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    That Affair Next Door
    That Affair Next Door
    That Affair Next Door
    Ebook414 pages7 hours

    That Affair Next Door

    By Anna Katharine Green

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    "This inaugural volume in the Library of Congress Crime Classics series, featuring the first woman sleuth in a series, is a must for genre buffs."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

    From the "mother of detective novel" and the first book unearthed in exclusive partnership with the Library of Congress, That Affair Next Door follows Miss Amelia Butterworth, an inquisitive single woman in the Victorian Era who becomes involved in a murder investigation after the woman next door turns up dead.

    Heralded as a perfect vintage murder mystery, That Affair Next Door is:
  • For fans of historical crime mysteries and crime classics
  • For readers of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series
  • For fans of trailblazing women on and off the page

    • Miss Amelia Butterworth prides herself on being an observer of human nature, especially of the people she sees every day from her usual spot at her front window—that is, until she witnesses the prelude to a ghastly murder. Late at night, two people enter her neighbor's home, but only one leaves. The next morning a young woman is found dead, crushed beyond recognition beneath a cabinet. But her death was no accident—it soon comes to light that she was stabbed by a seemingly innocuous item: a hat pin.

    Rife with social tension and mistaken identity, the messy case is assigned to veteran Detective Ebenezer Gryce. He expects Miss Butterworth to demurely return home, but she was there at the beginning of this case and she intends to see it through to the end. Miss Butterworth is determined to solve the mystery before the detective, but what begins as a battle of the sexes soon turns into a fight for the ever-elusive truth.

    Anna Katharine Green is credited as the "mother of the detective novel," and the classic That Affair Next Door proves that the intrigue of a well-crafted mystery is timeless.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSourcebooks
    Release dateApr 7, 2020
    ISBN9781464212963
    That Affair Next Door
    Author

    Anna Katharine Green

    Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) was an American writer and one of the first authors of detective fiction in the United States. Her book The Leavenworth Case, published in 1878, became a wildly successful bestseller. Green went on to write dozens of mysteries and detective novels. She died in Buffalo, New York. 

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    Reviews for That Affair Next Door

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    • 4/5
      1895. Miss Amelia Butterworth curiosity is engaged when late one evening she notices a couple enter her neighbours' house. The house belonging to the Van Burnams. And the next morning a body of a female is discovered within. Detective Gryce investigates but Miss Butterworth is determined to find the guilty party first.
      An intriguing mystery, originally written in 1897
    • 5/5
      classic-crime, NYC, amateur-sleuth, law-enforcement, murder-investigation, sly-humor, 1890s*****First published in 1897.Delightful! First you have the problem of syntax and idioms of over a hundred years ago as well as the attitudes of people from one income bracket to another, but it's the telling of what we now call a cozy mystery that makes it a really good classic. The story is told by Miss Butterworth whose observations are very much tongue-in-cheek if not downright snarky. The characters are exceptionally well drawn and their quirks add to the fun. While it may seem a bit longwinded according to the page count, that does include some explanations of idioms and whatnot that are unknown today rather than reinterpreting the original. It's a great story with a totally unpredictable resolution and I hope that more of her books will be on offer soon!I requested and received a free ebook copy from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. Thank you!
    • 5/5
      Anna Katherine Green is an author that I didn't discover until I received my Kindle and was looking for freebies to read. She began writing in 1878 and died in 1935. I don't know how I had missed her books before but I'm so glad I found them! I find her referred to as "The mother of the detective novel" so I'm thrilled that so many of her books are available as Kindle freebies. If I ever see them in hardback, they'll be going on my shelves!That Affair Next Door features a spinster sleuth long before Miss Marple ever came on the scene. Amelia Butterworth is unashamedly interested in her neighbor's affairs. The house next door is supposed to be empty but one night she sees the son of the owner return with a woman. The gentleman leaves but without the woman. The next day the woman is found dead in the house. Miss Butterworth can't help but investigate, especially when it appears that the police believe she, as an older woman, is just in the way in their investigation.The story has twists and turns and surprises. It has unwanted wives, costume changes, timing issues, all things that become standard in later detective novels. The clues, such as hats and pincushions, are very satisfying as the meanings come to light. Miss Butterworth is a no-nonsense woman with a strong sense of right and wrong, compassion toward those that deserve it and a keen eye. She is the original spinster sleuth on which many pale imitations are based in later years. She feels original, the book feels original and it was a delight to read.
    • 5/5
      This was the best mystery that I have ever read! For a murder mystery, it was very clean; it did not have the gory details that most seem to have. An old woman calls the police when she suspects that something strange has happened in the house next door. To their great surprise, they find the body of a young woman crushed under a heavy cabinet. Who is she? What was she doing in the empty house? Why is she wearing another woman's clothing? Why does the coroner swear that she died before the cabinet fell on her? Who is the man that she was seen entering the house with? Was it murder or suicide? It quickly becomes a battle of wits as the old woman races against an overly confident detective to try to solve this perplexing mystery first. Watching the two of them repeatedly try to outfox each other was highly amusing! Throughout the story Green reveals just enough clues to make you sure that you have figured out the ending, then throws in a startling twist that shatters your hypothesis, over and over again. The ending was completely unforeseen and completely blew me away! Overall, it was an extraordinary book, one I highly recommend, and one I will definitely be reading again!
    • 4/5
      Perhaps the original "cozy" mystery, The Affair Next Door (written in the early 1890's) introduces Miss Butterworth, an independent spinster who happens to live next door to a house in which a woman has been murdered. This book is well worth reading for any fan of this sub-genre -- Miss Butterworth is an engaging character, the plot has plenty of surprises and neither the writing nor the story are out-of-date.

