The Case of the Housekeeper's Hair (1948) by Christopher Bush

The Case of the Housekeeper's Hair (1948) is the 34th title in the ample Ludovic Travers series and one of Christopher Bush's transitional, World War II-themed detective novels in which he slowly began to move away from the elaborate, clockwork-like plots of the 1930s in favor of the American-style private eye format – a transformation that began with The Case of the Murdered Major (1941) and was completed in The Case of the Corner Cottage (1951). A novel reportedly to be a full-blown homage to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1930), but I'll get to that particular title sometime later this year.

So, for the moment, let's settle down with The Case of the Housekeeper's Hair. A post-World War II mystery with a plot that, in some ways, anticipated Michael Gilbert's Death Has Deep Roots (1951).

The story begins with Travers telling Wharton that has "an idea that a certain man," Guy Pallart, "is going to commit murder." Travers met Pallart at the Regency Club, in London, where he confided to Scotland Yard's special consultant that he intended to perpetrate a morally justifiable murder in "the not too distant future" and Travers promises him, "if it isn't too cold a morning," he'll come and see him hanged – only to be told he hasn't "the faintest intention" of getting himself hanged. Somehow, Travers got the impression he wasn't pulling his leg. This places him in a highly unusual situation.

Travers has to opportunity to find the intended victim of a murder plot and "step in before it actually happens." A murder case in reverse! So he engineers an unexpected meeting with Pallart and easily secured an invitation to have dinner at house, located in "a tiny little spot in Essex," where Travers meets some peculiar characters.

Richard Brace is Pallart's nephew and his last living relative, which is why it was so shocking to his uncle when he discovered he was scrounging together a living by playing in a dance band. Something he's determined to prevent from happening ever again. David Calne is the person who introduced Pallart to Travers and has rented a piece of property from the former where he plans to immerse himself in his hobby of ornithology. Dr. Kales (pronounced Kalesh) is a Czech physician who had to fled Prague, to France, when the Germans marched in and is now staying in England as a guest of Pallart. And then there are the servants, Georges Loret, Susan Beaver and Fred Wilkins, who all have a role to play in the impending drama – such as providing the titular clue. So a very conventional setup to an unconventional, inverted murder case, but a boat trip unexpectedly clears the chess board of all its pieces. And the game has to be restarted.

During a brief excursion to sea on Pallart's steamer, Calne goes overboard and is picked up hours later by the coast guard with an ugly head wound. Only reason he lived to tell the tale is that he came across "a piece of lumber" to cling to.

Travers believes Calne's suspicious looking accident could have been the murder that had been foretold, but, a telephone call from the police, summoned him back to the home of Pallatt. A quite unexpected murder had been discovered on the premise and some of the clues point straight towards Travers himself, which forced him to bring Wharton into the case.

Travers and Wharton have to sort the relevant from the irrelevant clues, such as an unkind, but generous, will and the unfortunate mistake the housekeeper made with her hair. But, more interestingly, is the secret meeting that witnessed at the shuttered summer-house between the victim and a blonde, Aryan-looking man. This blonde man was probably one of the German prisoners-of-war who were bused around the countryside to work on farms. You often find references to the post-war malaise in British mystery novels from the late 1940s and early 1950s, but I believe this is the first time I came across a reference to German prisoners being put to work on farms to combat the shortage of agricultural workers. And this elusive German proves to be important cog in the machine of the plot.

The Case of the Housekeeper's Hair is not as tightly, or intricately, plotted as the earlier titles in the series. For example, you can easily spot the murderer, but the story still has a pleasantly puzzling and complex problem to present to the reader. What exactly went wrong with the plan, alluded to by Pallett to Travers, and why? The murderer has one of those pesky, unimpeachable alibis, which was not quite as brilliant as the alibi-tricks from Cut Throat (1932) or The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936), but certainly as daring and original as the one from The Case of the Hanging Rope (1937) – which all neatly tied together with an excellently done back-story. A back-story that had been deeply buried in the wreckage of war-torn France.

So what else is there to say except that The Case of the Housekeeper's Hair is a solidly plotted detective story from Bush's transitional period and provided a good example of how the winds were changing in post-war Britain. Recommended to every fan of Bush, Travers and Wharton!

