Book Review: Murder at the Elms by Alyssa Maxwell

1901. Newport, Rhode Island

Murder at the Elms: A Gilded Newport Mystery Book takes place in another century, but similarities abound with life today in the United States. The translated aphorism, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” by French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, in 1849, came to mind frequently as I read Murder at the Elms.  The “Elms” is the newly built “cottage” of coal baron Edward Berwind. Harvard Business School describes Berwind as one of the business leaders of the 20th century. 

During his years at the helm of Berwind-White Coal Mining, Berwind was closely associated with J.P. Morgan in the consolidation, reorganization, integration, and expansion of his coal operations. Berwind was reputed to be the world’s largest individual owner of coal mining properties. Berwind also was considered a hard-driving businessman. He refused to bargain with employees, and his mines were the last bastions of the open shop in the coal fields.

This succinct description of Berwind’s business philosophy is brought to life in Murder at the Elms. The Berwinds invite the good and the great—and the rich—citizens of Newport to marvel at their opulent mansion, “one of the first homes in America to be wired for electricity with no backup power system.” Berwind coal generates electricity. In the days before the fête all Berwind’s staff (except for Ines, a Portuguese chambermaid) go on strike, hoping to negotiate better working conditions—they work seven days a week with no time off. Berwind fires them all and replaces them with new staff. Adding insult to injury, Berwind grants the new staff improved time off. “Hard-driving businessman” indeed.

Newlyweds Emma and Derrick Andrews are invited to the grand opening of Berwind’s showplace. There is fine dining and marvelous music but the evening ends tragically: “a chambermaid is found dead in the coal tunnel” and “a guest’s diamond necklace is missing.” It’s fortuitous that the Andrews are on the scene. As he has so many times before, detective Jesse Whyte enlists Emma and Derrick’s help in uncovering a connection between the murder and the necklace.

In turn-of-the-century Newport, the summer playground of the Gilded Age, there is a vast income and power disparity. There is certainly no collective bargaining power. Even at an exalted level, where upper class women are often members of fabulously rich families, men hold sway. There is no women’s suffrage. All these circumstances make Emma an anomaly. Although she is one of the poor Vanderbilts, she is a working journalist and with her ownership of The Newport Messenger (along with Derrick) comes independence. 

Emma chronicles the power struggles between the old guard and the nouveau riche, not to mention the tension between upstairs and downstairs. Emma and Derrick, as always, are precariously caught in the middle. It’s a closed room (sort of) mystery and the timing of the crime is uncertain. 

The owner of the necklace, Rex Morton, is curiously unhelpful, as Derrick confides to his wife.

“He won’t even describe the necklace to us. I’m afraid I’m to be little help, if at all.”

 

“How does he expect the police to find and return it if they don’t know what it looks like?”

 

“He claims they’ll know if when they see it, the piece is so astonishing.” The carriage wheels struck a bump in the road and I steadied myself with a hand on his forearm.

 

“He seems . . . afraid. That the best way I can describe it.”

 

“That’s understandable. He obviously spent a great deal of money on this necklace.

 

“Yes, but why?”

Good question Derrick. Emma’s efforts to answer the “why” are met with resistance from her husband. She thinks the taverns would be a good place to gather information, but he says, “I wish you wouldn’t.” She points out this is not her first rodeo, and that her visits to taverns are in aid of finding a suspect, but he persists.

He blew out a breath. “Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

 

“It isn’t necessary that you do.”

Is there a Gilded Age equivalent of “dumb ways to die?” Emma has no time for this and takes off to visit taverns, with Derrick tagging along behind her.

Another puzzling element: labor agitator Orville Brown holds a demonstration in front of the Berwind mansion. Emma wonders why he made that choice.

Orville Brown might have staged his protest directly at the front of the house, where he would have gotten the attention of the Berwinds themselves, rather than their servants. True, the new servants had taken over the positions of those who had been fired, but ultimately it was the Berwinds whom Brown held responsible for having unfairly dismissed their original staff. He had brought a ragtag group of individuals, each with their own grudge against—well, against the world. Things had easily gotten out of hand when Brown might have used his influence to restrain his followers.

Had Orville Brown “purposely staged a distraction,” a strike to distract the new staff, “making it easier for Ines to sneak into the Mortons’ bedroom the night of the musicale and steal the necklace from the safe?” Emma can’t figure out why Ines was murdered. Was the chambermaid seeking a bigger payday? It’s not easy to put the connections together but if you’re up for the challenge, Murder at the Elms is an edgy mystery with unsettling parallels with today’s world.

If you’d like dive deeper into the plot and the players, check out author Alyssa Maxwell’s conversations in character with Emma Cross.