The Case of the Corporal's Leave

It wasn’t I who discovered the body. I want to make that perfectly clear, if only for the benefit of a couple of club acquaintances of mine.

Ludovic Travers, special investigator for Scotland Yard, commits murder? No—but at the end of this novel you will understand why he might claim to have done so.

Sir William Pelle has become a missing person, and Superintendent Wharton of the Yard is prioritizing his recovery. But when Pelle is found murdered, there are serious questions to answer. Was the well-to-do jewellery-handler the victim of a well-planned robbery? And why was the corpse partly covered in sugar?

Several of the enigmatic figures formerly surrounding the deceased are going to repay close scrutiny; as is the importance of the army corporal who keeps weaving in and out of the story. It will take all Travers’s customary acuity to bring the case to a successful conclusion—and eventually to explain his assertion of committing murder himself.

The Case of the Corporal’s Leave was originally published in 1945. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Christopher Bush was born Charlie Christmas Bush in Norfolk in 1885. His father was a farm labourer and his mother a milliner. In the early years of his childhood he lived with his aunt and uncle in London before returning to Norfolk aged seven, later winning a scholarship to Thetford Grammar School. As an adult, Bush worked as a schoolmaster for 27 years, pausing only to fight in World War One, until retiring aged 46 in 1931 to be a full-time novelist. His first novel featuring the eccentric Ludovic Travers was published in 1926, and was followed by 62 additional Travers mysteries. These are all to be republished by Dean Street Press. Christopher Bush fought again in World War Two, and was elected a member of the prestigious Detection Club. He died in 1973.