The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century

by Penzler, Otto

  There was about Dr. Gilmore so much of the air and manner of truth, that his statement prevailed in the minds of the audience and of the court, and the Trailors were discharged, although they attempted no explanation of the circumstances proven by the other witnesses.

  On the next Monday, Myers arrived in Springfield, bringing with him the now famed Fisher, in full life and proper person.

  Thus ended this strange affair; and while it is readily conceived that a writer of novels could bring a story to a more perfect climax, it may well be doubted whether a stranger affair ever really occurred. Much of the matter remains in mystery to this day. The going into the woods with Fisher, and returning without him, by the Trailors; their going into the woods at the same place the next day, after they professed to have given up the search; the signs of a struggle in the thicket, the buggy tracks at the edge of it; and the location of the thicket, and the signs about it, corresponding precisely with Henry’s story, are circumstances that have never been explained.

  William and Archibald have both died since—William in less than a year, and Archibald in about two years after the supposed murder. Henry is still living, but never speaks of the subject.

  It is not the object of the writer of this, to enter into the many curious speculations that might be indulged upon the facts of this narrative; yet he can scarcely forbear a remark upon what would, almost certainly, have been the fate of William and Archibald, had Fisher not been found alive. It seems he had wandered away in mental derangement, and, had he died in this condition, and his body been found in the vicinity, it is difficult to conceive what could have saved the Trailors from the consequence of having murdered him. Or, if he had died, and his body never found, the case against them would have been quite as bad, for, although it is a principle of law that a conviction for murder shall not be had, unless the body of the deceased be discovered, it is to be remembered, that Henry testified he saw Fisher’s dead body.

  1850

  DANIEL WEBSTER

  The Fatal Secret

  A talent, or skill, that has largely lost its luster in recent years is that of oratory, but it was highly prized in an earlier era, and few dispute that America’s greatest orator was DANIEL WEBSTER (1782–1852). Although his “Second Reply to Hayne” in the Senate in 1830 is regarded as “the most eloquent speech ever delivered in Congress” and first made his reputation, it was Stephen Vincent Benet’s famous short story and play, “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1936), which later was the basis for a motion picture, in which the lawyer wins a debate with Satan, that made his name familiar to generations a century after his powerful address in the Senate. Webster’s political career lasted forty years, the first ten as a congressman from New Hampshire, followed by seventeen as a senator representing Massachusetts, and then as secretary of state for three presidents.

  Webster’s career as a lawyer and statesman did not leave much time for writing outside of those disciplines, and his collected works are mainly the speeches he delivered to Congress and the laws he wrote (one of which settled the border with Canada), as well as his often lengthy and always eloquent letters.

  The following story is an anomaly and is included in this collection as a curiosity. Even in its brevity, the power of Webster’s language and the lushness of his prose cannot be denied. Is it a story? Well, there is a fictional scenario. Is it a sermon? He was not a man of the cloth. Is it an essay? It is conjecture and fabrication. However it may be defined, it is a florid, superbly crafted piece, grandiloquent in its argument for the religious conscience of New England in the middle of the nineteenth century. And you have never before read it!

  “The Fatal Secret” was first published in The Boston Book. Being Specimens of Metropolitan Literature (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850).

  ***

  AN AGED MAN, without an enemy in the world, in his own house and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay.

  Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this, he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him.

  The room is uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper is turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, show him where to strike.

  The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death!

  It is the assassin’s purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it is obvious that life has been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard. To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse. He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer.

  It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe!

  Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which pierces through all disguises, and beholds everything.

  True it is, generally speaking, that “murder will out.” True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven by shedding man’s blood seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come . . .

  A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.

  Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth.

  The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence.

  When suspicions, from without, begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.

  1862

  THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

  The Danseuse

  WHEN THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH (1836–1907) wrote Story of a Bad Boy (1870), he and his wife were a popular couple in the literary circle of Boston that included Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, and James Russell Lowell, leading the eminent William Dean Howells, editor of the prestigious literary journal The Atlantic Monthly, to hail the book as the first truly American novel (though readers of James Fenimore Cooper might have disagreed). Aldrich was such a g
iant figure in American letters in the latter part of the nineteenth century that at his memorial service in 1908, Mark Twain stated that Story of a Bad Boy, based on Aldrich’s own experiences growing up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was his inspiration for Tom Sawyer.

