Triple Quest: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  Sometime in the 1950s an increasingly fragile Punshon took a dreadful tumble down the landing steps at the Detection Club premises at Kingly Street, an event Christianna Brand vividly recollected many years later in 1979, with what seems rather callous amusement on her part:

  My last memory, or the most abiding one, of the club room in the clergy house, was of an evening when two members were initiated there instead of at the annual dinner [possibly Glyn Carr and Roy Vickers, 1955 initiates]. As they left, they stepped over the body of an elderly gentleman lying with his head in a pool of blood, just outside the door . . . dear old Mr. Punshon, E.R. Punshon, tottering up the stone stair steps upon his private business, had fallen all the way down again and severely lacerated his scalp. My [physician] husband, groaning, dealt with all but the gore, which remained in a slowly congealing pool upon the clergy house floor. . . . However, Miss Sayers had, predictably, just the right guest for such an event, a small, brisk lady, delighted to cope. She came out on the landing and stood for a moment peering down at the unlovely mess. Not myself one to delight in hospital matters, I hovered ineffectively as much as possible in the rear. She made up her mind. “Well, I think we can manage that all right. Can you find me a tablespoon?”

  The club room was unaccountably lacking in tablespoons. I went out and diffidently offered a large fork. “A fork? Oh, well . . .” She bent again and studied the pool of gore. “I think we can manage,” she said again, cheerfully. “It’s splendidly clotted.”

  I returned once more to the club room and closed the door; and I can only report that when it opened again, not a sign remained of any blood, anywhere. “I thought,” said my husband as we took our departure before even worse might befall, “that in your oath you foreswore vampires.” “She was only a guest,” I said apologetically.

  “Dear old Mr. Punshon,” no vampire he, passed through a door to death in his 84th year on 23 October 1956, four years after his elder brother, Robert Halket Punshon. On 25 January 1957 the widowed Sarah Punshon presented Dorothy L. Sayers with a copy of her husband’s thirty-fifth and final Bobby Owen mystery, the charmingly retrospective Six Were Present. “He would like to think that you had one,” wrote Sarah, warmly thanking Sayers “for your appreciation of my husband’s work during his writing life” and wistfully adding that she would miss her “occasional visits to the club evenings.” Sayers obligingly invited Sarah to the next Detection Club dinner as her guest, but Sarah died in May, having survived her longtime spouse by merely seven months. Sayers herself would not outlast the year. As Christianna Brand rather flippantly reports, Sayers was discovered, just eight days before Christmas, collapsed dead “at the foot of the stairs in her house surrounded by bereaved cats.” Having ascended and descended the stairs after a busy day of shopping, Sayers had discovered her own door to death.

  * * * * *

  Dorothy L. Sayers’s literary reputation has risen ever higher in the years since her demise, with modern authorities like the esteemed late crime writer P.D. James particularly lauding Sayers’s ambitious penultimate Peter Wimsey mystery, Gaudy Night--a novel E.R. Punshon himself had lavishly praised in his review column in the Manchester Guardian--as not only a great detective novel but a great novel, with no delimiting qualification. Although he was one of Sayers’s favorite crime writers, Punshon was not so fortunate with his own reputation, with his work falling into unmerited neglect for more than a half-century after his death. With the reprinting by Dean Street Press of Punshon’s complete set of Bobby Owen mystery investigations—chronicled in 35 novels, five short stories and a radio play—this long period of neglect now happily has ended, however, allowing a major writer from the Golden Age of detective fiction a golden opportunity to receive, six decades after his death, his full and lasting due.

  Short Stories by E.R. Punshon

  FIVE BOBBY OWEN detective short stories complement E.R. Punshon’s 35 Bobby Owen detective novels, and these short stories are reprinted, one to a volume, with the new Dean Street Press editions of Punshon’s The Attending Truth, Strange Ending, Brought to Light, Dark Is the Clue and Triple Quest. Although Punshon’s Bobby Owen detective novels appeared over nearly a quarter-century, between 1933 and 1956, the publication of the Bobby Owen short stories was much more concentrated, with the first one, “A Study in the Obvious,” appearing in the London Evening Standard on 23 August 1936 and the remaining four, “Making Sure,” “Good Beginning,” “Three Sovereigns” and “Find the Lady,” in the Evening Standard in 1950, on, respectively, 15 February, 1 August, 17 October and 21 December.

