Sisters In Crime: Early Crime and Mystery Stories by Women

by Mike Ashley (Editor)

Overview

The companion volume to The Darker Sex and The Dreaming Sex, this absorbing anthology of early women's crime fiction belongs on the bookshelf of any serious crime fan

Many of the leading writers of crime fiction are women—Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell et al—but it still comes as a surprise to many that the first full-length detective novel was by one Metta Fuller whose The Dead Letter, under the alias Seeley Regester, appeared as far back as 1866, predating Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone by two years. In fact, women writers were instrumental in developing the new genre of detective fiction. This anthology selects stories from the late Victorian and Edwardian era including one of the Violet Strange stories by Anna Katharine Green, known as the "mother of the detective novel;" one of the Loveday Brooke stories by Catherine Pirkis, featuring an early private woman detective; and a story by the Australian writer Mary Fortune, who had written more than 500 detective novels by the time Edward VII came to the throne.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780720615173
Publisher:	Peter Owen Publishers
Publication date:	12/01/2013
Sold by:	INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Mike Ashley is a bibliographer, author, and editor of science fiction, mystery, and fantasy. He is the editor The Darker Sex, The Dreaming Sex, and the Mammoth Book series of short-story anthologies. He won the Edgar Award for The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction.

Read an Excerpt

Sisters in Crime

Early Detective and Mystery Stories by Women

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By Mike Ashley

Peter Owen Publishers

Copyright © 2013 Mike Ashley
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7206-1519-7

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CHAPTER 1

Mary E. Braddon

LEVISON'S VICTIM

Mary E. Braddon (1835–1915) was one of the most popular and bestselling novelists of the Victorian period, as well as one of the most notorious. After a challenging childhood – raised and educated by her mother after her father deserted them and going on to the stage in her early twenties to support her mother – Braddon found, by 1860, her gift for writing. After several short stories and a blood-and-thunder novel Three Times Dead (1860) she struck gold with Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which became the sensation of the decade. It tells of an attractive but devious woman who, though now respectably married, discovers that her first husband (who had previously deserted her) is still alive and likely to cause problems, so she attempts to murder him. Braddon followed this with the equally sensational Aurora Floyd (1863), with more bigamy and murder. The popularity of her work – and she would go on to write over eighty novels – allowed her to survive public reaction to her own sensational life which, in Victorian England, would have ruined a lesser woman. Braddon had moved in with and had children by her publisher, John Maxwell, who was still married, though his wife was in an Irish asylum for the insane. Braddon married Maxwell only after his wife died in 1874.

The following story was written during a particularly difficult time. Her mother and sister had died within a month of each other at the end of 1868, and soon after Braddon gave birth to a daughter and fell into a state of both physical and nervous collapse, aggravated by puerperal fever. She had by then written twenty novels in less than ten years and had been editing the magazine Belgravia. This story, which was published in Belgravia in January 1870, with its profound sense of loss and recovery, may well have helped her get over her depression.

Levison's Victim

'Have you seen Horace Wynward?'

'No. You don't mean to say that he is here?'

'He is indeed. I saw him last night; and I think I never saw a man so much changed in so short a time.'

'For the worse?'

'Infinitely for the worse. I should scarcely have recognized him but for that peculiar look in his eyes, which I dare say you remember.'

'Yes; deep-set grey eyes, with an earnest penetrating look that seems to read one's most hidden thoughts. I'm very sorry to hear of this change in him. We were at Oxford together, you know, and his place is near my father's in Buckinghamshire. We have been fast friends for a long time; but I lost sight of him about two years ago, before I went on my Spanish rambles, and I've heard nothing of him since. Do you think he has been leading a dissipated life – going the pace a little too violently?'

'I don't know what he has been doing; but I fancy he must have been travelling during the last year or two, for I've never come across him in London.'

'Did you speak to him last night?'

'No; I wanted very much to get hold of him for a few minutes' chat but couldn't manage it. It was in one of the gambling-rooms I saw him, on the opposite side of the table. The room was crowded. He was standing looking on at the game over the heads of the players. You know how tall he is, and what a conspicuous figure anywhere. I saw him one minute, and in the next he had disappeared. I left the rooms in search of him, but he was not to be seen anywhere.'