The Case of the Dead Shepherd (1934) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush retired in 1931 from teaching in order to dedicate himself full-time to his writing career and his twelfth detective novel, The Case of the Dead Shepherd (1934), was drawn from his own experiences as a teacher, but, as Curt Evans observed, Bush was "rather glad" to leave the classroom behind him – if judged by the "comments made in his detective novels" (e.g. The Perfect Murder Case, 1929). The Case of the Dead Shepherd gives the reader a depressing and sullen picture of school-life, but with a top-of-the-class plot!

The Case of the Dead Shepherd was published in the U.S. as The Tea Tray Murders and begins when Superintendent George "The General" Wharton invited Ludovic Travers to accompany him to the dismal Woodgate Hill County School.

Woodgate Hill County School is a co-educational school, housed in "a jail-like building" with a nine-foot wall, where one of the masters has been found poisoned in the masters' common room. A young pupil was sent down to fetch some papers, but found the master, Charles Tennant, "crawling on his hands and knees." But when the boy returned with help, the master had died. Curiously, he had been tightly clutching "a perfectly enormous catalogue" of "chemical and physical apparatus" from 1910. A dying message?

Charles Tennant was "the only really cheerful person on the staff" and enlivened faculty meetings by infuriating the despised headmaster, Lionel Twirt, who's a lazy, ego-driven tyrant and self-appointed shepherd with "the habit of haranguing the school on every possible occasion" – making his removal a popular subject of discussion among the teachers. Travers and Wharton have good reasons to believe that the oxalic acid in the sugar bowl was intended to kill the unpopular headmaster. A hypothesis that seems to be confirmed when Twirt's body is found on the school grounds with his skull caved in!

A note for the curious: oxalic acid is not a poison you often come across in detective stories and know of only two, oddly-linked examples, C.H.B. Kitchin's Death of My Aunt (1929) and Richard Hull's The Murder of My Aunt (1934), of which the latter was published in the same year as The Case of the Dead Shepherd. However, Bush is the only one who found a truly clever way to employ this unusual poison (see the ink-mark clue). Anyway, back to the story!

Travers and Wharton take their time to track everyone's movements at the time of the murders, testing those pesky alibis and questioning anyone even remotely linked to the case. And the list of suspects they have to consider is a long one.

There's the always helpful Maitland Castle, a senior master, who's the odds-on favorite to succeed Twirt as headmaster, but he refuses to consider it. Mr. Godman is a junior language master who had suggested it would be easy "to drop some poison" in the headmaster's tea. Miss Holl is a geography teacher and is, what the novelists call, "sex-starved" without a solid alibi. Miss Gedge, or Ma Gedge, is "a bitch of authentic pedigree" who always cuts her classes to gossip with Twirt. Young Furrow had offered his assistance to frame those two for indecent behavior, but was away from the school to attend a wedding at the time of the murders. The daughter of the local police inspector, Miss Daisy Quick, is a secretary at the school and the murdered headmaster had shifted practically all of his daily work on Miss Quick, which gave him more time "to think of still more schemes" – or simply harassing his staff. Such as the groundsman, Vincent, who was regularly threatened with the sack and the caretaker, Flint, has gone missing around the time of the murders. And to complicate the case even further, they even have to consider a few outsiders. A school governor, Mr. Sandyman, was invited by the headmaster to see him on a most particular business and the mysterious Indian visitor, Mr. Mela Ram.

A cast filled to the brim with potential murderers, but there are many more plot-threads to be tidied up. Such as why Mela Ram disappeared or why a shed was burglarized just to empty a pail of water. Or why Tennant was lugging around a heavy, outdated catalogue around when he was dying. And the solutions to most of these questions show why I love Bush so much.

I mentioned in my review of The Case of the Platinum Blonde (1944) that nobody has nailed the relationship between the amateur and professional detective quite like Bush. The Case of the Dead Shephard is a good example of Travers and Wharton each solving a piece of the puzzle. Wharton masterfully explains the clever poisoning method used to kill Tarrent and Travers destroyed the rock-solid alibi in the headmaster's murder, but it was Travers' manservant, Palmer, who helped him figure out the meaning of the dying message (of sorts). I find this teamwork between different kind of detectives a pleasing approach to the detective story, but, like rival detectives, something you sadly only find with any regularity in anime-and manga mysteries.

