The Man in the Moonlight by Helen McCloy

The Man in the Moonlight by Helen McCloy

published 1940

 

[A young woman is talking about leaving Europe for America in the late 1930s]

 

“We who left Austria at the last moment were only allowed to take two hundred schillings of Austrian money and five hundred schillings of foreign money—a hundred and forty dollars altogether. My father and I had a small sum—a few thousands in your money. None of our relatives were remaining in Austria. Should we leave the money we couldn’t take with us to the new régime? We thought not. So we squandered it. Of course it was hard to waste money we would soon need for food and shelter. But what else could we do? My father bought books and phonograph records; I bought clothes. We were afraid jewels or anything negotiable would be confiscated at the border. But they could hardly object to our taking our clothes with us! Or our books and records. The only valuable thing I got was a fur coat which I sold in Prague to pay my passage to America. Everything else was quite frivolous and useless and perishable. The sheerest stockings that run if you look at them—the palest suéde gloves that become soiled if you wear them ten minutes—the finest handkerchiefs that any public laundry will tear to ribbons in the washing.”

 

comments: Her very smart clothes have made this young woman an object of suspicion at the university where she landed up. A very interesting phenomenon and a new one to me.

One of the university women says ‘I don’t see how she can afford those clothes she wears. I’m sure I can’t afford stockings as sheer as that—and yet she’s supposed to be a penniless refugee!” – this particular person suspects immorality rather than her being a secret agent.

[top picture shows upmarket European fashions from 1938, complete with gloves, fur stole and stockings]

And then there is this:

The morbid elegance of black tweed and white angora suited her black and white beauty. Basil realized suddenly how rarely he had seen her in colors. She belonged to a world of European women who had clung to black for nearly twenty years as if it were scarcely worth the trouble to go out of mourning between wars.

Chatain Sport Angora Blouse Pattern #3004 | Knitting Patterns

 

I do like Helen McCloy and have covered a number of her books here - tag below.

This was an early entry in the Basil Willing series, and has significant implications for him: One of those cases where if you’ve read later books, you know that a certain character isn’t killer or victim. Though honestly, I don’t think you’d be in much doubt.

Events are taking place in a small serious university in Manhattan, close to one of the rivers: it’s slightly hard to imagine, but you certainly get the atmosphere of an academic institution of the time. The date is important: the USA has not entered WW2, but everyone is very politically aware, and there are the refugees from Europe – many of whom don’t feel able to trust one another. Are some of them Nazi plants?

There is a Dr Konradi, a very clever scientist, involved – apparently – in cancer research. But why would that be of interest to covert forces, why would anyone want either to steal or stop his research? Well, trust no-one.

And he is the first victim. Basil Willing, psychiatrist and sleuth, tries to find out what’s going on, with his usual confidently-stated psychological certainties. I wonder if they were as unconvincing in 1940 as they sound now? You certainly wouldn’t ever want to convict anyone on Basil’s mind game sayso.

There is an extended Word Association section – ie characters/suspects are given a word and asked to respond instantly with the first word in their head. This is a trope I strongly dislike in crime stories, and in this one she actually gives the reaction times for each word. Tchah. Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs Bradley always prone to that - but it gives you a way to skip a few pages.

Even the sainted Agatha has Poirot giving it a go in the early short story The Tragedy of Marsden Manor (collected in Poirot Investigates). By the time she got to Towards Zero (1944), a word association takes place offpage, and is used to stitch up an innocent person to the strong disapproval of Superintendent Battle and one assumes Agatha herself. No more nonsense there.

The university seems an unattractive and rather corrupt place…. We are in no doubt of the importance of money, and the strange things it can buy.

There is a comic knockabout psychologist (ie not psychiatrist like Basil) who is doing awful experiments on his students and even his poor baby. He is also a great one for lie detector tests, which are much discussed in the book. Interestingly, there is a Fr Brown short story, the Mistake of the Machine, in which author GK Chesterton warns why you can’t go too far with lie detectors. It’s in The Wisdom of Fr Brown published in 1914, though the incident is said to have taken place 20 years before. This early lie detector was pointed out to me by blogfriend Roger Allen a while back in the comments: I’ve no memory of why it arose, and the comments on the blog are impossible to search.

Also some strange views and reactions around epilepsy.

All that said, it was an enjoyable and easy read, and as ever Basil’s final exposition of what had happened, and of the clues, (particularly the clues which did not involve him ‘knowing’ how people 'always' think) was good fun.

Kate over at Cross-Examining Crime has done an excellent review of this book, with a much more detailed look at the plot – I highly recommend

The Man in the Moonlight (1940) by Helen McCloy – crossexaminingcrime