Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Hello readers! I’m reviewing another Erle Stanley Gardner book, The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat, for #ReadingtheMeow2024. In Perry Mason’s seventh book, he has his most unusual client to date: a silver Persian cat named Clinker, whose life is being threatened.

Plot Summary

The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat begins with the prickly and acerbic Charles Ashton, who has tried several times to meet with Perry Mason and tell him his unusual story. Ashton, the caretaker for the city mansion owned by Peter Laxter, has been with Laxter for many years. Several years before now, he and Mr. Laxter were in a car accident resulting in a damaged leg and hip for Ashton. Peter Baxter, who was also injured, wished to pay restitution of a kind to Ashton and made up his mind to give Ashton a job for as long as Ashton could work and to provide housing and other expenses for Ashton until his death. Provisions for Ashton are made in Peter Laxter’s Will.

Recently, however, Peter Laxter died in a disastrous house fire at his country estate. The fire and his death are ruled accidental, but rumors swirl that it may have been done intentionally by one of his heirs. Laxter’s heirs include his grandson, Samuel C. Laxter- the will’s executor, and his cousin, Frank Oakley. Laxter’s granddaughter, Winifred Laxter, was recently disinherited without an explanation only a few days before the deadly fire.

Samuel C. Laxter and Frank Oafley reside in the city house where Ashton resides and agree to abide by the terms of Peter Laxter’s Will. Samuel Laxter agrees to care for Ashton but maliciously contends that Peter Laxter’s Will makes no provisions for his silver Persian, Clinker. Ashton can get rid of his cat and stay or keep his cat and move out. Samuel C. Baxter threatens if Clinker continues to live at the house, he will intentionally poison the cat.

Ashton presents Perry Mason with the conundrum: help him keep his cat and his job. Mason, having heard this astonishing tale, takes Ashton’s case for $10. Mason wants to investigate this strange will, Peter Laxter’s suspicious death, and why Winifred Laxter was disinherited, but he contends that the whole issue might blow over with an officious and strongly worded letter to Samuel C. Laxter.

However, the letter prompts a visit from Samuel C. Laxter, Frank Oafley, and their oily lawyer, Mr. Shuster. Shuster is trying to make a name for himself as a big-shot criminal lawyer and is itching to go toe-to-toe with Mason. Shuster contends that the letter from Mason is disingenuous, that his actual client is the disinherited Winifred Laxrer, and that Mason is trying to find a way to break the will. Questioning Mason’s integrity is like waving a red rag to a bull, and Mason concludes this explosive meeting with an added objective: to break this suspicious will by Peter Laxter.

Mason’s first step in breaking the will, saving Ashton’s job, and letting Clinker keep its home is to find Winifred. Paul Drake locates her in a matter of hours. She’s running a waffle shop and planning to get married to her boyfriend, Doug Keene, who stuck by her after she was disinherited. Winifred has very little information to add about the fire and has effectively been stymied by Shuster, who tricked her into signing away from her ability to contest the will. The one valuable piece of information that she gives Mason is that a nurse named Edith Devoe is living in the house to help take care of Peter Laxter and that she might know something important about the fire. Winifred is also disgusted by Samuel C. Laxter’s attempts to oust Ashton and says that she will testify on behalf of Clinker if called into court.

Drake and Mason visit Edith DeVoe at her apartment, and she’s a veritable gold mine of information saying that she thinks she saw Samuel C. Laxter use a rubber hose to feed carbon monoxide from the garage into Peter Laxter’s room, killing him with carbon monoxide and then covering up the murder by burning up the house.

Mason is now sure something fishy happened the night of the fire and takes detectives to the house, where they find the rubber tubing and other evidence that the fire was used to cover up a crime. Unusually, Ashton phones Mason and cryptically asks him to slow down his investigation into the fire. Before Ashton can explain to Mason what he means, he’s strangled in his bed, and his body is covered in muddy paw prints.

Ashton, getting scared, asked Douglas Keene to come to the house and take Clinker away for safeguarding. Keene contends he waited an hour for Ashton to go home before taking Clinker back to Winifred’s; so how did Ashton die with cat prints on his forehead? Suspicion falls on Keene and mounts to a fever pitch when bloody clothes are found in Keene’s closet.

That same night, Edith DeVoe is found bludgeoned in her apartment, apparently by Ashton’s crutch, which has been sawed into pieces to find some missing diamonds. 