'I shall try and hunt him up tomorrow. He must be stopping at one of the hotels. There can't be much difficulty in finding him.'

The speakers were two young Englishmen; the scene a lamplit grove of trees outside the Kursaal of a German spa. The elder, George Theobald, was a barrister of the Inner Temple; the younger, Francis Lorrimore, was the son and heir of a Buckinghamshire squire, and a gentleman at large.

'What was the change that struck you so painfully, George?' Lorrimore asked between the puffs of his cigar. 'You couldn't have seen much of Wynward in that look across the gaming-table.'

'I saw quite enough. His face has a worn, haggard expression, he looks like a man who never sleeps; and there's a fierceness about the eyes – a contraction of the brows, a kind of restless searching look – as if he were on the watch for someone or something. In short, the poor fellow seemed to me altogether queer – the sort of man one would expect to hear of as being shut up in a madhouse, or committing suicide, or something bad of that kind.'

'I shall certainly hunt him out, George.'

'It would be only a kindness to do so, old fellow, as you and he have been intimate. Stay!' exclaimed Mr Theobald, pointing suddenly to a figure in the distance. 'Do you see that tall man under the trees yonder? I've a notion it's the very man we're talking of.'

They rose from the bench on which they had been sitting smoking their cigars for the last half-hour, and walked in the direction of the tall figure pacing slowly under the pine trees. There was no mistaking that muscular frame – six feet two, if an inch – and the peculiar carriage of the head. Frank Lorrimore touched his friend lightly on the shoulder, and he turned around suddenly and faced the two young men, staring at them blankly without a sign of recognition.

Yes, it was indeed a haggard face, with a latent fierceness in the deep -set grey eyes overshadowed by strongly marked black brows, but a face which, seen at its best, must needs have been very handsome.

'Wynward,' said Frank, 'don't you know me?'

Lorrimore held out both his hands. Wynward took one of them slowly, looking at him like a man suddenly awakened from sleep.

'Yes,' he said, 'I know you well enough now, Frank, but you startled me just this moment. I was thinking. How well you're looking, old fellow! What, you here, too, Theobald?'

'Yes; I saw you in the rooms last night,' answered Theobald as they shook hands, 'but you were gone before I could get a chance of speaking to you. Where are you staying?'

'At the Hotel des Étrangers. I shall be off tomorrow.'

'Don't run away in such a hurry, Horace,' said Frank. 'It looks as if you wanted to cut us.'

'I'm not very good company just now; you'd scarcely care to see much of me.'

'You are not looking very well, Horace, certainly. Have you been ill?'

'No, I am never ill; I am made of iron, you know.'

'But there's something wrong, I'm afraid.'

'There is something wrong, but nothing that sympathy or friendship can mend.'

'Don't say that, my dear fellow. Come to breakfast with me tomorrow and tell me your troubles.'

'It's a common story enough; I shall only bore you.'

'I think you ought to know me better than that.'

'Well, I'll come, if you like,' Horace Wynward answered in a softer tone. 'I'm not very much given to confide in friendship, but you were once a kind of younger brother of mine, Frank. Yes, I'll come. How long have you been here?'

'I only came yesterday. I am at the Couronne d'Or, where I discovered my friend Theobald, happily for me, at the table d'hôte. I am going back to Buckinghamshire next week. Have you been at Crofton lately?'

'No. Crofton has been shut up for the last two years. The old housekeeper is there, of course, and there are men to keep the gardens in order – I shouldn't like the idea of my mother's flower-garden being neglected – but I doubt if I shall ever live at Crofton.'

'Not when you marry, Horace?'

'Marry? Yes, when that event occurs I may change my mind,' he answered with a scornful laugh.

'Ah, Horace, I see there is a woman at the bottom of your trouble!'

Wynward took no notice of this remark and began to talk of indifferent subjects.

The three young men walked for some time under the pines, smoking and talking in a fragmentary manner. Horace Wynward had an absent-minded way, which was not calculated to promote a lively style of conversation; but the others indulged his humour and did not demand much from him. It was late when they shook hands and separated.

