Hand and Ring

Anna Katharine Green

Description

Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) was an American novelist and poet. Among the first writers of detective fiction in America, she is considered to be the “mother” of the genre for her legally-accurate and well-thought-out plots. Her novel “Hand and Ring” centres around the curious case of Widow Clemmens who is murdered in her parlour while the town's lawyers are congregating outside the courthouse. During the investigation, two possible culprits are identified, but whether or not either of them is really guilty and the role of the enigmatic Miss Imogene Dare are the subject of a rigorous courtroom debate. The fourth instalment of Green's detective series featuring Mr. Gryce, “Hand and Ring” is a riveting tale of mystery and justice not to be missed by fans of classic detective fiction. Other notable works by this author include: “The Leavenworth Case” (1878), “A Strange Disappearance” (1880), and “The Circular Study” (1900). Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this vintage detective novel now in a brand new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 16 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781473364851
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

HAND AND RING
By
ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

First published in 1883



Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Classics
This edition is published by Read & Co. Classics, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
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Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


"For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ."


Contents
Anna Kat harine Green
BOOK I
THE GENTLEMAN FROM TOLEDO
I A STARTLING COINCIDENCE
II AN APPE AL TO HEAVEN
III THE UNFIN ISHED LETTER
IV IMOGENE
V HORACE BYRD
VI THE SKILL OF AN ARTIST
VII MISS FIRMAN
VIII THE T HICK-SET MAN
IX CLOSE CALCULATIONS
X TH E FINAL TEST
XI DECISION
BOOK II
THE WEAVING OF A WEB
XI I THE SPIDER
XIII THE FLY
XIV A LAST ATTEMPT
XV THE END OF A T ORTUOUS PATH
XVI STORM
XVI I A SURPRISE
XVIII A BRACE O F DETECTIVES
X IX MR FERRIS
XX A CRISIS
XXI HEART 'S MARTYRDOM
XXII C RAIK MANSELL
XXI II MR ORCUTT
XXIV A TRUE BILL
XXV AMONG TELESCOPE S AND CHARTS
XXVI "HE SHA LL HEAR ME!"
BOOK III
THE SCALES OF JUSTICE
XXVII THE GREAT TRIAL
XXVIII THE CHIEF WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
XXIX THE OPENING OF THE DEFENCE
XXX BYRD USES HIS PENCIL AGAIN
XXXI THE CHIEF WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE
X XXII HICKORY
XXXIII A LA TE DISCOVERY
XXXIV WHAT WAS HID BEHIND IM OGENE'S VEIL
XXXV PRO AND CON
XXXVI A MISTA KE RECTIFIED
XXXVII UNDER TH E GREAT TREE
XXXVIII UNEX PECTED WORDS
XX XIX MR GRYCE
XL I N THE PRISON
XLI A L INK SUPPLIED
XLII C ONSULTATIONS
XLII I MRS FIRMAN
XLIV THE WI DOW CLEMMENS
XLV MR GRYCE S AYS GOOD-BYE


Anna Katharine Green
Anna Katharine Green was born in Brooklyn, New York, USA in 1846. She aspired to be a writer from a young age, and corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson during her late teens. When her poetry failed to gain recognition, Green produced her first and best-known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878). Praised by Wilkie Collins, the novel was year's bestseller, establishing Green's reputation.
Green went on to publish around forty books, including A Strange Disappearance (1880), Hand and Ring (1883), The Mill Mystery (1886), Behind Closed Doors (1888), Forsaken Inn (1890), Marked "Personal" (1893), Miss Hurd: An Enigma (1894), The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock (1895), The Affair Next Door (1897), Lost Man's Lane (1898), Agatha Webb (1899), The Circular Study (1900), The Filigree Ball (1903), The House in the Mist (1905), The Millionaire Baby (1905), The Woman in the Alcove (1906), The Sword of Damocles (1909), The House of the Whispering Pines (1910), Initials Only (1911), Dark Hollow (1914), The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow (1917), The Step on the S tair (1923).
Green wrote at a time when fiction, and especially crime fiction, was dominated by men. However, she is now credited with shaping detective fiction into its classic form, and developing the trope of the recurring detective. Her main character was detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force. In three novels, he is assisted by the spinster Amelia Butterworth – the prototype for Miss Marple, Miss Silver and other literary creations. Green also invented the 'girl detective' with the character of Violet Strange, a debutante with a secret life as a sleuth. She died in 1935 in Buffalo, New Yo rk, aged 88.