So, all in all, The Case of the Dead Shepherd was a pleasant return to those tricky, clockwork-like plots of early Bush, but, as devilish complex as the story appears on the surface, the overall solution to the murders is marvelously simplistic with all of the plot-threads neatly tied up in the end. Recommended!

The Case of the Hanging Rope (1937) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Hanging Rope (1937) is the seventeenth detective novel in the Ludovic Travers and Superintendent Wharton series, rechristened as The Wedding Night Murder in US., which was published during what some consider to be a vintage year for the genre – a golden year, of the golden decade, of the Golden Age. A fine year with an excellent harvest of detective stories. Some of them are still considered classic masterpieces today.

Classics such as Anthony Berkeley's Trial and Error (1937), John Dickson Carr's The Four False Weapons (1937), Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (1937), Gladys Mitchell's Come Away, Death (1937) and John Rhode's Death on the Board (1937).

So where does Bush's The Case of the Hanging Rope exactly stand in this illustrious class of '37? Well, let's find out!

Sonia Vorge is an Anglo-Russian aviatrix, like Amelia Earhart, who was driving race cars at eighteen, "picking up prizes at Brooklands," before she started competing in "the international circuits and holding her own against men," but, during an Alpine race, she wrecked her car – killing her friend and passenger, Irene Carne. Sonia escaped with a broken arm and smashed ribs. After her stint as a female dare-devil of the race track, she picked up parachuting, gliding and finally long-distance flying.

A second tragedy happens when Sonia crashes her plane in the Austrian Alps and her co-pilot, Maurice Trove, damaged his legs and is unable to walk. So she went looking for help, but she wandered around for two days until by "sheer bling, blazing luck" stumbling across a forester. The wreck and Trove's body were never found, but rumors of "reliable evidence" of Trove's survival have begun to circulate. A man claimed to have seen Trove in Odessa, Russia, three months after the plane crash. Even the newspaper headlines are now boldly asking the question "IS MAURICE TROVE STILL ALIVE?"

These rumors and public speculations begin on the eve of her marriage to a well-known theatrical producer, Sidley Cordovan, who had broken off his initial engagement to Sonia. Cordovan had "some pretty hard things" to say about his former fiance, but they became reengaged in the wake of the plane crash.

Sidley and Sonia have a modest wedding ceremony at a London registry office with Ludovic Travers, an acquaintance of Sonia, acting as one of the witnesses.

When Travers congratulates the newlywed Sonia, she invites him to have lunch with him the following day and promises with "a sardonic delight" that he won't be bored, but why delay their honeymoon for a casual lunch? The day had been heavy with portent. Early next morning, Travers is called out of bed, by Wharton, with the news that Sonia Vorge had been murdered at Montage Court – where they had been spending their wedding night. Sonia was stabbed to death in her bridal bed and Sidley was found in the next room, drugged and dazed, with a noose of stout linen-line hanging from a cross-beam. A poor attempt by the murderer to disguise the crime as a botched murder/suicide. 

 

A salient detail is that the elderly caretaker, Coales, claims to have seen the foreboding "apparition" of the Lame Monk of Montage, "quite a well-known ghost," on the night of the murder. Travers would probably have believed Coales had he seen the ghost on any other night, but not on that specific night.

Travers and Wharton begin to delve into the backgrounds of everyone involved, which brings Wharton to France to talk with the eccentric owner of Montage Court, Sir Raphael Breye, who left England to live as a recluse in the south of France with his vast collection of paintings. This charming little excursion to France shows why Wharton has become my favorite Golden Age policeman. Meanwhile, Travers is doing what he does best: testing the soundness of everyone's alibis.

Some of the alibis aren't only cast-iron, they appear to be made of hand-wrought steel, but "hand-wrought may be home-made" and they've demolished seemingly unbreakable alibis before. Travers gives a practical demonstration on how to make a homely alibi. However, the murderer's alibi-trick is something different altogether.

Bush's best and most successful alibi stories either have minutely-timed, clockwork-like plots (The Case of the Missing Minutes, 1936) or were carefully staged tricks (The Case of the Murdered Major, 1941), but here the murderer's unshakable alibi relayed on something unpredictable – which could have rendered the alibi completely useless. Sure, the murderer had an excuse to explain this unpredictable element, but it would still left this person without an alibi. Still, the idea behind the alibi-trick is original and possibly unique. Only problem is that it's a risky method to use in a crime that can get you hanged. Murderer was really lucky it worked exactly as planned.

