The Plumley Inheritance

Ludovic Travers #1

by Christopher Bush

“Have you heard the news, sir?” the waiter said.

“I’m afraid I haven’t. What is it?”

“Plumley’s dead, sir. Henry Plumley. We just got the news over the ’phone. Suicide they say it was. Anything else you want, sir?”

Out-of-print for over nine decades and one of the rarest classic crime novels from the Golden Age of detective fiction, The Plumley Inheritance, first of the Ludovic Travers mysteries, is now available in a new edition by Dean Street Press.

When the eccentric magnate Henry Plumley shockingly collapses and dies, a great adventure begins for Ludovic Travers, the dead man’s secretary, and his comrade Geoffrey Wrentham – a romp with not only mystery and mischief in the offing but murder too.

The Plumley Inheritance was originally published in 1926. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Genres: Mystery, Mystery Thriller, British Literature, Crime

243 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

Christopher Bush was educated in the local school. He then won a scholarship to Thetford Grammar, and went on to study modern languages at King's College London, after which he worked as a school teacher.

He participated in both world wars.

He was a prolific writer of detective novels, wrote three autobiographical novels and nine books about Breckland life using the nom-de-plume Michael Home.

He lived in Great Hockham.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three and a half stars.

This is my first experience of Christopher Bush and also the first volume in a series of 60 odd books featuring Ludovic "Ludo" Travers although in this book he is not the lead character. The plot is fiendishly intricate, very clever and this reader needed to keep his wits about him to keep in touch.

Published in 1926 but set in 1919.

Invalided out of the army after WW1, Ludo has a good job as private secretary to well known millionaire financial wizard, Henry Plumley. All goes long nicely until his boss dies suddenly after a period of really strange behaviour (which I won't describe as it would be a spoiler) and the financial empire appears to have collapsed. Ludo's boyhood friend Geoffrey Wrentham is set to lose everything as all his wordly fortune was invested with Plumley and the pair of them set out to discover what has gone on. Lots of mayhem ensues including murder, financial skulduggery and more.

Some excellent characterisations. I particularly like Wrentham's relationship with his father who is the vicar of the parish where it all goes on and is, to my mind, the epitome of what an English country parson should be.

The writing style I would describe as "flowery" with some wonderful if complex language. It is easier to quote an example than try to describe it. Sometimes difficult to follow, even for a native English speaker like myself. This is the beginning of chapter 11-

"If it be true that nothing is so rare as a day in June, whereby doubtless the poet meant some idealised day wherein all perfect Junes should be epitomised, then it might also be asserted that nothing is so miserable as July turned October. Perhaps on that morning the rustic genius of the groves, incensed at so unwonted a disturbance of his solicitudes, was minded that mortality should at least share in the derangement."

Not an easy read by any means but I enjoyed it and look forward to reading some of his subsequent books. Thanks to Dean Street Press who I believe are going to publish them all, I will be able to carry on in chronological order. Hats off to them and Kindle for resurrecting all this brilliant old stuff. Would have rated it a bit higher if it had been easier to read.

Strange that I was not familiar with Bush as he spent the latter part of his life living in Lavenham, Suffolk which is just a few minutes from where I live now.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an unusual offering, I think. Yes, there is a murder, but that isn't the circumstance that consitutes the bulk of the mystery. Henry Plumley seems to have committed suicide in the midst of leaving behind a bankrupt financial position. But did he instead simply liquidate his finances and hide the plunder? And if so, where? Did he leave behind a puzzle the solving of which would lead to the discovering of thousands of pounds?

This is not only the first in a series, but the debut novel by Christopher Bush. As the series went to 63 installments (!), I must assume that it garnered a loyal readership. I must emphasize that it is a debut and nearly always an author improves. I certainly hope such was the case here. I admit to being frequently confused about names and characters. I consider myself a mostly careful reader, but several times I wondered "now who was that again?" or "was this person even mentioned before?"

