Why Didn't They Ask Evans
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Cover artist | Gilbert Cousland |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
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Publication date
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September 1934 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| Preceded by | The Listerdale Mystery |
| Followed by | Parker Pyne Investigates |
Why Didn't They Ask Evans? is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in September 1934 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1935 under the title of The Boomerang Clue.
The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
Bobby Jones finds a man dying at his local golf course. A photo he saw in the man's pocket is replaced, as police seek his identity. Bobby and his friend Lady Frances Derwent have adventures as they solve the mystery of the man's last words, Why didn't they ask Evans?
The novel was praised at first publication as "a story that tickles and tantalises", and that the reader is sure to like the amateur detectives and forgive the absence of Poirot. It had a lively narrative, full of action, with two amateur detectives who "blend charm and irresponsibility with shrewdness and good luck". Robert Barnard, writing in 1990, called it "Lively" but compared it to Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies and felt that the detectives were too much the amateurs.
Bobby Jones is playing golf with Dr Thomas in the Welsh seaside town of Marchbolt. Seeking the golf ball he hit over the cliff edge, he sees a man lying below. The doctor says the man is fatally injured and seeks help. Bobby stays with the man, who briefly regains consciousness, says "Why didn't they ask Evans?", and then dies. Bobby finds a photograph of a beautiful woman in the man's coat pocket, but no identification. Roger Bassington-ffrench, a stranger wearing plus fours, offers to stay with the body so Bobby can play the organ at his father's church.
The dead man is identified as Alex Pritchard by his sister, Amelia Cayman, at the inquest. She is said to be the woman in the photograph; Bobby wonders how such a beautiful girl could become such a coarse older woman. After the inquest, Mrs Cayman and her husband want to know if Pritchard had any last words. Bobby says that he did not. Later, when talking with his friend Frankie (Lady Frances Derwent), Bobby remembers that Pritchard did have last words and writes to the Caymans to tell them.
Bobby receives and rejects an unexpected job offer from a firm in Buenos Aires. Soon afterwards Bobby nearly dies after drinking from a poisoned bottle of beer. The local police do not pursue this. Frankie thinks Bobby is targeted for murder. Bobby agrees when he sees the issue of the local paper with the photograph used to find Pritchard's sister. Bobby sees that it is not the one he found in the dead man's pocket. He and Frankie realise that Bassington-ffrench swapped the photographs and that Mrs Cayman is not related to the dead man at all. Bobby and Frankie search for Bassington-ffrench. They trace him to Merroway Court in Hampshire, owned by Roger's brother and sister-in-law, Henry and Sylvia. They stage a car accident outside the house with the help of a doctor friend so that Frankie, feigning injury, will be invited to stay to recover. Frankie produces a newspaper cutting about the mysterious dead man; Sylvia remarks that he looks like Alan Carstairs, a traveller and big-game hunter who was a friend of John Savage, a millionaire who had killed himself after learning he had terminal cancer.
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