The explanation as to who murdered Sonia, drugged Sidley and why there was a rope hanging from a cross-beam formed an interesting play on the tightly-linked, closely-timed double murder puzzles Bush specialized in before World War II. Dead Man Twice (1930), Dancing Death (1931) and The Case of the April Fools (1933) are great examples of them, but the multiple, interacting plot-threads of The Case of the Hanging Rope were loosely tied together. Something that would have been less of a problem, if the murderer had a stronger motive and the characterization had been better. There were only three convincing characters, besides Travers and Wharton, which is why I didn't go over the list of suspects. They were mostly colorless.

Unfortunately, these shortcomings prevented The Case of the Hanging Rope from securing a spot in the top-rank in Bush's oeuvre, but I can still recommend it to his loyal readers as a good, but loosely plotted, entry in the series with an insanely original alibi-trick. And if you specifically like detective stories that center on destroying alibis, you have to read The Case of the Hanging Rope, because this one doesn't rely on screwing with people's perception of space and/or time.

My last few excursions into this series haven't exactly been as successful as my earlier ones. So my next read from Dean Street Press is probably going to be return to always wonderful E.R. Punshon.

The Case of the Fourth Detective (1951) by Christopher Bush

The Case of the Fourth Detective (1951) is the thirty-ninth mystery novel about Christopher Bush's intelligent and urbane series-detective, Ludovic Travers, who started out as a bespectacled meddler with amateur status, but has slowly transitioned into a genteel private-investigator with a license – a change influenced by the American school of hardboiled crime fiction. A change that began with a shift to first-person narration (The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel, 1942) and was completed with Travers becoming the owner of the Broad Street Detective Agency.

Reprinted by Dean Street Press

Travers came into his new position when the previous owner of the agency, Bill Ellice, unexpected died from a heart attack.

The Case of the Fourth Detective begins when a prospective client, Owen Ramplock, calls the agency and his call is taken by a former Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard, Jack Norris. Ramplock is interrupted and Norris hears him say, "Prince... what the devil are you doing here?" Several months before, Travers had met Ramplock on the golf course and decides to go Warbeck Grove, a block of palatial flats, but when he arrives, he finds Ramplock lying on the floor of Flat 5 – "deader than last year's hit-song." A visiting card of Mr. A.W. Prince is found in the pocket of the body with a bold warning printed on the back, "You'll Be Sorry."

Owen Ramplock is the second generation chairman of Ramplocks, a chain of thirty-four provision shops, which he inherited from his late father, Old Sam Ramplock. However, his son proved to be a poor replacement.

Ramplock could be charming in his "own peculiar way," but being head of Ramplocks had inflated his ego and has become "impatient of advice" and "contemptuous of protests." And his personal life was not exactly spotless either. So they have to unsnarl a tangle of personal and private motives to get to the murderer. There's no shortage of suspects.

There's the evasive Mr. A.W. Prince and his equally elusive motive. A mysterious black-haired woman who appeared to have Ramplock's secret lover and regularly visited his private flat, but nobody seems to know who she is. There's his estranged wife, Jane Ramplock, who first refused to divorce him and than flat-out refused to take him back, because someone can hurt "a person even quite a lot" and "then they do just something else" – at once "everything's changed." She refuses to tell Travers what has changed. The last potential suspect on the home front is Jane's delightful uncle, Matthew Solversen, may well have been modeled on E.R. Punshon (see Curt Evans introduction).

On the "Big Business" side of the murder, there are the people working at Ramplocks: Henry Dale (manager director), Charles Downe (chief accountant), Miss Susan Haregood (secretary), Richard Winter (sales) and the company typist, Daisy Purkes. None of them were too happy with Owen Ramplock succeeding his father.

