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    The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery
    The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery
    The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery
    Ebook275 pages4 hours

    The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

    By Christopher Bush

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    His head went sideways, like a hopping sparrow’s on a lawn.

    The man who saves Henry Clandon’s life during the campaign in Sicily visits him once in hospital, gives his name as David Seeway, makes vague and apparently pointless reference to somebody else called Archie Dibben and a country town called Bassingford, and th

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDean Street Press
    Release dateMay 4, 2020
    ISBN9781913527020
    The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery
    Author

    Christopher Bush

    Christopher Bush is a debut author of ‘Jake’s Lunchbox Surprise’, alongside being a primary school teacher with a passion for sparking children’s creative instincts. His fun-filled experiences with his cheeky, mischievous and most of all, brilliant children have inspired his first children’s book. Chris hopes to bring as big a smile to children’s faces, as much as they have to his.

    Read more from Christopher Bush

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      Book preview

      The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel - Christopher Bush

      INTRODUCTION

      RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW

      Christopher Bush and Mystery Fiction in the Fifties

      Mr. Bush has an urbane and intelligent way of dealing with mystery which makes his work much more attractive than the stampeding sensationalism of some of his rivals.

      —Rupert Crofts-Cooke (acclaimed author of the Leo Bruce detective novels)

      New fashions in mystery fiction were decidedly afoot in the 1950s, as authors increasingly turned to sensationalistic tales of international espionage, hard-boiled sex and violence, and psychological suspense. Yet there indubitably remained, seemingly imperishable and eternal, what Anthony Boucher, dean of American mystery reviewers, dubbed the conventional type of British detective story. This more modestly decorous but still intriguing and enticing mystery fare was most famously and lucratively embodied by Crime Queen Agatha Christie, who rang in the new decade and her Golden Jubilee as a published author with the classic detective novel that was promoted as her fiftieth mystery: A Murder Is Announced (although this was in fact a misleading claim, as this tally also included her short story collections). Also representing the traditional British detective story during the 1950s were such crime fiction stalwarts (all of them Christie contemporaries and, like the Queen of Crime, longtime members of the Detection Club) as Edith Caroline Rivett (E.C.R Lorac and Carol Carnac), E.R. Punshon, Cecil John Charles Street (John Rhode and Miles Burton) and Christopher Bush. Punshon and Rivett passed away in the Fifties, pens still brandished in their hands, if you will, but Street and Bush, apparently indefatigable, kept at crime throughout the decade, typically publishing in both the United Kingdom and the United States two books a year (Street with both of his pseudonyms).

      Not to be outdone even by Agatha Christie, Bush would celebrate his own Golden Jubilee with his fiftieth mystery, The Case of the Russian Cross, in 1957—and this was done, in contrast with Christie, without his publishers having to resort to any creative accounting. Cross is the fiftieth Christopher Bush Ludovic Travers detective novel reprinted by Dean Street Press in this, the Spring of 2020, the hundredth anniversary of the dawning of the Golden Age of detective fiction, following, in this latest installment, The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel (1952), The Case of the Burnt Bohemian (1953), The Case of The Silken Petticoat (1953), The Case of the Red Brunette (1954), The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954), The Case of the Benevolent Bookie (1955), The Case of the Amateur Actor (1955), The Case of the Extra Man (1956) and The Case of the Flowery Corpse (1956).

