a fairly simple, straightforward request. Mrs. Wilson has come on behalf of a relative who couldn't afford to pay a private inquiry firm and wishes the remain anonymous, but wishes to find a man named Richard Sambord. A former music-hall artist, The Great Sambrino, who enjoyed some success with a second-rate Houdini act ("Sambrino never was in the same class as Houdini..."). Ten years ago, Sambord "was sent to prison for some offense or other" and "after that he seems to have disappeared." It does not take long for Travers to learn Sambord served a two-year prison term for manslaughter. However, the task is easy enough and Sambord is quickly traced to the winter quarters of the Granding Circus. While tracking him down, Travers handed out a few business cards specially printed for the occasion, but one of those cards turned up again unexpectedly five days later.

Superintendent Jewle, of Scotland Yard, calls Travers to asks him to immediately come to River Cottage in Ambourne. River Cottage is the private residence of a private investigator, George Peplock, who "had been shot clean through an eye" and the person pulling the trigger "searched the house methodically and burnt every scrap of paper that was incriminating" – leaving everything clean as a whistle. Only overlooking the business card tucked away in a small coat pocket. So how did the card handed out in the Sambord search found its way in the pocket of a dead detective? Travers remarks to Jewle, "the older I get, the less I believe in coincidences." A mighty big coincidence brings another problem, "a fantastic thing," to their attention.

On the night of the murder, a driver was coming down the road near River Cottage and spotted a body lying against the low hedge of one of the gardens. The driver turned around and warned the police, but, when they arrived, "there wasn't a sign of a man." However, the driver who found the man swears he was dead and not stunned or shamming ("I saw plenty of dead during the war"). This is one of many complications along the way like the true role and motives of the client, the possible links to a refugee relief organization, numerous trails leading back to Canada or Canadians and the maddening, possible involvement of a third, unknown man ("...our old enemy, the third man").

If you're familiar with the series, you can probably spot a glimmer of similarity between the murder of Peplock and the disappearing body and those early, 1930s titles plotted around two closely-linked murders/bodies (The Case of the Bonfire Body, 1936). Bush makes it very clear those were different times and how much has changed since then. Travers reflects how in the old days, the days of George Wharton, he had a quasi-official standing, but "the Yard was under new management, so to speak, and those days had gone." To quote the man himself, "all I could do now, to slake that incurable curiosity of mine and insert myself somehow into the case, was to keep my mouth shut and watch which way the wind blew." So the relationship between Travers and the police has completely changed. Travers now often has to weigh the interests of his agency against those of his clients and Scotland Yard. And they don't always play open card with each other ("Jewle didn't want me as an onlooker..."), which only adds to the often complicated position of Travers in these later cases ("...what the poet calls the tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive"). So an entirely different dynamic between the private and official detectives compared to those earlier novels, but then again, that's what Bush was aiming to do.

Another thing that intrigues me about these late-period Bush novels, historically, is the integration of television into everyday life. Travers watches the headline news on television and remarks early on in the story, "I don't look much like the television detective." There are characters involved in the case who were interviewed for a TV show and quite late in the story there's reference to two people questioned by the police, but they are television fans and had it on from five o'clock ("they wouldn't have heard a rocket, let alone a gun"). Ludovic and Bernice Travers watch a pop concert in The Case of the Empty Grave (1961). A very minor, perhaps unimportant, historical detail, but a fascinating one considering the series began in 1926. Years before the first serious experiments and developments in television broadcasting were being made. I should also note here that the earliest known reference to TV can be found in E.R. Punshon's The Bath Mysteries (1936). Bobby Owen is given a tour of a luxury apartment containing an expensive, experimental television set, but it was turned off as nothing was being broadcast at the time. There were only twenty-five years between the throwaway reference in The Bath Mysteries and the beginning of the TV's domination over the living room as shown in The Case of the Dead Man Gone. I thought that was worthy of highlighting, but let's return to the plot.

Well, the plot is a bit of a mixed bag. There are perhaps too many independently moving parts, conveniently coming and fitting snugly together, but nothing too convoluted or stretching credibility beyond all reason – merely a bit of convenient luck in some regards. And one of the characters was a bit too inconspicuous, which made that person obviously involved. I don't think many readers will be puzzled how that person relates to some of the other characters. On the other hand, there were some genuinely clever and inspired bits and pieces to the overall plot (ROT13: yvxr gur oynpxznvyvat fpurzr naq jul gur zheqrerq qrgrpgvir obhtug gur qrgrpgvir ntrapl) or the clever motivation for the two additional murders. I think many of you will agree that using corpses as story padding cheapens any detective story, but Bush handled them with a skilled and experienced hand. I particularly admired the motivation behind the third, last-minute murder. Something you would expect to have turned up a time, or two, before, but struggle to come up with even one other example.

The Case of the Dead Man Gone has a few smudged and imperfections, but, on a whole, a solid late-period Bush title that's still infinitely better than most of what passed for detective fiction at the time. Bush deserves so much more recognition for trying to conserve the essentials of the Golden Age detective story by trimming it down and presenting in a sleek, stylish form that matched the era. Recommended to fans of the series, but people new to Bush and Travers are advised to start at an earlier point in the series. You can only truly appreciate the best of these 1950s and '60s titles, if you're familiar with its Golden Age roots.

A note for the curious: I ended my review of The Case of the Empty Grave that the next stop in the series was going to be back-to-back or twofer review of The Plumley Inheritance (1926) and The Case of the Prodigal Daughter (1968). The first and last title in the series, because like the idea of the historically contrasting the England of the 1920s and '60s. And how much the detective story changed between 1926 and 1968. But decided to do that another time. Maybe before the end of the year.