The Sussex Downs Murder

“a classic tale of murder with enough twists and turns of plot to please a casual mystery reader . . .”

Although Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, and to a lesser extent, Freeman Wills Crofts, are names most readers associate with the Golden Age of British crime writing, there were other less well known authors whose work added to the tradition of the British mystery.  In conjunction with The British Library, Poisoned Pen Press will be publishing out-of-print titles of selected works by some of these lesser known British crime writers.

The Sussex Downs Murder by John Bude, the first title in the British Library Crime Classics and Spy series, features some of elements that have become stock in trade in the mystery novel: a map so the reader may follow the action; a strong setting, meticulously described; and an intelligent police officer in the person of Superintendent Meredith.

When John Rother disappears, leaving behind a bloodstained cap and abandoned car, also bloodstained, Superintendent Meredith is certain it was a case of assault and the victim would turn up. “You couldn’t spirit a man away, dead or alive, with the ease of a conjuror disposing of a rabbit in a top-hat.”

As the days passed without any trace of John Rother, Meredith is less sure of this case being about a simple assault with the victim wandering the countryside suffering a loss of memory. Instead it appears “. . . the police were up against a carefully planned and cleverly executed murder, and, what was more, a murder without a corpse?”

Then a workman uncovers a bone in a load of lime, lime to be used in adding an addition to the home of Professor Blenkings, who happens to be a retired professor of anatomy. Such a coincidence might make a modern mystery writer cringe, but as the mystery novel was still evolving in the Golden Age, the coincidence is acceptable.

Professor Blenkings identifies the bone as a human femur from a man the apparent age and size of John Rother. Moreover, the lime was purchased from the  Chalklands, the home of John Rother and his brother William.  

Further investigation into other orders of lime from the Rother brothers’ kilns reveals more bones, a distinctive belt clasp, and a mental disc such as frequently worn by veterans of the First World War with John Rother’s initials on the back. Now Superintendent Meredith has a corpse and a suspect—or maybe two.

William Rother did not get along with his brother John, and he is sole heir to Chalklands. Another possible motive is his wife Janet’s fondness for John. Kate Abingworth, the housekeeper, and “one of those simple-minded souls who find their greatest pleasure in life in gossiping about their employers,” tells the superintendent that “I’ve always upheld as Mrs. William Rother married the wrong brother.”

Did William Rother murder his brother for money or to save his marriage? Did Janet participate? Mrs. Abingworth did see her carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper to the lime kiln. Was she carrying bits and pieces of her brother-in-law to be burned in the kiln?

Meredith now has several theories but little proof to support any of them. He visits John Rother’s best friend, mystery writer Aldous Barnet, who says that John was in love with his brother’s wife, but he doubts the feelings were returned.

Superintendent Meredith continues his investigation, which involves a broken dashboard clock on Rother’s car; the whereabouts of William Rother whose alibi rests on a bogus telegram; what Janet was burning in the lime kiln; a false confession; and most puzzling of all: a cloaked figure seen in the vicinity of the crime scene. All of this is evidence and vital to solving the crime

By way of Superintendent Meredith’s declaration to crime writer Aldous Barnet, Mr. Bude states his belief in what features constitute a good mystery novel. “But when it comes to a proper detective yarn give me something that’s possible, plausible, and not crammed with a lot of nice little coincidences and ‘flashes of intuition.’ Things don’t work that way in real life. We don’t work that way. At least, sir, that’s how it seems to me anyway.”

Bude follows his own formulae in most instances, although Professor Blenkings’ fortuitous appearance when the first bone is recovered is very close to a coincidence. There are no “flashes of intuition,” though, as Meredith follows one red herring after another, adding one piece of evidence to another until a case is built against a most unlikely person.

John Bude, a pseudonym of Ernest Elmore (1901–1957), and co-founder of the Crime Writers’ Association, tells a classic tale of murder with enough twists and turns of plot to please a casual mystery reader, while providing a historical context for the dedicated student of British crime writing.