      If you enjoy Agatha Christie's Miss Marple or Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver, you should try this!
    • 4/5
      I found this an exasperating novel. It is quite long and largely consists of theories regarding the murder posed by Amelia Butterworth and the 77 year old police detective Inspector Gryce.Some reviews I have read of the Amelia Butterworth novels, of which this is the first, talk about Butterworth as being the forerunner of Miss Marple. Certainly, there are similarities: a quite elderly spinster, a bit of a sticky beak, rather self opiniated, and rather unlikeable. She softens as the novel progresses.At times Miss Butterworth works in collaboration with the police, but after they make their first arrest, she decides that they have the wrong man, and strikes out investigating on her own, accompanied by her lady's maid. But each time she or the police come up with a scenario which doesn't quite fit the facts and in the long run Amelia Butterworth produces a rabbit from the hat, something the police did not know. But even then there is a twist to the tale, something Butterworth did not know.

    Book preview

    That Affair Next Door - Anna Katharine Green

    Also by Anna Katharine Green

    The Leavenworth Case (1878)

    A Strange Disappearance (1880)

    The Sword of Damocles: A Story of New York Life (1881)

    Hand and Ring (1883)

    Behind Closed Doors (1888)

    A Matter of Millions (1891)

    The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock (1895)

    That Affair Next Door (1897)

    Lost Man’s Lane: A Second Episode in the Life of Amelia Butterworth (1898)

    The Circular Study (1900)

    One of My Sons (1901)

    Initials Only (1911)

    The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow (1917)

    Other Mysteries

    X Y Z: A Detective Story (1883)

    The Mill Mystery (1886)

    7 to 12: A Detective Story (1887)

    Forsaken Inn (1890)

    Cynthia Wakeham’s Money (1892)

    Miss Hurd: An Enigma (1894)

    Doctor Izard (1895)

    Agatha Webb (1899)

    The Filigree Ball: Being a Full and True Account of the Solution of the Mystery Concerning the Jeffrey Moore Affair (1903)

    The Millionaire Baby (1905)

    The Chief Legatee (1906)

    The Woman in the Alcove (1906)

    The Mayor’s Wife (1907)

    The House of the Whispering Pines (1910)

    Three Thousand Dollars (1910)

    Dark Hollow (1914)

    The Step on the Stair (1923)

    Non-Detective Novels

    The Defence of the Bride, and Other Poems (1882)

    Risifi’s Daughter, a Drama (1887)

