The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree: Stuart Palmer

This book is part of the Hildegarde Withers series of mystery novels. The protagonist is a spinster schoolteacher who often ends up working on cases with Inspector Oscar Piper of the New York Police Department. In this fourth book of fourteen, Hildegarde Withers is enjoying her first vacation in years on the island of Santa Catalina when a Dragonfly Seaplane lands with nine new visitors to the island. One of the passengers on the plane is dead and the local officials want to declare the death as due to natural causes, a heart attack. Hildegarde thinks he was poisoned. She raises a stink but gets no results.

The victim turns out to be Roswell T. Forrest, who has a $15,000 price on his head to prevent him from testifying before the Brandstatter Committee investigation back in New York. Hildegarde promptly telegraphs to Inspector Piper in New York. He sends a telegram in return telling the police chief to hold off on doing anything with the body until he arrives.

Because the death occurred on the airplane, the circle of suspects is limited to the pilots or the other passengers on the flight. In this story Hildegarde gets to do most of the detecting herself. Inspector Piper is delayed and does not show up until close to the end. Hildegarde is fearless in detecting and strikes off hiking across the island in search of evidence, fortunately not alone but with a friend from the hotel, a passenger who had come in on the seaplane.

This was a fascinating read. The picture of Avalon and Santa Catalina island in the early 1930’s is just wonderful. There is a diagram of the old seaplane and where people sat. I could just imagine what such a flight would be like. Hildegarde Withers is always entertaining. She doesn’t put up with anything and always speaks her mind.

It was good to see Hildegarde getting her own investigation, mostly, but the friendship and respect that she and Oscar Piper have for each other is always a part of these books that I enjoy, so I was glad when he showed up.

And the plot is very good. There were a lot of characters, and I only had a slight hint of who the culprit might be. These stories are humorous, but they are not written exclusively for laughs. There is a serious story and Hildegarde Withers is serious about her investigation.

I was surprised at a young woman wearing trousers on an airplane trip...

With the decisiveness of an old campaigner, the man in brown chose the third seat from the front on the right, placing himself thus directly in front of the girl with the red curls. The usual pair of dark sun glasses obscured her eyes, but her mouth was pleasantly tinted in an orange that matched her hair and contrasted well with the blue of her corduroy trousers. 

There is a lovely description of the masses of people on the streets of Avalon, and I was surprised to read about the scanty attire of the young ladies in 1933.

Brown-faced gentlemen moved shoreward, bearing the heavy rods and tackle that spell menace to swordfish and leaping tuna. Red-faced gentlemen bore large and shiny golf bags. Little boys swung bright tin pails. Old ladies beamed from wheelchairs—and young ladies beamed from everywhere.  

There were girls, girls—thousands of girls. Girls in furs and girls in cotton pajamas. Girls in riding habits, girls in Paris models, girls in homemade frocks—but mostly girls in very little of anything. Young, tanned bodies in the briefest of shorts, with a wisp of silk haphazardly bound across their breasts ... the essence of Catalina.

The film adaptation: Murder on a Honeymoon

We also watched the film adaptation of this book starring Edna May Oliver and James Gleason as Hildegarde Withers and Oscar Piper. Although the story in the film is close enough to the plot of the book, Piper does show up earlier and play a larger role. Some of the passengers on the seaplane are eliminated from this version and Hildegarde comes over on the plane with the other passengers. The footage of the flight and Santa Catalina Island was wonderful. As usual, I prefer the book, but the movie is a lot of fun too.

There were six films based on this series of novels, and Edna May Oliver starred in the first three. Later she was replaced by Helen Broderick and Zazu Pitts.

See Also...

• My previous reviews of The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard, which also had film adaptations.
• A lovely and informative review by Nan at Letters from a Hill Farm.
• Comments on the film at TCM.

The Rue Morgue Press edition of this book is still available online, and the book is also available as an e-book from Mysterious Press.


 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Rue Morgue Press, 2008 (orig. pub. 1933)
Length:      191 pages
Format:      Trace Paperback
Series:       A Hildegarde Withers Mystery #4
Setting:      Santa Catalina Island, California
Genre:        Mystery
Source:      From my TBR piles; purchased in 2017.