I *think* I finally caught up with most of that and the resolution was interesting. If I didn't have so much I want to read I might be convinced more of this series would be worthwhile. But I do have lots to read. There are many other series I've already started and other books and authors I've already decided I want to explore. Ludovic Travers will likely fall by the wayside. 3 stars.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dean Street Press is to be congratulated on its decision to republish all 63 of Christopher Bush’s Ludovic Travers detective novels.The first tranche of ten has just come out. They are:-

The Plumley Inheritance
The Perfect Murder Case
Dead Man Twice
Murder at Fenwold
Dancing Death
Dead Man’s Music
Cut Throat
The Case of the Unfortunate Village
The Case of the April Fools
The Case of the Three Strange Faces

This was the first, published in 1926. It comes with a very full and interesting Introduction by Curtis Evans who has done so much to foster the current re-awakening of interest in forgotten Golden Age classics.

The plot is fairly simple. Financier Henry Plumley, facing financial ruin and arrest, commits suicide, very publicly, and after making a rather strange speech. Convinced that they can salvage something from the financial ruins, Geoffrey Wrentham and Ludovic Travers decide to investigate, and see if they can unravel the mystery of where all Plumley’s money has gone, by decoding his final speech.

Others are on to this and a police inquiry begins after one of Plumley’s secretaries is killed.

Wrentham is very much the action hero, with Travers playing a small, very low-key part.

The ending is quite astonishing-all revealed in a letter- and I certainly did not come close to working it all out.

The writing is good and the style has not dated too badly.

This is a lot of fun as well as being lively and entertaining.The author was quite a character and, incidentally, the father of composer Geoffrey Bush.

Highly recommended and the Kindle Edition is currently cheap to buy on Amazon.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Taken individually, each sentence is well crafted. Unfortunately, the one bears little connection to the next following on its tail.

I admit to not finishing this, but at a fifth of the way through, I found it to be rambling and disconnected and couldn’t wait to ditch.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Major Geoffrey Wrentham has just arrived back in England after wrapping things up abroad after the end of the Great War. He's at loose ends and think he'll look up his old friend Ludovic Travers after checking in with his financial advisors. He learns two things from the financial wallahs--that Henry Plumley, the business magnate with whom Wrentham had invested money, had gone a bit mad while Wrentham was out of England and the finances are not all that they should be and that Travers has been serving as one of Plumley's secretaries (after Travers was invalided out of the war). Wrentham learns that Plumley is going to give a speech that very night and figures that Travers will be on deck for the event, so the major decides to kill two birds with one stone and try to see both men at the event.

He doesn't see Travers and he doesn't get a chance to talk to Plumley because the man drops dead in the middle of his speech. And a very odd speech it was. One of Plumley's other secretaries hands the man a note and suddenly the businessman starts spouting off about treasure and lillies and gardens. When Wrentham finally runs Travers to earth, he finds that Plumley had his secretary on a scavenger hunt shortly before he died--finding particular bits of wire, pine cones, used suitcases, waterproof cement,methods for making glass opaque, and other odd things.

Plumley had more than one residence and one of them just happens to be in the village where Wrentham grew up. Travers has to stay in London to wrap up Plumley's affairs, so the major heads home to stay with his father and to scout around. He discovers that Plumley did some rather odd things in the garden the last time he was at his country house--ordering the replanting of the garden border and redesigning an old well among them. Just as Wrentham has been writing clues down like mad and tidying up his notes to share with Travers, someone steals his notes, sets a booby trap (that gives the major one of several knocks on the head), and Plumley's other secretary, Andre Moulines, is found dead from wounds very similar to Wrentham's. Next thing we know, someone has been digging up the gardens at both of Plumley's residences...someone else is in search of buried treasure. Will Wrentham and Travers figure out the hidden message in Plumley's last speech before their unknown rival? Will Burrows, the local policeman, arrest one of them for Moulines murder--or if not that, then for impeding an officer in the pursuit of his duties? And, in the midst of all the treasure-hunting, will anyone figure out who killed the secretary?

