Sisters in Crime Read online

  Praise for The Darker Sex (ed. Mike Ashley)

  ‘A magnificent and terribly readable collection’ – BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour

  ‘Editor Ashley does his usual fine job in selecting and introducing the eleven entries in a reprint anthology sure to appeal to fans of both Victorian fiction and ghost stories.’ – Publishers Weekly

  Praise for The Dreaming Sex (ed. Mike Ashley)

  ‘Tales by some of the most imaginative female genre writers of the Victorian era’ – Sci-Fi magazine

  ‘A very interesting collection … a useful and entertaining addition to the library of the genre’s prehistory … deserves some considerable attention’ – Foundation, the journal of the Science-Fiction Foundation

  THE FIGURE STILL WENT IN FRONT OF ME …

  from ‘The Warder of the Door’ by L.T. Meade

  SISTERS IN CRIME

  While many of the leading exponents of modern detective fiction throughout the twentieth century and beyond have been women, it is perhaps less well known that women writers were instrumental in developing the genre in its early years. Sisters in Crime is a fascinating collection of such stories from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that exemplifies this through the works of Mary E. Braddon, Ellen Wood, Harriet E. Prescott, Mary Fortune, Anna Katharine Green, Elizabeth Corbett, Mary E. Wilkins, C.L. Pirkis, Arabella Kenealy, L.T. Meade, Lucy G. Moberly and Carolyn Wells.

  A companion volume to his acclaimed The Darker Sex: Tales of the Supernatural and Macabre by Victorian Women Writers and The Dreaming Sex: Early Tales of Scientific Imagination by Women, Mike Ashley’s latest collection of rare early examples of women’s fiction should be an essential addition to the bookshelves of any serious fan of the development of crime writing.

  SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Stories

  ‘Levison’s Victim’ by Mary E. Braddon, first published in Belgravia, January 1870

  ‘Going Through the Tunnel’ by Mrs Henry Wood, first published in The Argosy, February 1869

  ‘Mr Furbush’ by Harriet E. Prescott, first published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, April 1865

  ‘Traces of Crime’ by Mary Fortune, first published in Australian Journal, 2 December 1865

  ‘The House of Clocks’ by Anna Katharine Green, first published in The Golden Slipper (Putnam, 1915)

  ‘The Polish Refugee’ by Elizabeth Corbett, first published in Secrets of a Private Enquiry Office (Routledge, 1891)

  ‘The Long Arm’ by Mary Wilkins Freeman, first published in Chapman’s Magazine, August 1895

  ‘The Redhill Sisterhood’ by C.L. Pirkis, first published in The Ludgate, April 1893

  ‘The Villa of Simpkins’ by Arabella Kenealy, first published in The Ludgate, August 1896

  ‘The Warder of the Door’ by L.T. Meade, first published in Cassell’s Family Magazine, July 1897

  ‘The Tragedy of a Doll’ by Lucy G. Moberly, first published in The Lady’s Magazine, October 1903

  ‘A Point of Testimony’ by Carolyn Wells, first published in Adventure, October 1911

  Pictures

  From ‘The Redhill Sisterhood’, Bernard Higham (The Ludgate, April 1893)

  From ‘The Villa of Simpkins’, R. Savage (The Ludgate, August 1896)

  From ‘The Warder of the Door’, John H. Bacon (Cassell’s Family Magazine, July 1897)

  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

  INTRODUCTION

  In my previous two anthologies in this series, The Darker Sex (2009) and The Dreaming Sex (2010), I presented examples of works by women writers that contributed to the development and popularization of the supernatural story and science fiction respectively. For this third volume I have turned to crime and mystery fiction.

  Women have long been regarded as major contributors and innovators when it comes to crime fiction – one has only to think of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Patricia Cornwell, Sara Paretsky, Kathy Reichs (and on and on and on) to show what a force women are in the field. But their forebears do not always get the same recognition. When charting the growth of crime fiction during the Victorian period the names of Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and, of course, Arthur Conan Doyle will come readily to mind, but among women writers perhaps only Mary E. Braddon will get a grudging recognition, as will Anna Katharine Green, who is, at least, called the ‘mother of the detective novel’.

  As for Catherine Pirkis or Mary Fortune or Arabella Kenealy or Lucy Moberly – who remembers them? Yet their roles in popularizing the genre are every bit as important. Mary Fortune was the most prolific writer of crime stories during the Victorian period, but because her work appeared only in Australian newspapers she has long been forgotten.

  So for this anthology I have brought together just a few of these excellent writers. There are many more – I could have filled this book ten times over without repeating any authors. All of the stories feature a crime or a mystery, and many of them are also detective stories. What struck me in putting together this collection is that the women rose as equally to the challenge as men in creating fascinating puzzles and bizarre mysteries, but they added an extra depth of character. You will find believable people in these stories who understand the problems of others and are determined to fight injustice. That is because many of these writers had experienced their own sufferings and privations and had struggled to survive against long odds.

  All the stories are, of course, written in the style of their day, and it is interesting to compare the earliest, from 1865 with the most recent (!) from 1915. The stories are presented more or less in chronological order so that you can follow the development of the field, and I have provided backgrounds on all of the authors in an introduction to each story. You will find a far more relaxing style compared with much of today’s fiction. These are stories to curl up with and wind down to at the end of the day. And they are a remarkable window on the past. So prepare to be transported to those wonderful gaslit days of mystery and escape the present, just for a while.

  Mike Ashley

  May 2013

  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 l
ife. 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.’