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The Bus Station Murders/No Pocket in Shrouds by Louisa Revell (2025; anthology edition with introduction by Curtis Evans from The Passing Tramp). Louisa Revell was the pen name for Ellen Hart Smith. My thanks to Greg with Stark House for providing this review copy in exchange for my honest review. I have received no other compensation of any kind. This is a fine edition of a little-known American mystery writer. I thoroughly enjoyed A Silver Spade, the third title in the Miss Julia Tyler mysteries and a title that I managed to acquire in one of the Detective Book Club's 3-in-1 volumes. Thanks also to Curtis for mentioning my review in his introductory comments. I was very glad to see that Stark House was bringing out the first two books in the series in a nice little two-for-one volume. And even more glad that Curtis has provided such an excellent introduction with a well-researched background on Revell and her first two works. If you haven't had the pleasure of reading one of Revell's mysteries before, then I highly recommend that you get yourself a copy.
The Bus Station Murders (1947): Miss Julia Tyler, retired Latin teacher, is on her way to visit her great-niece Anne and husband her husband Dick Travers in Annapolis, Maryland. When the bus arrives at the bus station, everyone rushes off...everyone except for one older woman who seems to be deeply asleep. The bus driver doesn't want to startle the lady, so he asks Miss Julia if she will try to wake her. But that proves impossible as the woman is dead from a knitting needle to the heart. Miss Julia says she wants to be out of it as soon as possible...until she realizes that the police detective in charge is one of her former students, Ben Kramer. And suddenly, with his blessing, she's playing Miss Marple and Miss Silver. Miss Julia, Anne, and Dick all have a solid background in mysteries--reading them (and referencing them) right and left. Hopefully, her reading has given Miss Julia all the training she needs in detection.
Most of the people from the bus knew and despised the deceased, Mrs. Roger Barnes. And most of them live or work in areas where Miss Julia could reasonably go and ask questions. As she notes in her narrative:
One nice thing about getting to what is called a certain age--and at sixty-seven I've been there quite some time--is the privilege of asking questions without having your motives misunderstood. (p.50)
And, so she does. She finds ways to question them all from the Red Cross caseworker to the young sailor who didn't want his uncle to marry Admiral Barnes' widow to the genealogy researcher/librarian who lost her job at Mrs. Barnes' insistence to the doctor who went to jail for dealing in morphine under the table (guess who provided evidence of that?) to the young mother who leaves her children alone while at work (and who Mrs. Barnes had threatened with Social Services). And she manages to provide Ben with suspect after suspect. Just when Miss Julia has decided that it was the young mother, then she digs up something that points at the doctor. But then there's that tidbit that just proves it must have been the sailor (even if Miss Julia does like him). Meanwhile, Ben is digging up evidence himself. But even that is confusing and he winds up making two arrests before the final pieces fall in place and he can make sure the right person has been locked up.
This is a strong debut mystery by Revell, though not quite as solid an entertainment as A Silver Spade. I enjoyed seeing Miss Julia in her first outing and how she handled her first attempts at amateur detection. If she makes some mistakes, it's understandable since this is her first time. And she's so earnest and interested that you can't help but like her. Revell also paints a great picture of Annapolis society of the time. With the most subtle of sentences she lets the reader know how the naval class system works--from the ranking lady being the first to leave a social gathering to which ladies it would be appropriate for Anne to invite for tea (based on her husband's role as naval instructor). The plot is a bit convoluted and though one could assume part of the motive for the culprit, we really aren't given enough clues to figure it all out. There's a bit of Holmes keeping everything to himself until the end about Ben Kramer. But still a lot of fun and a good read. ★★★ and 1/2
In the quotes below, I just couldn't resist listing all the references to well-known mysteries and mystery authors.
First line: My great-niece Ann had been pestering me to visit her ever since her husband got his commission and she started following him around.
Dick says maybe it was murder in the air, and reminds me how sinister and foreboding everybody feels in Mignon Eberhart's books. (p. 22)
This One Will Kill You. What a good title for a murder story, I thought letting my mind wander again from the murder open on my lap. It was a very poor one, one of the hundreds on the market since people found out you can sell anything that looks like a murder, no matter how bad it is. If I'd had an Agatha Christie, now, or one of the all-too-rare Mary Roberts Rineharts, I wouldn't have known or cared noisy and unpleasant passengers could be, or how hard the bus jolted and how bad it smelled, or how long the trip dragged on. (p. 25)
It's been my observation that some people are born to do things in this world, just as some others are born to sit back. (p. 27)
I learned afterward that he [the bus driver] was addicted to reading murder mysteries too. All the most unlikely people--and I suppose I'm one of them--do read them nowadays and aren't ashamed to admit it. (p. 28)
He [the bus driver] was a credit to the books he'd read, not like me. There was more than a touch of Lieutenant Valcour about him (or maybe it was Chief-Detective Inspector Alleyn as he stood up and made the speech somebody always makes, with variations, toward the beginning of every detective novel. (p.28-9) [Rufus King; Ngaio Marsh]
Maybe you're the homicidal maniac. Goodness knows, I thought, genealogy is enough to drive anybody out of her mind (p. 38)
Among others, we saw him arguing with a woman with dyed black hair and yellow clothes--yellow shoes, even, like the woman in Crimson Friday. (p. 47) [Dorothy Cameron Disney]
AT: We all read lots of murders, even Aunt Julia. She can throw Hercule Poirot in your teeth every step of the way.
