In the several anthologies I have compiled (The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The Rivals of Dracula, Supernatural Sherlocks), my aim has always been to demonstrate the sheer range of entertaining short fiction that was produced in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. My purpose in putting together this volume is the same. From a palm-reading society lady (Diana Marburg) to the gypsy owner of a pawnshop (Hagar Stanley), from a Scotland Yard detective (Lady Molly) solving crimes years before women in real life were even allowed to join the police force to a nurse of genius (Hilda Wade) looking to revenge the death of her father, the female detectives of this golden age of genre fiction were a gloriously mixed bunch. I hope that readers enjoy their assorted adventures as much as I do.
DORA BELL
Created by Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett (1846-1930)
A journalist who worked for the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett also wrote a number of interesting genre novels. New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future, first published in 1889, is a feminist utopia in which her heroine falls asleep in the late nineteenth century and awakes in the year 2472 to find a society in which women have control. Thanks to a technique known as ‘nerve-rejuvenation’, these ‘Amazonians’ live for hundreds of years in the prime of life and have created a fairer and less corrupt world. (Although, disconcertingly for a modern reader, they do practise a form of eugenics.) Corbett was not only a pioneer of women’s science fiction. She also published crime novels. In When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead, subtitled ‘A Thrilling Detective Story’, Annie Cory turns detective when her fiancé is falsely accused of stealing diamonds from the firm for which he works. Adopting a series of alternative identities and disguises (including cross-dressing as a man), Annie sets out to prove his innocence. The book was published in 1894. At about the same time, Corbett created another female detective in Dora Bell, an agent for the Bell & White Agency, who appeared in a series of stories published in provincial and colonial newspapers such as the Leeds Mercury and the Adelaide Observer. These do not seem to have been collected in book form although an earlier volume of stories by Corbett, Secrets of a Private Enquiry Office (1890), does include a character named Dora. The Dora Bell stories are short and uncomplicated, ideally suited to the newspaper readership at which they were aimed. They win no prizes for great originality but they remain entertaining and easy to read.
MADAME DUCHESNE’S GARDEN PARTY
‘It cost more than two hundred pounds, Miss Bell. But that is not the worst of the matter. My aunt stipulated that I should always wear it as a perpetual reminder of her past kindness and her future good intentions, and if she misses it I shall lose favour with her altogether. To lose Miss Mainwaring’s favour means to lose the splendid fortune which is hers to bequeath, so you see how very serious the matter is for me. It is, indeed, little short of life and death, for poverty would kill me now. For God’s sake do your best for me.’
‘But surely, if Miss Mainwaring knows that you could not possibly have foreseen your loss, she will not be unjust enough to disinherit you?’
‘Indeed she will. She believes me to be vacillating and unreliable, because I broke off an engagement with a rich man to whom I had but given a reluctant acceptance, and united myself to the man of my choice. My husband was poor, and therefore beyond the pale of forgiveness, and my own pardon is only based on the most unswerving obedience to all my aunt’s injunctions. The pendant came from India, and the stones in it are said to possess occult power – I wish they had the power to come back to their rightful owner.’
The speaker heaved a sigh of desperation as she spoke, and I glanced at her with considerable interest. She was tall, pale, dark-eyed, and handsome, but her appearance bore certain signs of that vacillation and carelessness of which her aunt accredited her with the possession.
The circumstances surrounding the loss of which she complained were peculiar. She had been spending the evening at the house of the German Ambassador, and returning home in Miss Mainwaring’s carriage, when she became aware of the fact that she had lost the jewelled pendant which her aunt had given her as a token of reconciliation when she returned to her after being suddenly widowed.
A frantic search of the carriage bore no results, and Mrs Bevan hastily told the coachman to return to the Embassy. But she prudently refrained from confiding the particulars of her loss to him, for she was not quite without hope that it might be remedied. Madame von Auerbach was, however, able to give her no comfort, for she had herself suffered in like manner with her guest.
She had lost a valuable diamond-studded watch, and when the most careful search failed to discover it, the conclusion arrived at was that some thief must have been present at the reception. It was
