The Buttercup Case

 The Buttercup Case (1958) by Frances Crane (#22)

Pat Abbott has just wrapped up a case in New Orleans and his old friend, Captain Bill Jonas invites Pat and his wife Jean to join him at his little get-away spot--cabins on the plantation of Etienne Lamont. The three are included in a lavish dinner birthday party planned for Etienne's wife, Stella. The other guests include Etienne's sister Suzanne, his daughter Anne, Anne's beau Mark Mason, a sister-in-law Crystal, and the local doctor, Dr. Dick Cox. But before anyone can have a bite of the delicious southern meal, Etienne's sister Suzanne dies most dramatically. Both Jonas's and Abbott's detective instincts are aroused and Bill draws the ire of the Lamont family by insisting on an autopsy since the symptoms look like poison to him. Winds up he's right...but it's snake poison and Suzanne loved to wander through plantation looking for plants for her garden and just might have been bitten. 

Despite the family's antagonism towards anyone "snooping" into their affairs, neither Jonas nor Abbott can resist investigating and they discover several family skeletons hidden in the antebellum closets. There's Etienne's missing brother Jack--the black sheep of the family who is wanted by the FBI (and whose wife Crystal suspects is back in the neighborhood), Crystal herself, whom the Lamont family loathes and who helped Jack run through his inheritance like water, Dora Lindley, Dr. Cox's nurse who worships the ground Doctor walks on and who loathes the Lamont family for reasons not quite clear, a deaf-mute family retainer by the name of Frenchy who looks an awful lot like Etienne's great-grandfather, and Marie-Laure, an old servant to the Lamont family, who paints in her spare time and whose latest masterpiece seems to hold clues to recent events.

Things really hot up when both Frenchy and the missing Jack wind up killed and Marie is attacked in her own cabin. Her latest painting is also stolen and burned. What does the old woman know and why won't she talk? Even Pat, at his most charming, can't get her to tell everything she knows. It's an uphill battle for the detectives to discover the motive behind the killings and to unmask the killer--but Pat Abbott gets there in the end.

Two Crane mysteries in a row where Pat Abbott is asked by at least one person involved to investigate and then everyone (including the persons who do the asking) resents his detecting ways and wants him to leave. It's really quite tiresome. And just about everyone in this one shouts at him at some point--Bill Jonas shouts that the Lamonts are his friends, so stop making them mad. Etienne Lamont shouts and keeps insisting that Pat, Jean, AND Bill need to leave (but never really forces them to). And even Dr. Cox shouts when it seems Pat is asking the wrong questions (wrong for somebody, anyway). Oh...and, although it's toned down a bit, we still have Jean assuming that Pat is more interested in the females in the case than he ought to be. She really comes across as an insecure wife.

I couldn't really enjoy this one much. The entire Lamont family is pretty annoying and/or just down-right rude. I honestly didn't care much who was killing them (and their servants) off. I couldn't understand Jonas's loyalty to them especially when it looked at times like he'd side with them over Abbott. He's known Pat Abbott for a long time and he knows Pat's a good private detective. He knows Pat doesn't look for crime where it doesn't exist just for fun. And I spotted the killer way too soon--enter character X and "boom" there's the killer. Well...not quite. But almost. 

The one thing that Crane has going for her in this one is her descriptive abilities--atmosphere and descriptions of the plantation, cabins, and southern mansion. She does it well and, apart from her cattiness over everything female, Jean Abbott provides entertaining commentary on the proceedings--oh, and she has a nice scene where she fends off a threat from a gun-toting man. All stars are for these points. ★★

First line: She died at forty-one minutes past six on a lovely spring afternoon.

Last line: And it was then that he began to worry for fear Arnaud's bisque was superior to his own.
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Deaths =  4 (two poisoned; two shot)