Essentially, The Case of the Fourth Detective is a relatively simple, uncomplicated and straightforward detective story. You have a body surrounded by a group of suspects with motives and those pesky alibis, which are either watertight, incomplete or non-existent. Answers to all the questions posed here perfectly demonstrates Bush had moved on from those elaborate, intricate Golden Age baroque-style plots of the thirties with precise, minutely-timed alibis (e.g. Cut Throat, 1932) and even the occasional impossible crime – e.g. The Perfect Murder Case (1929) and The Case of the Chinese Gong (1935). However, the solution here was uncomplicated simple and can even be called it slightly uninspired. Even the alibi-trick was child's play compared to the earlier titles in the series.

However, The Case of the Fourth Detective is, in spite of its simplistic plot, not too bad a mystery novel, but one that mainly draws its strength from its depiction and use of the post-war malaise in Britain. A country where food rationing continued until July, 1954!

Ramplocks is plagued by shortages, war damage claims, rising overheads, labor troubles and "the devil knows what." Not to mention "the ravishing inheritance tax" (a.k.a. death duties). Old Sam had "enough salted" to pay for the inheritance tax when he passed away, but, with the murder of Owen Ramplock, they once again have to cough up those death duties. And scramble to find a way to raise the money. Two solutions that are constantly mentioned is either selling out or selling shares publicly to cover the cost, which would turn the family company into a public one and is fate shared by many companies – such as the "remarkable newsstand and bookstall empire," W.H. Smith and Son. This casts a gloomy, somber and even depressing shadow over the story. Something you can find in other British mysteries from this period. Cyril Hare's When the Wind Blows (1949) and Leo Bruce's Cold Blood (1952) immediately come to mind.

So, all in all, the plot of The Case of the Fourth Detective is a little simple when compared to the earlier entries in the series, but the financial and social upheaval of post-WWII Britain offers a fascinating backdrop, to say the least. As was how these changes affected the murder of Owen Ramplock. However, if you're new to the series, I advice you to begin at an earlier point in the series, because this one will only be appreciated by seasoned Bush readers.

The Case of the Haven Hotel (1948) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Haven Hotel (1948) is the thirty-third entry in the voluminous Ludovic Travers series, co-starring Superintendent George "The General" Wharton, which is one of those charming, typically English seaside resort mysteries – comparable to Agatha Christie's Peril at End House (1932), Nicholas Brady's Week-end Murder (1934) and John Rowland's Calamity in Kent (1950). This makes it one of Bush's more leisurely paced detective stories.

The Case of the Haven Hotel begins with a brief introduction of the two series-detectives, Travers and Wharton, in which the former explains how "long years in the company of George Wharton" has matured him. Travers' introduction to Wharton is truly excellent. Showing why they're perhaps my favorite team of detectives.

This brief overview ends with a challenge to the reader, of sorts, in which Travers tells the reader they'll "be troubled by no more descriptions" and "conversations there will be," but warns the reader not to mistake it for "aimless chatter," because every bit of chit-chat will probably contain a clue – pruned and edited to give everything its real significance. He was not lying.

With their wives away, Travers and Wharton "manoeuvred a fortnight's holiday together" at the Haven Hotel, Sandbeach, for the first two weeks of July.

Sandbeach is one of the last seaside strongholds where the upper classes still have their "decorous holidays" with their children and nannies. They play golf. Lounge in chairs on the hotel lawn or on the beach and go for the occasional swim in the sea, but these are the immediate post-war years of scarcity, strict rationing and long queues. So the black marketeers are doing booming business and Wharton has to postpone his holiday a couple of days, because he has to cover for a colleague who's working on the black market stuff. However, Wharton gives Travers the name of Sandbeach policeman, Inspector Fry, who has something that might interest him. This meant mixing pleasure with business.

Travers goes to the Haven Hotel ahead of Wharton and meets the people who would come to play a role in a pair of murders and attempted murders.

Mr. Havelock-Rowse is the affable, but status-conscious, owner of the hotel who wanted all his guests to feel they were in a home from home. Jeffrey Worne is the venerated author of the highly-praised Scarlet May and prides himself on being "the only serious novelist in England who's never attempted a detective story." Worne is staying at the Haven Hotel to write his next book and everyone's "wondering if they're going to be in it." There's a ravishing ex-Commando, Major Brian Huffe, who has a mutual attraction with another guest, Barbara Channard, but she wears a wedding ring. Old Peckenham is "a most distinguished-looking old chap" and used to be in the church, but Travers comes to the conclusion that he is "a consummate and artistic liar" when he told him a personal anecdote about his time on Bikini Atoll – which was lifted, word for word, from an article in the National Geographic Magazine. A timely reference to the Atom bomb test at Bikini. 

