Comes a Stranger

“You see,” Miss Kayne said, “I committed a murder once myself.”

Miss Kayne's proud boast to Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen is that she has committed the Perfect Murder – a crime with no clues. Bobby thinks at first it is a macabre joke, but before long a body is reportedly found, stabbed in the world-famous Kayne Library. When Bobby gets to the scene, the corpse has disappeared. But instead Miss Kayne's cousin, Nat, is found in a nearby country lane – shot through the heart. Were the two murders connected – or were there even two? Bobby finds himself embroiled in one of the most ingenious and sinister cases of his career. Can he prove this was not a case of Perfect Murder?

Comes a Stranger
, originally published in 1938, is the eleventh novel in the Bobby Owen mystery series. This new edition features an introduction and afterword by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

“Death has no advantage, but when it comes a stranger”

(FRANCIS QUARLES)

With
Comes a Stranger
, E. R. Punshon's eleventh Bobby Owen detective novel, the author found inspiration for his plot in remarkable contemporary real life events, to which he circumspectly alluded in an author's note at the beginning of the book. In this introduction I discuss the novel without reference to the actual events that inspired its composition. The latter subject I address in an afterword, which readers should peruse only after they have finished the novel, on account of major plot spoilers contained therein.

During the course of his murder investigation in
Dictator's Way
, the Bobby Owen detective novel that immediately preceded
Comes a Stranger
, Detective Sergeant Owen, like other handsome, well-born fictional crime solvers of his day, such as Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey and Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Roderick Alleyn, falls in love with one of the suspects in the case: Olive Farrar, lovely owner of a chic London hat shop. In
Comes a Stranger
, Bobby and Olive, who happily proved not to be the actual guilty party in the earlier novel, are engaged to be married. The couple are chastely spending some time in the country, Bobby staying in Wynton Village at the Wynton Arms, and Olive at nearby Wynton Lodge, country home of eccentric Miss Kayne, an old friend of her family, and the locale of the world-renowned Kayne library.

The Kayne Library, which was brought into existence by Miss Kayne's late father and now “perhaps the finest collection of books in private hands,” is the object of considerable contention as the novel opens. Over the library imperiously presides the intimidating noted bibliographical scholar Mr. Broast, timorously assisted by his wallflower secretary, Miss Perkins. However, the library is under the sole control, during her lifetime, of Miss Kayne, pending any compelling evidence brought forth by the trustees--Miss Kayne's cousin, Nathaniel Kayne, and her near neighbor, bibliophile Sir William Winders--of maladministration on her part. Both of the trustees are desirous of finding just such evidence, Winders because he wants to replace Mr. Broast as librarian either with himself or someone loyal to him, Nathaniel Kayne because he hopes to close the library and sell off the books to the University of Wales, pocketing a big profit. (Under the terms of the will he is Miss Kayne's heir.) For his part, Bobby has the impression that Miss Kayne, who has devoted her life to nurturing her father's brainchild, “felt towards that wonderful collection of books a little as Frankenstein felt towards the monster of his creation.”

At the end of chapter five a report comes to Sergeant Owen of, most classically, a body in the library, yet when he arrives upon the scene he is unable to locate said body. However, a bullet-riddled corpse, this one definitely verified, soon turns up in the sunken lane through Wynton Wood, and Bobby's assistance thereupon is secured by local law enforcement to help them solve this most perplexing problem, one that will see more deaths before it is untangled. A slashed portrait, a tale of an old lover's long-hidden poems, an American with the remarkable, Elmer Gantry-ish name of Bertram A. Virtue and a box of forget-me-nots all play parts in one of E.R. Punshon's most beguiling tales of mystery.

Along the way the reader is treated to some superb examples of the author's engaging wit and wisdom. The county constable, Major Harley, is much enamored with Freud and theorizes throughout the novel that sexual repression may be a factor in the case:

Later Bobby discusses the case with Olive, mentioning Major Harley's pet theory about the manic compulsions of sex-starved women (“Freud, you know”), which the spirited Olive ripostes with keen feminist insight:

Olive herself is a London career woman, owner of “Olive, Hats,” and contemplates marriage to Bobby with some level of trepidation: “All very well to talk about sex equality, but the eternities remained, and what a woman gave, she gave, and could never have again. But what a man took, he took and could go on taking, so where was your equality?” Somewhat undercutting this observation Punshon adds that, nevertheless, after Olive sees Bobby looking at her, “no thought was left in her any more, only a great wish that she had more to give and ever more.” Readers unimpressed with this last sentiment should compare it with Margery Allingham's observations on marriage and feminine sacrifice in her detective novel
The Fashion in Shrouds
, also published in 1938; I think they will find Punshon the more modern of the two authors in this regard.