  “A Study in the Obvious” appeared as part of an Evening Standard series devoted to “famous detectives of fiction,” edited by Dorothy L. Sayers. Besides Bobby Owen, fictional detectives included in “Detective Cavalcade” were Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Raffles, Eugene Valmont, Father Brown, the “Man in the Corner,” Max Carrados, Dr. Thorndyke, Dr. Priestley, Dr. Hailey, Hercule Poirot, Reggie Fortune, Philip Trent, Albert Campion, Lord Peter Wimsey, Roger Sheringham, Ludovic Travers, Mrs. Bradley, Mr. Pepper, Mr. Reeder, Mr. Pinkerton, Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield, Inspector French, Superintendent Wilson, Inspector Head, Uncle Abner, Trevis Tarrant, Charlie Chan and Ellery Queen.

  As editor of the series Dorothy L. Sayers warned Gladys Mitchell, who was contributing an original Mrs. Bradley short story, that the Evening Standard “will probably say they want it as short as possible and as cheap a possible! Don’t let them screw you down to 4000 words, because I know they are prepared to go to 6000 words or thereabouts. . . . I have almost broken their hearts by pointing out to them that all the older people, like Conan Doyle and Austin Freeman, run out to something like 10,000 [words] and their columns will be frightfully congested.”

  In her Evening Standard introduction to “A Study in the Obvious,” (2814 words) Sayers wrote:

  E.R. Punshon’s detective novels are distinguished by two things: a delicate, sub-acid humour and a fine vein of romantic feeling. They fall into two groups—the stories about Inspector Carter and Detective-Sergeant Bell, and the more recent series about Superintendent Mitchell and Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen.

  In this short story . . . Owen—that nobly-born and Oxford-bred young policeman—appears alone, exploiting his characteristic vein of inspired common sense.

  The crime here is a trivial one; those who like to see serious crimes handled with delicate emotional perception should make a point of reading some of the novels, such as “Mystery Villa” and “Death of a Beauty Queen.”

  “A Study in the Obvious,” which appeared the same year as The Bath Mysteries, a Punshon detective novel that delved into Sergeant Bobby Owen’s aristocratic family background, is Bobby Owen’s origin story, showing how he came to be a policeman. Though light, the tale is one of considerable charm that should delight Bobby Owen fans.

  The later Evening Standard stories are shorter affairs, though they are all murder investigations. “Good Beginning” and “Find the Lady” take us back to earlier years in Bobby Owen’s police career, when he held the ranks of, respectively, constable and sergeant. “Making Sure” and “Three Sovereigns” capture something of that quality of what American mystery critic Anthony Boucher called “the obscure destinies that drive [Punshon’s] obsessed and tormented characters,” which so impressed Dorothy L. Sayers about Punshon’s novels.

  Curtis Evans

  CHAPTER I

  THE ‘PRIVATE EYE’

  ON HIS PROFESSIONAL cards, on his office-door plate, Mr. Marmaduke Groan described himself as ‘Confidential Investigator’. In other words, a private detective, or, more colloquially, a ‘private eye’. Now, at Scotland Yard, in the sanctum of Deputy Commander Bobby Owen, he sat nervously, or at any rate to all appearance nervously, on the edge of his chair, though in fact he was about as subject to nerves as is cold boiled cod.

  His bowler hat he held clutched in one hand, his badly folded umbrella in the other, a small dispatch case he nursed awkwardly across his knees. Ob
viously it held his sandwiches for lunch, only it didn’t, and altogether he presented a perfect picture of the insignificant little man, one whose insignificance had been so impressed on him since birth that he had come to accept it as a part of the natural order of things, no more to be questioned or resented than the natural sequence of day and night. The impression was heightened by protuberant eyes behind large spectacles fitted with perfectly clear lenses and a mouth sagging loosely open, giving no sign that it could on occasion snap to like a rat-trap.

