The Case Of The Burnt Bohemian
A review of The Case of the Burnt Bohemian by Christopher Bush – 240806
Aficionados of Christopher Bush will recognize his ability to take a couple of seemingly random and unconnected events and weaving a complex and intriguing mystery out of them. This, the forty-second in his Ludovic Travers series, originally published in 1953 and reissued by Dean Street Press, is an excellent example.
Travers, in his guise as Chairman and owner of the Broad Street Detective Agency, is rung up by a psychiatrist, Dr Arthur Chale, who believes that his life is in danger. He does not make the appointment but a background check establishes that Chale and his cousin, Morse, were involved in a blackmail case in Brumford before the Second World War, Chale being cleared but Morse, after escaping on bail, was thought to have been shot in France after double-crossing the Nazis.
In his role as consultant to the Yard, Travers is summoned by George Wharton to view the remains of an artist by the name of Sindle who was stabbed to death in his Chelsea flat and then the body was burnt to conceal its identity. As Travers remarked at the time, if the body was that of Sindle and it was found in his flat, why the need to conceal its identity? From such little acorns a mighty mystery grows and it comes as no surprise to discover the first of several links between the two events, namely that Chale provided the flat for Sindle.
There is another murder victim, Chale’s secretary, Wolde, killed for knowing too much and to add further spice to the mystery, an eccentric woman who blames Chale for the death of her daughter.
The intricacies of the plot is too complex to summarise succinctly and most of the pleasure to be derived from reading the book is to find that Bush has pushed you in one direction only to bring you to a crashing stop and have to refocus, regroup and start again. For Wharton and Travers it is a case where a discovery or revelation forces them to re-evaluate their preconceptions ad assumptions of the case. They really only get on to the trail after two major false starts. Even when they do get on to the right track, they miss some obvious clues which, in hindsight, would have speeded up the identification of the culprit.
It is a case involving dental plates and Travers’ observation of a child’s trick with orange peel to alter the jaw profile leads him to an understanding of why there were too many teeth found in the melted remains at the flat and why the victim and murderer seemed to have the same dental characteristics. There is a reprise of an artefact used to establish and break an alibi, a variation of which Bush used in the Case of the Flying Donkey, and a couple of curiosities, such as the use of a telephone box to report a fire when there was a phone in the reception and the delay in handing over a sketch of Sindle, which had they been given greater attention would have led to the killer more quickly.
Bush has got over his phase of moaning about the high taxation rates levied by the now former Labour government but he upholds his conservative sentiments in his portrayal of Sindle who, in a letter purporting to come from him and confessing to the murder of Wolde, reveals that he suffered from what he called “sexual perversions” from which Chale had cured him, a controversial thesis at the best of times. Did the fact that a fellow resident claimed to have seen Sindle with a pansy-looking man mean he was backsliding, an unfortunate choice of participle by Bush?
The relationship between Wharton and Travers is always a highlight, with the Old General quick to blame Travers when assumptions prove false and to take credit for a suggestion from his consultant that bears fruit. This is classic Bush, a good solid murder mystery that takes some sorting out. Great stuff.
