The Case Of The Corner Cottage
A review of The Case of the Corner Cottage by Christopher Bush – 240415
There is a distinctive change of tone in this, the thirty-eight novel in Bush’s long-running Ludovic Travers series, originally published in 1951, twenty-five years after the publication of the series opener, The Plumley Inheritance, and reissued by Dean Street Press. This is an investigation fuelled by personal revenge as Travers seeks revenge for the murder of one of his colleagues, Godfrey Prial.
Travers’ affairs have moved on as he is now the owner of Bill Ellice’s Broad Street Detective Agency, a long held ambition although his hand was rather forced by Ellice’s death from a massive heart attack. His original vision was to run it in tandem with his old mucker, George Wharton of the Yard, the Old General, but Wharton shows no sign of retiring from the force. Indeed, one of the unusual aspects of the book is that save for a couple of name checks, Wharton is absent from its pages, a disappointment for those who enjoy the repartee between the two and the sparring to get to the truth before the other.
However, what the book lacks in that respect, it more than makes up for the quality of the mystery that Travers sets out to solve. Godfrey Prial is the agency’s star turn and while he is away on holiday in the East Anglian town of Shireton, he seems to have got on to the trail of a mystery which he is investigating on his initiative. Prial sends Travers a cryptic message and a little while later he is found, shot dead in The George, a hotel to which he seems to have transferred in haste.
The book falls into two parts, the first and shorter sets up the scenario and details Travers’ initial investigations, which, apart from introducing the reader to some of the principal characters of story and picking up some clues which ultimately become important, lead to no satisfactory conclusion. The pace picks up in the second part with the appearance of Myra Cowle, a hairdresser who nervously seeks to employ Travers to find a set of diamonds which were stolen from her uncle during a robbery in which he was struck over the head and having the customary weak skull died from the resultant wounds. The culprit was quickly apprehended and hung but the jewels were nowhere to be found. Myra, though, is soon knocked over and killed by a car. Accident or murder?
There are some intriguing characters in the case, none more so than the elderly James Monagan who was so traumatized by an assault and the ransacking of his cottage that he lost his mind and is consigned to a mental asylum where he spends all day clutching a rosary and muttering to himself.
The archetypal baddies are represented by a shady London businessman, Henry Laver, who has acquired Monaghan’s cottage, Copley’s Corner, the eponymous corner cottage, and thoroughly renovated it and excavated the garden as if he was searching for something, and his thuggish henchman, Alf. The local vicar, Comfort, is also acting suspiciously and taking an unusual amount of interest in Monaghan, despite being of a different faith.
The resolution of the mystery becomes a case of cherchez la femme as Travers, assisted by Jack Norris, formerly of the Yard, seek the elusive Eileen Masters. As often is the case in a Bush mystery, not everyone is quite who they seem to be and there is quite a twist over the identity of one of the principal characters in the reveal. Travers’ wife, Bernice, is pressed into service and much hangs on whether and how quickly a woman can change their hair colouring.
While the whereabouts of the diamonds is easy to spot and there is no real attempt to disguise who the culprits are, I found this an enthralling book, one of Bush’s better ones, probably because there is a greater intensity to the tale. It is a personal matter, not just a dry academic investigation. I could not help thinking, though, that despite his enthusiasm for crossword puzzles, Travers made quite a hash of interpreting Prial’s cryptic missive and for all his perspicacity, he fell quite easily into a trap.
Look out for Prial’s snuff box, bequeathed to Travers. Squeeze the ends and it reveals a pornographic image, but it also reveals more, clues from which the resolution of the mystery can be gleaned. Great stuff!
