MOONLIGHTERS: Queena Mario, A Diva Kills (on Paper)

For the handful of people who read the last “Moonlighters” article on an actress who dabbled on the side as a mystery writer (Dulcie Gray) you may have thought I started up this feature and promptly abandoned it because the promise of the next installment on a literature professor turned mystery writer never materialized. Did I abandon the idea altogether? (you may be wondering). I say unto you, “Taint true, kiddos!” Today marks the return of “Moonlighters” and I hope to make this a monthly or bimonthly feature for the rest of the year.

Today we have the opera singer Queena Mario, well-loved lyric soprano who performed with five different opera companies and was with the illustrious Metropolitan Opera from 1922 to 1938. While still working as a singer in 1934 she wrote her first of a trio of mystery novels. All three, none too surprisingly, are set in the world of opera with plots revolving around such familiar works as I Pagliacci, Samson & Delilah and Gounod’s version of the Faust story.

I’ve only read her first book and judging from the less than kind reviews of her other two mystery novels it’s probably better to stop right there. Murder in the Opera House (1934) is ably plotted and energetically written with a truly original murder method directly tied to the world of opera and theater. For that reason I would recommend the book to those enjoy vintage detective fiction for its bizarre and outre plot elements. But the characters, unfortunately, left me wanting; they tend to come from a dusty trunk of cliched stereotypes.

Editha Fleischer & Queena Mario in Hansel & Gretel
Metropolitan Opera, Dec 25, 1931

That Mario performed in the Met’s production of I Pagliacci in March 1934 is no coincidence when you discover that the plot of her novel features a dual production of that opera along with Cavalleria Rusticana, both one act operas and both often presented together in a double bill. Are any of these characters modelled on the actual cast members of Leoncavallo’s opera, one wonders? I certainly hope not. Mario’s fictional cast is as temperamental and hot-headed as any cast of opera singers you could imagine in their worst possible stereotypes. From the vindictive and passionate Consuelo Elvado who plays the doomed Nedda in the opera and the victim in the murder mystery to the ludicrously jealous and dictatorial conductor Luigi Velucci, a short-statured egomaniac, sort of a Napoleon of Time …uh, Tempo.

Our detective duo are made up of Carey Van Horn, "the world's greatest criminal psychologist" and Manhattan D.A. Merrick Townsend.  This is their only appearance in her books (the other two have amateur detectives) and they make a good team. But to fill up the pages we are saddled with a love story subplot between Van Horn and Diana Pearson, a character who is not at all a suspect in the crime but who has a slightly suspicious nature related to something else entirely. The entire subplot is a distraction and when Van Horn is with Diana he tends to become embarrassingly boyish.

When Mario sticks with her theater background, her impassioned singers, the efficient stage crew, and focusses on the detective work the book is a mild success. As a debut detective novel from a woman not known for her fiction writing (although she had been a journalist prior to studying singing) Murder in the Opera House is an admirable piece of entertainment. Mario does well with planting her clues, trying her best to throw in a few red herrings, but it is painfully obvious by the middle of the book who the culprit is. As soon as Van Horn discovers one key piece of evidence the game is up. Additionally, her valiant attempt to make the murder an impossible crime -- a shooting that occurs during a performance in front of an audience with no sign of the weapon anywhere on stage or in the wings -- does not quite live up to the reader's expectations.

The most intriguing feature of this theatrical mystery novel is the focus on the backstage world. Specifically, Mario gives us a literal bird’s eye view of how an opera is run. There are two key scenes that take place on the catwalks high above the stage amid the terraced ledges of the fly system and the maze of booms from which the lighting instruments are hung. Very rarely has any mystery writer allowed a reader such a detailed tour into the arcane area of stage management and lighting design. Lighting cues and technical effects are crucial to understanding how the murder was committed. The murder weapon itself is utterly bizarre and incredibly ingenious for a novel of any age, let alone our beloved Golden Age. Something similar may have been employed in more modern theater mysteries, but I am sure that this is a first time it was employed in all of detective fiction.

Queena Mario (1896-1951) was born in Akron, OH to James Tillotson, who was a Civil War drummer boy, and Rose Sinathinos. She grew up in Plainfield, NJ and moved to New York as a young adult to write newspaper columns for The Telegram, The Evening World and The Sun. She wrote under her own name Queena Tillotson and a house name, "Florence Bryan," for a column called "Talks with Your Children." While working as a journalist she saved her money and began taking singing lessons. After being twice turned down by the Met she was hired by Fortune Gallo for his San Carlo Opera Company. She made her professional debut with that company in Tales of Hoffman on Sept 4, 1918. She chose to perform under Queena Mario by shortening her middle name Marion.