Comes a Stranger
inaugurated the period of, arguably, Punshon's finest crime fiction, and it was highly favorably received by English reviewers. (Mystifyingly, it and the next six Bobby Owen detective novels were not published in the United States.) Reviewing
Stranger
in the
Spectator
, Punshon's Detection Club colleague Nicholas Blake (the leftist poet Cecil Day Lewis) conceded that while the novel “reverts to that venerable crime chestnut, the Body in the Library” (this four years before the publication of Agatha Christie's celebrated Miss Marple detective novel of that title), “Mr. Punshon garnishes his crime with a wealth of bibliography which adds to its fascination.”
Comes a Stranger
was, he declared, “a first-rate story” with a “terrific climax.” On this score, Mr. Blake will get no argument from me. It is a great pleasure to welcome
Comes a Stranger
, a mystery set in a library of precious rare books that is itself the rarest of E.R. Punshon's detective novels, back in print after nearly eighty years. Classic crime fiction fans are in for a rare treat.

Curtis Evans

Because this story was suggested by, and is indeed founded upon, certain recent occurrences, on which, however, for good reason, little emphasis was laid in the public press, it is all the more necessary to insist that neither personages, incidents nor localities have any resemblance even in the slightest degree, to actual places, persons, or events.

There is, there never has been, any library, public or private, in any way resembling the Kayne library. The owner, the trustees, the librarian, are all equally creatures of the imagination, and have no relation to any person, living or dead.

Certain liberties, too, for the purposes of the tale, have been taken with the facts of bibliography. There is, for example, no reason to suppose that Caxton did in fact print an edition of the
Travels of Sir John Mandeville
, even though it is a little surprising that so popular a work—a ‘best seller' for centuries—did not pass through his press. But it is hoped that such liberties as have been taken are of comparatively minor importance, and that if, by any remote chance, this work falls into the hands of the expert bibliographer, he will not find in it too much to arouse indignation.

“You see,” explained Miss Kayne, wheezing a little, her tiny voice issuing as it were with difficulty from the mountainous flesh encasing it and her, ‘‘I was so interested when I saw that paragraph about dear Olive engaged to a detective. So exciting.”

“Oh, yes,” answered Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen, polite but bored, wondering vaguely why everyone thought a detective's life exciting when in reality it consisted chiefly of routine work any city clerk would think deadly dull.

“Because, you see,” Miss Kayne went on, “I committed a murder once myself.”

“Oh, yes,” said Bobby brightly, getting ready to laugh as soon as he saw exactly where the joke was supposed to lie.

“The perfect murder,” mused Miss Kayne in her small and distant voice. “I think—the perfect murder.”

“Indeed,” said Bobby, still brightly, still wondering what, exactly, was the joke, and when he would have to laugh.

“You would call it that, wouldn't you?” Miss Kayne went on, looking at him earnestly, “when there's never even any suspicion—when the murdered person just vanishes and is never even missed, and no questions are ever asked?”

“Well, I suppose so,” agreed Bobby. “Only it doesn't happen like that, you know.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Why, er—” Bobby said, a little taken aback by the direct question, by something forceful, too, he seemed to feel in it.

“Do have another cup of tea,” she urged. ‘‘Or a whisky and soda? You would prefer that? If you'll ring the bell, Briggs will get it.”

“Oh, no, thanks, I never touch spirits in the day time,” Bobby explained. “Sometimes at night just before going to bed. But that's all.”

The conversation languished. Bobby supposed the subject of the perfect murder, of the victim who vanished and was never even missed, had now been exhausted. Certainly this enormous old woman, sunk in fat, her swollen feet in great, shapeless slippers, so ponderous that, as he knew, for Olive had told him, it was all she could do to rise from her chair without assistance, in no way suggested a murderess.

Bobby was paying this visit at Olive's request, and because it is part of the duty of the newly-engaged to present themselves for the inspection and approval of the friends and relatives of the other party. Miss Kayne was, he knew, a very old friend of Olive's, though one from whom she had not heard for a number of years till there had appeared paragraphs in the papers announcing their engagement. The papers noticed it, because it came as a sequel to a sensational case of murder that on account of its political aspects had attracted general attention, and so there had been various headlines about Romantic Sequel to Sensational Political Killings.