The Cautley Conundrum: A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery!
The four Cautley cousins, Major Howard Cautley, Lionel, Jack, and Fabian could not have been more different, a wealthy businessman, explorer, architect, and mystic respectively. But the cousins, while they might argue amongst themselves, could always be counted on to stick together. This certainly appeared to be the case when the Major is killed in a seeming accident by his own shotgun. The local police, very familiar with the family, are reluctant to suspect the surviving cousins of murder. Chief Inspector Pointer, though, when consulted over a pearl necklace that has gone missing on the same day, is less reticent. As a matter of long practice, he suspects everyone. But can even Pointer unravel the Conundrum that is the Cautley cousins?

The identity of the author is as much a mystery as the plots of the novels. Two dozen novels were published from 1924 to 1944 as by Archibald Fielding, A. E. Fielding, or Archibald E. Fielding, yet the only clue as to the real author is a comment by the American publishers, H.C. Kinsey Co. that A. E. Fielding was in reality a "middle-aged English woman by the name of Dorothy Feilding whose peacetime address is Sheffield Terrace, Kensington, London, and who enjoys gardening." Research on the part of John Herrington has uncovered a person by that name living at 2 Sheffield Terrace from 1932-1936. She appears to have moved to Islington in 1937 after which she disappears. To complicate things, some have attributed the authorship to Lady Dorothy Mary Evelyn Moore nee Feilding (1889-1935), however, a grandson of Lady Dorothy denied any family knowledge of such authorship. The archivist at Collins, the British publisher, reports that any records of A. Fielding were presumably lost during WWII. Birthdates have been given variously as 1884, 1889, and 1900. Unless new information comes to light, it would appear that the real authorship must remain a mystery.