      Not surprisingly, given its being the occasion of Christopher Bush’s Golden Jubilee, The Case of the Russian Cross met with a favorable reception from reviewers, who found the author’s wry dedication especially ingratiating: The author, having discovered that this is his fiftieth novel of detection, dedicates it in sheer astonishment to HIMSELF. Writing as Francis Iles, the name under which he reviewed crime fiction, Bush’s Detection Club colleague Anthony Berkeley, himself one of the great Golden Age innovators in the genre, commented, "I share Mr. Bush’s own surprise that The Case of the Russian Cross should be his fiftieth book; not so much at the fact itself as at the freshness both of plot and writing which is still as notable with fifty up as it was in in his opening overs. There must be many readers who still enjoy a straightforward, honest-to-goodness puzzle, and here it is. The late crime writer Anthony Lejeune, who would be admitted to the Detection Club in 1963, for his part cheered, Hats off to Christopher Bush….[L]ike his detective, [he] is unostentatious but always absolutely reliable. Alan Hunter, who recently had published his first George Gently mystery and at the time was being lauded as the British Simenon," offered similarly praiseful words, pronouncing of The Case of the Russian Cross that Bush’s sleuth Ludovic Travers continues to be a wholly satisfying creation, the characters are intriguing and the plot full of virility. . . . the only trace of long-service lies in the maturity of the treatment.

      The high praise for Bush’s fiftieth detective novel only confirmed (if resoundingly) what had become clear from reviews of earlier novels from the decade: that in Britain Christopher Bush, who had turned sixty-five in 1950, had become a Grand Old Man of Mystery, an Elder Statesman of Murder. Bush’s The Case of the Three Lost Letters, for example, was praised by Anthony Berkeley as a model detective story on classical lines: an original central idea, with a complicated plot to clothe it, plenty of sound, straightforward detection by a mellowed Ludovic Travers and never a word that is not strictly relevant to the story; while reviewer Christopher Pym (English journalist and author Cyril Rotenberg) found the same novel a beautifully quiet, close-knit problem in deduction very fairly presented and impeccably solved. Berkeley also highly praised Bush’s The Case of the Burnt Bohemian, pronouncing it yet another sound piece of work . . . in that, alas!, almost extinct genre, the real detective story, with Ludovic Travers in his very best form.

      In the United States Bush was especially praised in smaller newspapers across the country, where, one suspects, traditional detection most strongly still held sway. Bush is one of the soundest of the English craftsmen in this field, declared Ben B. Johnston, an editor at the Richmond Times Dispatch, in his review of The Case of the Burnt Bohemian, while Lucy Templeton, doyenne of the Knoxville Sentinel (the first female staffer at that Tennessee newspaper, Templeton, a freshly minted graduate of the University of Tennessee, had been hired as a proofreader back in 1904), enthusiastically avowed, in her review of The Case of the Flowery Corpse, that the novel was the best mystery novel I have read in the last six months. Bush has always told a good story with interesting backgrounds and rich characterization, she added admiringly. Another southern reviewer, one M. of the Montgomery Advertiser, deemed The Case of the Amateur Actor another Travers mystery to delight the most critical of a reader audience, concluding in inimitable American lingo, it’s a swell story. Even Anthony Boucher, who in the Fifties hardly could be termed an unalloyed admirer of conventional British detection, from his prestigious post at the New York Times Books Review afforded words of praise to a number of Christopher Bush mysteries from the decade, including the cases of the Benevolent Bookie (a provocative puzzle), the Amateur Actor (solid detective interest), the Flowery Corpse (many small ingenuities of detection) and, but naturally, the Russian Cross (a pretty puzzle). In his own self-effacing fashion, it seems that Ludovic Travers had entered the pantheon of Great Detectives, as another American commentator suggested in a review of Bush’s The Case of The Silken Petticoat:

      Although Ludovic Travers does not possess the esoteric learning of Van Dine’s Philo Vance, the rough and ready punch of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, the Parisian [sic!] touch of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, the appetite and orchids of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, the suave coolness of The Falcon or the eerie laugh and invisibility of The Shadow, he does have good qualities—especially the ability to note and interpret clues and a dogged persistence in remembering and following up an episode he could not understand. These paid off in his solution of The Case of The Silken Petticoat.