    Marked Personal, a Drama within a Drama (1893)

    To the Minute; Scarlet and Black: Two Tales of Life’s Perplexities (1916)

    Short Story Collections

    The Old Stone House and Other Stories (1891)

    A Difficult Problem: The Staircase at the Heart’s Delight, and Other Stories (1900)

    Room Number 3, and Other Detective Stories (1913)

    The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange (1915)

    Copyright © 1897, 2020 by Anna Katharine Green

    Introduction and notes © 2020 by Leslie S. Klinger

    Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks and Library of Congress

    Cover images © The Library of Congress

    Cover design by Heather Morris/Sourcebooks

    Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

    Cover image: Help Your Neighborhood by Keeping Your Premises Clean, Tenement House Department, New York. Federal Art Project, 1936 or 1937. Works Projects Administration Poster Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZC2-5299

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

    The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

    Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the Library of Congress

    P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

    (630) 961-3900

    www.sourcebooks.com

    Originally published in 1897 in New York by G. P. Putnam’s Sons/The Knickerbocker Press.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

    Contents

    Front Cover

    Title Page

    Copyright

    Foreword

    Introduction

    Book I

    Chapter I

    Chapter II

    Chapter III

    Chapter IV

    Chapter V

    Chapter VI

    Chapter VII

    Chapter VIII

    Chapter IX

    Chapter X

    Chapter XI

    Chapter XII

    Chapter XIII

    Chapter XIV

    Chapter XV

    Book II

    Chapter XVI

    Chapter XVII

    Chapter XVIII

    Chapter XIX

    Chapter XX

    Chapter XXI

    Chapter XXII

    Chapter XXIII

    Chapter XXIV

    Chapter XXV

    Chapter XXVI

    Chapter XXVII

    Chapter XXVIII

    Book III

    Chapter XXIX

    Chapter XXX

    Chapter XXXI

    Chapter XXXII

    Chapter XXXIII

    Chapter XXXIV

    Chapter XXXV

    Book IV

    Chapter XXXVI

    Chapter XXXVII

    Chapter XXXVIII

    Chapter XXXIX

    Chapter XL

    Chapter XLI

    Chapter XLII

    Reading Group Guide

    Further Reading

    About the Author

    Back Cover

    Foreword

    Crime writing as we know it first appeared in 1841, with the publication of The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Written by American author Edgar Allan Poe, the short story introduced C. Auguste Dupin, the world’s first wholly fictional detective. Other American and British authors had begun working in the genre by the 1860s, and by the 1920s we had officially entered the golden age of detective fiction.

    Throughout this short history, many authors who paved the way have been lost or forgotten. Library of Congress Crime Classics bring back into print some of the finest American crime writing from the 1860s to the 1960s, showcasing rare and lesser-known titles that represent a range of genres, from cozies to police procedurals. With cover designs inspired by images from the Library’s collections, each book in this series includes the original text, as well as a contextual introduction, brief biography of the author, notes, recommendations for further reading, and suggested discussion questions. Our hope is for these books to start conversations, inspire further research, and bring obscure works to a new generation of readers.

    In That Affair Next Door, author Anna Katharine Green introduces us to amateur sleuth Amelia Butterworth, a snooping spinster who observes some odd behavior on the door-step of the New York City mansion next door to her own. Miss Butterworth investigates intrepidly, using her position in society and her feminine wiles to gain access to clues that bemused detective Ebenezer Gryce has missed, all with indefatigable confidence in her ability to crack the case. Already an established and best-selling crime novelist when this book was first published in 1897, Green bolstered her contribution to American crime fiction with the introduction of Butterworth, the first female sleuth to appear in a crime novel series.

    Early American crime fiction is not only entertaining to read, it also sheds light on the culture of its time. While many of the titles in this series include outmoded language and stereotypes now considered offensive, it’s fascinating to read these books and reflect on the evolution of our society’s perceptions of race, gender, ethnicity, and social standing. That Affair Next Door takes place in a world of confining social rituals and disagreements about how women should behave. At one point Miss Butterworth laments that women have lost our manners in gaining our independence.

