Murder is Murder is Murder by Samuel M. Steward. the subtitle is “A Gertrude Stein – Alice B. Toklas mystery”, and that it is.

Samuel Steward is the author of Parisian Lives, which I read a few weeks ago. That novel also includes Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas as characters, although they aren’t the focus, as they are here. Parisian Lives is narrated by a character named John McAndrews, a stand-in for Samuel Steward who also appeared in one of the stories in Different Strokes where he was called “Mac.” He’s in this novel, too, although it’s narrated in third person. Here he’s called, “Johnny.” Parisian Lives was published in 1984. This one is from 1985.

The setting of the novel is clearly stated as 1937. The action takes place over the summer and fall at Gertrude and Alice’s country home in Bilignin, that winter at their apartment in Paris, and then back in Bilignin in the spring of 1938. This was the winter when Gertrude and Alice moved from the famous address at rue de Fleurus to rue Christine. The date puts this novel concurrent with the second episode of the four episodes in Parisian Lives, the one involving the British sailor named Peter Quint. But there’s no mention of Peter Quint, or Johnny’s Parisian friend Arthur Lyly in this novel. Nor, in that novel did Johnny mention being involved in an ongoing murder investigation with Gertrude and Alice.

But is it a murder? For the longest time in the novel it’s unclear what has actually happened. The novel begins with Gertrude and Alice at their country home. The characters are well drawn. They speak as I would expect them, too. They care for each other fondly and also act like an old married couple. (They met in 1907, so they would have been together 30 years in 1937. Gertrude, born in 1874 would be 63, Alice 60. Gertrude suffers writer’s block. Alice cooks.

They have a gorgeous young man as their gardener. He is Pierre Desjardins (appropriate for a gardener) called “Petit”, because his father is Grand Pierre, a neighbor. Petit Pierre is a deaf/mute who speaks in sign language, which Alice can use but Gertrude cannot. In the opening chapter Gertrude and Alice chat about Petit Pierre’s beauty, the difficult relationship he has with his strict father, and about another neighbor named Debat, who no one likes. Alice, from the back of the house, can see into Debat’s field where, with the help of a spyglass, she catches sight of Grand Pierre one morning angrily approaching Debat and apparently getting into an altercation. But she misses half of what goes on in her attempts to get Gertrude also to come out and witness. When she looks again, Grand Pierre is no longer to be seen.

They next day, they learn from Petit Pierre that Grand Pierre had gone into town the previous morning for shopping and had never returned. Alice’s sight of him in Debat’s field is apparently the last anyone has seen of him. Pierre tells them of an incident a few days earlier where Debat had gotten Pierre drunk and raped him while Pierre’s father was out of town on business. They go into town and tell the whole business to the police.

Johnny arrives. “He was a lean sort of person with brownish hair and a darker mustache, which he wore mainly because no one else was wearing lip hair at that time. He was, alas, a somewhat respected professor at some Chicago university named after a saint [although Gertrude often confused the name of it with a dog’s paw], but he was more or less a whore at night, or a hunter of stags, or some kind of predator” (p. 47). He’s also an old friend of Gertrude and Alice’s although actually a young friend, 27 years old. Gertrude and Alice enlist him in their investigation by going into the village and confirming whether Grand Pierre actually completed his shopping and making a list of all the stores he visited and what he bought.

And that’s nearly all the investigating they do. It’s a very thin plot. Johnny has sex with Claude the clerk at the police station. Claude attempts to have sex with Petit Pierre causing a violent reaction where Pierre injures Claude. Johnny has sex with Chen, Gertrude and Alice’s household servant. Gertrude and Johnny decide to explore the woods around Debat’s field and they come across Grand Pierre’s shopping bag buried in the dirt – Gertrude’s dog discovers it, attracted by the scent of the cheese that Grand Pierre had bought. They compare the contents of the bag with the shopping lists they made earlier and everything seems to be there except some items that Grand Pierre might have put directly into his pockets. They share the discovery of the bag with the police, and based on its location proximate to Debat’s fields the police arrest Debat but realize that with no body and such thin evidence they won’t be able to hold him long.

Johnny goes back to America to his teaching job. Gertrude and Alice move to Paris for the winter. In Paris, Gertrude and Alice attend an art opening and the title of one of the paintings reminds them that one of the items from Grand Pierre’s shopping trip was a packet of seeds for red poppies. They hadn’t found the seeds in the bag, so they assume he must have had them in his pocket.

In April, they return to Bilignin. Grand Pierre has still not been found. Debat is still in prison but soon to be released. Petit Pierre is living with a woman, Pauline. It rains for several days, and after the rain, what should Alice discover growing in Debat’s field but a patch of red poppies? The police discover Grand Pierre’s body buried in a shallow grave beneath the poppies.

There is a final chapter, interesting but quite unnecessary as far as the mystery is concerned. Petit Pierre’s girlfriend, Pauline, comes to Gertrude and Alice seeking protection. She is seven months pregnant and is being mistreated by Pierre. Drunk, he told her a story she repeats to Gertrude and Alice. Debat did not rape Pierre, rather, Pierre got Debat drunk and seduced him, not because he wanted the sex but because he wanted his father dead and he knew that when his father heard about Debat taking Pierre’s “honor” the father would be angry enough to storm off and confront Debat, which he did. Petit Pierre had found a way to have someone else murder his father for him.

.It’s a thin book, in length and substance. It was enjoyable to read. And fast to read. That Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are featured is a charming device. That the third main character is gay is refreshing, as gay characters don’t often appear in these sorts of stories. That the Johnny McAndrew character has guilt-free, consensual, recreational, sex, is satisfying, especially for 1937. But that Petit Pierre uses gay sex as a means of entrapment, manipulation, and motivation for violence in defense of “honor” shows that the culture still has a long way to go.