'At ten o'clock tomorrow, Horace?' said Frank.

'I shall be with you at ten. Good-night.'

* * *

Mr Lorrimore ordered an excellent breakfast, and a little before ten o'clock awaited his friend in a pretty sitting-room overlooking the gardens of the hotel. He had been dreaming of Horace all night and was thinking of him as he walked up and down the room waiting his arrival. As the little clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour, Mr Wynward was announced. His clothes were dusty, and he had a tired look even at that early hour. Frank welcomed him heartily.

'You look as if you had been walking, Horace,' he said, as they sat down to breakfast.

'I have been on the hills since five o'clock this morning.'

'So early?'

'Yes; I am a bad sleeper. It is better to walk than to lie tossing about hour after hour, thinking the same thoughts with maddening repetition.'

'My dear boy, you will make yourself ill with this kind of life.'

'Don't I tell you that I am never ill? I never had a day's illness in my life. I suppose when I die I shall go down at a shot – apoplexy or heart disease. Men of my build generally do.'

'I hope you may have a long life.'

'Yes, a long life of emptiness.'

'Why shouldn't it be a useful, happy life, Horace?'

'Because it was shipwrecked two years ago. I set sail for a given port, Frank, with a fair wind in my favour; and my ship went down in sight of land, on a summer's day, without a moment's warning. I can't rig another boat and make for another harbour as some men can. All my world's wealth was adventured in this one argosy. That sounds tall talk, doesn't it? but you see there is such a thing as passion in the world, and I've so much faith in your sympathy that I'm not ashamed to tell you what a fool I have been – and still am. You were such a romantic fellow five years ago, Frank, and I used to laugh at your sentimental notions.'

'Yes, I was obliged to stand a good deal of ridicule from you.'

'Let those laugh who win. It was in my last long vacation that I went to read at a quiet little village on the Sussex coast, with a retired tutor, an eccentric old fellow, but a miracle of learning. He had three daughters, the eldest of them, to my mind, the loveliest girl that ever the sun shone upon. I'm not going to make a long story of it. I think it was a case of love at first sight. I know that before I had been a week in the humdrum sea-coast village I was over head and ears in love with Laura Daventry; and at the end of a month I was happy in the belief that my love was returned. She was the dearest, brightest of girls, with a sunshiny disposition that won her friends in every direction, and a man must have had a dull soul who could have withstood the charm of her society. I was free to make my own choice, rich enough to marry a penniless girl, and before I went back to Oxford I made her an offer. It was accepted, and I returned to the university the happiest of men.'

He drank a cup of coffee and rose from the table to walk up and down the room.

'Well, Frank, you would imagine that nothing could arise to interfere with our happiness after this. In worldly circumstances I was what would be considered an excellent match for Miss Daventry, and I had every reason to believe that she loved me. She was very young, not quite eighteen, and I was the first man who had ever proposed to her. I left her with the most entire confidence in her good faith, and to this hour I believe in her.'

There was a pause, and then he went on again.

'We corresponded, of course. Laura's letters were charming, and I had no greater delight than in receiving and replying to them. I had promised her to work hard for my degree, and for her sake I kept my promise and won it. My first thought was to carry her the news of my success; and directly the examinations were over I ran down to Sussex. I found the cottage empty. Mr Daventry was in London; the two younger girls had gone to Devonshire, to an aunt who kept a school there. About Miss Daventry the neighbours could give me no positive information. She had left a few days before her father, but no one knew where she had gone. When I pressed them more closely they told me that it was rumoured in the village that she had gone away to be married. A gentleman from the Spanish colonies, a Mr Levison, had been staying at the cottage for some weeks and had disappeared about the same time as Miss Laura.'

'And you believe that she had eloped with him?'

'To this day I am ignorant as to the manner of her leaving. Her last letters were only a week old. She had told me of this Mr Levison's residence in their household. He was a wealthy merchant, a distant relation of her father's, and was staying in Sussex for his health. This was all she had said of him. Of their approaching departure she had not given me the slightest hint. No one in the village could tell me Mr Daventry's London address. The cottage, a furnished one, had been given up to the landlord and every debt paid. I went to the post office, but the people there had received no directions as to the forwarding of letters, nor had any come as yet for Mr Daventry.'