      In some ways Christopher Bush, his traditionalism notwithstanding, attempted with his Fifties Ludovic Travers mysteries to keep up with the tenor of rapidly changing times. As owner of the controlling interest in the Broad Street Detective Agency, Ludovic Travers increasingly comes to resemble an American private investigator rather than the gentleman amateur detective he had been in the 1930s; and the novels in which he appears reflect some of the jaded cynicism of post-World War Two American hard-boiled crime fiction. The Case of the Red Brunette, one of my favorite examples from this batch of Bushes, looks at civic corruption in provincial England in a case concerning a town counsellor who dies in an apparent badger game or honey trap gone fatally wrong (a web of mystery skillfully spun noted Pat McDermott of Iowa’s Quad City Times), while in The Case of the Three Lost Letters, Travers finds himself having to explain to his phlegmatic wife Bernice the pink lipstick strains on his collar (incurred strictly in the line of duty, of course). Travers also pays homage to the popular, genre altering Inspector Maigret novels of Georges Simenon in The Case of Red Brunette, when he decides that he will try to get a feel of the city [of Mainford]: make a Maigret-like tour and achieve some kind of background. . . .

      Christopher Bush finally decided that Travers could manage entirely without his longtime partner in crime solving, the wily and calculatingly avuncular Chief Superintendent George Wharton, whom at times Travers, in the tradition of American hard-boiled crime fiction, appears positively to dislike. I generally admire and respect Wharton, but there are times when he annoys me almost beyond measure, Travers confides in The Case of the Amateur Actor. There are even moments, as when he assumes that cheap and leering superiority, when I can suddenly hate him. George Wharton appropriately makes his final, brief appearance in the Bush oeuvre in The Case of the Russian Cross, where Travers allows that despite their differences, the Old General is the man who’d become in most ways my oldest friend.

      Ring out the old, ring in the new may have been the motto of many when it came to mid-century mystery fiction, but as another saying goes, what once was old eventually becomes sparklingly new again. The truth of the latter adage is proven by this shining new set of Christopher Bush reissues. Just like old crimes, vintage mystery fans may sigh contentedly, as once again they peruse the pages of a Bush, pursuing murderous malefactors in the ever pleasant company of Ludovic Travers, all the while armed with the happy knowledge that a butcher’s dozen of thirteen of Travers’ investigations yet remains to be reissued.

      Curtis Evans

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE CLIENT

      I happened to be alone in the office because Norris, my managing director, had gone out with a client. When there’s nothing doing for me as what Scotland Yard calls an unofficial expert, I spend a goodish bit of time at the Broad Street Detective Agency, though it’s Norris who runs the business. I’m only a kind of figure-head—chairman of the company, and, incidentally, the owner. If Norris wants me, and we happen to be short-handed, I sometimes take the place of an operative or do a certain amount of interviewing, and that Saturday morning I happened to be on hand.

      Bertha Munney, that brisk old trouper of a secretary, rang through.

      There’s a gentleman here, Mr. Travers, who wants to see one of the principals. Shall I send him in?

      He’s in the waiting-room?

      Oh yes, she said, and guessed that I’d want to know a bit about him. He’s quite a gentleman. Youngish. Speaks well. Doesn’t look worried or anything like that.

      He may do when he leaves here, I told her facetiously. Send him in, Bertha. What’s his name, by the way?

      Clandon. Henry Clandon.

      Henry Clandon came in. Bertha was right, as usual, for he certainly looked what one calls a gentleman. There was a level look and an ease of movement, and all those little, scarcely noticeable things that place a man in a certain social category. He looked about thirty, stood about five feet ten, and his broad shoulders were squared like those of a man who’s taken his army life seriously. He was quite good-looking in a strictly virile sort of way. His hair was dark brown, the neatly trimmed moustache was dark brown, and he wore horn-rimmed spectacles much darker and much smaller than my own. His clothes were well cut, and he wore no tie of the kind that announces a school or a regiment.

      Mr. Clandon? I said, and gave him my best smile and waved him to a seat.

      Yes, he said, and his smile was rather tentative. I’ve often seen your advertisement, but I never thought I’d be here. He smiled again, this time apologetically. That sounded rather crude. Perhaps I mean that I’m here because I saw your advertisement.

