John Bude’s The Cheltenham Square Murder

Book Number 40 of 2024

The Cheltenham Square Murder (1937) is the fourth mystery novel of John Bude I’ve read. His hero, Superintendent Meredith, returns for this one, even though Cheltenham is outside his jurisdiction. Meredith is visiting his friend, mystery author Aldous Barnet (another returning character), to help with a novel he’s working on. While Meredith’s there, one of the residents of a small square of homes in the town of Cheltenham is killed – with an arrow shot from a bow!

The novel is set in Regency Square, a U-shaped block of ten houses, inhabited by some very entertaining characters: Captain Cotton, Miss Boon and her ménage of dogs, The spinster Misses Nancy and Emmeline Watt, Dr. Pratt, the stockbroker Buller, the Rev. Matthews and his sister, the young Fitzgerald couple, Arthur and Isobel West, Sir Wilfred and Lady Eleanor, and Aldous Barnet’s sister. At first glance, it seems to be a peaceful and pleasant neighborhood, but underneath the placid surface lurks all kinds of conflict.

Captain Cotton brazenly flirts with Isobel West, Mr. Buller is suspected of swindling his clients, Captain Cotton killed one of Miss Boon’s beloved dogs when it ran at him, and something is causing Hilary Fitzgerald to look like he is suffering from a terminal illness.

One evening, Captain Cotton calls on Buller for advice on how he should invest 3000 pounds he’s just inherited. While they are up in Buller’s study on the second floor and Buller has his back turned mixing drinks, there is a whish, and suddenly Cotton is dead with an arrow protruding from the back of his head. Buller runs out and hails Meredith, who is on the scene in seconds. It appears the arrow was shot from the empty house across the courtyard. It also just so happens that many of the Regency Square residents are avid archers and members of an archery club!

As the case progresses, all kinds of sordid details come to light: Cotton is a blackmailer, another resident is an embezzler, another a chronic gambler, etc. It’s all great fun, and Superintendent Meredith, with the assistance of the local Inspector Long, slowly but surely uncovers an ingenious murder plot that was planned out to the last detail.

As I mentioned earlier, Cheltenham Square Murder is the fourth John Bude mystery I’ve read, and they get better and better. His characters have more personality and presence, and there is a nice sense of humor at play, despite the grim setting. If you are interested in exploring an author besides Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers who wrote during the “Golden Age” of British mysteries, Bude is a solid choice.

John Bude’s The Sussex Downs Murder – Excellent Classic British Mystery

Book Number 34 of 2024

This is the third John Bude mystery I’ve read, and it is his best so far. The Cornish Coast Murder was a promising first novel, and The Lake District Murder introduced Inspector Meredith. In The Sussex Downs Murder, Meredith has been promoted to a superintendent, and he is a confident investigator dealing with a fiendishly difficult crime to solve.

In this, his third mystery novel, Bude really hits his stride. He is much better at conveying the beauty of the English countryside and the quirky characteristics of its inhabitants. Here’s a passage involving a “simple” young man, Ned, who has some useful information regarding the case, but he is reluctant to go to the police:

“The law’s the law—there’s no ’voiding that fact, Ned. You ought to see Constable Pinn.”
Ned shook his head loosely and backed away with an alarmed look in his roving eye. “Nay—not Oi. Oi don’t go making trouble, then! Constable might lock Oi up.”
“I’ll see that he won’t do that, Ned,” urged Tom Golds. “You come with me to-night and see if the constable’s at home.”
“Oi don’t like it,” hedged Ned with great uneasiness.
“ ’Tis a murder case, Ned,” pointed out old Garge. “ ’Tis as much as ’ee owe to Mister John to see the constable.”
“Oi still don’t like it,” protested Ned.
“I’ll stand you a pint o’ bitter if you do,” said Tom Golds diplomatically.
“Make it two,” put in old Garge.
“Three!” said Charlie Finnet.
“Four!” added Cyril Smith.
“Oi’ll go,” said Ned promptly. “Oi’ll do it.”
It seemed that sometimes Ned was far less simple than he appeared to be on the surface of things.
John Bude. The Sussex Downs Murder (pp. 67-68). Distributed Proofreaders Canada. Kindle Edition.

