When Rachel Murdock and her sister Jennifer receive a call for help from their favourite niece, Lilly, they quickly hop on a train to see her – but not before collecting their prized cat Samantha in a picnic basket and bringing her along for the ride. Samantha, it turns out, is an heiress, the inheritor of a fortune left by a wealthy relative, and so the attempt on the cat’s life, made right after they arrive, comes as a shock. The cat survives, but Lilly, murdered soon thereafter, is not so lucky.

By the time the police arrive, the clues are already falling into place, with gambling debts just being the tip of a brutal killing spree iceberg. With the authorities distracted by lurid details, it’s up to Rachel and her furry friend to uncover the truth.

I wanted to try an American Golden Age mystery, to see how they differ from the English Golden Age Mysteries. ‘The Cat Saw Murder‘ caught my attention because it has a gorgeous cover and the amateur sleuth at the heart of the story is a seventy-year-old maiden aunt. My curiosity was piqued when I checked the details and found that this kicked off a thirteen-book series of Rachel Murdock mysteries with cats in the title that ran from 1939 to 1956, which must make both the cat and Rachel Murdock long-lived.

From the publisher’s description, I’d expected that the amateur sleuthing would be done by the Murdoch sisters but only Rachel, the more adventurous of the two sisters, responds to her niece’s call. Still, at least the publisher was consistently inaccurate. The cat plays no part in the sleuthing (except leaving its pawprints in unexpected places) and the Miss Murdock and the local police investigator, Detective Lieutenant Stephen Mayhew work in close partnership.

I was happy to find that Rachel Murdock wasn’t Miss Marple with an American accent. She’s kinder and gentler than Miss Marple and does her best not to think the worst of people even when the people she’s surrounded by are far from nice. Even so, Miss Murdock is no pushover. She notices things and she observes people as acutely, if a little more kindly, than Miss Marple does. Where Miss Marple pretends to be a harmless old lady, almost too timid to voice her opinions as she pokes and prods and analyses, Miss Murdock really is a harmless old lady, of the sort who looks and acts like the grandmother many people wish they had, but she also puts her point of view to Inspector Mayhew clearly and simply and with every expectation of being listened to. Perhaps the biggest difference between Miss Murdock and Miss Marple is that Miss Murdock doesn’t hesitate to get involved in the investigation in ways that place her in danger.

The plot unfolds in a beachside boarding house of a kind that didn’t survive World War II and is populated with a wide variety of people, almost none of whom are who they appear to be. I loved the details of this shoddy, slightly disreputable house and its occupants. It gave me a window into an earlier, down-at-heal-but-unexceptional America. Of course, pretty much everyone becomes a suspect at some point. Even, Lily, the niece Miss Murdock has travelled so far to help, is hiding secrets and living a little outside the lines.

To me, the story and the storytelling felt modern, almost as if it was written for a TV market that did not yet exist. I slipped into the narrative easily and had a good time.

Although this was a very accessible story, the way in which it was told was quite unique. It was told in the third person but it had the flavour of someone sharing a much-loved and often-told reminiscence from two old friends. It took me a little while to get used to the style but it ended up being one of the things I liked most about the book. I’ll share the opening paragraphs of the book to show you what I mean. If these work for you, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy the rest of the novel.

“Detective Lieutenant Stephen Mayhew has been heard to complain that the murder of the Sticklemann woman was the damnedest case that he ever met up with; that solving the thing was like working a jigsaw puzzle upside down and backward; that it got progressively worse as it dragged along; and that it set him at such insane tasks as pulling hairs out of Miss Rachel’s cat and forcing a timid fat woman to scream. He has said, with embellishments, that he hated the thing from beginning to end.

But Miss Rachel from the wisdom of her seventy years thinks otherwise. Though she admits Mayhew’s pose of truculence, she thinks that it was a camouflage for happiness. She says that Mayhew’s eyes shone and that his step was springy in spite of himself. She has an idea that he ate well during that time, and slept like a top. She is as sure of his grin at finding the pin at the window as she is of putting it there. It was a small and ordinary pin but it set awry the first careful intrigue of the murderer. It must have pleased the lieutenant.

As for Rachel herself: there was shock and grief, and a time when the cold fingers of death had almost clutched her. There was the puzzle of the crime, which allured her mathematical mind as would a problem in algebra. At only one time was she really desperately afraid and that was during the night that she spent in the attic listening to the murderer search her room below. The attic was windy and chill, and so black that Miss Rachel felt disembodied in darkness. Until she sneezed. Then she became very much present in the flesh—a breathless thing all ears to hear if the person below had caught the sneeze and were coming up after her. The wind blew on her through the musty attic; the black pressed like a fist into her eyes; and she didn’t dare stir for fear of making a sound.

A minute ticked away. Perhaps two. The whispering rustle below continued as someone went through her belongings. Miss Rachel breathed again.

Then the cat opened her mouth with a small wet sound in the dark and Miss Rachel was struck anew with terror. Was the cat getting ready to yowl—or just to yawn? Miss Rachel waited.

But Lieutenant Mayhew would object that the story shouldn’t begin there—not properly. It should start at the beginning, before even he had barged into the picture.

So the scene fades back and back, until … The Misses Murdock were having breakfast.”

---