Mystery Authors (K)

The foreign colony in Rio de Janeiro formed a group visited by murder, influenced by money and hemmed in by their isolation. The death of Jack Houghton, leader of that colony, was as much a relief to some of his former associates as it was a shock to his sister-in-law, Jane. Jane was due for disillusionment as the investigation of Houghton’s death revealed more and more his double dealings, his ruthlessness and his cruelty. Jack Houghton had aroused fierce hatred in many people, one of whom had used the rare little seeds of death to bring about his murder and had left a bunch of coffee leaves as another crime of violence. In a denouement which holds suspense to the very end, Jane finally found not only a murderer but release from her grief and a new understanding of two men.

From the moment when Penelope Paget saw the slumped figure in the empty subway train at midnight to the last crashing climax in a drawing room in Rio de Janeiro, she was caught up in a mass of cross currents, misstatements of fact, and bewildering emotional reactions. She had to undertake the delivery to Rio of a small clay elephant, which she concealed in a turban wound around her head. Once arrived in Rio, she found herself sought after by people she had never seen before and almost deliberately kept in the dark by people she thought she knew very well. She heard the legend of Satan’s Sixth Finger and she saw a dead man whose body mysteriously disappeared only to be traced by scientific research in a glass factory.

Inside an old family mansion the presence of too many self-invited guests creates a dangerous situation—a situation which explodes when an unprecedented blizzard hits Seattle. When Nan and Dyke drop in on her friend, Fleur Wales, they find both Fleur and her home much changed. A queer assortment of women buffeted by the storms of war has sought refuge at Madrona Place, bringing with them not only furniture and wardrobe, but hostility, suspicion, and most of all, fear. The atmosphere inside, as out, is chill and charged with sharp, crackling tension. Fleur herself is coldly reticent, seeming more like a prisoner than hostess. Then death bursts into their midst. Mrs. Devins, plump and birdlike, becomes putty-gray with fright. Beulah’s tall, thin frame grows more taut with acrid contempt. The beautiful sophisticate, from South Africa, Eileen, resorts to obscure innuendo and dark-eyed Peggy withdraws to bitter silence. The snow brings it all to a boil, and Nan learns to her grief that murder can follow when fear comes first.

In this psychological novel of murder Vera Kelsey demonstrates her versatility and capacity to present a small cast of sharply delineated, thoroughly credible characters. Dana Madison had always rationalized her own actions. It was for the good of her family that she had married money, not once but three times. Her parents took better care of her children than she could; hence she traveled extensively in a carefree manner. Her husbands preferred beauty and charm to integrity; hence she became an exquisite figurine. But her return to her family home forced her finally to face some bitter, unlovely facts. In dealing with the problems that upset her, Dana discovered that beauty can be a boomerang and cleverness outsmart itself.

Dan Cumberland tried to convince himself that the town of Clayton could not harbor the evil and threatened violence he felt in the air, but when the police chief pleaded with him never to say the word ‘murder’ aloud, he could no longer ignore the obvious. Dan was a returned war correspondent, and it might have been his terrible experiences in Europe which made him read horror into the two hotel fires and the death by gas poisoning of the hotel man and his wife. A girl who identified herself as the sister of the dead woman spurred him on a serious effort to solve the puzzle, and another girl, whose claim of affection was outworn with the years, proved the key figure in a series of startling revelations.

Vera Kelsey has created a group of distinct and believable characters and has accurately caught the feel of small-town life. Whisper Murder!, with its peculiarly cold-blooded plot, adds up to an excellent and substantial novel of murder.