"Give me gossip or Sherlock Holmes, and I take gossip every time. The detective's first aid and ever present help in time of doubt."
Why should anyone want to murder a man like Alfred Brown? Yet slain he was, in his own home and with a poker. The murder seems to be connected to a bout of religious fervour gripping the village of Oldfordham - in particular a battle royal between the Reverend Alexander Childs, and his nemesis Duke Dell, boxer turned revivalist preacher. But Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Owen has numerous other local suspects, and local gossips, to contend with...
"Give me gossip or Sherlock Holmes, and I take gossip every time. The detective's first aid and ever present help in time of doubt."
Deep in bucolic Wychshire something dreadful is stirring ...
The disappearance of a club-footed and inquisitive youth leads to a tangle involving two instances of stolen jewels, a water-colour which may be the most remarkable picture ever painted ... and eventually to the discovery of a body in a forest with 'a smell of rotting, a smell of things decaying'. The scene abounds with the intense, the afflicted, and the darkly humorous in classic Punshon style. But the murderer himself is on a collision cause with fate - aided of course by Inspector Bobby Owen.
...
Deep in bucolic Wychshire something dreadful is stirring ...
The disappearance of a club-footed and inquisitive youth leads to a t...
Late in the afternoon a man, unidentified, had been seen to throw a glove into the Midwych, Wychshire and Southern Canal...
Osman Ford said he would kill the lawyer Mr. Anderson. So when the latter is found dead, with a bullet in the back, the disagreeable Mr. Ford is top suspect. But the lawyer's office was also a cauldron of repressed feelings, and not all the staff are sorry to see the lawyer's demise. In particular, Inspector Bobby Owen fears the dark, brooding clerk Anne Earle. Will her quest for justice lead her to a terrible fate of her own, amid family secrets and...
Late in the afternoon a man, unidentified, had been seen to throw a glove into the Midwych, Wychshire and Southern Canal...
"I've got to hurry," Bobby said. "Mr Weston has been found dead from a knife-wound in his study."
It's not easy for a county police Inspector to handle prominent local citizens diplomatically, while getting on with the real work of crime detection. But it's particularly hard when Bobby Owen finds himself the victim of a sinister swindle worked by a millionaire business executive. Not to mention the machinations of a radical political movement, a secretary with a puzzling alibi, and a young scientist-inventor, willing to do anything, even murder, to put his schemes into...
"I've got to hurry," Bobby said. "Mr Weston has been found dead from a knife-wound in his study."
"I wouldn't come any nearer if I were you. It's not a thing to see unless you have to."
TThe remote Conqueror Inn, possibly the oldest licensed house in England, has an unexpectedly key role to play in World War Two. Lorry drivers, army camps, black marketeers and even the IRA become entangled in the sinister web which draws this novel's plot together. Bobby Owen, after finding a case of banknotes, has to identify a corpse mutilated in its grave, ignore the red herrings thrown in his way ... and identify a ruthless killer who uses the confusion of war to conceal his...
"I wouldn't come any nearer if I were you. It's not a thing to see unless you have to."
Bobby Owen stood for a time in silence, looking down thoughtfully at the dead man's face. A small, insignificant face, lacking even that touch of repose and dignity which death, even violent death, so often gives, and one that Bobby had never seen before. Of that at least he was sure.
Yet this same man was found dead with a detailed and accurate plan of Bobby Owen's new London flat. Why? The plot soon thickens when a man with a grievance against Bobby turns up to identify the dead man ... But Bobby will need many more beads on the thread before he understands the murderous...
Bobby Owen stood for a time in silence, looking down thoughtfully at the dead man's face. A small, insignificant face, lacking even that touch ...
Olive, Inspector Bobby Owen's wife, is on a mission to obtain the recipe for some uncommonly good chocolates. But the most innocent beginning means trouble for Bobby Owen: take one wood-dwelling hermit, a girl who talks to animals, an evil stepfather and two exceedingly valuable works of art, and you have the recipe, not for chocolate, but for one of Punshon's most satisfying and devilish mysteries.
This beguiling story of labyrinths and seemingly impossible murder is a challenge and a treat for armchair sleuths everywhere....
"Ode to a chocolate," murmured Bobby.
Olive, Inspector Bobby Owen's wife, is on a mission to obtain the recipe for some uncommonly ...
"I don't like it, Olive. No good, plain evidence, not so much as the smell of a fingerprint. Nothing but psychology and an atmosphere of doubt, menace, and suspicion."
Bobby Owen's latest case begins with him warily lending five shillings to an old reprobate. But this is driven from his mind when he hears of the murder of one Itter Bain, found shot in the woods. Bobby is called into the case, one already made controversial by the alleged shielding of an aristocratic suspect. The evidence certainly ought to make the aristocrat a figure of particular interest to the police....
"I don't like it, Olive. No good, plain evidence, not so much as the smell of a fingerprint. Nothing but psychology and an atmosphere of doubt,...
"Gets on your nerves, doesn't it? I mean, that playing of hers. I've never heard anything like it."
"I haven't either," Bobby said.
Bobby Owen (now 'temporary-acting-junior-under-deputy-assistant-commissioner' of the C.I.D.) and his wife Olive are house-hunting. Finding the perfect country home, every prospect pleases ... until they meet their neighbours, including the odd, piano-playing Miss Bellamy, and Mr. Fielding, whose jollity is unsettling. The incessant piano music seems to jar on everyone, and Bobby Owen even wonders if the recent murder of a...
"Gets on your nerves, doesn't it? I mean, that playing of hers. I've never heard anything like it."
"Why should anyone want to pinch the dagger--except to do somebody in?"
No one answered this question.
Item: one anonymous phone call reporting a murder at a historic country house - but no body is to be found. Item: one ornate antique knife, discovered in a village call-box, blood-stains on the blade.
Rather than identifying a corpse, Bobby Owen of the Yard has to find out who, if anyone, has actually been killed. Two persons, one a best-selling author, the other no-one's cup of tea, are missing but a particular kind of hat keep turning up...
"Why should anyone want to pinch the dagger--except to do somebody in?"
