Love’s Sentry-Box

September 13, 2023

When my wife Kelly asked me if I could think of an interesting female protagonist for a detective novel, I suggested Muna Lee.

Born in Raymond Mississippi in 1895, Lee lived most of her life in Puerto Rico, where she died in 1965. She was a poet who worked for the State Department during WWI as a translator and censor of letters, and she was the first wife of an important Puerto Rican senator who later became the first elected governor of that un-incorporated territory: Luis Muñoz Marín.

Their storied, passionate, and stormy relationship ended in a public and scandalous divorce.

Lee was also the co-author, together with a Shell Oil executive, of five mystery novels published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. I recommended to Kelly the second installment in the series, titled The Sentry-Box Murder, published in 1935 under the pseudonym of Newton Gayle.

The novel told the story of the murder of a US Senator (John Monarch), who could have been modelled after Muñoz, the “Prince of Puerto Rico.” He was also a charismatic and ruggedly handsome senator, who would become the architect of the Island’s political fate for the next fifty years.

Lee’s choice for the scene of the crime was telling. She made explicit references in the novel to a Puerto Rican folk tale called “the Devil’s Sentry-Box.”

Two versions of the story were collected by two famous Puerto Rican writers, but in both versions, the story repeated a Patriarchal cautionary tale. The sentry-box was a dark place where a Spanish soldier abandoned his post, fell for a young Puerto Rican woman, and mysteriously disappeared for his sin.

The Sentry-Box Murder changed the original formula. In it, an unfaithful, calculating, imposing senator is murdered. The novel reads like a feminist revenge fantasy against a man who had left Lee and her two children to fend for themselves, alone, while he went on to pursue his political career.

Lee’s sentry-box reminded me of another.

When my grandfather was governor of the Island, a flamboyant expat neighbor built a sentry-box across from our house, to shelter two policemen posted to protect us from the bombs that were setting off all around us during the early seventies.

My mother protested that the policemen were there, as much to protect as to keep an eye on her. The sentry-box kept the terrorists away, but it couldn’t stop the explosions inside my family. My mother and my father separated and went through a drawn-out, public divorce during my grandfather’s term.

Today, the sentry-box is the logo for Turismo, the government-owned corporation in charge of tourism matters in Puerto Rico. The symbol is free of its turbulent history as a repeating Puerto Rican sign of passion, power, and heart ache. Its mystery has been forgotten along with Muna Lee.

When I try to convince Kelly to resurrect her, I tell her it will bring back Lee’s forgotten romantic story. But I know that in fact I’m trying to tell a story that is still alive and is close to my heart.