The Leavenworth Case

Copyright

Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1878

Published by The Detective Story Club for Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1929

Introduction © John Curran 2016

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1929, 2016

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008137595

Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008137601

Version: 2016-06-22

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Book One: The Problem

Chapter I: ‘a Great Case’

Chapter II: The Coroner’s Inquest

Chapter III: Facts and Deductions

Chapter IV: A Clue

Chapter V: Expert Testimony

Chapter VI: Side-Lights

Chapter VII: Mary Leavenworth

Chapter VIII: Circumstantial Evidence

Chapter IX: A Discovery

Chapter X: Mr Gryce Receives New Impetus

Chapter XI: The Summons

Chapter XII: Eleanore

Chapter XIII: The Problem

Book Two: Henry Clavering

Chapter XIV: Mr Gryce at Home

Chapter XV: Ways Opening

Chapter XVI: The Will of a Millionaire

Chapter XVII: The Beginning of Great Surprises

Chapter XVIII: On the Stairs

Chapter XIX: In My Office

Chapter XX: ‘Trueman! Trueman! Trueman!’

Chapter XXI: A Prejudice

Chapter XXII: Patch-Work

Chapter XXIII: The Story of a Charming Woman

Chapter XXIV: A Report Followed by Smoke

Chapter XXV: Timothy Cook

Chapter XXVI: Mr Gryce Explains Himself

Book Three: Hannah

Chapter XXVII: Amy Belden

Chapter XXVIII: A Weird Experience

Chapter XXIX: The Missing Witness

Chapter XXX: Burned Paper

Chapter XXXI: Q

Chapter XXXII: Mrs Belden’s Narrative

Chapter XXXIII: Unexpected Testimony

Book Four: The Problem Solved

Chapter XXXIV: Mr Gryce Resumes Control

Chapter XXXV: Fine Work

Chapter XXXVI: Gathered Threads

Chapter XXXVII: Culmination

Chapter XXXVIII: A Full Confession

Chapter XXXIX: The Outcome of a Great Crime

Footnotes

The Detective Story Club

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

NOT ONLY was Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) the first woman to write a detective novel—thereby earning the soubriquet ‘The Mother of Detective Fiction’—but she also included in it many themes and ideas that later became commonplace in the genre.fn1 And as further proof of her importance in the development of detective fiction she also introduced, later in her career, two distinct ‘types’ of detective, each very different, each contributing to an emerging form; and each much copied in the years that followed.

Born into a well-to-do family in New York’s Brooklyn Heights, Anna Catherinefn2 Green was raised, on the death of her mother, by a stepmother who encouraged Anna’s interest in writing. After graduating with a B.A. from Ripley College in Vermont in 1866—an impressive achievement for a woman at that time—she submitted some poems to the eminent American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. He encouraged her to continue writing, but advised her to abandon poetry. Green, fearing that her lawyer father would not approve of novel-writing, began, in secret, to write a detective novel. When, on its completion, she did show it to him, he was sufficiently impressed—possibly because of the novel’s significant legal content—to arrange for a well-known critic to bring it to the attention of publisher George Putnam. The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer’s Story was published in the US in 1878 and in the UK the following year. It was an immediate success and marked the beginning of a prolific writing career.

Appearing almost half a century before the heyday of the Golden Age, The Leavenworth Case embodies many of that era’s distinctive features. Ebenezer Gryce, described by himself as ‘a professional detective’, and one who would feature in a dozen novels over the following thirty years, investigates the murder, in his New York home, of wealthy Horatio Leavenworth. The reader is presented with the body in the locked library, a victim on the point of changing his will, a floor-plan of the murder scene, a coroner’s inquest with medical and ballistic evidence, and a second death. We encounter a lawyer-narrator, Everett Raymond, with a romantic interest in the outcome of the case, a butler, a secret marriage, an initialled handkerchief, a second floor-plan, and that device beloved of many later Golden Age writers: a numbered listing of significant points. All of these are instantly recognisable from hundreds of detective novels over the following century.

Ebenezer Gryce is described as ‘a portly, comfortable personage with an eye that never pounced’. Unlike the gimlet eye of many detectives, his rarely rested on the person he addressed but ‘was always on some insignificant object in [the] vicinity’, variously described as being ‘on intimate terms with the door-knob’ or as ‘fixing his eyes upon the poker though not with any hostile intention’. Distinct from many investigators, Gryce does not dominate or draw attention to himself and this unpretentiousness makes him a character with which readers can identify. He is self-made, self-effacing, unencumbered by family and uncomfortable in the presence of members of the upper-class; and he is a rheumatism sufferer. All of which goes some way to explain why he is rarely listed among the Great Detectives.