She went on to sing with Scotti Opera Company and Ravinia Opera Company travelling across the united States with the former. Finally, on Thanksgiving Day in 1922 she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Micaela in Carmen. She also performed for six seasons with San Francisco Opera and sang at the renowned Paris Opera House in 1925. For details on her career in San Francisco see this article and the SF Opera blog. According to her New York Times obituary: "She achieved her greatest popularity as Gretel in Hansel and Gretel and it was as Gretel she bade goodbye to the Metropolitan in a special afternoon performance on Dec 26, 1938." A bit of trivia: the Met's 1931 production of Hansel and Gretel featuring Mario in her first Met performance of her signature role was the first live radio broadcast of a Met opera.

The Times goes on to note: "Beginning in 1931 she taught for three years at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. She also taught voice and operatic acting at the Julliard Graduate School, and for some years conducted her own private studio."

In addition to Murder at the Opera House Mario's mystery novels include Murder Meets Mephisto (1942) , and Death Drops Delilah (1944). Isaac Anderson, mystery novel reviewer for The New York Times was taken with her debut saying "... she is able to make the setting and the people of the opera fairly convincing, but she is not so successful in her delineation of the other characters in the book. [The book]...is not a great detective story, but it has its exciting moments." Neither of the later two mysteries was as favorably reviewed as her debut. Below are capsule reviews I took from old editions of "The Criminal Record," the mystery novel column that appeared in The Saturday Review for over three decades.

And for true opera buffs here's Queena Mario performing a Pucchini aria during an NBC 1932 radio show: 

FFB: Power on the Scent - Henrietta Clandon

THE STORY: William Power, lawyer, confides with his married novelist friends, Vincie and Penny Mercer, on an unusual murder involving what appears to be a poisoning by inhalation. Evidence suggests that a boutonniere found on the victim's lapel was dusted with cocaine.  The two writers are enlisted as unofficial detectives and together the three solve the murder with a very strange method of killing and even more odd motive.

THE CHARACTERS: William Power along with the Mercers appear in a brief series of detective novels by John Hazlette Vahey writing under the pseudonym Henrietta Clandon. Vahey is better known to readers of this blog as Vernon Loder whose mystery novels incorporate bizarre plots, strange murder methods and his trademark sense of offbeat humor.  Power on the Scent (1937) is the fourth book in the series of five, but only the third in which the three series characters appear together.  Powell appears alone in Good by Stealth (1937) while the Mercers go it alone in the final Clandon novel Fog over Weymouth (1938).

Penny and Vincie are novelists who specialize in crime fiction and detective stories. Penny's last work was released as This Delicate Murder, the previous novel in the Clandon series, and we find out that Penny writes as "Henrietta Clandon" adding an element of metafiction to this series. The previous case is alluded to several times and even footnoted in the text.

Penny comes up with a handful of good ideas as to how the cocaine was administered when an elaborate re-creation of a flower delivery fails to show that the rose used as a boutonniere could have held onto the powdered drug over the rough road the bicyclist travelled. When she learns that the victim had a fondness for the candy Turkish Delight she offers up the traditional coating of confectioner's powered sugar could easily have been doctored and not been noticed. That the victim is also a "snuffer" (translation for US readers: drug snorter) suggests that he may not have sensed the difference to an added sprinkling of coke on his candy. The detective work here is filled with interesting ideas and action like the flower delivery by bicycle re-enactment that Vincie performs for Power and the police.

The title of novel comes into play at various places. We get discussions of the scent of flowers, perfumes, and the apparently fading habit of people smelling flowers. When Power passes by a garden at night and smells the pungent odor of tobacco plants which he tells us release their scent at night he once again gets to thinking of botanical scents.  It turns out to be the detection climax of the book.

Overall, I would call Power on the Scent a didactic detective novel. The bulk of the detection is done via conversations at afternoon tea, restaurant meals and dinner parties. It's detection as a social gathering.  Almost all of it exclusively through dialogue as well. Late in the book is one excellent scene where Powell invites Dr. Terpis, forensic pathologist, to dinner at the Mercer home.  Dr. Terpis is perhaps the liveliest character in the entire book. He was certainly my favorite.

Terpis is described as "no more than thirty, fat, red-faced, with a perpetual smile and a hoarse laugh which broke out on the least provocation."  He is amateur puppeteer and entertains Penny's interest in the art form with tales of his puppet making and his work on writing plays for his gallery of puppets. He enjoys every course of the meal prepared for him ("It was as good as eating yourself to watch his gastronomic pleasure") and is a pleasant raconteur as well as an informative forensics expert.  When Terpis comes to discuss the case he presents fascinating details about the skull of a Great Dane that went over a cliff with one of the suspects, both perished. His findings, both macabre and pertinent to the case, will help clear up some ambiguities, decide the actual method of murder, and lead to the surprising solution to the various mysteries uncovered in the death of Montague Morgan, stockbroker and developer of a unique variety of Rennavy Rose.

INNOVATIONS: As "Henrietta Clandon" Vahey indulges in a self-consciously witty style, overflowing with puns, epigrams and arch humor.  It's a humor reminiscent of Restoration comedies of Wycherley and Etherege and seems utterly out of place in this detective story plot with its grave consequences involving murderous rage and drug abuse.  Other writers use this arch humor to great effect like Christianna Brand and Colin Watson without characters willfully drawing attention to their own cleverness.  I was bothered by how delighted Penny and Vince were with each other when they came up with yet another ridiculous pun.  Even Powell joins in on the game. The dialogue is loaded with the kind of epigrammatic sentences you find too often in the plays of Oscar Wilde. People don't talk this anywhere except in books, on stage and in cocktail comedies of 1930s American cinema. In a detective novel that does not start out as a farce the self-conscious humor sticks out like a sore thumb. This is not to say I didn't find some of it clever or amusing; some of it is (see QUOTES section). However, when the characters comment on their cleverness and practically pat each other on the back when some witticism is delivered I was rolling my eyes.

THINGS I LEARNED:  The victim's nephew Charles Sibbins has hired Powell to look into his uncle's suspicious death. He's a playboy and spendthrift who at the start of the book is hunting bongos in Afirca.  I always though a bongo was a type of drum. Guess again! Bongos are a type of striped antelope with distinctive curved horns indigenous to to Western Africa. (see photo)  Currently there are only 150 still living in the wild.  Luckily, their home is a preserve in the Kenyan mountains where hopefully they are safe from marauding poachers who seem to be solely responsible for the decimation of hundreds of animals species in that continent.

Penny refuses to use the hateful term macrocarpa to describe a hedge behind which Morgan was found. She says why say that when its easier and smarter to use cypress. A macrocarpa is, after all, a form of cypress -- the Monterey cypress, in fact. The very type of cypress clinging for life on the cliffs of Carmel, CA that has been photographed innumerable times and appears all over the internet.

On page 158 there is this sentence: "Noses, 'narks' as they used to be called, are very useful but rarely men with any moral sense." This is most likely the origin of the crime world slang term spelled as 'narc' in the US. I always thought narc was derived from the word narcotic. Nark and nose here are meant as slang for police informer. Nark first appeared in print in 1859 as the Merriam-Webster wizards of lexicography and etymology informed me. They suggest it derives from nak, Romani (the Gypsy language) for nose.

Another odd word on page 175 "Morgan...might be tempted to risk his money on a stumer..." sent me to the internet dictionaries once more. I learned that this is British slang for fraud or failure, especially a horse race that was rigged or fixed. It can also refer to the person who was victimized from such a rigged horse race.

And -- of course-- dog in the manger cropped up again! ("There was no suggestion of tender passages between them. He was either a dog-in-the-manger, or she was a superlative typist. They are, I hear, rare in the City.") For those who are counting that makes the third appearance of the phrase in two months for the books reviewed here. How have I never heard or read it until this year?

QUOTES: Summing up Charles Sibbins, an avid hunter, as a loudmouth coward Power says:
"You take it from me that if bongos went about with sub-machine guns Sibbins wouldn't collect many."

"You're spoiling the whole thing! You people full of commonsense are the death of all imagination!"

Impartiality is a gift of the gods and they are more sparing of it than anything else.

"The fact is that Withers has got the wind up, and I always find it pays to let the wind do its work," [Penny said]
"Very right," Vincie agreed, "practical and alliterative."

Vagueness is a virtue in a practicing policeman. He can always say that he didn't mean what you mean.

"I warned him against that dog several times. In fact, I hated the beast. It may seem unkind to say so, but over-kind and friendly people, and over-affectionate dogs are definitely dislikeable."

"Does it not occur to you that a man or woman tells the truth more often when he is rude, then when he is civil and polite?"
"Politeness is as much an enemy of the truth as oil is of friction."

EASY TO FIND? But of course! How's that for a welcome surprise. Four of the books written by Vahey using the Clandon pen name have been reissued by the prolific vintage crime novel reprint publisher Dean Street Press. In addition to Power on the Scent you can purchase a copy of Good By Stealth (already favorably reviewed here and here), Inquest and This Delicate Murder. All four were officially released on March 2 and are now available for sale in paperback and digital formats. The original UK editions of the Henrietta Clandon mystery novels are extremely scarce. None of them were published in the US during Vahey's lifetime. Some like Fog over Weymouth have not been available in the used book market in decades. There are a handful out there, but I suggest that you purchase the new editions as they include informative introductory material by Curt Evans who offers up his usual biographical tidbits and insights into the writer's work.