NEGLECTED DETECTIVES: Prof. Peter Ponsonby - Academic, Mystery Novelist, Amateur Sleuth

When last I wrote of Jean Leslie's professor detective, Peter Ponsonby, several years ago (One Cried Murder) he was faced with the apparent suicide of a psychology professor that turned out to be nasty murder.  He also met his soon-to-be wife Mara Mallory who became his Watson of sorts in two other novels, both of which I have now read.  The second outing, Two Faced Murder (1946), with Peter & Mara is a silly story that seems completely influenced by the madcap murder movies that the "Thin Man" series made such easy targets for imitation.  It began sort of okay with the disappearance of an academic's wife who was straying from her husband into the arms and bed of a dashing British literature professor, a  colleague of Peter's. When the two go on a nighttime search for missing wife Jane, tracing her last known locations, Mara literally stumbles over Jane's dead body in a heavily wooded area near a beach. Then, sadly, the nonsense kicks in. Mara insists they bury the body, Peter complies. Then she insists they mark the burial site. Then she says No! They have to uncover the body. Then they go to the police. I threw in the towel when I got to this exchange of dialogue between Sheriff Amos Schroeder and Peter.

"...how was Jane killed?"

"She's been strangled. Her neck is broken."

"So?" Schroeder gave the information his professional attention. "Not the technique I would have expected, but then," he added modestly, "I'm no great shakes at this crime business."

Not exactly a policemen exuding confidence in his own profession. And then he tells Peter and Mara that they are allowed to conduct their own investigation. Encourages them even! He confesses: "I wouldn't get to first base with the college people. I guess my methods are too crude for them." Too bad, Amos!  That's why you're a cop. How ridiculous for a senior police officer to ask a literature teacher and an academic secretary to conduct a murder investigation simply because they know the college milieu better than he does.  I couldn't read anymore. I shut it and moved onto the third volume hoping for something that approached the noirish mood and plot of her last book (The Intimate Journal of Warren Winslow) which does not feature Peter and Mara.

 

Turns out that the third and final adventure with Professor Ponsonby is the best.  And it mixes all of Jean Leslie's strengths in a story that is for once mature and hard-edged.  Most surprisingly, Three Cornered Murder (194) is thoroughly relevant and resonant for 21st century readers with its exploration of corrupt government, corporate greed and self-interest as the guiding principle of regional government officials more interested in lining their own pockets than listening to the concerns of their citizenry.  I was very glad to read a crime novel that smacked of realism instead of screwball illogic.

 

Peter steps into the central role of detective three days prior to his wedding. Mara -- more worried about the impending rehearsal, the guest list, the catering and other wedding plans -- helps only peripherally. And it is largely due to Pete's solo action as amateur sleuth and expert in fistfights that Three Cornered Murder succeeds so well. Leslie still has fun with witty banter, a seemingly innate talent as it highlights all of her crime fiction, but the focus on a group of thoroughly corrupt council members in a unnamed California town that resembles Santa Monica gives the book a necessary gravitas given the level of crime dominating the somewhat complicated plot.

 

Peter is witness to the shooting murder of city council member "Doc" Lawson, a G.P. whose patient list consists solely of his fellow council members. Lawson was shot while crossing a street and there are multiple witnesses besides Peter. When police arrive someone claims that Peter had a gun and he ought to be searched. Police do so and find a recently fired revolved in his coat pocket. Someone is trying to frame Peter for the murder.  

 

Lawson was involved in a shady gambling operation that is a cover for local government graft. He is also named as the pay-off man for the operation making large cash payments to several of the city council members. Joan Toplitz, wife of a former student of Peter's, is an investigative journalist who has written a book on city corruption and knows the whole scheme. She educates Peter and Mara about what's been going on. As Peter delves into this deeply ingrained graft he learns of a series of accidental deaths of the last seven (!) pay-off men. Joan, her husband "Babe" Scott, Mara and Peter begin to formulate a theory that someone they call Mr. X is behind all these accidents. That for some reason known only to Mr. X the pay-off man must be eliminated. Perhaps, they surmise, they are killed to prevent talking about the gambling operation and the bribery payouts. The plot then focuses on the search for a professional criminal who has masterminded the corruption and payoffs as well orchestrating serial murder disguised as accidental deaths.