 

Lastly, there are some minor characters. Mrs. Smyth looks like a motherly old soul, but very little what happened at the hotel escaped her eyes or tongue. Peggy is a prying chambermaid who was seen listening at Worne's keyhole. And this party is rounded out by a abominable child, Gerald, who some wish was carried away by the tide.

During his first days, small, but strange, things happen. Travers and Huffe have the unshakable feeling that they had seen Worne before. Travers even notes that Worne had dyed his hair black. Inspector Fry thought he had seen Peckenham before and he had been told to lay-off a hot lead on the local black market. Travers had seen a car arrive at the back entrance of the hotel in the middle of the night. So there's enough happening under the peaceful surface of Beachsand.

All of these undercurrents come together in a narrow inlet, which is known as The Mouth, where Major Huffe meets with, what appears to be, an unfortunate accident when the rowboat began to sink and it appeared he struck his head against the side of the sinking boat – a body was not recovered. A short time later a serious attempt is made on the life of Travers. This is not the obligatory spot of danger, but a serious and spirited attempt to silence him. A second, very obvious murder is discovered and a body washed up on a sandbank blows apart Wharton pet theory, which was modeled on the Birlstone Gambit. So there's your reason for liking Bush, JJ.

In one of my previous reviews, I have said that nobody nailed the symbiotic relationship between the fictional amateur detective and professional policeman quite like Bush, but The Case of the Haven Hotel puts Travers and Wharton on the same footing. They both act as amateur detectives who work together with the local police. As a consequence, the reader is not treated on tracking movement of suspects and destroying one, or more, cast-iron alibis, but on pure amateur detective work with information being extracted from conversations, observations and wool-gathering. Surprisingly, the professional policeman turned out to have a firmer grasp on the case than the amateur theorist. I love it when Wharton comes out on top!

However, in spite of most of the story being a lightweight mystery novel without one, or two, of Bush's trademark alibi-tricks, The Case of the Haven Hotel had a pretty solid and satisfying solution with a fairly original motive. Only thing you can really hold against it is that its not as carefully plotted as earlier titles and how some ideas were recycled from earlier novels. However, those ideas were put to excellent use here. I would even say that a key-element of the plot was better used here than in that previous story.

So, all in all, The Case of the Haven Hotel is a slightly unusual, but good, entry in the series, which comes highly recommended to readers who are already acquainted with Travers and Wharton.

The Case of the Magic Mirror (1943) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Magic Mirror (1943) is the twenty-sixth entry in the Ludovic Travers series and here the influence of the tough, hardboiled school began to show with its first-person narration by the detective, "the dissolute rich" and "scheming femmes fatales" – changing Travers from a prim intellectual to a genteel private-investigator. However, the plot hearkened back to the more elaborate, Golden Age baroque-style detective stories from the early days of the series (c.f. The Case of the April Fools, 1933). The book even begins with a sporting challenge to the reader.

The Case of the Magic Mirror begins in the Spring, of 1942, with Travers recovering from an operation that removed "a lump of shrapnel from a premature bomb." So he has enough time on his hands to tell the story of one of the most unusual murder cases he had been unofficially connected to, but the solution was "so absurdly simple" that some wonder why they haven't "seen it from the very first."

To cement his claim, Travers tells the reader that in the next paragraph is "the germ of that simple solution" allowing you, the reader, "to solve the whole thing well before the last page" and prove your mettle as an armchair detective – which is an excellent example of fair play. Right off the bat, Bush gives away a clue as a freebie! This is exactly why he has become one of my favorite Golden Age mystery writers.

The story Travers has to tell took place shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1939, but the case has its roots in an earlier swindle affair and a big, headline grabbing 1937 trial. Five men were charged and convicted for fleecing thousands of pounds from race-horse bookies by tampering with the time-stamps of telegrams, which were used to wire bets to the bookies. These convictions were secured with the testimonies of the "socially dubious" Joe Passman and one of the accused, Rupert Craigne, ensuring most of them got "a couple of years apiece," which infuriated one of them, Patrick Sivley – who worked as Passman's chauffeur. And, as he's dragged out of court, he screams he will get them even "if it's the last thing I do."

