The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers, by Stuart Palmer (1947)

            Palmer introduced the spinster third-grade teacher Hildegarde Withers in The Penguin Pool Murders in 1931. This book collects eight short stories in which she solves crimes with her friend/antagonist police inspector Oscar Piper.

            The plastic surgeon John Severance looks like the lady-killer who might indeed have killed the infatuated girl whose face he had fixed, but Miss Withers, pretending to be an aunt in the family, “The Lady from Dubuque,” begs to differ. “The Yellow Canary” sings the song that helps Hildegarde crack the Tin Pan Alley case. “The Blue Fingerprint” is Hans Holbein’s, and the murder victim was trying to match it to one on a painting that might sell for as little as a hundred dollars.

            Miss Withers is often described by Palmer as “angular,” suggesting height and thinness. She is not attractive, but “equine” in face shape. Her methods combine very acute observation with a touch of intuition; she is also capable of picking a lock when necessary. She has a forceful personality, and often convinces Piper to go along with her in order to test theories about a crime that she only strongly suspects without having any real proofs.

            “The Doctor’s Double” is a complicated tale involving a Montague/Capulet romance consummated by means of a tunnel between houses, as well as a man disguising himself as himself. “In “The Twelve Amethysts,” a woman uses her ex-fiancé to ease her way into getting rid of her husband and blaming it all on a former servant. “The Black Museum” is the scene of a strangling, and the two men who were touring the museum with the victim accuse each other of the crime.

            “The Green Ice” is an emerald ring that a smash and grab man goes back to the same jewelry store to steal after overlooking it, taking diamonds instead, during his first theft. Miss Withers pierces the disguises of him and his getaway driver, a blonde with sunglasses. The last case, “The Snafu Murders,” deals with a woman marrying servicemen about to be shipped overseas and collecting allotments as their wives. Each case is ingenious—perhaps a little too much so to be plausible—and moves along at a pace that keeps our interest.