Praise for
THE LISTENING HOUSE
“Miss Seeley is to be welcomed as a very promising author of detective fiction.”
—The Times Literary Supplement
“Miss Seeley, with a good story to tell, ingenious plot and counter-plot, characters diverse and clearly seen, lifts her book into the first class.”
—The Observer
“Bloodcurdling. . . . Especially good.”
—Saturday Review of Literature
“The Crime Club have discovered a genius in Mabel Seeley. The author’s style is unusual: she tells her story in natural everyday language, but she puts it ‘right over’—and what a climax!”
—Manchester Evening News
“So packed with weird thrills that it grips from first page to last. . . . Should take its place as one of the best thrillers of the season.”
—National Newsagent
“First-rate whodunit, with enough of romance to give it a Mary Roberts Rinehart appeal. . . . This is a newcomer in the field—a good ’un.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review, September 1938)
Praise for the novels of Mabel Seeley
“Beautifully told by a writer who is expert at finding horror in commonplace settings. Recommended for highest honors.”
—The New Yorker
“The Crying Sisters is the Crime Club selection for this month, and it is an excellent mystery novel of the ‘atmospheric’ type. . . . It holds its interest from the beginning as it rises in crescendo toward climax.”
—The New York Times
“Satin-smooth mystery novel in a family fracas which starts with acts of malignant mischief and leads to murder. . . . Ingenuous manner for some ingenious matter—expert timing and mechanics and pleasant romantic asides. Velvet.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred reviewed)
“Another superior job of atmosphere, character, and suspense.”
—Kirkus Reviews
TITLES BY MABEL SEELEY
The Listening House
The Chuckling Fingers
The Crying Sisters
The Whispering Cup
Eleven Came Back
The Beckoning Door
The Whistling Shadow
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 1938 by Mabel Mysteries / Elsewhither Publishing, LLC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Seeley, Mabel, 1903-1991, author.
Title: The listening house / Mabel Seeley.
Description: Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition. | New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021007363 (print) | LCCN 2021007364 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780593334546 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593334553 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3537.E2826 L57 2021 (print) | LCC PS3537.E2826 (ebook) | DDC 813/.52—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007363
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007364
Doubleday, Doran hardcover edition / January 1938
Pyramid mass-market edition / January 1973
Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition / June 2021
Cover illustration by Kim Johnson
Cover design by Rita Frangie
Book design by Alison Cnockaert, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
To Gregory
With Love
CONTENTS
Cover
Praise for The Listening House
Praise for Mabel Seeley
Titles by Mabel Seeley
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Dramatis Personae
Sketches of Mrs. Garr’s House
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About the Author
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
GWYNNE DACRES, copywriter out of a job, lodger.
HARRIET LUELLA GARR, whose business is and has been the taking in of lodgers.
HODGE KISTLER, ex-reporter but not retired, lodger.
MR. JOSEPH WALLER, retired, lodger.
AGNES WALLER, wife of Joseph Waller.
MYRTLE SANDS, salesgirl, lodger.
CHARLES BUFFINGHAM, soda jerker, lodger.
JOHN GRANT, retired accountant, lodger.
MRS. HALLORAN, Mrs. Garr’s niece, mother of seven.
MR. HALLORAN, veteran of the World War.
MRS. TEWMAN, maid, resident in Mrs. Garr’s basement.
MR. TEWMAN, co-owner of a hamburger castle.
SAMUEL ZEITMAN, whose time is short.
ROVER, CECILIA, RICHARD, AND GEORGE, pets of Mrs. Garr.
LIEUTENANT PETER STROM, in charge of the homicide squad, Gilling City police.
RED AND JERRY, officers of patrol car 22, whose territory covers the state capitol section.
Reporters, additional police officers, a coroner, a ticket seller, doctors, nurses, etc.
Mrs. Dacres’ rough sketch of the basement in Mrs. Garr’s house
Mrs. Dacres’ rough sketch of the ground floor in Mrs. Garr’s house
Mrs. Dacres’ rough sketch of the first floor in Mrs. Garr’s house
1
I AM NOT SURE, myself, that I should open the door of Mrs. Garr’s house and let you in. I’m not at all sure that the truth about what happened there is tellable. People keep saying to me that the rumors going around are simply ghoulish, and ought to be laid to rest. But I’ve heard those rumors, some of them at least, and they’re not a bit more nightmarish than the truth. Finally, of course, I gave in to pressure.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” I said.
Because, after all, I’m the one that not only knows almost everything that went on in Mrs. Garr’s house in April, May, and June of this year, but also why a lot of it went on. And, unless Hodge Kistler wrote it, no one else could get the ending anywhere near right.
Since agreeing, I have made seventeen entirely separate and different beginnings.
I have begun with the cat’s swift sneak and hunch under the bookcase of that dark hall. I have begun with my first sight of Hodge Kistler chinning himself on the bar. I have begun with those terrifying hands reaching for my throat. I have begun with the opening of a door that led to an unimaginable