That dry sense of humor is employed throughout The Sussex Downs Murder to great effect. In one scene, Meredith is interviewing a woman who runs a small post office and speaks with an affected high society accent:

“Yes, there is that,” mused Meredith. “And where is this cottage of his?”
“You go up the street past the castle, take the first to the rate, and his cottage lies about two hundred yards up Wate’s Lane.”
“Waits Lane,” repeated Meredith with a nod of thanks.
“No. No. Wate’s—W-h-i-t-e-s Lane.”
 “Oh, sorry. I see—thanks.”
John Bude. The Sussex Downs Murder (p. 167). Distributed Proofreaders Canada. Kindle Edition.

So what about the murder to be solved? Well, it’s quite good, and much better than Bude’s previous two efforts. Two brothers, John and William Rother, live on a farm with a lime kiln. William is married to Janet. It appears that John has feelings for Janet, which she does not reciprocate. John leaves for a week-long holiday, but before much time has elapsed, his car is found parked far off the road with the windshield smashed in and blood on the seat. It appears there was a struggle, but there’s no body.

After a while, some construction workers are mixing cement using lime from the Rother farm when they find a piece of a human thigh bone in the lime. Meredith soon finds all the lime recently manufactured by the Rothers, and sure enough, there are many more bone fragments. With the help of a local anatomy professor, he is able to reconstruct the skeleton, which is only missing its skull. Meredith also finds some personal objects in the lime that belonged to John Rother, so he is able to convince the jury at the inquest to return a verdict of “Murder by Person or Persons Unknown”.

We then follow Superintendent Meredith as he travels all over the county unraveling a very clever murder plot. I won’t say any more to avoid spoilers, but Bude had me guessing up to the end who the culprit was.

Another interesting element in The Sussex Downs Murder is Bude’s character of Aldous Barnet, a local mystery author. Through him, Bude is able to explain his philosophy of writing:

“As a police official and a reader of detective fiction, what exactly is your idea about that type of story? You know, I should value your opinion.”
“Well,” said Meredith, flattered to be asked, “I think every yarn should be based on a sense of reality. I mean, let the characters, situations, and the detection have a lifelike ring about ’em. Intuition is all very well, but the average detective relies more on common sense and the routine of police organizations for results. Take this case, for example. The clues have led me all over the place, and quite honestly I’m very little further after a month’s intensive investigation than I was a couple of days after the crime was discovered. That’s normal. Half the work of a detective is not to find out what is but what isn’t! You might remember that fact in your next yarn, sir. As for the crime itself, choose something neat but not gaudy. The gaudy type of murder is more easily found out. The neat, premeditated crime is by far the most difficult to solve and will provide your readers with a load of neat detection.”
John Bude. The Sussex Downs Murder (pp. 114-115). Distributed Proofreaders Canada. Kindle Edition.

Bude employs this “meta” analysis of the art of writing mysteries throughout the novel, and it’s a lot of fun to hear his voice speaking through one of the characters.

If you’re looking for a good classic British mystery, The Sussex Downs Murder is an excellent choice. In it, Bude has matured into an author who is enjoyable to read, while presenting a very difficult puzzle to solve. His protagonist, Superintendent Meredith, is much more fleshed out as well. He has a sense of humor, a family, and perseverance that serves him well. I am glad the British Library Crime Series has brought this forgotten author to a new audience!

John Bude’s The Lake District Murder – More Golden Age British Mystery

Book #31 of 2024

This is the second murder mystery from John Bude (who was actually Ernest Elmore). In an earlier post, I reviewed his first book, The Cornish Coast Murder, which I enjoyed a lot. The Lake District Murder (1935) introduces Bude’s Inspector Meredith, a dogged police inspector who carefully searches for clues until he has enough to construct a plausible explanation for how the crime could have been committed.

In The Lake District Murder, a gas station attendant (oops, I mean petrol station attendant) is found dead, sitting in a car with a mackintosh over his head and a length of hose running from the car’s exhaust to under the mackintosh. A clear case of suicide, until Meredith notices that the dead man, Clayton, has clean hands, which is unusual for someone who was supposedly working at an oily and greasy job. Also, there is a nice dinner set on his table, uneaten.