Mason now must defend Keene from a class-act frame-up job, two murders, and keep Clinker from falling into the wrong hands. As he investigates the case, Mason discovers that Ashton’s half-brother, Watson Clammert, may have had his identity stolen after his death to open a security deposit box and hide away a million dollars that is missing from the estate.

To find the man claiming to be Clammert, Mason and Della pretend to be newlyweds and register at a luxurious hotel on their honeymoon. When their new car is stolen, the Insurance company finds Clammert, and the case is brought to light before the court.

The Review

Golly, where to start with this behemoth of a story? With the cat, Clinker.

Clinker is the cat who gets the ball rolling and is a hot piece of evidence hidden initially in Winifred Laxtr’s waffle shop after being taken from Ashton’s room by Keene. Mason plays hide the cat at Della’s apartment, where Clinker is duly found and tagged into evidence. Winifred Laxter rustles up another silver Persian and tries to convince Perry that this cat is Clinker, and the other kitty is just look-a-like, which they gave Mason. Winifred’s whole switcheroo plan doesn’t hold water because this new silver Persian doesn’t act like it knows Winifred from a doorstop. Mason tells Winifred that he wants Clinker to be evidence and that everything is going just as Mason intended. Of course, the magnificent Clinker is the residence at the trial and proves the piece of evidence that clinches the whole case. 

The cat goes from important client to substantial evidence in the span of The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat; I understand why, about halfway through the book, Gardner made the transition- firstly, having a cat for a client really mucks up the pace of the book and doesn’t lead to any half-truth or outright lying on behalf of the defendant, and I think a cat in the docket is too zany for the tone of the Perry Mason series,

However, Gardner kept the zany spirit of defending a cat before a court by having one of the series’ most over-the-top courtroom scenes. Mason’s showmanship is on full display as he playfully spars with the District Attorney assigned to the case and viciously cuts down Samuel C. Laxter’s upstart lawyer, Nate Shuster, whose objections and feeble attempts to shield his client draw the ire of the court, all before being called to testify before the court. 

Mason’s testimony is a vehicle for him to outline all of the evidence for all of the crimes: the fire, the mysterious death of Mr. Laxter, who strangled Ashton, who killed Edith DeVoe, what happened to the missing million, what happened to the missing diamonds, who is impersonating Clammert, and how a silver Persian is the key to everything. Mason’s testimony is mesmerizing and, of course, gets the killer to incriminate themselves in court on the stand.

It’s a good cat mystery; it has a brilliant courtroom scene, yet…I found myself only enjoying parts of the book. I think there’s just too much going on. Do we need missing diamonds and a missing million? Do we need a whole other investigation into the death of Peter Laxter and his possible murder on top of defending Keene- who, by the way, gets instead a short amount of dedicated time on the page because there’s so much going on, and Keene’s ultimately not the focus of the trial- Mason’s testimony is. It’s a bit too much of a good thing and ultimately means nothing pulls the emotional punch that Gardner is capable of in later books. 

Readers can tell that Gardner started writing short stories for pulp magazines in The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat because it’s all action, with twists, surprise reveals, gruesome deaths, and even two weddings. Gardner is afraid to let the reader catch his breath or spend too much time thinking about all the events he’s stuffed into two days. Somehow, the cat is retrieved, a marriage takes place, Ashton is killed, and Edith DeVoe is murdered in the SAME NIGHT. It’s too much to comprehend and stretches the bounds of believability.

The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat is an entertaining blur—but a blur nonetheless. It needs a little editing, refinement, and focusing. Mason’s showmanship is on full display, and it feels a bit like watching herding cats at a circus. It’s not my favorite Perry Mason, but it was a fun show.

Erle Stanley Gardner Reviews

Erle Stanley Gardner Biography

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) was an American author and lawyer, renowned for creating the iconic fictional defense attorney Perry Mason. Born in Malden, Massachusetts, Gardner moved to California, where he passed the bar exam in 1911 after a brief stint in law school. He began his writing career in the 1920s, contributing to pulp magazines before achieving major success with the Perry Mason series, starting with “The Case of the Velvet Claws” in 1933. Gardner’s legal expertise enriched his storytelling, leading to a prolific career that included over 80 Perry Mason novels, radio plays, films, and a popular TV series. He also created other memorable characters and worked on projects to aid the wrongfully convicted. Gardner’s legacy endures as a significant figure in detective fiction.

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