No one could prove we had reason to suspect murder. We can afford to be thought fools. So we’ll go on behaving as if such a thought never entered our minds.

I’m sorry, gents. I thought for a moment I’d been coshed. An odd sort of way in which to thank two helpful strangers after a nasty accident in a City street, and one bound to provoke speculation; especially when the strangers happen to be Ludovic Travers and his senior operative, Mr. Hallows, of the Broad Street Detective Agency. There was in fact something altogether a bit furtive and even familiar about the well-dressed man who had measured his length on the slippery road surface; so much so for Hallows that he tried a spot of spontaneous tracking , only to be eluded with a skill that could have been practised. But this curious brief encounter seemed to have no real significance until by a quirk of fate it tied in with Travers’ investigations into the matter of Julian Matching’s young wife who had disappeared with some valuable jewellery belonging to the family business, and so became part of the case of the extra grave. Here is Christopher Bush at his most urbanely baffling, with a tale of murder and robbery that will please all connoisseurs of the genuine detective story.

The Case of the Extra Grave was originally published in 1961. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.