Viewed from today’s perspective the novel can be considered somewhat over-written and, in certain passages, sentimental. The narrator rhapsodises a shade too much over the beauty of the two main suspects; said suspects are given to fainting conveniently, and vital evidence is delayed in the interests of gallantry. But none of this should deter the reader who relishes a well-constructed plot with an unequivocal emphasis on ‘Whodunit’. And throughout the novel facts are fairly offered to the reader—the Book I inquest is a model of legal and forensic presentation—with inferences drawn from these facts. Particularly impressive also are the discussions of, and deductions drawn from, letters in Books II and IV.

The significance of Green and The Leavenworth Case can be judged by the interest shown by two eminent contemporary practitioners of the form: Arthur Conan Doyle, with whom Green had corresponded, made a point of meeting her when he visited America in 1894; and writing in The Critic on 28 January 1893, Wilkie Collins, author of the ground-breaking The Moonstone (1868), admired both the plot and the manner of its telling:

‘[Green’s] powers of invention are so remarkable—she has so much imagination and so much belief (a most important qualification for our art) in what she says … Dozens of times in reading the story I have stopped to admire the fertility of invention, the delicate treatment of incident—and the fine perception of event on the personages of the story.’

If the creator of Sherlock Holmes and the pioneer of the detective novel are not two impressive enough advocates for Green’s reputation, then the discovery that Agatha Christie was an admirer surely is. Before embarking on her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, she had read little detective fiction but records in An Autobiography (1977) how much she had enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes stories—then still appearing intermittently in the Strand Magazine—as well as two influential novels: The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908) by Gaston Leroux (1868–1927) and The Leavenworth Case. Although she mis-spells the title of Green’s novel, its influence on Christie’s early work is evident in the adoption, and adaptation, of many of its elements; elements which would become synonymous with the detective novel during the imminent Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

If we amend ‘locked library in New York’ to ‘locked bedroom in Essex’ the influence of Green’s novel on The Mysterious Affair at Styles is clear: an upper-class domestic setting, a lovelorn male narrator who also acts as the detective’s helper, a wealthy victim, a contentious will, a limited circle of suspects, the inclusion of a floor-plan and the plot device of an incriminating document; furthermore, the method adopted by the killer to conceal that document is identical in Leavenworth and Styles. More than forty years later, during his investigation of The Clocks (1963), Hercule Poirot, musing over milestone titles of detective fiction, comments on The Leavenworth Case’s ‘studied and deliberate melodrama’, noting particularly ‘the excellent psychological study’ of the murderer and calling the book ‘admirable’ overall. And if that’s the opinion of Hercule Poirot, who are we to disagree?

Anna Katharine Green continued to write for the next forty years, producing over thirty novels and five short story collections. In 1897, at which stage she had published fourteen novels and one collection, she introduced the spinster detective Amelia Butterworth, narrator of That Affair Next Door. When a young woman with a face battered beyond recognition is found in the neighbouring house, Amelia joins forces (unofficially) with Leavenworth’s Gryce to solve the mystery. Their collaboration is initially antagonistic and it is not until they compare notes that they successfully solve the case. Amelia Butterworth, the earliest example of the elderly female detective, the meddlesome amateur with time on her hands and curiosity on her mind, appeared in two further novels.

Almost twenty years later, in The Golden Slipper (1915) Green introduced, in a series of linked short stories, yet another detective: the young, professional female. Violet Strange is not merely a younger version of Amelia Butterworth; she is a detective through necessity. Although from a privileged background Violet needs money (for a purpose not disclosed until her last adventure, ‘Violet’s Own’) and undertakes professional detection for a fee. Although many of her cases are concerned with theft or missing valuables some (e.g. ‘The Second Bullet’) involve the investigation of a mysterious death. Like most of Green’s output the setting is among the privileged classes, a milieu through which Violet can move with ease and conviction.

In 1884 Green married Charles Rohlfs, an actor—he collaborated with her in the stage dramatisation of The Leavenworth Case in 1891—and, later, a highly respected furniture designer. The couple had three children, two of whom tragically pre-deceased them. Green published her final novel, The Step on the Stair, in 1923. She died in New York on 11 April 1935; Charles died in June 1936.

The Leavenworth Case was filmed as a silent movie directed by Charles Giblyn in 1923, and was remade as a more lavish ‘talkie’ by Lewis D. Collins, released in 1936. A different ending to the American release had to be filmed to satisfy the British film censors, leaving UK viewers somewhat bemused at the illogical change of identity of the killer at the end of the film. Both versions of the 1936 black-and-white film survive, although the only known US print is sadly incomplete, having been heavily re-edited for television in the 1950s.

