The Desert Moon Mystery

The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

The Desert Moon Mystery is narrated by Mary Magin, longtime housekeeper of Sam Stanley’s Nevada ranch. Sam, wealthy, generous, and devoted to the ranch, invites the grown twin daughters of his former wife Margarita Canneziano to live at Desert Moon. Danielle is quiet, gentle, and soon becomes engaged to Sam’s adopted son John; Gabrielle is glamorous, reckless, hostile, and determined to interfere with their happiness. The household also includes silent nurse Mrs. Ollie Ricker, mentally childlike Martha, self-important assistant manager Hubert Hand, and Chadwick Caufield, a charming perpetual guest who loves Gabrielle while Martha loves him. Mary immediately suspects that the twins have not come merely for rest. She overhears them searching for an object they must find quickly and discussing revenge. For weeks they explore the house, the barns, the ranch quarters, and Sam’s old cabin. Gabrielle threatens Danielle with revealing their secret, while Danielle reluctantly helps her but wishes only for safety, respectability, and life with John. Gabrielle also flirts with John and Hubert, torments Martha, and intensifies the tensions in the house. Mary discovers packages labeled explosives hidden in the old cabin and overhears Hubert and Mrs. Ricker arguing there. Mrs. Ricker, normally almost mute, declares that she would kill Gabrielle before allowing her to have Hubert; Hubert refers to an earlier unsuccessful attempt at murder. Sam later explains that the explosives are fireworks intended for Martha, causing Mary to withhold further suspicions from him. Gabrielle receives a coded letter from France and becomes terrified. She summons Danielle, then behaves wildly through the evening. On the following hot Fourth of July, with the ranch hands away at a celebration, Gabrielle gives Martha her treasured gold monkey bracelet, dresses as if to meet someone, and leaves the house. She appears afraid, though she tells Martha she is going toward the cabin. John has meanwhile made an unexpected trip to Rattail after Gabrielle tells him that Danielle needs medicine. Gabrielle fails to return. Sam, John, Danielle, Hubert, Chad, and Mary search the cabin, the ranch, and the road as a storm begins. When Mary goes upstairs to close the attic windows, she finds the attic door locked. A key in her pocket opens it, and she discovers Gabrielle’s body on the stairs, strangled and bruised. Ashes and tobacco from Sam’s pipe lie on Gabrielle’s beaded bag; Mary secretly removes them. Chad soon learns of the murder and shoots himself, leaving a note claiming that he killed Gabrielle. Sam refuses to accept Chad’s confession, because Chad was with him or in sight for much of the afternoon and could not have committed the killing at the apparent time of death. Daniel Canneziano, the twins’ father, is initially suspected, but San Quentin confirms that he was released only that morning and could not have arrived in time. The sheriff and coroner produce inconclusive verdicts: Chad died by suicide and Gabrielle was murdered by an unknown person. Gabrielle’s belongings yield more mysteries: an empty coin purse and missing billfold, a broken cigarette holder, an empty matchbox, a crumpled handkerchief, Hubert’s invitation to meet him at the cabin, and a coded letter apparently from Lewis Bauermont. Gabrielle’s note to Danielle says she expected to be murdered, asks for cremation in San Francisco, and says that only one person could have saved her. Mary also learns that the key in her pocket was not the attic key but an old pass key from the kitchen broom closet, implying that someone familiar with the house planted it. Sam confines the household in the living room and demands that everyone state what they know and suspect. Hubert accuses John, arguing that John’s unexplained absence, tire trouble, delayed return, and trip to the back entrance could conceal a meeting with Gabrielle and the transport of her body. John denies this and explains that Gabrielle tricked him into going for nonexistent medicine. He says Chad’s suicide must have been caused by shame or by his involvement in a secret, not simply grief. Danielle finally reveals why the twins came. Gabrielle had been involved in a European blackmailing circle led by Lewis Bauermont. Bauermont and Canneziano had convinced Gabrielle that money from a train robbery had been hidden at Desert Moon, prompting the twins’ long search. A coded letter later told Gabrielle that the story was a deliberate fraud designed to humiliate and abandon her. Danielle had hoped the ranch would rescue Gabrielle from that life. Pressed further, Danielle accuses Sam indirectly: she says Chad’s gifts as a mimic and ventriloquist could have made Hubert believe Sam was in the barn while Sam slipped away. She also says she found pipe ashes on Gabrielle’s bag. Mrs. Ricker then accuses Danielle of killing Gabrielle and planting the ashes. Mary defends Danielle’s innocence but remains burdened by her own knowledge of the ashes, the planted key, Chad’s confession, and the secrets binding every member of the household. The text ends as Sam directly asks Mary whether she saw pipe ashes when she found Gabrielle’s body, and Mary answers, “No.”

By Kay Cleaver Strahan · First published 1928 · Genre: Mystery, Detective Fiction, Crime Fiction · 60 chapters · 108,475 words

First lines

I knew, that evening in April, when Sam got home from Rattail and came stamping snow into my kitchen, his good old red, white, and blue face stretched long instead of wide in its usual grin, that he had brought some bad news with him: a slump in the cattle market; moonshine liquor discovered again, down in the outfit's quarters; a delayed shipment of groceries from Salt Lake. I, who in the months that were coming, was to live through more shock, and fright, and distress and disaster than should fall to the lot of a thousand women in all of their combined lifetimes, was worrying, then, for fear we should have to be doing without olive oil and canned mushrooms for a few weeks in the ranch-house!

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mystery · detective fiction · crime fiction · suspense · adventure · amateur sleuth · investigation · clues · hidden secrets · danger · American fiction · vintage fiction

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