      Fine, I said. I liked the first look of him, and it never does any harm to have a certain amount of preliminary blether. It puts the nervous ones at their ease—not that this chap looked especially nervous. If he looked anything at all it was what I might call politely diffident.

      And what can we do for you, Mr. Clandon? I went on. My name’s Travers, by the way. Ludovic Travers. Not that that conveys anything to you.

      I want you to do something that may sound rather peculiar, he told me, and his eyes blinked a bit behind the heavy lenses. I want you to find somebody for me.

      Why not? I said amiably. It’s the kind of thing we’re often doing.

      But this is different. I mean—well, I only saw the man twice and that was during the war.

      Tell me all about it, I said. Have a cigarette.

      I held the lighter for him and he seemed more at ease when he’d taken a draw or two. To start the ball rolling, I asked him what sort of a time he’d had in the army. He showed no surprise that I’d hit on the right service.

      Not too bad, he said. I got carved up a bit in Sicily, at a place called Larentza. That’s where I first saw the man I want you to find. His name was Seeway. David Seeway.

      And the last time you saw him?

      The same time. The following week, in fact.

      With all the kinks straightened out, his story was this. After an unsuccessful night attack he had been left in no-man’s-land with a lump of shrapnel in his belly. A young officer from another regiment had brought him in and had later come to see him in hospital. That officer—the David Seeway whom we were to find—had stayed by the bed only a few minutes, and with a sister fluttering nervously around since the patient was not supposed to talk.

      That’s practically all I know about him, Clandon told me. But I owe him my life and I want to find him. I’m not being sentimental or anything like that, but I feel I owe him something. If he should be up against it in any way or wanting a spot of help—well, I’d like to do something about it. It was a devilish brave thing he did. Heard a bloke groaning out there and didn’t know him and crawled out and brought him in. Got wounded himself in the process, too.

      But you’ve heard nothing about him since?

      It was a shrewd question that implied a whole lot of things. Some of them he spotted, for he frowned slightly.

      You know how it is in a war, he said. One minute you’re alive and then you’re dead, and that’s the sort of day-to-day mentality. Then when you’re out of things, and for me that was only three years ago, you’ve got to get reorganised and that’s apt to take a whole lot of time and thought.

      He broke off to give a shy sort of smile.

      I don’t want you to laugh at me, but the other day I saw an American war film that dealt with a situation like my own. It sort of hit me. I suddenly knew I’d been most damnably ungrateful towards Seeway and I’ve been thinking the same ever since. Only I happen to be a rather busy sort of person, so I thought I’d get you people to look up Seeway for me.

      If he’s alive.

      Exactly. If he’s alive.

      Right, I said. Let’s start off with a description and so on. His regiment?

      He gave a smile that was even more apologetic.

      You’re going to find it hard to understand this, he said, but I was a mighty sick man when he saw me in hospital. I couldn’t even tell you his regiment. I just sort of lay there in my bed and listened. I do remember that I thanked him, but I must have said it very quietly. I guess I didn’t feel like talking.

      I guess not, I said. But anything at all about him that you remember?

      He took out his wallet and found a sheet of notes. He said he’d been racking his brains for a week or two—ever since that evening at the cinema—and had jotted things down from time to time. Seeway was definitely an infantryman—that was a certainty. He looked pretty big and strong, and he was somewhere about Clandon’s own age, which was thirty-three. That would be now, of course. Eight years ago Seeway would have been only twenty-five. He’d spoken with a cultured voice and had no recognisable accent.

      This is the real clue, Clandon said, and looked up from his notes. I’m practically sure he came from a place called Bassingford. You know it?

      I think I’ve been there, I said. A quiet little town about twenty-five miles north of London.

      Norris came in then and I introduced him. He took a back seat when I’d outlined the case and let me get on with the eliciting of clues which would give us a starting point. Maybe it was the interruption that made Clandon remember something he should have asked.

      You don’t mind my asking it, he said, and craned round to include Norris, but all this is strictly confidential?