 

I thought this story was very well done compared to the other two Ponsonby books. Less lighthearted and truly gritty this third entry often lets loose with merciless violence. One murder elicited a gasp from me for its random cruelty -- an intentional hit-and-run accident, brutal, ruthless, sadistic. That the victim is one of the most lively and likable characters among the supporting cast, Looney Wills — a newsboy barely out of his teen years, adds an unexpected level of poignancy amid all the cruelty. This story seemed utterly modern and unsettling in how it echoes our troubled times plagued with rampant mistrust of government officials and the disease of unrestrained avarice.

 

THINGS I LEARNED:  Instead of referring to Tom, Dick and Harry to refer to anonymous people a character refers to John Doe, Joe Average, and Addison Simms.  That third name was new to me. Off I went a-Googling. Addison Sims (with one M, by the way) turned up all over the internet. Of course! The best info came from an Wikipedia article on Ruthrauff & Ryan, an obscure advertising company that flourished in America from 1912 through 1964.  Sims was a fictional character created in an ad campaign for a memory learning service.  I'll quote directly from the article: "Ruthrauff wrote a prominent ad campaign for the Roth Memory Course. The ads featured a businessman greeting another with, ‘Of course--I remember you: Mr. Addison Sims of Seattle.’ The ads convinced American business people that a memory for names was an essential business skill, and ‘Mr. Addison Sims’ entered the vernacular."

 

Mara and Peter make frequent visits to a luxuriously designed drugstore with a soda fountain.  That drugstore and its staff become crucial to the solution of the hit man killings. While cleverly getting Bert, the owner and pharmacist at the drugstore, to talk about what he knows about Lawson and the shooting Mara decides to buy some cosmetics. Bert says, "That'll be $5.75 plus the 20% luxury tax and sales tax."  A 20% luxury tax on make-up?  I had to check on that. Whaddya know! According to a 1951 U.S. Treasurer's Report on Excise Taxes citing the taxes collected as a result of the Revenue Act of 1940 "...fur,  jewelry, toilet preparations, and later luggage, were subjected to taxes at the retail level, eventually reaching a 20% rate." Toilet preparations, which include make-up and cosmetics of all types, were taxed from 10-20% between the years 1939-1943. I spent way too much time reading about how the USA gathered additional revenue (apart from higher income tax) during the pre- and post-WW2 years through numerous excise taxes that were colloquially known by shoppers as the luxury tax. I thrive on these minute details in vintage popular fiction. I learn so much about the past.

 

EASY TO FIND? It's a shame that this last and by far the best of the Prof. Ponsonby detective novels is such a rarity. There were three copies I found for sale and I bought the cheapest several months ago. And now there are zero copies of the book for sale.  A true shame. This book is the one to read if you're interested in the work of Jean Leslie. It's not only relevant and resonant for our time, it's often rather witty and unexpectedly poignant. Of all the books I've read so far (I still have yet to read a non-Ponsonby mystery:  Shoes for My Love (1949) AKA Blood on My Shoe) the last Ponsonby book is the best written, most tightly plotted, has the most fascinating story, and is the most grounded in real believable crime. Perhaps it may see the light of day in a reprint edition.  If only one book by Jean Leslie could be reprinted I would like it to be Three Cornered Murder.

FIRST BOOKS: One Cried Murder - Jean Leslie

It's too bad that the striking cover illustration at left for this debut mystery novel by Jean Leslie, and the introduction to her decades long association with Doubleday Doran's Crime Club, is no indication of the story within. One Cried Murder (1945) has nothing to do with a horde of bats invading a town nor does it feature anything vaguely resembling  Gothic motifs. The story could have done with a few macabre and outre touches. But as it stands it is still one of the best academic mysteries I've read by any American writer of this era, including the many academics who hid behind pseudonyms and wrote mystery novels set on university campuses. In One Cried Murder Professor Peter Ponsonby makes his first appearance in what would be a three book series and turns amateur sleuth when faced with the apparent suicide of a psychology professor at a small university somewhere in California. This is one of the few academic mysteries of the WW 2 era where I got any inkling that the writer actually was a teacher (Leslie was a psychology fellow and taught for a while early in her career). The detail of university politics, the hierarchy of the deans and the faculty and how they influence and affect the various departments and division heads rang 100% true. I say this having worked in academic medicine for the past 24 years.

The only reason Ponsonby, an English professor, gets involved with the psychology department is because he wanted to talk with his friend Marshall d'Arcy, a child psychologist who was noticeably absent from his office on the day of Ponsonby's visit. In trying to locate d'Arcy Ponsonby enters the office of Prof. Wagner, a psychology professor of German heritage, and finds the man dead from a bullet wound to his head.