After further investigation, Meredith discovers that Clayton is engaged to be married, he has 2000 pounds in his bank account (an enormous sum in Depression-era Britain), and he was planning on emigrating with his fiancée to Canada. All facts that argue against suicide.

Meredith convinces his superior to authorize an autopsy, and sure enough, there are traces of a drug, Trional, in his system, which would have knocked him out. So, the inescapable conclusion is that he was murdered! What follows is an interesting hunt to unravel the reason why anyone would want to kill poor young Clayton. It’s a hunt that takes Meredith all over the county, as he slowly but surely uncovers an extensive network of illegal distilleries and bootleggers.

Through an ingenious use of petrol delivery trucks (oops, I mean lorries), one of the most well-respected citizens of the Lake District is making a mint selling contraband whiskey. Bude’s explanation of the mechanics of the operation are little too Rube Goldberg in their complexity, but they remain plausible. Suffice it to say, Meredith ties all the threads together, and justice is served.

Bude does a good job of describing various local characters in the course of the novel, and the reader gains a good understanding of how British law enforcement is structured and operates. It’s quite different from the American system. For example, Meredith has no hesitation about breaking and entering businesses and private homes without a warrant in his search for evidence.

Like The Cornish Coast Murder, The Lake District Murder isn’t a real puzzle as to who done it, but it makes for an enjoyable read. No one is ever in any danger (except for poor young Clayton), and solving the murder is simply a matter of collecting enough evidence to nail the culprits. Bude was quite popular at the same time as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, and while he is not a writer of their caliber, it’s nice to have his novels available in inexpensive Kindle editions. I’ll definitely be reading more of the adventures of Inspector Meredith.

John Bude’s Cornish Coast Murder – A Golden Age British Mystery

Book #29 of 2024

It occurred to me as I read John Bude’s The Cornish Coast Murder that we live in miraculous times. The only reason I was aware of John Bude is because I got a newsletter in my email inbox from Abe Books, an online used book seller. The newsletter discussed a series of classic British mysteries from the 1920s to the 1950s. The Cornish Coast Murder looked interesting, so I went on Amazon using my Kindle, and sure enough, it was available for the whopping sum of $1.99. So I bought it, and within seconds I was reading it in my favorite chair.

None of that would have been possible 30 years ago in 1994 – email was just getting widespread, but it was very primitive. Kindles did not exist. Amazon did not exist! Home Wi-Fi didn’t exist; if you went online, it was via a very slow dial-up modem, and you probably were only on AOL or Compuserve. The internet as we know it was just beginning to get going. Anyway, I think it’s pretty amazing that I can read an obscure British author’s book for less than two bucks, and I never have to leave my house to acquire it near-instantaneously.

So how is The Cornish Coast Murder? Not bad! It was John Bude’s first effort, published in 1935. This was a golden age for British mystery, with Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Edgar Wallace at the height of their popularity. As a matter of fact, in the opening chapter, the Reverend Dodd, vicar of the the tiny village of Boscawen, and his best friend, Dr. Pendrill, eagerly open a crate containing a selection of books by Wallace, Christie, Sayers, J. S. Fletcher, and Freeman Wills-Croft. As they are enjoying a postprandial smoke and sherry, the telephone rings, and it is Ruth Tregarthan, who lives in Greylings – an isolated stone house on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic. Her uncle’s been murdered!

What follows is a fairly formulaic mystery – how was Julius Tregarthan shot in the head when there is no sign of entry, and there are no footprints outside on the muddy path except for Ruth’s? As the story develops, Ruth comes under suspicion, as well as Ronald Hardy, a young man she is in a relationship with that her uncle has violently opposed. Inspector Bigswell doggedly gathers clues and comes up with various theories as to how the murder could have been committed. He welcomes Rev. Dodd’s help, who has a self-described “intuition method” of solving crimes. 

As with most classic mysteries, it turns out Julius Tregarthan was no saint, and he had made many enemies. No one is really sorry to see him gone. My only quibble with the novel is that eventual culprit is someone who is mentioned only briefly early on. Bigswell and Dodd laboriously construct scenarios to fit the changing facts, and Bude can get bogged down in unnecessary complications. However, for a first effort, The Cornish Coast Murder is a well-crafted classic mystery that is a lot of fun to escape for a few hours into. It’s definitely worth a couple of bucks, as far as entertainment value goes.