    More dark secrets and bloody deeds lurk in the massive collections of the Library of Congress. I encourage you to explore these works for yourself, here in Washington, D.C., or online at www.loc.gov.

    —Carla D. Hayden, Librarian of Congress

    Introduction

    Anna Katharine Green was born in 1846, the daughter of a prominent Brooklyn attorney from whom she gained a fascination with the law and trials. After graduating from Ripley Female College in 1867—one of the nation’s few female college graduates that year—she pursued her ambition to write poetry. By 1871 or so, Green decided to try her hand at a novel in order to gain attention as a writer. Her father disapproved of fiction, and so Green concealed her work for six years, filling notebook after notebook with her drafts. Finally, she showed the manuscript to her father, who conceded that she had written something of value. Using her father’s connections, Green presented The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer’s Story to publisher George Putnam, who made the very intelligent decision to publish it in 1878. By then, mystery novels were an established genre, at least in England, though not yet one in which women or Americans were active.

    Though Edgar Allan Poe’s three stories of the Chevalier Dupin, written between 1841 and 1844, may have created the figure of the cerebral detective, the field of American crime writing was left largely untilled until Green began writing. The 1860s had witnessed the birth of the detective novel. There is much debate about which title deserves the crown as the first, but worthy candidates include The Trail of the Serpent (1860) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, The Notting Hill Mystery (1862) by Charles Felix, and The Dead Letter (1864) by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor (writing as Seeley Regester), the first American crime novel. In England, Charles Dickens had created Inspector Bucket, the first significant detective in English literature, who appeared in Bleak House (1852–1853). Wilkie Collins contributed a similar character, Sergeant Cuff, who appears in The Moonstone (1868).

    The Leavenworth Case was an instant bestseller and continues to be hailed as an exemplar of the pitfalls of circumstantial evidence. Not only was the mystery itself compelling, but the tale depicted the lives of the ultra-wealthy, the upper class of Manhattan. The millionaire Leavenworth is found shot to death in the library of his Fifth Avenue mansion. There are suspects galore, including his beautiful nieces, his middle-class secretary, a mysterious English visitor, and the Irish servants, as well as detailed forensic evidence. While a modern reader may find the book filled with clichés (the detective mutters at one point that he suspects every one and nobody), Green invented many of these now-common devices, and the solution is fair, reasonable, and—unlike some of its competitors—involves no psychic or supernatural intervention. Instead, the plodding, plump Inspector Gryce of the New York Police Department, who seems unable to look his subjects in the eye, eventually sifts clue by clue until the truth is revealed. In this novel, Green not only distanced herself from the sensation novels of writers like Braddon and Regester but also made her detective more like the amiable Bucket and Cuff than the sharp-eyed detective of the dime novels.

    The book’s success led Green to write another twenty-nine mystery novels, countless short stories, and books in other genres, with her last book published in 1922, thirteen years before her death. Gryce, who was fifty-nine in The Leavenworth Case (set in 1876), is seventy-seven in That Affair Next Door and appears in thirteen novels in total, as well as a short story that takes place when he was twenty-two.¹

    With That Affair Next Door, Green introduced the character of Amelia Butterworth, a well-to-do spinster with a marked curiosity and a fixed belief that she was intended for great things. Butterworth appears in two other novels: Lost Man’s Lane: A Second Episode in the Life of Amelia Butterworth (1898) and The Circular Study (1900), both with Gryce, and she was undoubtedly the inspiration for Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple,² Stuart Palmer’s Hildegarde Withers,³ and countless other amateur detectives.