Enter Joe Passman's stepdaughter, Charlotte Craigne, who's married to Rupert and, once upon a time, she had been Travers' sole indiscretion in life.

Charlotte is completely devoted to Rupert, but financially depended on Passman and suspects he masterminded the bookie-swindling case. So she turns to her ex-lover, Travers, to use his detective skills to dig up dirt on Passman, which she wants to use as blackmail material. So why would Travers agree to take part in this scheme? Charlotte hands him a snapshot of a small boys and tells him its his son! A son she gave birth to after their relationship ended. If he refuses to help her, Charlotte promises him to send his wife all the prove of his bastard son. So he has no choice but to acquiesce.

However, Travers makes plans "to clip the lady's claws" and engages a private-detective, Edward "Eddie" Franks, to not only help him with the Passman end of the swindling affair, but also help him disprove his paternity by identifying the boy in the photograph, which is one of the things that reminded me of the early books in the series – when John Franklin, an inquiry agent of Durangos Limited, assisted Travers and Superintendent George Wharton (e.g. The Perfect Murder Case, 1929). So far, this appears to be a relatively simple, straightforward case, but then the murders happened. And those murders is another thing that reminded me of the earlier books.

Before his fall from grace, Rupert Craigne was a famously conceited actor and, upon his release, he has been making a public exhibition of himself by loudly proclaiming his innocence in public.

One day, Charlotte gets a letter from Rupert telling her that he's going to a seaside place, called Trimport, to "collect a crowd" and "tell them a few things." Theatrically, Rupert was standing in a small boat addressing the scores of swimmers and the people crowded at the water's edge. A rifle-shot silences the actor as he falls backwards into the sea. Charlotte and Travers witnesses the murder, but the worst is yet to come. When they return to the manor house, the place is crawling with police. Joe Passman has been stabbed to death around the same time Rupert Craigne was shot!

These multiple, closely-timed and tightly intertwined murders were a staple of Bush's detective novels from the 1930s and he got a lot of mileage out of exploring the possibilities this premise has to offer. Some notable examples are Dead Man Twice (1930), Dancing Death (1931), The Case of the Bonfire Body (1936), The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938) and the previously mentioned The Case of the April Fools. This time the murders are complicated when two people go missing: Sivley had been spotted near the house around the time of Passman's murder and this is assumed to have been the reason why he bolted, but the old, dutiful butler of the place, Matthews, appears to have "simply walked out of the house" – vanishing without a trace or reason. Lastly, there the titular mirror, which was taken from the wall and replaced by a framed print.

The Case of the Magic Mirror has all the ingredients of a first-rate detective novel. An intricately-linked double murder plot, a cat-and-mouse game with a dangerous, beautifully characterized dame and personal angle for the protagonist. Travers is not only blackmailed, but circumstances forces him to pull the wool over the eyes of the old war-horse, Superintendent George "The General" Wharton. Always a tricky thing to do. Even more so to someone he respects as a friendly rival and considers to be a friend. Or what about keeping his wife in the dark about his past with Charlotte? Consequently, Travers emerges from this story "a trifle shop-soiled."

In spite of the rich, busy plot with multiple moving parts and a quasi-impossible alibi-trick, the whole scheme was as transparent as a child's lie and this made the intended surprise solution fall flat on its face. However, I have to give props to Bush for the trickery behind the first murder. Some parts of the trick are a little difficult to swallow, which mainly has to do with time and timing, but not entirely impossible to pull off under those circumstances. As an aside, a far more famous mystery writer used a slight variation on this trick in one of his latter, lesser-known detective novels.

So, on a whole, The Case of the Magic Mirror failed to secure a place among the top-rank titles in the series and not recommended to readers who are new to the series, but the close ties Travers has to the case and how he handled it makes it a must-read to fans of Bush.

The Case of the Corporal's Leave (1945) by Christopher Bush

The Case of the Corporal's Leave (1945) is Christopher Bush's twenty-ninth mystery novel about his two detectives, Ludovic Travers and Superintendent George Wharton, which is one of his wartime stories and takes place after Travers was "invalided out of the Army in the autumn of 1943" – now worked on "Special Branch jobs" for an overworked Scotland Yard. My reason for picking this particular title is its tantalizing premise. The story opens with Travers confessing that he had committed "what was tantamount to murder" and it will not be till the story is almost over that "you learn how and why."

