And Cauldron Bubble (1951) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's And Cauldron Bubble (1951), thirty-ninth novel in the Anthony Bathurst series, begins with Lady Blanchflower being summoned to the bedside of her elderly, dying husband, Sir Hugo Blanchflower, who needs to unburden his conscience – whispering a terrible, long-held secret into her ear. Sir Hugo passed away moments later and left behind more than a grieving widow ("...something like Terror had joined hands with Sorrow").

Over the following years, Lady Blanchflower was allowed to continue to live in the cloister apartments of Quinster Castle by the Duke of Quinster. Every evening, Lady Blanchflower is escorted to the Red Deer Hotel for dinner by one of its permanent residents, Mrs. Whitburn. She became Lady Blanchflower's "inseparable evening companion" in the Red Deer's dining room among the permanents, regulars, locals and commercial travelers. So nothing to indicate something suspicious was a afoot and "the two ladies were in better spirits" than normally, but, one morning, Mrs. Whitburn is discovered missing from the Red Deer Hotel and her bed doesn't appear to have been slept in. She was last seen escorting Lady Blanchflower back home, but nobody answers at the cloister apartments.

After several hours go by without a sign of life, a police goes around to have a look at the cloister apartment to make a gruesome discovery: Lady Blanchflower's body lying on the floor of the lounge with a silk stocking, belonging to Mrs. Whitburn, "twisted tight" around her neck and a man's wig is found under her body – no trace of her dinner companion. Even worse, the Duke of Quinster was in residence at the time his dear, old friend was dastardly murdered ("...this is an outrage") and refuses "to allow any damned local policeman to take a case of this importance" ("nothin' less than Scotland Yard itself for Lil Blanchflower!"). Scotland Yard dispatches Inspector MacMorran to Quinster Castle and he brought along that amateur meddler of renown, Anthony Bathurst.

However, the Chief Constable and the local police inspector, Guthrie, aren't exactly thrilled the Duke called in Scotland Yard over their head. And even less thrilled when learning MacMorran brought along an amateur detective to work on the case ("does he hold your hand—or do you hold his?"). But it adds a nice, welcome bit of friction to their joined investigation, especially when Bathurst gets it wrong a few times. In his defense, this is a particular tricky, multi-pronged problem.

Firstly, what happened to the missing Mrs. Whitburn? Should she be considered as a suspect on the run or another victim? If the latter, what happened to her body? Whom of the two was the primary target and who's collateral damage? A difficult problem that needs time and some spadework to resolve, but the real stumbling block in their investigation proves to be motive. Not a ghost of a motive can be found to harm either of the elderly, inoffensive ladies nor does the missing Mrs. Whitburn has a reason to kill Lady Blanchflower. That's both the biggest strength and greatest flaw of And Cauldron Bubble.

Steve Barge, the Puzzle Doctor of In Search of the Classical Mystery Novel, called And Cauldron Bubble as a return to the whodunits in his introduction to this new Dean Street Press edition, but it would more accurate to call it a whydunit to the point where it probably would have worked better as an inverted mystery – considering motive is the only thing obscuring the murderer's identity. Not locked doors, unbreakable alibis or false-identities. I can't deny Flynn cooked up a very clever, incredibly ruthless scheme in which the murderer is practically gifted a golden window of opportunity to commit an unsolvable crime. That's no exaggeration and the reason why not only Bathurst struggled with finding a solution, but everyone armchair detective looking over his shoulder. Flynn sewed it up so tightly, you either have to be Mycroft Holmes or a super-AI to reason the correct answer from the scant few nebulous hints (not clues). Sure, you can say in hindsight that the clue of the note saying, "Come quickly—Mistress away," is obvious when you realize Flynn plotted the whole thing, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. So that the very fallible Bathurst reasoned the too well-hidden truth from these nebulous hints is something of a Herculean achievement.

Flynn was being far too clever for his own good here and that came at the expense of the fair play, but not the only thing that irked me a little. Firstly, what was the point of opening the story with that deathbed scene? I'm still not entirely sure what that was all about. Secondly, Flynn overlooked an important consequence of (SPOILER/ROT13) ohelvat n obql ng gur obggbz bs n ynetr urnc bs jnez, fbsg naq fzbxvat znaher. Rira vs gur zheqrere jber birenyyf, ur jnfa'g tbvat gb pbzr bhg pyrna fzryyvat yvxr n ebfr tneqra. Ur jbhyq arrq obgu n tbbq fpeho qbja naq jnfu uvf pybgurf, juvpu pbhyq or qbar jvgubhg trggvat pnhtug, ohg gung fzryy jnf pbzvat jvgu uvz vagb gur ubgry. Gung fubhyq unir orra abgvprq be erzrzorerq nsgre gur obql jnf qht hc.

And Cauldron Bubble ended up being a mixed bag of tricks with some good, even brilliant ideas, but lacking in execution and can only be recommended to fans of the series on account of Bathurst trying to grapple with a murder without an apparent motive or viable suspects. If you're new to Flynn and Bathurst, I recommend starting at an earlier point in the series.