BK: And Miss Marple. In fact, I'm counting on Miss Julia's turning out to be another Miss Marple or Miss Silver. You don't know Miss Silver? she's another of the lady sleuths who solve the crime and give the credit to the police. (Anne Travers, Ben Kramer; pp. 56-7)
When a woman is scorned, she stays scorned (Anne Travers; p. 66)
...I was perfectly happy because I had Leslie Ford's new book propped up in front of me. (p. 79)
In And Then There Were None there were ten suspects and every one of them had a motive. (Anne Travers; p.88)
It isn't that you read too many [mysteries], Dick, it's just your taste is so low. He likes those old gangster murders, Ben. And--can you imagine?--he likes Philo Vance. (Anne Travers; p. 89)
I gave him a look. This was no time for Agatha Christie either. (p, 99)
The days passed slowly. I couldn't seem to get my mind on anything but murder, which is an awful confession for a respectable woman to have to make. (p. 120)
I was ashamed of myself too, though, in the midst of my indignation. Never again will I criticize poor Mrs. Latham for being upset when she finds a body. Theoretically she should, as I'd thought, have got used to it by this time. But so should I, (p. 134)
Who do you think I am--Lieutenant Weigand, taking my friends along for the ride? I'm going on police business in a police car. (Lt. Ben Kramer; p. 150)
Last line: But maybe so.
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Deaths = 8 (two stabbed; four war wounds; one drowned; one poisoned)
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No Pockets in Shrouds (1948): At the end of The Bus Station Murders Miss Julia declares that she isn't interested in murders:
I certainly felt that way now, as if I never even wanted to read another murder. I change the subject every time it comes up at home.
But then we learn at the beginning of No Pockets in Shrouds (just a few months later) that she's not even interested in visiting her old acquaintance Charlotte Buckner until she learns that there's a body to be investigated. And Miss "I change the subject" Julia now has a scapbook full of murderous newspaper clippings. (Quite a quick recovery from murder overload there, Miss Julia. 😉) So, off she goes to Louisville, Kentucky to see what's going on in the murder investigation of Gus, the butler to the Helm family. Gus had been with the Helm family for years and was apt to report everything he saw and heard to Breckinridge Helm, the autocratic head of the clan. Breckinridge had suffered a stroke right about the time Gus was murdered and then as soon as he's recovered, he convinces "Aunt/Cousin Charlotte" to invite all the grandchildren over to her house across the street for a little party (and a meet and greet with her friend Miss Julia). Johnny Brown, one of the grandsons, happens to look out the window to see the Helms family lawyer entering the house.
"Well, boys and girls," he said, and his voice didn't sound a bit the way it did when he'd talked to me, "there goes the reason why we were invited to this very nice little party of Cousin Charlotte's. Mr. W. Blodgett Fownes, come by request to change Grandfather's will."
Miss Julia notes that if this were a mystery novel that Breckinridge would have threatened to change his will, but would have been murdered before he had the chance to do so.
Well...guess what, boys and girls? Mr. Fownes has to go off and have the will typed up all nice and pretty, so it hasn't been signed yet. So guess who is the next to die? Yep. Breckinridge Helm. The police were fairly certain that someone in the house had killed Gus, but they couldn't find definite evidence against anyone or that no one else could have gotten. But this time? Breckinridge was killed after all the kinfolk were home and snug in bed and the house was locked up tighter than a drum. Oh...and it couldn't have been any of the servants because Thelma, one of the clumsiest of the servants (but the very best cleaner in the world) dumped a jar of powder on the only stairs leading to their quarters. She'd been too tired to clean it up right away and planned to do it first thing in the morning. But the murder was discovered first. And there are no footprints in the powder--so none of them crept out in the middle of the night to kill the old man. Which points the finger of suspicion firmly at the grandchildren who had everything to lose if Breckinridge had lived to sign a new will.
Any of them might have done it--from Johnny who likes to live up to (and maybe beyond) his means to Mary Preston who wants to be a doctor (but Grandpa wouldn't loosen the purse strings for such nonsense to Breck (named for his grandfather) who wants to remodel his family's property to Dr. Greer who could use the inheritance for research to Emily who wants to get married. Emily was the last to see Gus and was seen purchasing the poison that may have been used on both men--so she's the leading favorite suspect for the police. But Miss Julia isn't so sure and she works with an Army lawyer to figure out who the real culprit is.
This mystery is a bit more standard--Miss Julia actually discovers a few clues that help lead to the culprit. And she works a bit more on her own since she isn't hand in glove with Lieutenant Bates of Louisville the way she was with Ben Kramer. Her observations are little more flippant, but still quite funny. She doesn't name-drop the mystery writers as before, but she does like to say, "If this were a murder book..." The one disappointment was how obvious the culprit was to me. The way Miss Julia talks about this person--even when she's saying (as she doesn with all of them) that she doesn't believe it could be them--appeared like a flashing arrow highlighting them to me. There are also more subtle clues that point to the motive that I picked up along the way. Still, a very enjoyable entry in the "elderly" amateur detective category. ★★★ and 1/2
First line: My great-niece Anne is quite a business woman when she wants to be.
I;d read murder books since the first of the Mary Roberts Rineharts, and after I got mixed up in those murders in Annapolis I took a personal interest, naturally. [p. 184]
Charlotte says I read too many murder books. Maybe I do. But even without that, even without the fact of Gus's death in the background, I believe the same thoughts would have gone through my mind. Mr. Helms ought to have died, I thought. Died before this [changing the will[ had a chance to happen. [p. 189]
There are so many ways to kill helpless old people. You can push them downstairs, or feed them things they're not supposed to have, or even just forget to give them their medicine. And nobody ever suspects, except maybe the doctor, sometimes, and he doesn't say anything because he realizes that nothing could be proved and all that would come of stirring it up would be a lot of trouble and unpleasantness and maybe professional oblivion for him. [p. 189]
Last line: "Yes, after all," I said.
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Deaths = 3 (two poisoned; one shot)
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