      Most decidedly, I said. As confidential as between doctor and patient. In fact, I said, as I offered the cigarette box again, if you’d come here and told us you’d committed a murder, we wouldn’t have dreamed of ringing the police.

      Good, he said, and had another look at his notes. "And there’s one other thing and I’ve wondered if it wasn’t some kind of hallucination. After he’d gone that day I must have had a bit of a relapse. Slightly delirious, and so on, and all sorts of mad things running through my brain. This one was over and over again, like the noise of the wheels of a train. And it was a man’s name. Archie Dibben. Archie Dibben, Archie Dibben—over and over again, just like that. He gave a wry shake of the head. Perhaps that’s why I remember it."

      No clue at all as to why the name was on your mind?

      Yes, he said. It came to me last night. I seem to remember his asking me what my part of England was, and then his mentioning of Bassingford. I don’t know what I said, if anything, but I faintly remember him saying that if I didn’t know Bassingford I wouldn’t know Archie Dibben. Something like that. It’s all very vague and obscure, and it’s all I can be reasonably certain about.

      Tell me this, I said. Who brought you in from no-man’s-land? Seeway alone? There wasn’t another man with him?

      That’s an idea, he said, and in the same breath was shaking his head. I couldn’t say. It was dark as hell and I was in a pretty bad way. I think I passed out almost as soon as he touched me. I faintly remember a grenade going off—the one that wounded him—and then I came to in the dressing station. But I do see your point. This Archie Dibben may have been with him and the two of them brought me in, and he was sort of telling me so.

      It’s an idea, I said. And it may make things easier. We’ve got two people to look for and either may lead us to the other.

      Yes, he said. The notes had petered out and he was suddenly gravelled for lack of matter.

      You haven’t made any enquiries yourself? Norris put in from behind.

      None whatever, Clandon told him. I’m a busy man, and, if you’ll pardon the old adage, I never keep a dog and bark myself. As soon as I’d made up my mind—and that was only last night—I decided to get you people to do the barking.

      Very sensible, too, I said. And you haven’t even been to Bassingford.

      Yes, he said. But not about that. A few weeks ago I interviewed a client there about a manuscript. I happen to be a publisher.

      Really?

      No one important, he said. Just the junior director of Halmer and Blate.

      A fine old firm, I said. And the address where you’d like us to communicate with you, Mr. Clandon?

      He was a bachelor, he said, and had a small service flat—14 Marlow Mansions, Westminster. He gave me the telephone number and said the best, indeed the only time to be sure of him was in the early morning. Any time before half-past nine. Then he was asking about terms. I quoted terms that allowed for eventualities and he seemed perfectly happy. In fact, he had his cheque-book and was signing his name to the retaining fee as soon as the terms were quoted. I filled in the contract details on one of our usual forms, and he took a quick look through it and signed with never a question.

      As soon as there’s anything to communicate, you shall have it, I told him. It might be pretty soon. In fact, I added humorously, I don’t think we’re going to make an awful lot of money out of you, Mr. Clandon. Not that we shall spin the case out. We’ll get to work at once. Bassingford’s pretty handy, which is an excellent thing as far as your pocket is concerned.

      He smiled politely, but the smile wasn’t there for more than a second.

      And everything’s strictly confidential?

      Confidence is the basis of this kind of business, I told him soberly. Have no worries about that, Mr. Clandon. He shook hands with both of us. Norris had a last word as Clandon and I went through the door.

      If any additional recollections should occur to you, you’ll let us have them at once?

      Clandon said he certainly would. I saw him through to the outer door and that was that. He had a nice little post-war car that must have made a big hole into a thousand pounds, but I wasn’t smiling ruefully at the fact that we weren’t likely to collect a handsome cheque. I wasn’t smiling at all. I think as I went back along the corridor to Norris that my fingers were instinctively at my glasses. That’s a nervous trick of mine when I’m at a mental loss or suddenly confronted with something that seems to need a considerable deal of explanation.

      "A nice

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