‘I freely admit, gentlemen, that it is a question which I cannot answer, and you may rest assured that the press will eagerly await the decision of the Supreme Court if it is considered necessary to carry the matter that far.’
VIOLET STRANGE
Created by Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935)
In 1878, the poet Anna Katharine Green, disappointed that her verse had not received the recognition she had hoped for it, decided to try her hand at fiction. The result was The Leavenworth Case, often cited (not entirely accurately since there are other claimants) as the first mystery written by an American woman. The book, with its story of a rich man’s murder, investigated by a detective from the New York Metropolitan Police Force named Ebenezer Gryce, was a great success and launched Anna Katharine Green on a career as a crime writer that lasted more than forty years. Gryce returned in a dozen further novels, in some of which he was paired with a proto-Miss Marple figure, a nosey spinster with an eye for crime named Amelia Butterworth. Green also wrote other crime novels and published several volumes of short stories. The Golden Slipper and Other Stories appeared in 1915 and introduced another character to her readers. Violet Strange is an attractive young woman, a debutante who is at home amongst the upper echelons of New York society. She also leads a secret life as a professional sleuth, investigating crimes of all kinds to provide herself with an income of which her father knows nothing. The Violet Strange stories are not as pioneering as the longer fiction Green wrote decades earlier but they are skilfully crafted and entertaining, and their lively heroine is one of the most engaging of the era’s female detectives.
THE SECOND BULLET
‘No. No.’
‘She’s a most unhappy woman. Husband and child both taken from her in a moment; and now, all means of living as well, unless some happy thought of yours – some inspiration of your genius – shows us a way of re-establishing her claims to the policy voided by this cry of suicide.’
But the small wise head of Violet Strange continued its slow shake of decided refusal.
‘I’m sorry,’ she protested, ‘but it’s quite out of my province. I’m too young to meddle with so serious a matter.’
‘Not when you can save a bereaved woman the only possible compensation left her by untoward fate?’
‘Let the police try their hand at that.’
‘They have had no success with the case.’
‘Or you?’
‘Nor I either.’
‘And you expect –’
‘Yes, Miss Strange. I expect you to find the missing bullet which will settle the fact that murder and not suicide ended George Hammond’s life. If you cannot, then a long litigation awaits this poor widow, ending, as such litigation usually does, in favour of the stronger party. There’s the alternative. If you once saw her –’
‘But that’s what I’m not willing to do. If I once saw her I should yield to her importunities and attempt the seemingly impossible. My instincts bid me say no. Give me something easier.’
‘Easier things are not so remunerative. There’s money in this affair, if the insurance company is forced to pay up. I can offer you –’
‘What?’
There was eagerness in the tone despite her effort at nonchalance. The other smiled imperceptibly, and briefly named the sum.
It was larger than she had expected. This her visitor saw by the way her eyelids fell and the peculiar stillness which, for an instant, held her vivacity in check.
‘And you think I can earn that?’
Her eyes were fixed on his in an eagerness as honest as it was unrestrained.
He could hardly conceal his amazement, her desire was so evident and the cause of it so difficult to understand. He knew she wanted money – that was her avowed reason for entering into this uncongenial work. But to want it so much! He glanced at her person; it was simply clad but very expensively – how expensively it was his business to know. Then he took in the room in which they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity of high art – the drawing room of one rich enough to indulge in the final luxury of a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance and the subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to the general effect.
What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be reached by such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the nature of the task he offered her? It was a question not new to him; but one he had never heard answered and was not likely to hear answered now. But the fact remained that the consent he had thought dependent upon sympathetic interest could be reached much more readily by the promise of large emolument – and he owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even while he recognized the value of the discovery.
But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was of very short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change in her. The sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he had never been able to penetrate, had dissipated itself in something like a tear and she spoke up in that vigorous tone no one but himself had ever heard, as she said:
‘No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not waste my energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot
