Lady Killer by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
fear and paranoia on a cruise ship
This is the second post in the series Death Takes a Holiday, where I explore the dark side of the sunny season — Caribbean cruises gone wrong, bodies washed ashore on beaches, murderous honeymooners. Grab a cold drink and find a shady spot. The heat is murder.
Read the first installment here:
Point of view is everything in a mystery. What do we know and when do we know it? Can we trust the information being presented to us? Usually the reader shares the point of view with the detective or the Watson. Sometimes we see through the eyes of the villain, or we alternate back and forth in a game of cat and mouse. If our detective is an amateur, we’re privy to their thought processes — their doubts and suspicions, their observations and their blind spots. It’s my favorite place to be, alongside a detective as they piece together the puzzle.
And if that amateur is a woman thrust into a strange situation, valiantly pursuing the truth even though no one believes her, unsure of who she can trust? Yes, please.
Although I’m a squeamish sort (I hate scary movies, any story that puts children in danger, all kinds of blood and gore), I love a woman in peril story. The women drive the narrative, they make the plot happen. They go beyond the plucky heroines of many golden age mysteries to become full-fledged protagonists. They may be in peril, but they are not damsels in distress.
In Elizabeth Sanxay Holding’s Lady Killer, published in 1942, our fearless heroine is Honey Stapleton, former fashion model and newlywed. She married her husband, Weaver, not only because he was wealthy, but because he was a gentleman. But since their wedding, he has changed (sound familiar?) and he and Honey board their cruise ship to the Caribbean caught in an unrelenting stream of petty arguments and resentments.
So when Honey suspects the husband in the cabin next door is planning to murder his wife, Weaver — an uptight WASPy type — insists she mind her own business. But she can’t resist sticking her nose in, and as her suspicions grow, her marriage crumbles further, until Weaver is having secret meetings with another woman and seems irrationally terrified of Honey. Is he gaslighting her? Is this a cruise designed specifically for men who want to get rid of their wives? When Weaver’s mystery woman winds up dead with only Honey as a witness before her body disappears, it briefly seems possible that everyone aboard the ship is colluding to make Honey thinks she’s gone mad. Will she persevere and prove a murder has occurred or will she too be silenced?
Unfortunate name aside, Honey is one of my all-time favorite characters. She is good but complicated, fair but fallible. Weaver is rich, but she married him because although she didn’t love him, she thought he was kind and they would genuinely make each other happy.
She listened to him, as she listened to everyone, wanting to learn everything. But as soon as he stopped speaking, that gamine attentiveness was switched off, like a light, leaving her in a curious twilight of distress. I didn’t know it would be like this, to be married to Weaver, she thought. Of course, I know I wasn’t madly in love with him, but I thought… I thought it would all be — sort of gracious. He was certainly crazy about me — then. I never met anyone that was so thoughtful and attentive as Weaver was.
In spite of his demeaning attitude toward her, his stifling rules and expectations, she really is determined to make their marriage work. In the same spirit, she wants to help the woman in the cabin next door. Because she seems pitiful and friendless, Honey sets out to protect her. We experience the story through Honey, in close third-person, with access to her thoughts about herself and others. She remembers the little sayings she and her mother shared, and they amount to a kind of moral code for her:
It’s his fault, she thought. He’s done this. I would have gone on trying. But he’s broken up our marriage. He’s gone back on me. It’s all his fault.
But in her heart, she could not believe that. She returned, as always, to the brisk little sayings of her mother, familiar throughout her childhood. It takes two to make a quarrel. There are two sides to every question. There must be something to be said on Weaver’s side. I suppose I’ve been sort of mean, in some ways. She thought about that. I threw my mink coat on the floor and kicked it, she thought. That honestly was violent.
It’s her honesty — with her husband, the other passengers and with herself — that makes her so endearing. Even when the other passengers warn her off investigating, even when they think she is crazy, it doesn’t occur to her to give up, simply because she knows she is doing what’s right. She has too much sympathy for the world’s outcasts to ignore them:
What can you do with the unlucky, the ill-starred, the people who can’t win love? The clumsy, the blind, the infinitely unfortunate creatures who try to seize, to buy, to dragoon what can only be given?
Even when those pathetic creatures turn to murder, Honey can’t bring herself to hate them. And thanks to Honey, neither can we.
further reading
If women in peril is your thing (in fiction!) Charlotte Armstrong is the acknowledged master, and reading The Unsuspected is the perfect way to spend a summer afternoon. Dorothy B. Hughes is best known for her hard-boiled mysteries, but I love her crazily plotted women in peril stories best: start with The So Blue Marble and work your way through The Cross-Eyed Bear Murders and The Scarlet Imperial. You won’t be sorry.
read with me
Next week: “Razor Edge” by Anthony Berkeley
In two weeks: The Crime Coast by Elizabeth Gill