The Case of the Corporal's Leave begins when Travers reported to Scotland Yard and found Wharton in "in one of his heavy, preoccupied moods." What harried his mind was the sudden disappearance of a retired "Big Bug" of the India Office.

Sir William Pelle is a retired Indian Civil Servant, who has recently taken over the secretaryship of the gifts branch of the Indian Famine Relief Fund, which came with the custodianship over "various items of jewellery" that were gifted to the fund and he was going to have them appraised by a noted antique dealer, Francis Kenray – toting the expensive gifts around in a small attaché-case. Assuming nobody would think that ordinary-looking little case was crammed with at least thirty thousand pounds worth of jewellery.

However, Sir William failed to show up for his appointment with Kenray. He had disappeared without a trace along with his attaché-case and its valuable content.

Wharton is tied up at the office and ask Travers to go down to Kenray's shop, which is run by his stepsister, Grace Allbeck, under false pretenses and surreptitiously pried information in a pub from their employee, Tom Fulcher. And he has a talk with Sir William's secretary, Miss Doris Chaddon.

Travers learned from these conversations that the knowledge of Sir William lugging a small fortune in jewellery had been widely broadcast. This made him feel "vastly different about the curious disappearance," but then Wharton called to tell him that the case had become a murder investigation: Sir William's body had been discovered in the back of a railway truck with the back of his head caved in. Curiously, the body was partly covered in sugar.

As a brief aside, the pathologist discovered that Sir William had "an abnormally thin skull." So thin that they would like to have the skull as "a medical curio" in a bottle of spirit, but how can someone with with an abnormally thin, eggshell-like skull have made it to sixty-four without ever bumping his head? I remember reading about a real-life case from my country, known as Het Pantoffel-Eierschedelarrest (The Carpet Slipper-Eggshellskull Arrest), in which a man threw his carpet slipper at his wife – who was hit in the head and died several hours later. I thought this was the only aspect of the story that was a little too convenient, for the plot, to be the case.

Travers and Wharton have to find a murderer in an interesting cast of characters. There are the aforementioned suspects, who were already present when Sir William was still missing, but they also have to consider one of "the last of the eccentrics" from late Edwardian times, Betram Dale, who's collects rings and once offered the lower story of his house as a police post – providing him round-the-clock police protection for his collection without spending a dime on an expensive security system. But when Travers visited the antique shop to speak with Allbeck, he saw Dale "shaking his fist at someone in the shop." And as Wharton wisely remarks, collectors are "the biggest thieves and liars unhung."

Roger Mavin is a failed novelist and Sir William hired him as a live-in secretary to help him work on his autobiography, which contains an important clue to the solution. Travers even goes out of his way to point out this clue and assures the reader that the passages from the manuscript wasn't an "unnecessary digression or mere padding." Always nice when a mystery writer goes out of his away to assure his readers that the story is fairly clued. Lastly, there's Marion Blaketon, who runs a Prisoners' Reformation Society, but Wharton knows she uses the Society for more nefarious activities.

I should also mention a part of their (early) investigation consists of the reconstructing Sir William's last train journey, which was somewhat reminiscent of Freeman Wills Crofts.

The solution to the murder of Sir William plays on the old-sins-cast-long-shadows theme linked together by a series of (world) events, such as a long-forgotten episode in France and World War II, which would not resulted in the deaths of three people had one of those events not happened – or gone differently. A tricky juggling-act convincingly pulled off by a true plot-technician. Although this approach made it a little difficult to anticipate the full explanation. And I missed the merciless demolition of an intricate, rock-solid alibi or two.

Nonetheless, The Case of the Corporal's Leave, as a whole, nicely fitted together and, while not one of Bush's top-tier detective novels (e.g. The Case of the Missing Minutes, 1936), it's a fine specimen of the jigsaw-puzzle detective story from the genre's Golden Age with a tragic back-story. The answer to the “murder” Travers committed elevated it above the average Golden Age mystery novel, but not quite enough to break through the ceiling of the top-floor.

I'll probably be returning to Bush (again) before too long, because I only just noticed how Carrian the plot-description of The Case of the Hanging Rope (1936) is.