  As Bobby knew, Mr. Groan’s general reputation was good. He was always punctilious in passing on all information he possessed as soon as any specific criminal activity became apparent. In blackmail, or other cases in which for any reason publicity was dreaded, he was always careful to explain to his clients that there could never be any question of his agreeing to what is called ‘compounding a felony’. But then blackmail is often perhaps generally practised within the four corners of the law—no harm in asking for a loan and an accompanying hint might seem harmless to any but a guilty conscience. Indeed on more than one occasion his preliminary work had been useful in helping to put the C.I.D. on the right trail or in giving warning that this or that criminal enterprise was in contemplation. He had also a real gift for organization so that the system of protection he had put in force for a group of chain stores in East London had succeeded in reducing pilfering to almost reasonable proportions—chain stores, of course, are the shoplifter’s idea of Paradise.

  A little ungrateful then, even unreasonable, that Bobby should be listening to him with a touch of incredulity, regarding him with a certain mistrust, even wondering what Mr. Groan was really up to this time. For it had been noticed, without surprise, that Mr. Groan was generally at the receiving end of the cash line—as who wouldn’t wish to be? It was even suspected, though only on the flimsiest grounds, and merely because weak human nature is rather specially weak among ‘private eyes’, that unexpected but glaring gaps in the information provided by Mr. Groan, or even the disappearance of some of those concerned, might not be unconnected with the reported receipt by Mr. Groan of large registered envelopes that might or might not have contained a selection of one-pound notes.

  “Very likely it doesn’t amount to a pennorth of peanuts,” Mr. Groan was now saying in a dispirited sort of way, “but I don’t like it, if you see what I mean. Disappeared he has. Promised to meet me and didn’t, though knowing I had a pressing report to make—important and urgent I told him, and he said he would be there as suggested. But wasn’t. Appointment with Mrs. Bardolph same day and never kept, and she near fainting when spoken to by me, but all the same back again next day, same time, same place, waiting and waiting, like waiting for someone she knew would never come. Mrs. Atts not seeing anyone and no calls put through by request. And now in all the papers headlines about him not turning up at the Royal Arts to give his lecture as advertised.”

  “I’ve been reading about that,” Bobby said. “Very important affair apparently. It seems he had been hinting he was going to make a sensational announcement but told no one what about.”

  Mr. Alfred John Atts was in fact one of the best-known and most influential art critics of the day, a darling of the B.B.C. and a television pet of the first order. It was said of him that with the lifting of a finger he could set any artist on the high road to fame and fortune, as also, with a flick of that same finger and thumb, he could relegate him to obscurity again. Bobby lapsed into contemplation. Difficult to imagine any good reason why a man of Mr. Atts’s professional standing should disappoint an audience so distinguished as that which had assembled at the Royal Arts, all as eager to hear any promised sensational revelations that might be going as any audience made up of most utterly undistinguished individuals. Of course, there might be some question of a nervous breakdown or something of that sort or even a sudden last-minute realisation that the promised sensational revelation was neither sensational nor new. Rendered a little uneasy by Bobby’s lapse into contemplation, for from such contemplative silence he knew swift and occasionally disconcerting action was apt to issue, Mr. Groan said:

  “Never gave me any hint of anything else on his mind. Only what he had mentioned before. So I thought it best to come along, if you see what I mean.”

  “Yes, yes, very sensible,” agreed Bobby. “No reason yet to suppose anything’s seriously wrong, but there may be. You say it’s about a month since he engaged you?”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Groan answered. “To report re Mrs. Atts and behaviour of same re Mr. Philip Shirley, engraver, of Hills Street Studio, Chelsea, and High Crescent, Hampstead. You know yourself, Commander, the Groan Confidential Agency accepts divorce cases only when such are absolutely above-board and straight in every way. If not, we drop them. What we do is keep an eye on our client, too, to be sure he’s on the up and up.”

  “Very sensible,” applauded Bobby; and wondered privately if discovery that a client was not on the ‘up and up’ ever got itself reflected in the fees charged. “And was Mr. Atts?” he asked.