    Green was also a prolific writer of short stories, including the collection The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange (1916), nine stories featuring a young society debutante turned professional detective, Violet Strange, who solved crimes in order to earn enough money to support a disinherited sister. Strange is a likely inspiration for the Nancy Drew series of mysteries that began in 1930. Green’s work was a profound influence on the career of American writer Mary Roberts Rinehart, whose 1908 novel The Circular Staircase was the beginning of an enormous body of modern American crime fiction. Rinehart’s career spanned fifty years, more than fifty books, half a dozen plays, and hundreds of short stories.⁴

    Despite its age—it was first published in 1897—That Affair Next Door has many of the earmarks of the golden age writing of Agatha Christie, S. S. Van Dine, and Ellery Queen. The murder weapon is highly unconventional. In an era before DNA identification and widespread use of fingerprinting, even the identity of the victim is uncertain. The reader is convinced that X is the killer, then Y, then Z, as the evidence that seemed to point one way suddenly implicates another. As Sherlock Holmes said years later, When once your point of view is changed, the very thing that is damning becomes a clue to the truth.⁵ And, like Holmes, Amelia Butterworth excels at the observation of trifles: a needle, a pin-cushion, and a package of laundry all become grist for the mill of her mind.

    The social setting of That Affair Next Door is Manhattan in 1895, still dominated by the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, and other wealthy families of Dutch descent, the so-called Gilded Age, when the building of fortunes dominated the city. Miss Butterworth, the Van Burnam family, and some of the other people of the tale are clearly members of the upper class of New York, discussing the toniest shops and living in the swanky neighborhood of Gramercy Park.⁶ As predicted by the popular wisdom of the day that the upper classes feared scandal more than crime, the titular affair—a shocking murder—seems very clearly to be tied to a fear of scandal and accusations of social overreaching, though in the end, a more conventional motive of money is revealed.

    While a few people in the story are not wealthy, they are little developed as characters, relegated to minor roles as shopkeepers, hotel employees, landladies, and servants. The exceptions are Louise Van Burnam and O.R., both of whom suffer terrible consequences from stepping out of their own class. Do these women’s fates reflect Green’s own views? Despite her own education and her dominance in a field largely occupied by men, Green did not approve of many of her feminist contemporaries, and she was opposed to women’s suffrage. Green may have written about bold women like Amelia Butterworth and Violet Strange, but she appears to have had little sympathy with the lives of lower-class women.

    That Affair Next Door is a window into a time remote to the twenty-first century, before the advent of police science and modern tools of detection. Between 1892 and 1894, tales of the professional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes dominated mystery fiction. In 1897, however, four years after Holmes had vanished from the scene, presumed dead, over the brink of the Reichenbach Falls, a new figure appeared in crime writing: an amateur detective and a female at that. At a time when educated women struggled to find their places in society, Amelia Butterworth forged her own way, ignoring the deprecating comments of friends and police officials, to make her mark as a woman of intelligence and courage and help bring a cold-blooded killer to justice. Crime-solving was no longer the exclusive domain of male professionals.

    ¹ The Staircase at the Heart’s Delight was first published in the Boston Globe (among other newspapers) on January 14, 1894, and was later included with a slightly different opening in Green’s 1900 short story collection A Difficult Problem.

    ² Jane Marple appeared in thirteen novels between 1930 and 1971 and countless short stories. Christie freely admitted her debt to Green.

    ³ Stuart Palmer wrote about Withers’s detection between 1931 and 1947; Withers was a schoolteacher.

    ⁴ Though not Rinehart’s first novel, it was her first published work. Rinehart acknowledged that when selecting a publisher to which to submit The Circular Staircase, she merely looked at who had published Green’s latest work.

    ⁵ Arthur Conan Doyle, The Problem of Thor Bridge, Strand Magazine 63, no. 2 (February 1922): 104.

    ⁶ Other residents of Gramercy Park over the years included Samuel Tilden, a Vanderbilt, architect Stanford White, and Thomas Alva Edison.

    Book I

    Miss Butterworth’s Window

    I

    A Discovery

    I am not an inquisitive woman, but when, in the middle of a certain warm night in September, I heard a carriage draw up at the adjoining house and stop, I could not resist the temptation of leaving my bed and taking a peep through the curtains of my window.

    First: because the house was empty, or supposed to be so, the family still being, as I had every reason to believe, in Europe; and secondly: because, not being inquisitive, I often miss in my lonely and single life much that it would be both interesting and profitable for me to know.