So...what we have here is the very first of the Ludovic Travers mysteries by Christopher Bush. Except...our protagonist is Geoffrey Wrentham. The man who does nearly all the on-page legwork and brainwork is (you guessed it) Geoffrey Wrentham. Ludo (as he's known to his friends) comes across as a bright side-kick to the hero. I somehow don't think that the most auspicious beginning for a series sleuth. But then maybe Bush didn't plan on a series. Or maybe he started out thinking that Wrentham was going to be his main man. I don't know--but other than figuring out the last bit of the treasure hunt puzzle (with a clue that unless I missed it Bush didn't even give to us), Travers really doesn't do much of the detective work here. Wrentham isn't the best detective in the world (our culprit gets the best of him repeatedly), but he does decipher about 90% of the treasure puzzle. Nobody really figures out the murder--we get a convenient confession letter left mailed to Wrentham after the bird has flown.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed Wrentham and his boys own adventure antics. It's a shame that Bush didn't make him just a little more perceptive and a little less prone to getting bashed on the head. He could have made a very appealing lead detective. Fortunately (from previous experience), I know that Bush polishes up Travers and makes him into a better detective than his first appearance would leave us to believe possible. This one is an enjoyable read even though the tale leaves a bit to be desired.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: when Henry Plumley dies, a mystery romp begins for his secretary Ludovic Travers.

[ShanDizzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A verbose mystery but not without its interesting parts.

Ludovic Travers...did not possess that keenness of manner and that incisiveness of speech which appear to be the distinguishing marks of a human bloodhound. As his colleague might have expressed it, he didn’t look as if Sherlock was his middle name. All the same, had he been picking a side out of all the men he knew it is more than likely that he would have been Wrentham’s first choice. The thing was that you never knew just what he was capable of doing or when he was going to do it...A quiet bird, Ludo. You never knew how much he did know until it came out. He seemed to have the knack of assimilating all sorts of odd information. He could probably make his own clothes at a pinch!
“If I know anything about Moulines he would have kept his own counsel about anything he discovered. I suppose that if we had the money to spare and wanted to do the thing thoroughly we should employ private inquiry agents and really ferret out all Henry Plumley’s history and antecedents, the whereabouts of his son and his son’s wife, the nature of and necessity for all building alterations to the various properties during the last six months, the exact whereabouts of Plumley during my absences, and so on. You see the loose ends in the case, how involved it is, and yet what a lot we could do given unlimited time, money, and patience.” Ludo flourished his glasses in the air as he concluded with, “And yet, I repeat, all the inferences lead me to one main idea, that the centre of everything is the killing of Moulines.”
“You imply that, given that man, it will be easy to find out the rest?”
“Not necessarily, Geoffrey. I admit I’m a bit tedious as far as conveying my ideas goes..."

[Kathryn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the vicar but didn't connect to the main character who I felt thought he was much cleverer than he actually was. The ending was not terribly satisfying though much of it made sense. There really was only one other person who could be after the treasure. Travers wasn't much of a character in the plot though clearly cleverer than the protagonist. I thought the writing was dated obviously in viewpoints and unsurprisingly only had one dimensional female characters.

[Jeff Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first Christopher Bush and the first of his novel's I've read and I for one struggled to get my head around why any person would leave cryptic clues to solve the mystery of an inheritance. That indeed is the plot in a nutshell when Sir Henry Plumley dies a number of unusual items need to be found before any treasure hunt takes places to find where the money is hidden. Throw in a dead a body and sleuth Ludovic Travers then try to follow the plot at least sometimes! Finally add a letter sent by the murderer which hopefully it explains everything the reader as missed.

[Ann · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't really understand this book very well. The slang was of WWI vintage, the story of the missing money of the financier who had apparently gone off his rocker, then committed suicide, didn't make sense, and much of the plot revolved around digging up flower beds. The final resolution relied on a hard-to-believe impersonation, and I was just generally lost and bored.

[Life · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the most boring books I've ever read.