The contribution of Anna Katharine Green to the development of detective fiction is immense, and The Leavenworth Case was an obvious choice for inclusion in the first batch of Detective Story Club classics in 1929. The book showed, as Wilkie Collins noted, impressive ‘fertility of invention’ in a well-constructed and well-paced story, full of much that subsequently became commonplace in the genre. Her creation of two types of female detective paved the way for countless followers. Green, a pioneer in a genre that would later come to be dominated by women, was, indeed, ‘The Mother of Detective Fiction’.

DR JOHN CURRAN

December 2015

CHAPTER I

‘A GREAT CASE’

‘A deed of dreadful note.’

—MACBETH

I HAD been a junior partner in the firm of Veeley, Carr & Raymond, attorneys and counsellors at law, for about a year, when one morning, in the temporary absence of both Mr Veeley and Mr Carr, there came into our office a young man whose whole appearance was so indicative of haste and agitation that I involuntarily rose at his approach and impetuously inquired:

‘What is the matter? You have no bad news to tell, I hope.’

‘I have come to see Mr Veeley; is he in?’

‘No,’ I replied; ‘he was unexpectedly called away this morning to Washington; cannot be home before tomorrow; but if you will make your business known to me—’

‘To you, sir?’ he repeated, turning a very cold but steady eye on mine; then, seeming to be satisfied with his scrutiny, continued, ‘There is no reason why I shouldn’t; my business is no secret. I came to inform him that Mr Leavenworth is dead.’

‘Mr Leavenworth!’ I exclaimed, falling back a step. Mr Leavenworth was an old client of our firm, to say nothing of his being the particular friend of Mr Veeley.

‘Yes, murdered; shot through the head by some unknown person while sitting at his library table.’

‘Shot! Murdered!’ I could scarcely believe my ears.

‘How? When?’ I gasped.

‘Last night. At least, so we suppose. He was not found till this morning. I am Mr Leavenworth’s private secretary,’ he explained, ‘and live in the family. It was a dreadful shock,’ he went on, ‘especially to the ladies.’

‘Dreadful!’ I repeated. ‘Mr Veeley will be overwhelmed by it.’

‘They are all alone,’ he continued in a low business-like way I afterwards found to be inseparable from the man; ‘the Misses Leavenworth, I mean—Mr Leavenworth’s nieces; and as an inquest is to be held there today it is deemed proper for them to have someone present capable of advising them. As Mr Veeley was their uncle’s best friend, they naturally sent me for him; but he being absent I am at a loss what to do or where to go.’

‘I am a stranger to the ladies,’ was my hesitating reply, ‘but if I can be of any assistance to them, my respect for their uncle is such—’

The expression of the secretary’s eye stopped me. Without seeming to wander from my face, its pupil had suddenly dilated till it appeared to embrace my whole person with its scope.

‘I don’t know,’ he finally remarked, a slight frown, testifying to the fact that he was not altogether pleased with the turn affairs were taking. ‘Perhaps it would be best. The ladies must not be left alone—’

‘Say no more; I will go.’ And, sitting down, I despatched a hurried message to Mr Veeley, after which, and the few other preparations necessary, I accompanied the secretary to the street.

‘Now,’ said I, ‘tell me all you know of this frightful affair.’

‘All I know? A few words will do that. I left him last night sitting as usual at his library table, and found him this morning, seated in the same place, almost in the same position, but with a bullet-hole in his head as large as the end of my little finger.’

‘Dead?’

‘Stone-dead.’

‘Horrible!’ I exclaimed. Then, after a moment, ‘Could it have been a suicide?’

‘No. The pistol with which the deed was committed is not to be found.’

‘But if it was a murder, there must have been some motive. Mr Leavenworth was too benevolent a man to have enemies, and if robbery was intended—’

‘There was no robbery. There is nothing missing,’ he again interrupted. ‘The whole affair is a mystery.’

‘A mystery?’

‘An utter mystery.’

Turning, I looked at my informant curiously. The inmate of a house in which a mysterious murder had occurred was rather an interesting object. But the good-featured and yet totally unimpressive countenance of the man beside me offered but little basis for even the wildest imagination to work upon, and, glancing almost immediately away, I asked:

‘Are the ladies very much overcome?’

He took at least a half-dozen steps before replying.

