Poison Jasmine (Rue Morgue Vintage Mysteries)

It's up to Professor Westborough to find out who poisoned the advertising agent in full view of the dinner guests. Theocritus Lucius Westborough, the mild-mannered little historian who has made a name for himself solving impossible crimes, is summoned to the estate of Etienne LeDoux, founder of a world-famous perfumery conceived in the grand style of those in his native France and located in the beautiful Valle de Flores, California. It appears that somebody has tried to poison LeDoux in his own office and he engages Westborough (here going by the name of West) to unmask the would-be killer. But when murder does strike, it's not LeDoux but his advertising agent, Paul Michael Charmaron, who is poisoned in plain view of several other guests, including Westborough, at his employer's dinner table. The obvious suspect is Derek Esterling, LeDoux's brilliant but moody chief chemist, who is engaged to his lovely daughter Jacynth and who had quarreled with Charmaron the night before he died. But it's not until another murder takes place that Westborough is able to penetrate a tangle of old secrets and discover who the real killer is. First published in 1940, it's one of the many impossible-crime mysteries set against exotic backdrops from this ingenious and pleasantly old-fashioned storyteller.