    Luckily I made no such mistake this evening. I rose and looked out, and though I was far from realizing it at the time, took, by so doing, my first step in a course of inquiry which has ended—

    But it is too soon to speak of the end. Rather let me tell you what I saw when I parted the curtains of my window in Gramercy Park, on the night of September 17, 1895.

    Not much at first glance, only a common hack drawn up at the neighboring curb-stone. The lamp which is supposed to light our part of the block is some rods⁷ away on the opposite side of the street, so that I obtained but a shadowy glimpse of a young man and woman standing below me on the pavement. I could see, however, that the woman—and not the man—was putting money into the driver’s hand. The next moment they were on the stoop of this long-closed house, and the coach rolled off.

    It was dark, as I have said, and I did not recognize the young people,—at least their figures were not familiar to me; but when, in another instant, I heard the click of a night-key, and saw them, after a rather tedious fumbling at the lock, disappear from the stoop, I took it for granted that the gentleman was Mr. Van Burnam’s eldest son Franklin, and the lady some relative of the family; though why this, its most punctilious member, should bring a guest at so late an hour into a house devoid of everything necessary to make the least exacting visitor comfortable, was a mystery that I retired to bed to meditate upon.

    I did not succeed in solving it, however, and after some ten minutes had elapsed, I was settling myself again to sleep when I was re-aroused by a fresh sound from the quarter mentioned. The door I had so lately heard shut, opened again, and though I had to rush for it, I succeeded in getting to my window in time to catch a glimpse of the departing figure of the young man hurrying away towards Broadway. The young woman was not with him, and as I realized that he had left her behind him in the great, empty house, without apparent light and certainly without any companion, I began to question if this was like Franklin Van Burnam. Was it not more in keeping with the recklessness of his more easy-natured and less reliable brother, Howard, who, some two or three years back, had married a young wife of no very satisfactory antecedents, and who, as I had heard, had been ostracized by the family in consequence?

    Whichever of the two it was, he had certainly shown but little consideration for his companion, and thus thinking, I fell off to sleep just as the clock struck the half hour after midnight.

    Next morning, as soon as modesty would permit me to approach the window, I surveyed the neighboring house minutely. Not a blind was open, nor a shutter displaced. As I am an early riser, this did not disturb me at the time, but when after breakfast I looked again and still failed to detect any evidences of life in the great barren front beside me, I began to feel uneasy. But I did nothing till noon, when going into my rear garden and observing that the back windows of the Van Burnam house were as closely shuttered as the front, I became so anxious that I stopped the next policeman I saw going by, and telling him my suspicions, urged him to ring the bell.

    No answer followed the summons.

    There is no one here, said he.

    Ring again! I begged.

    And he rang again but with no better result.

    Don’t you see that the house is shut up? he grumbled. We have had orders to watch the place, but none to take the watch off.

    There is a young woman inside, I insisted. The more I think over last night’s occurrence, the more I am convinced that the matter should be looked into.

    He shrugged his shoulders and was moving away when we both observed a common-looking woman standing in front looking at us. She had a bundle in her hand, and her face, unnaturally ruddy though it was, had a scared look which was all the more remarkable from the fact that it was one of those wooden-like countenances which under ordinary circumstances are capable of but little expression. She was not a stranger to me; that is, I had seen her before in or about the house in which we were at that moment so interested; and not stopping to put any curb on my excitement, I rushed down to the pavement and accosted her.

    Who are you? I asked. Do you work for the Van Burnams, and do you know who the lady was who came here last night?

    The poor woman, either startled by my sudden address or by my manner which may have been a little sharp, gave a quick bound backward, and was only deterred by the near presence of the policeman from attempting flight. As it was, she stood her ground, though the fiery flush, which made her face so noticeable, deepened till her cheeks and brow were scarlet.

    I am the scrub-woman, she protested. I have come to open the windows and air the house,—ignoring my last question.

    Is the family coming home? the policeman asked.

    I don’t know; I think so, was her weak reply.

    Have you the keys? I now demanded, seeing her fumbling in her pocket.

    She did not answer; a sly look displaced the anxious one she had hitherto displayed, and she turned away.

    I don’t see what business it is of the neighbors, she muttered, throwing me a dissatisfied scowl over her shoulder.