  Aldrich was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction and was extremely popular in his day, though he is almost entirely forgotten today. Among his many works are several that involve mystery fiction, such as Marjorie Daw and Other People (1873), a short story collection; The Stillwater Tragedy (1880); and his most important contribution to the genre, Out of His Head (1862), an episodic novel in which the complete short story “The Danseuse” comprises chapters 11–14.

  This self-contained excerpt from the novel reveals the author’s debt to Edgar Allan Poe, though he adds significant advances of his own. The plot is clearly derived from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” but an important element in the development of the detective story is the first American variation of Poe’s “locked room” mystery. Also, while Poe’s Monsieur Dupin was certainly an eccentric sleuth, Aldrich more than continued the notion (though perhaps to an unusual extreme, as his detective, Paul Lynde, is also a borderline madman who is working on a secret invention known as “the Moon-Apparatus”).

  “The Danseuse” was first published as chapters 11–14 of Out of His Head (New York: Carleton, 1862).

  ***

  THE ENSUING SUMMER I returned North, and, turning my attention to mechanism, was successful in producing several wonderful pieces of work, among which may be mentioned a brass butterfly, made to flit so naturally in the air as to deceive the most acute observers. The motion of the toy, the soft down and gorgeous damask-stains on the pinions, were declared quite perfect. The thing is rusty, and won’t work now; I tried to set it going for Dr. Pendegrast, the other day.

  A manikin musician, playing a few exquisite airs on a miniature piano, likewise excited much admiration. This figure bore such an absurd, unintentional resemblance to a gentleman who has since distinguished himself as a pianist, that I presented the trifle to a lady admirer of Gottschalk.

  I also became a taxidermist, and stuffed a pet bird with springs and diminutive flutes, causing it to hop and carol, in its cage, with great glee. But my masterpiece was a nimble white mouse, with pink eyes, that could scamper up the walls, and masticate bits of cheese in an extraordinary style. My chambermaid shrieked, and jumped up on a chair, whenever I let the little fellow loose in her presence. One day, unhappily, the mouse, while nosing around after its favorite aliment, got snapt in a rat-trap that yawned in the closet, and I was never able to readjust the machinery.

  Engaged in these useful inventions—useful, because no exercise of the human mind is ever in vain—my existence for two or three years was so placid and uneventful, I began to hope that the shadows which had followed on my path from childhood, making me unlike other men, had returned to that unknown world where they properly belong; but the Fates were only taking breath to work out more surely the problem of my destiny. I must keep nothing back. I must extenuate nothing.

  I am about to lift the veil of mystery which, for nearly seven years, has shrouded the story of Mary Ware; and though I lay bare my own weakness, or folly, or what you will, I do not shrink from the unveiling.

  No hand but mine can now perform the task. There was, indeed, a man who might have done this better than I. But he went his way in silence. I like a man who can hold his tongue.

  On the corner of Clarke and Crandall streets, in New York, stands a dingy brown frame-house. It is a very old house, as its obsolete style of structure would tell you. It has a morose, unhappy look, though once it must have been a blythe mansion. I think that houses, like human beings, ultimately become dejected or cheerful, according to their experience. The very air of some front-doors tells their history.

  This house, I repeat, has a morose, unhappy look, at present, and is tenanted by an incalculable number of Irish families, while a picturesque junk-shop is in full blast in the basement; but at the time of which I write, it was a second-rate boarding-place, of the more respectable sort, and rather largely patronized by poor, but honest, literary men, tragic-actors, members of the chorus, and such like gilt people.

  My apartments on Crandall street were opposite this building, to which my attention was directed soon after taking possession of the rooms, by the discovery of the following facts:

  First, that a charming lady lodged on the second-floor front, and sang like a canary every morning.