'The girls in Devonshire – you applied to them, I suppose?'

'I did, but they could tell me nothing. I wrote to Emily, the elder girl, begging her to send me her sister's address. She answered my letter immediately. Laura had left home with her father's full knowledge and consent, she said, but had not told her sisters where she was going. She had seemed very unhappy. The whole affair had been sudden, and her father had also appeared much distressed in mind. This was all I could ascertain. I put an advertisement in The Times addressed to Mr Daventry, begging him to let me know his whereabouts, but nothing came of it. I employed a man to hunt London for him, and hunted myself, but without avail. I wasted months in this futile search, now on one false track, now on another.'

'And you have long ago given up all hope, I suppose?' Lorrimore said as Wynward paused, walking up and down the room with a moody face.

'Given up all hope of seeing Laura Levison alive? Yes; but not of tracking her destroyer.'

'Laura Levison! Then you think she married the Spanish merchant?'

'I am sure of it. I had been more than six months on the look-out for Mr Daventry, and had begun to despair of finding him, when the man I employed came to me and told me that he had found the registry of a marriage between Michael Levison and Laura Daventry at an obscure church in the City, where he had occasion to make researches for another client. The date of the marriage was within a few days of Laura's departure from Sussex.'

'Strange!'

'Yes, strange that a woman could be so fickle, you would say. I felt convinced that there had been something more than girlish inconstancy at work in this business – some motive power, strong enough to induce this girl to sacrifice herself in a loveless marriage. I was confirmed in this belief when, within a very short time of the discovery of the registry, I came suddenly upon old Daventry in the street. He would willingly have avoided me, but I insisted on a conversation with him, and he reluctantly allowed me to accompany him to his lodging, a wretched place in Southwark. He was very ill, with the stamp of death upon his face, and had a craven look that convinced me it was to him I was indebted for my sorrow. I told him that I knew of his daughter's marriage, when and where it had taken place and boldly accused him of having brought it about.'

'How did he take your accusation?'

'Like a beaten hound. He whimpered piteously and told me that the marriage had been no wish of his. But Levison had possession of secrets which made him the veriest slave. Little by little I wrung from him the nature of these secrets. They related to forged bills of exchange in which the old man had made free with his kinsman's name. It was a transaction of many years ago; but Levison had used this power in order to induce Laura to marry him, and the girl, to save her father from disgrace and ruin, as she believed, had consented to become his wife. Levison had promised to do great things for the old man but had left England immediately after his marriage without settling a shilling on his father-in -law. It was altogether a dastardly business: the girl had been sacrificed to her father's weakness and folly. I asked him why he had not appealed to me, who could no doubt have extricated him from his difficulty, but he could give me no clear answer. He evidently had an overpowering dread of Michael Levison. I left him, utterly disgusted with his imbecility and selfishness; but, for Laura's sake, I took care that he wanted for nothing during the remainder of his life. He did not trouble me long.'

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Sisters in Crime by Mike Ashley. Copyright © 2013 Mike Ashley. Excerpted by permission of Peter Owen Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction,
Mary E. Braddon Levison's Victim,
Ellen Wood Going Through the Tunnel,
Harriet E. Prescott Mr Furbush,
Mary Fortune Traces of Crime,
Anna Katharine Green The House of Clocks,
Elizabeth Corbett The Polish Refugee,
Mary E. Wilkins The Long Arm,
C.L. Pirkas The Redhill Sisterhood,
Arabella Kenealy The Villa of Simpkins,
L.T. Meade The Warder of the Door,
Lucy G. Moberly The Tragedy of a Doll,
Carolyn Wells A Point of Testimony,

Editorial Reviews

"This stellar collection showcases the brilliant imagination of a heretofore neglected generation of female writers."  —Bust magazine, on The Dreaming Sex



"Ashley does his usual fine job in selecting and introducing the 11 entries . . . sure to appeal to fans of both Victorian fiction and ghost stories."  —Publishers Weekly, on The Darker Sex

From the Publisher