This is the third book by the great Canadian/American novelist Margaret Millar that I've had the pleasure of reading and reviewing. The other two reviews both appeared on Shiny New Books - Vanish in an Instant and A Stranger in My Grave. So I was delighted when Pushkin Vertigo sent me their most recent reprint of another of her very classy crime novels. This one was first published in 1959, and well deserves its new incarnation.
The novel is set mainly in San Francisco, but it begins in Mexico City. Two friends, Wilma Wyatt and Amy Kellogg, are sharing a hotel room. They are not on good terms. Wilma is a loud, flashy extrovert, on holiday to try to obliterate the aftermath of a divorce. Happily married Amy, the complete opposite in every way, is quiet and restrained. Not surprisingly, they argue - and unknown to them, their heated conversation is overheard by Consuela, a young Latino maid, from her favourite hiding place in the broom closet. Consuela decides to sleep the night in the closet, but is woken by loud screaming. Dashing into Room 404, she discovers Amy gazing in horror at the open window. Down below, on the pavement, lies Wilma's lifeless body. A verdict of suicide is quickly arrived at.
Amy is in pieces, and her husband Rupert quickly drops everything and gets on a plane to Mexico to bring her home to recover from the shock. But, to the consternation of her brother Gill Branson and his wife Helene, he arrives back in San Francisco without her. Amy, he tells them, has gone to New York to recuperate and will be home soon. But the weeks go by and there is still no sign of her. Suspicious circumstances mount up, and Gill employs Dodd, a private detective, to try to discover what has become of Amy. Is Amy still alive? Is Rupert having an affair with his secretary? Where is Amy's beloved dog Mack? Why did Rupert get power of attorney and then withdraw $15,000 from Amy's account? It's impossible to say more about the plot without giving too much away. Suffice it to say that there are many suspicious circumstances and much misdirection before the end, which comes with a major twist in the final line.
Millar is a fine writer. I always enjoy her characters and in this novel particularly liked Rupert Kellogg's secretary Miss Burton, who dyes her hair according to the season of the year - when we first meet her it is pumpkin coloured in honour of Halloween. A pretty, able young woman, she is undervalued by Rupert, to whom she is completely devoted - she has a surprising role to play before the end and carries it out admirably. Dodd, the PI, is a good character too - he took up the job by default, unable to think of anything else to do with his life, but he turns out to be surprisingly good at it and plays an important part in solving the mystery of Amy's disappearance. Here's a moment when things start to become a bit clearer for him:
Doors began opening in his mind, revealing rooms that were peopled with shadows and voiced with echoes. None of the shadows could be positively identified and the echoes were like nonsense syllables produced by a tape recording running backwards. But in one corner of one room, a faceless woman sat at a desk, writing.
Margaret Millar, who was married to the successful crime novelist known as Ross MacDonald, wrote a total of twenty-seven novels, most of them best sellers and several prizewinners. This one gave me hours of pleasure.