The gun it seems was astoundingly used as a prop in a variety of psychology experiments. Yes, a real gun, not a toy gun, not even a replica of a gun. A real gun. I guess that's another sign of the extreme changing times. I was flabbergasted that teaching professionals would allow a real gun to be used as a prop and handled by students in an experiment when a replica, or even a photograph of one would serve the purpose. The experiment is not crucial to the plot but is explained in detail and there is no reason why a real gun is necessary at all. [It's just a novel, I know. I'll calm down.] In any case, this gun used a prop, is never loaded during the experiments. But -- of course -- there is a box of bullets stored with the gun and anyone had access to both gun and bullets. It is kept stored in an unlocked supply closet which was covered by only a curtain. When Ponsonby finds the box two bullets are missing. He had no time to examine the gun and assumes that the second bullet is still loaded in the gun.

Suspects are many and the motives start to pour in when Ponsonby discovers that Wagner was an unethical psychologist who used confidential medical files to blackmail former patients. There is also some discussion as to the cabal of foreigners -- mostly German and Italian heritage -- who live within close proximity of one another and keep their offices just as close. Ponsonby toys with the idea of a conspiracy of Axis spies on the campus but this is soon dismissed as absurd by Mara Mallory, a secretary in the psychology department. She accuses the English professor of allowing his imagination to get the better of him. You see, Ponsonby is also a writer of murder mysteries. His most recent novel, rather popular and selling well, has a silly alliterative title. And Mara, the sassy secretary, pops off the percussive title with this derisive exclamation: "The Poison Pen Puzzle by Professor Peter Ponsonby, Purveyor of Pulp. What a comedown!"

Peter and Mara have a Benedict and Beatrice relationship that blossoms into a sleuthing partnership (albeit begrudgingly on Mara's part) as well as a cocktails and dancing partnership. He convinces Mara to allow him access to her boss' files and in return he'll take her out for a night on the town. This romantic subplot is handled with some wry humor, a sophisticated game of literary quote dropping, and a heavy dose of sexual innuendo the likes of which I've never encountered in any Crime Club novels. Jean Leslie seems to have taken a lesson from her hardboiled contemporaries when it comes to expressing the male libido and does so with relish. At times it gets to be a little much like when Ponsonby listens to one of the oversexed psychology faculty members talk about his hobby of watching the co-eds wearing skimpy gym costumes at archery practice outside his office windows. "Do you like legs?" he asks while "grinning offensively" to which Ponsonby replies, "I like legs, but I prefer them a pair at a time."

Leslie's plot meanders at times and she can't seem to make up her mind if she wants the book to be about the burgeoning romance between Peter and Mara or if she wants Peter to stick to his initial decision to match wits with his own creation, French criminal psychologist George Bouchet.  When Peter is left to his Q&A sessions with the various teachers, students, faculty wives and others Leslie displays some fine work at creating characters. The scenes with Drs. Ring, James, George and the graduate student Kurstein are highlights in the novel.  A mystery woman Ponsonby encounters in the waiting room near d'Arcy's clinic and dubs the "star sapphire woman" for the brooch she was wearing also provides him with some intriguing information about the staff.  As Ponsonby delves further into his snooping and questioning the list of blackmail victims grows, motives multiply and he inadvertently stumbles onto an undercover FBI operation which seems to validate his conspiracy of German spies among the faculty.

I enjoyed this book even if it took me three times as long to read it as it should have. The rambling nature of the story is crammed with red herrings and minutiae that prove in the long run to be pointless. Still, Leslie was clearly having fun with her story and her characters.  When Peter's mom appears it was like having a cameo by the British actress Frances De la Tour show up for some grandiosely arch comic relief. Agatha, his mother, is a radio personality with a cooking and housekeeping tips program. She also happens to have stopped by for a spontaneous chat with the wife of a faculty member. That chat comes in very handy in clearing up some alibi issues. It's characters like Agatha, Dr Ring, R.H.J. James and others among the supporting cast that will be keep me coming back for more in Jean Leslie's mystery novels.

I'll leave you with this one quote I thought was telling about how college life and college teaching in America has not changed one iota.  Dr Ring ,the self-confessed "hack professor" and the most senior member of the faculty int he psychology department has this to say about his survival and long lasting tenure:  "If I do no good I also do no harm. It is not my wish to call myself to the attention of the administration. I might also add that by the same token I never flunk a football player."

Prof. Peter Ponsonby Detective Novels
One Cried Murder (1945)
Two Faced Murder (1946)
Three Cornered Murder (1947)