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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,...
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Ludovic Travers and his wife choose to spend part of their honeymoon in the quiet town of Edensthorpe, one place, where they can be sure of peace and quiet, and where an eminent author and his famous wife might not be recognised.
Unfortunately, for them, however, another fugitive has sought anonymity in the nearby village of Pettistone, a swindler named Brewse, who has just completed a prison sentence for fraud. Brewse has made an unfortunate choice...
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The murderer was clever and the planning was perfect. There was apparently nothing that had been overlooked and nothing that didn't go to plan. There was nothing that could be called a slip. Why then was the murderer caught?
Too few answers chasing too many questions is the problem facing Ludovic Travers and Superintendent George Wharton when a famous actress is murdered. The crime-investigator always looks for unusual circumstances, departures from...
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"Famous Spiritualist Dead . . . Gun Found in Flat"
In The Case of the Happy Medium Ludovic Travers is at the top of his considerable form. When Ludovic and his wife set out to attend a séance, they are in a mood of amiable scepticism. But the atmosphere swiftly changes when Travers is plunged headlong into a case where he, and Scotland Yard supremo George Wharton, must tussle with murder, suicide and traffickers in forbidden goods. There is action,...
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"Good God!" I was staring like a lunatic. "Murdered, you say? When?"
"Less than half an hour ago, sir."
TRAVERS: "I don't know why I should call this case that of the Magic Mirror for there's nothing in it reminiscent of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," even if the mirror did do a certain amount of magical revelation.
"As a matter of fact the title is my obstinate own. In the first place, of the many murder cases with which I have been officially...
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However thorough your search was, I'm convinced the murderer, or the burglar-call him what you will-is still in the house.
Little Levington Hall, the site of the seasonal house party in Dancing Death, is owned by Martin Braishe, inventor of a lethal gas. Unfortunately for Braishe and his houseguests, their fancy-dress ball might more accurately be described as a fancy-death ball. After the formal festivities have taken place place, nine guests remain...
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Old Hunt slithered in the most amazing way and then fell to the floor. He lay between the seats, face upwards.
Ludovic Travers is on his way by train from Toulon to Marignac. Along for the ride are several suspicious characters, two of whom die en route. Although the murders seem at first unrelated, Travers is able to prove the connection between the two, while diverting the eye of official suspicion from himself. After Travers learns that one of...
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What was I to be this time? A Commandant again of a Prisoner of War Camp? Was I to get a sedentary job at the War Office itself, and begin the slow process of fossilization? Was I due for some wholly new job of, which the rank and file, had never even heard? As it turned out, I most certainly was.
Ludovic Travers reports to room 299 of the War Office to receive new orders. He is, sent up to Derbyshire to be a training officer for the local Home Guard,...
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Near the right temple was a hole, and down the forehead and along the nose was dried blood.
"Shot, by God! No wonder the poor old devil couldn't hear."
When the telephone bell rings in Bill Ellice's Broad Street Detective Agency, it happens to be Ludovic Travers who takes the call. The new client is certainly out of the ordinary, for he claims that his life is in danger. He wants the firm to trace a nephew who would be a protection. Travers finds...
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'Anything doing?'
'Maybe,' he said guardedly, and then as a kind of afterthought: 'Just slipping along to Hampstead. Charles Manfrey's dead.'
Ludovic Travers is on army leave in London when actor and theatrical impresario Charles Manfrey is murdered, so it is not surprising that Superintendent Wharton, 'the General' to the initiated, pulls him in to help investigate the crime. All the suspects are examined, the rival actor, the housekeeper, the beautiful...
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As Travers's finger touched the dead hand, he felt the warmth, and wondered if the man were still alive. Then he saw the knife that stuck sideways in the ribs.
It was three years after Ludovic Travers had acquired a painting by the famous contemporary French artist, Henri Larne, that a mysterious art dealer named Braque turned up, showed great interest in the picture, and invited Travers to visit him in Paris. But all Travers saw of Braque in Paris...
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Travers turned to Wharton. "I ask you, George, as a man of the world-do schoolmasters and mistresses have souls full of glamour and passion and intrigue? Are they torn by the same emotions that rend people like us?"
At first the old schoolmaster's poisoning was judged a suicide. But there were too many suspicious circumstances to satisfy Inspector Wharton of Scotland Yard. Why, for instance, had the dead man clung to a large book as he expired? And...
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"It's about a murder...Here. Five Oaks, they call it...A man, he's murdered...Oh, no, it isn't a joke. I wish it was...I said I wished it was...You'll send someone at once?"
Ludovic Travers, still in the army, is obliged to combine his military duties with being an invaluable private sleuth on behalf of Scotland Yard. Now Inspector Wharton has asked Ludo to track down a man in a village rife with blackmail and skulduggery. A problem soon arises however-murder,...
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Murder on Mondays! Greatest prophecy of the century! T.P. Luffham was murdered!
Ferdinand Pole of the Murder League claims that, since 1918, thirteen murders have been committed on a Monday. A sleazy economist has now been slain, followed the next week by a blameless actress-both on Monday. While the press have a field day, it is up to Inspector Wharton of Scotland Yard, along with his inspired amateur co-investigator Ludovic Travers, to see if London...
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"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...
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"I have an idea that a certain man is going to commit murder. He told me so-in so many words."
If Ludovic Travers hadn't been so sure the man was serious, he might not have gone snooping. If he hadn't kept his eyes peeled, he might have noticed what happened to the housekeeper's hair. It is even less likely he would have uncovered those dark deeds that took place in France, deeds that led to three violent deaths.
The Case of the Housekeeper's Hair...
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Travers looked down at the thing that sprawled. The head gave a last movement, and there was a faint sound like a tired moan. The time was eight minutes to eight.
Ludovic Travers is approached by his sister after tales of strange doings and horrible night shrieks in a country house called Highways. Travers makes an investigatory visit, where he finds stabbed to death the bizarre old man who was living at the house with his 10-year-old granddaughter....
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"Is he bad, sir?"
"Worse than that," I said. "In fact, he's dead."
1943. Ludovic Travers, consulting specialist for Scotland Yard, is on a fortnight's well-earned leave in London from his military posting. Anticipating relaxation, he is instead, thrown into a fresh mystery by a letter from one Peter Worrack, the owner of a genteel gambling club.
Worrack's business partner, Georgina, has disappeared. Or, has she? Ludo rapidly has doubts, but the reasons...
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"Murder is easy. It's child's play to commit murder and get away with it."
Unpleasant uncle Hubert is murdered, while playing cards-and surrounded by any number of relatives, who stand to gain by his death. An impossible crime, it seems, though it turns out three of his nephews were intending to despatch the old tyrant anyway! In this classic country house whodunit, the redoubtable Ludovic Travers will have to wade through a quagmire of clues and...
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""This is something desperately secret," she said. "Something I want you to do for me . . . But I can't tell you now. It's something I'm frightened about."
Ludovic Travers, consulting specialist for Scotland Yard, receives two invitations at once to visit Beechingford. One comes from Cuthbert Daine, his literary agent. Daine is an important and busy man, and it seems strange that he would want to see Travers personally about a matter that might have...
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