‘It would be unnatural if they were not.’ And whether it was the expression of his face at the time, or the nature of the reply itself, I felt that in speaking of these ladies to this uninteresting, self-possessed secretary of the late Mr Leavenworth, I was somehow treading upon dangerous ground. As I had heard they were very accomplished women, I was not altogether pleased at this discovery. It was, therefore, with a certain consciousness of relief I saw a Fifth Avenue stage approach.

‘We will defer our conversation,’ said I. ‘Here’s the stage.’

But, once seated within it, we soon discovered that all intercourse upon such a subject was impossible. Employing the time, therefore, in running over in my mind what I knew of Mr Leavenworth, I found that my knowledge was limited to the bare fact of his being a retired merchant of great wealth and fine social position who, in default of possessing children of his own, had taken into his home two nieces, one of whom had already been declared his heiress. To be sure, I had heard Mr Veeley speak of his eccentricities, giving as an instance this very fact of his making a will in favour of one niece to the utter exclusion of the other; but of his habits of life and connection with the world at large, I knew little or nothing.

There was a great crowd in front of the house when we arrived there, and I had barely time to observe that it was a corner dwelling of unusual depth when I was seized by the throng and carried quite to the foot of the broad stone steps. Extricating myself, though with some difficulty, owing to the importunities of a boot-black and butcher-boy, who seemed to think that by clinging to my arms they might succeed in smuggling themselves into the house, I mounted the steps and, finding the secretary, by some unaccountable good fortune, close to my side, hurriedly rang the bell. Immediately the door opened, and a face I recognised as that of one of our city detectives appeared in the gap.

‘Mr Gryce!’ I exclaimed.

‘The same,’ he replied. ‘Come in, Mr Raymond.’ And drawing us quietly into the house, he shut the door with a grim smile on the disappointed crowd without. ‘I trust you are not surprised to see me here,’ said he, holding out his hand, with a side glance at my companion.

‘No,’ I returned. Then, with a vague idea that I ought to introduce the young man at my side, continued: ‘This is Mr—, Mr—, excuse me, but I do not know your name,’ I said inquiringly to my companion. ‘The private secretary of the late Mr Leavenworth,’ I hastened to add.

‘Oh,’ he returned, ‘the secretary! The coroner has been asking for you, sir.’

‘The coroner is here, then?’

‘Yes; the jury have just gone upstairs to view the body; would you like to follow them?’

‘No, it is not necessary. I have merely come in the hope of being of some assistance to the young ladies. Mr Veeley is away.’

‘And you thought the opportunity too good to be lost,’ he went on; ‘just so. Still, now that you are here, and as the case promises to be a marked one, I should think that, as a rising young lawyer, you would wish to make yourself acquainted with it in all its details. But follow your own judgment.’

I made an effort and overcame my repugnance. ‘I will go,’ said I.

‘Very well, then, follow me.’

But just as I set foot on the stairs I heard the jury descending, so, drawing back with Mr Gryce into a recess between the reception room and the parlour, I had time to remark:

‘The young man says it could not have been the work of a burglar.’

‘Indeed!’ fixing his eye on a door-knob nearby.

‘That nothing has been found missing—’

‘And that the fastenings to the house were all found secure this morning; just so.’

‘He did not tell me that. In that case’—and I shuddered—‘the murderer must have been in the house all night.’

Mr Gryce smiled darkly at the door-knob.

‘It has a dreadful look!’ I exclaimed.

Mr Gryce immediately frowned at the door-knob.

And here let me say that Mr Gryce, the detective, was not the thin, wiry individual with the piercing eye you are doubtless expecting to see. On the contrary, Mr Gryce was a portly, comfortable personage with an eye that never pierced, that did not even rest on you. If it rested anywhere, it was always on some insignificant object in the vicinity, some vase, inkstand, book, or button. These things he would seem to take into his confidence, make the repositories of his conclusions; but as for you—you might as well be the steeple on Trinity Church, for all connection you ever appeared to have with him or his thoughts. At present, then, Mr Gryce was, as I have already suggested, on intimate terms with the door-knob.

‘A dreadful look,’ I repeated.

His eye shifted to the button on my sleeve.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘the coast is clear at last.’

Leading the way, he mounted the stairs, but stopped on the upper landing. ‘Mr Raymond,’ said he, ‘I am not in the habit of talking much about the secrets of my profession, but in this case everything depends upon getting the right clue at the start. We have no common villainy to deal with here; genius has been at work. Now sometimes an absolutely uninitiated mind will intuitively catch at something which the most highly trained intellect will miss. If such a thing should occur, remember that I am your man. Don’t go round talking, but come to me. For this is going to be a great case, mind you, a great case. Now, come on.’