The Cape Cod Mystery

Prudence Whitsby ("Snoodles" to her niece Betsey) decides to rent a cottage in Cape Cod for the summer. They choose two friends to spend the summer with them: Dorothy “Dot” Cram, a former college classmate of Betsey’s who works in a settlement house in New York City, and Emma Manton, the widow of a clergyman from Boston. Bill Porter, a lifelong friend of Prudence and Betsey (and suitor of the latter), is a frequent guest at the home.

Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, but there is one unpleasant complication: Dale Sanborn, a highly successful author. Prudence tried to read one of his novels:

”It was all about a man— no; about a girl who loved a man who was married to a girl— I think this is straight— who loved a man who loved the first mentioned girl. It confused me to such an extent that I left off on page forty. It was a little nasty, too. I am not convinced that his characters bear any resemblance to human beings, though I am given to understand that he takes his stories from life.”

Sanborn does not make a good impression on Prudence, Betsey, and their friends, but they cannot avoid him since he has rented the tiny cabin on the same property as the cottage. His interest in Betsey is not exactly welcome either, especially to a very jealous Bill Porter. Prudence rather acidly describes him:

“He was, I thought, a little oily. I tried to make out why. It might have been the chorus-boy perfection of his too-well-cut flannels and blue coat, or possibly his highly manicured fingers. My father always warned me about men with manicured hands. Such a man, he said, was never a gentleman by birth but by accident.

One night Prudence goes looking for her cat, Ginger, who is behaving in typical contrary cat fashion and has gone off exploring. He leads her to Sanborn’s cabin. Reluctantly, Prudence enters the cabin, expecting to encounter Sanborn, but she does not see him anywhere. Then she notices a blanket in the middle of the floor. She pulls it back – and finds Dale Sanborn lying face down on the floor. Dead.

The murder investigation is quickly bungled by the incompetent sheriff, Slough Sullivan, and the gossipy, overly enthusiastic Dr Reynolds, who quickly makes himself Sullivan’s assistant. They fasten on Bill Porter as the chief suspect and soon poor Bill is arrested for murder. Since the town has no jail, he has to spend his time in the stocks. Bill’s friends know he did not commit the crime and set out to prove him innocent.

Bill’s handyman and friend, Asey Mayo, quickly takes over the investigation for the defense. Asey is one of the more unusual and charming amateur detectives I have run across. In a way, he reminds me of Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael – a well-traveled, experienced older man who has seen just about everything life has to offer and isn’t terribly impressed by it. To quote Prudence, who has known him most, if not all of her life:

”Asey was the kind of man everybody expects to find on Cape Cod and never does. He was by my reckoning about sixty years old, because I am fifty, and I knew he had been “voting age,” as they say in the town, when I was a girl visiting my relatives. No one seeing him for the first time could tell whether he was thirty-five or seventy. His long lean face was so tanned from exposure that the lines and wrinkles did not show. His mouth was wide, with a humorous twist about the corners, and his deep-set blue eyes twinkled disconcertingly.

He usually walked with his shoulders hunched and his head thrust forward. As he moved his worn corduroy trousers and flannel shirt flopped as though anxious to catch up with the rest of his spare frame. An old broad-brimmed Stetson set at an angle on his head gave him a strangely rakish look. He almost invariably chewed tobacco, and that habit coupled with his trick of pronouncing no more syllables of a word than were absolutely necessary, made him quite unintelligible to those who didn’t know him.

Although he called himself a mechanic, he had taken a turn at nearly every trade. As steward, cook or ordinary seaman he had sailed over the seven seas in every type of ship. He had made his first voyage on one of the last of the old clipper ships, and before he had settled down in the town he had been mate of a tramp steamer. Under Bill’s grandfather he had built carriages; under Bill’s father he had learned about automobiles. I doubt if he had ever had more than a fleeting glimpse of the inside of a school-room, but his knowledge of the world and its inhabitants was vastly superior to that of the average man.

The town cast a critical eye upon him because he belonged to no church and rarely attended any service outside of the Christmas Eve celebration, when he went and lustily sang hymns. He was neither a Mason, a Bison nor an Elk.”

It is easy not to take Asey seriously, but that would be a big mistake. Like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Asey sees parallels between the people and situations in the present and the ones in the past:

“I told Miss Prue the other day that all folks was like other folks in one little thing or ’nother, an’ usually if they was alike in that one little thing they was like them in other ways too.”

It is Asey’s experience and common sense that save the day and enable him to catch the real killer of Dale Sanborn.

It is always nice to discover a new author whose books I enjoy. I had heard of Phoebe Atwood Taylor, but had never read any of her books until recently. Her characters are well drawn and interesting, especially her older women (see Daisy Tower in [b:Murder at the New York World's Fair|15852972|Murder at the New York World's Fair|Phoebe Atwood Taylor|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1346101477s/15852972.jpg|1090605]). There is not quite as much humor in “The Cape Cod Mystery” as in [b:Punch with Care|16621846|Punch with Care|Phoebe Atwood Taylor|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1374173660s/16621846.jpg|155132] or “New York Fair,” which are basically screwball comedies/mysteries. However, Taylor has a light touch and just when things get serious, they are leavened with some humor. I liked most of the characters (except for Sanborn, Sullivan, and Reynolds), and was rather upset when I learned who the killer was. It was someone I had never suspected at all.

This novel was published in 1931, but has held up very well. Some books from the early 1930s positively creak with age. However, like Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Rex Stout, Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s books are still a pleasure to read. I highly recommend “The Cape Cod Mystery,” “Punch with Care,” and “Murder at the New York Fair.” They’re all a great deal of fun.