  “Didn’t take us long to find out there weren’t any solid grounds for action against Mrs. Atts,” replied Mr. Groan. “Pally they were and used to meet each other for lunch or tea—or dinner if Mr. Atts was away on his art business. But always correct, and even if Mr. Shirley took her home he never did more than get out of the taxi and see her safe inside the flats where she lives. It showed like a candle in the dark how they felt for each other, but loving looks don’t count for divorce and never so much as a kiss between them. I don’t say something mightn’t have brewed up time being given, if you see what I mean?”

  “Yes,” said Bobby. “And Mr. Atts?”

  “The same could not be said of him, not by a long chalk,” Mr. Groan continued. “Mrs. Bardolph. As I mentioned before, he didn’t keep his appointment with her and fair upset about it she looked too. Art lectures my foot. You don’t go to small country hotels to lecture on Colour in Relation to Form, do you?”

  “No,” said Bobby; and he added, for he saw more was coming, “Well?”

  “I reported as duty bound,” Mr. Groan said. “Nothing doing, I said, and I would let him have my account soon as required. Only then he sprang a new one on me. Said he had reason to believe they were planning to put him out of the way. Poison.”

  “Poison?” repeated Bobby, startled by that sad and ominous word. “Did he give any reason? Any grounds?”

  “Only talking in a funny sort of way about how he had seen them looking at him; and how Mr. Shirley, being in the engraving line, would have easy access to poison. I don’t know about that. But I began to get the idea maybe he meant to fake up an attempted murder charge against the two of them, so he could get his divorce that way if he couldn’t the other.”

  “Attempted murder wouldn’t be grounds for divorce,” Bobby said; but he was beginning to look really worried, for all this seemed to bring a darker hue into the tale of Mr. Atts’s disappearance. “You are sure he said nothing more definite?”

  “It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it,” Mr. Groan told him, “and the way he looked as if he had something up his sleeve, as it might be the ace of trumps, only not sure he dared play it. And then Mrs. Bardolph all set up about something and waiting for him as never came, looking like she was waiting for a ghost. I tell you straight, Commander, I’m not one for imagining things and no need, things being what they are, but I did get to wonder if Mrs. Atts and Mr. Shirley hadn’t brought it off, same as Mr. Atts hinted they might try—only not by poison. It isn’t so difficult to hide a body, especial if in pieces.”

  “We needn’t think about that yet a while,” Bobby said, and now he was growing both more and more disturbed, and less and less certain that Groan had told all he knew. Bobby went on, “What do you know about Mrs. Bardolph? Is she married? Is there a Mr. Bardolph?”

  “Paint dealer in a big way and getting bigger,” Groan answered. “Youngish, under forty. Good reputation. Authority
on paint. Married seven years. Lives near Guildford. No children. Mr. Atts met him re nature of paint on old pictures and restoring same. Grew friendly. Not likely to let his wife go easily. Often away from home on business trips.”

  “The set-up then,” Bobby observed thoughtfully, “is Atts suspecting his wife of an intrigue with Shirley and hinting they may be planning murder while he himself is spending nights at small country hotels with Mrs. Bardolph whose husband is not likely to be of the complaisant type. Then Atts disappears after giving out that he has something sensational to say in a lecture he is due to deliver at the Royal Arts. But I don’t see what we can do except keep our eyes and ears open, and be ready to act if necessary. For all we know, Mr. Atts may be enjoying himself in Paris with some third woman.”

  “No, sir,” declared Groan with emphasis. “It was sort of serious between him and Mrs. Bardolph, and that’s what’s at the back of my mind, if you see what I mean. For what I feel is that Mr. Bardolph would take it hard, as some do but not all.”

  “Well, at any rate, thank you for coming along,” Bobby said. “We shan’t forget. If it does develop at all, we shall be prepared. You are sure there is nothing else you can tell me?”

  “Every last little thing that I know, you know, Mr. Owen,” declared Groan, slightly offended, for he knew his job, or so he thought, knew the overwhelming importance of detail. “Funny like Mr. Atts talked and more jolly than ever I had seen him before. Excited, and it wasn’t drink either, something on his mind. Last thing he did, when he took out his wallet to settle up re expenses incurred, was to give me a picture postcard and tell me to keep it because it was going to be interesting. He didn’t say why.”