    If you’ve got the keys, we will go in and see that things are all right, said the policeman, stopping her with a light touch.

    She trembled; I saw that she trembled, and naturally became excited. Something was wrong in the Van Burnam mansion, and I was going to be present at its discovery. But her next words cut my hopes short.

    "I have no objection to your going in, she said to the policeman, but I will not give up my keys to her. What right has she in our house anyway." And I thought I heard her murmur something about a meddlesome old maid.

    The look which I received from the policeman convinced me that my ears had not played me false.

    The lady’s right, he declared; and pushing by me quite disrespectfully, he led the way to the basement door, into which he and the so-called cleaner presently disappeared.

    I waited in front. I felt it to be my duty to do so. The various passers-by stopped an instant to stare at me before proceeding on their way, but I did not flinch from my post. Not till I had heard that the young woman whom I had seen enter these doors at midnight was well, and that her delay in opening the windows was entirely due to fashionable laziness, would I feel justified in returning to my own home and its affairs. But it took patience and some courage to remain there. Several minutes elapsed before I perceived the shutters in the third story open, and a still longer time before a window on the second floor flew up and the policeman looked out, only to meet my inquiring gaze and rapidly disappear again.

    Meantime three or four persons had stopped on the walk near me, the nucleus of a crowd which would not be long in collecting, and I was beginning to feel I was paying dearly for my virtuous resolution, when the front door burst violently open and we caught sight of the trembling form and shocked face of the scrub-woman.

    She’s dead! she cried, she’s dead! Murder! and would have said more had not the policeman pulled her back, with a growl which sounded very much like a suppressed oath.

    He would have shut the door upon me had I not been quicker than lightning. As it was, I got in before it slammed, and happily too; for just at that moment the house-cleaner, who had grown paler every instant, fell in a heap in the entry, and the policeman, who was not the man I would want about me in any trouble, seemed somewhat embarrassed by this new emergency, and let me lift the poor thing up and drag her farther into the hall.

    She had fainted, and should have had something done for her, but anxious though I always am to be of help where help is needed, I had no sooner got within range of the parlor door with my burden, than I beheld a sight so terrifying that I involuntarily let the poor woman slip from my arms to the floor.

    In the darkness of a dim corner (for the room had no light save that which came through the doorway where I stood) lay the form of a woman under a fallen piece of furniture. Her skirts and distended arms alone were visible; but no one who saw the rigid outlines of her limbs could doubt for a moment that she was dead.

    At a sight so dreadful, and, in spite of all my apprehensions, so unexpected, I felt a sensation of sickness which in another moment might have ended in my fainting also, if I had not realized that it would never do for me to lose my wits in the presence of a man who had none too many of his own. So I shook off my momentary weakness, and turning to the policeman, who was hesitating between the unconscious figure of the woman outside the door and the dead form of the one within I cried sharply:

    Come, man, to business! The woman inside there is dead, but this one is living. Fetch me a pitcher of water from below if you can, and then go for whatever assistance you need. I’ll wait here and bring this woman to. She is a strong one, and it won’t take long.

    You’ll stay here alone with that— he began.

    But I stopped him with a look of disdain.

    Of course I will stay here; why not? Is there anything in the dead to be afraid of? Save me from the living, and I undertake to save myself from the dead.

    But his face had grown very suspicious.

    You go for the water, he cried. "And see here! Just call out for some one to telephone to Police Headquarters for the Coroner and a detective.⁸ I don’t quit this room till one or the other of them comes."

    Smiling at a caution so very ill-timed, but abiding by my invariable rule of never arguing with a man unless I see some way of getting the better of him, I did what he bade me, though I hated dreadfully to leave the spot and its woeful mystery, even for so short a time as was required.

    Run up to the second story, he called out, as I passed by the prostrate figure of the cleaner. Tell them what you want from the window, or we will have the whole street in here.

    So I ran upstairs,—I had always wished to visit this house, but had never been encouraged to do so by the Misses Van Burnam,—and making my way into the front room, the door of which stood wide open, I rushed to the window and hailed the crowd, which by this time extended far out beyond the curb-stone.