  Second, that her name was Mary Ware.

  Third, that Mary Ware was a danseuse, and had two lovers—only two.

  Fourth, that Mary Ware and the page, who, years before, had drawn Howland and myself into that fatal masquerade, were the same person.

  This last discovery moved me strangely, aside from the fact that her presence opened an old wound. The power which guides all the actions of my life constrained me to watch this woman.

  Mary Ware was the leading-lady at The Olympic. Night after night found me in the parquette. I can think of nothing with which to compare the airiness and utter abandon of her dancing. She seemed a part of the music. She was one of beauty’s best thoughts, then. Her glossy gold hair reached down to her waist, shading one of those mobile faces which remind you of Guido’s picture of Beatrix Cenci—there was something so fresh and enchanting in the mouth. Her luminous, almond eyes, looking out winningly from under their drooping fringes, were at once the delight and misery of young men.

  Ah! you were distracting in your nights of triumph, when the bouquets nestled about your elastic ankles, and the kissing of your castanets made the pulses leap; but I remember when you lay on your cheerless bed, in the blank daylight, with the glory faded from your brow, and “none so poor as to do you reverence.”

  Then I stooped down and kissed you—but not till then.

  Mary Ware was to me a finer study than her lovers. She had two, as I have said. One of them was commonplace enough—well-made, well-dressed, shallow, flaccid. Nature, when she gets out of patience with her best works, throws off such things by the gross, instead of swearing. He was a lieutenant, in the navy I think. The gilt button has charms to soothe the savage breast.

  The other was a man of different mold, and interested me in a manner for which I could not then account. The first time I saw him did not seem like the first time. But this, perhaps, is an after-impression.

  Every line of his countenance denoted character; a certain capability, I mean, but whether for good or evil was not so plain. I should have called him handsome, but for a noticeable scar which ran at right angles across his mouth, giving him a sardonic expression when he smiled.

  His frame might have set an anatomist wild with delight—six feet two, deep-chested, knitted with tendons of steel. Not at all a fellow to amble on plush carpets.

  “Some day,” thought I, as I saw him stride by the house, “he will throw the little Lieutenant out of that second-story window.”

  I cannot tell, to this hour, which of those two men Mary Ware loved most—for I think she loved them both. A woman’s heart was the insolvable charade with which the Sphinx nipt the Egyptians. I was never good at puzzles.

  The flirtation, however, was food enough for the whole neighborhood. But faintly did the gossips dream of the strange drama that was being shaped out, as compactly as a tragedy of Sophocles, under their noses.

  They were very industrious in tearing Mary Ware’s good name to pieces. Some laughed at the gay Lieutenant, and some at Julius Kenneth; but they all amiably united in condemning Mary Ware.

  This state of affairs had continued for five or six months, when it was reported that Julius Kenneth and Mary Ware were affianced. The Lieutenant was less frequently seen in Crandall street, and Julius waited upon Mary’s footsteps with the fidelity of a shadow.

  Yet—though Mary went to the Sunday concerts with Julius Kenneth, she still wore the Lieutenant’s roses in her bosom.

&
nbsp; A MYSTERY

  ONE DRIZZLY NOVEMBER morning—how well I remember it!—I was awakened by a series of nervous raps on my bed-room door. The noise startled me from an unpleasant dream.

  “O, sir!” cried the chambermaid on the landing. “There’s been a dreadful time across the street. They’ve gone and killed Mary Ware!”

  “Ah!”

  That was all I could say. Cold drops of perspiration stood on my forehead.

  I looked at my watch; it was eleven o’clock; I had over-slept myself, having sat up late the previous night.

  I dressed hastily, and, without waiting for breakfast, pushed my way through the murky crowd that had collected in front of the house opposite, and passed up stairs, unquestioned.

  When I entered the room, there were six people present: a thick-set gentleman, in black, with a bland professional air, a physician; two policemen; Adelaide Woods, an actress; Mrs. Marston, the landlady; and Julius Kenneth.

  In the centre of the chamber, on the bed, lay the body of Mary Ware—as pale as Seneca’s wife.