    An officer! I called out, a police officer! An accident has occurred and the man in charge here wants the Coroner and a detective from Police Headquarters.

    Who’s hurt? Is it a man? Is it a woman? shouted up one or two; and Let us in! shouted others; but the sight of a boy rushing off to meet an advancing policeman satisfied me that help would soon be forthcoming, so I drew in my head and looked about me for the next necessity—water.

    I was in a lady’s bed-chamber, probably that of the eldest Miss Van Burnam; but it was a bed-chamber which had not been occupied for some months, and naturally it lacked the very articles which would have been of assistance to me in the present emergency. No eau de Cologne⁹ on the bureau, no camphor on the mantel-shelf. But there was water in the pipes (something I had hardly hoped for), and a mug on the washstand; so I filled the mug and ran with it to the door, stumbling, as I did so, over some small object which I presently perceived to be a little round pin-cushion. Picking it up, for I hate anything like disorder, I placed it on a table nearby, and continued on my way.

    The woman was still lying at the foot of the stairs. I dashed the water in her face and she immediately came to.

    Sitting up, she was about to open her lips when she checked herself; a fact which struck me as odd, though I did not allow my surprise to become apparent.

    Meantime, I stole a glance into the parlor. The officer was standing where I had left him, looking down on the prostrate figure before him.

    There was no sign of feeling in his heavy countenance, and he had not opened a shutter, nor, so far as I could see, disarranged an object in the room.

    The mysterious character of the whole affair fascinated me in spite of myself, and leaving the now fully aroused woman in the hall, I was half-way across the parlor floor when the latter stopped me with a shrill cry:

    Don’t leave me! I have never seen anything before so horrible. The poor dear! The poor dear! Why don’t he take those dreadful things off her?

    She alluded not only to the piece of furniture which had fallen upon the prostrate woman and which can best be described as a cabinet with closets below and shelves above, but to the various articles of bric-a-brac which had tumbled from the shelves, and which now lay in broken pieces about her.

    He will do so; they will do so very soon, I replied. He is waiting for some one with more authority than himself; for the Coroner, if you know what that means.

    But what if she’s alive! Those things will crush her. Let us take them off. I’ll help. I’m not too weak to help.

    Do you know who this person is? I asked, for her voice had more feeling in it than I thought natural to the occasion, dreadful as it was.

    I? she repeated, her weak eyelids quivering for a moment as she tried to sustain my scrutiny. How should I know? I came in with the policeman and haven’t been any nearer than I now be. What makes you think I know anything about her? I’m only the scrub-woman, and don’t even know the names of the family.

    I thought you seemed so very anxious, I explained, suspicious of her suspiciousness, which was of so sly and emphatic a character that it changed her whole bearing from one of fear to one of cunning in a moment.

    And who wouldn’t feel the like of that for a poor creature lying crushed under a heap of broken crockery!

    Crockery! those Japanese vases worth hundreds of dollars! that ormolu clock¹⁰ and those Dresden figures, which must have been more than a couple of centuries old!

    It’s a poor sense of duty that keeps a man standing dumb and staring like that, when with a lift of his hand he could show us the like of her pretty face, and if it’s dead she be or alive.

    As this burst of indignation was natural enough and not altogether uncalled for from the standpoint of humanity, I gave the woman a nod of approval, and wished I were a man myself that I might lift the heavy cabinet or whatever it was that lay upon the poor creature before us. But not being a man, and not judging it wise to irritate the one representative of that sex then present, I made no remark, but only took a few steps farther into the room, followed, as it afterwards appeared, by the scrub-woman.

    The Van Burnam parlors are separated by an open arch. It was to the right of this arch and in the corner opposite the doorway that the dead woman lay. Using my eyes, now that I was somewhat accustomed to the semi-darkness enveloping us, I noticed two or three facts which had hitherto escaped me. One was, that she lay on her back with her feet pointing towards the hall door, and another, that nowhere in the room, save in her immediate vicinity, were there to be seen any signs of struggle or disorder. All was as set and proper as in my own parlor

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