HAND AND RING


BOOK I
THE GENTLEMAN FROM TOLEDO


I
A STARTLING COINCIDENCE
By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.
—Macbeth
THE town clock of Sibley had just struck twelve. Court had adjourned, and Judge Evans, with one or two of the leading lawyers of the county, stood in the door-way of the court-house discussing in a friendly way the eccentricities of criminals as developed in the case then before the court. Mr. Lord had just ventured the assertion that crime as a fine art was happily confined to France; to which District Attorney Ferris had replied:
"And why? Because atheism has not yet acquired such a hold upon our upper classes that gentlemen think it possible to meddle with such matters. It is only when a student, a doctor, a lawyer, determines to put aside from his path the secret stumbling-block to his desires or his ambition that the true intellectual crime is developed. That brute whom you see slouching along over the way is the type of the average criminal of the day."
And he indicated with a nod a sturdy, ill-favored man, who, with pack on his back, was just emerging from a grassy lane that opened out from the street directly opposite the court-house.
"Such men are often seen in the dock," remarked Mr. Orcutt, of more than local reputation as a criminal lawyer. "And often escape the penalty of their crimes," he added, watching, with a curious glance, the lowering brow and furtive look of the man who, upon perceiving the attention he had attracted, increased his pace till he almost broke into a run.
"Looks as if he had been up to mischief," observed Judge Evans.
"Rather as if he had heard the sentence which was passed upon the last tramp who paid his respects to this town," correct ed Mr. Lord.
"Revenons à nos moutons," resumed the District Attorney. "Crime, as an investment, does not pay in this country. The regular burglar leads a dog's life of it; and when you come to the murderer, how few escape suspicion if they do the gallows. I do not know of a case where a murder for money has been really successful in t his region."
"Then you must have some pretty cute detective work going on here," remarked a young man who had not be fore spoken.
"No, no—nothing to brag of. But the brutes are so clumsy—that is the word, clumsy. They don't know how to cover up th eir tracks."
"The smart ones don't make tracks," interposed a rough voice near them, and a large, red-haired, slightly hump-backed man, who, from the looks of those about, was evidently a stranger in the place, shuffled forward from the pillar against which he had been leaning, and took up the thread of c onversation.
"I tell you," he continued, in a gruff tone somewhat out of keeping with the studied abstraction of his keen, gray eye, "that half the criminals are caught because they do make tracks and then resort to such extraordinary means to cover them up. The true secret of success in this line lies in striking your blow with a weapon picked up on the spot, and in choosing for the scene of your tragedy a thoroughfare where, in the natural course of events, other men will come and go and unconsciously tread out your traces, provided you have made any. This dissipates suspicion, or starts it in so many directions that justice is at once confused, if not ultimately baffled. Look at that house yonder," the stranger pursued, pointing to a plain dwelling on the opposite corner. "While we have been standing here, several persons of one kind or another, and among them a pretty rough-looking tramp, have gone into the side gate and so around to the kitchen door and back. I don't know who lives there, but say it is a solitary old woman above keeping help, and that an hour from now some one, not finding her in the house, searches through the garden and comes upon her lying dead behind the wood-pile, struck down by her own axe. On whom are you going to lay your hand in suspicion? On the stranger, of course—the rough-looking tramp that everybody thinks is ready for bloodshed at the least provocation. But suspicion is not conviction, and I would dare wager that no court, in face of a persistent denial on his part that he even saw the old woman when he went to her door, would bring in a verdict of murder against him, even though silver from her private drawer were found concealed upon his person. The chance that he spoke the truth, and that she was not in the house when he entered, and that his crime had been merely one of burglary or theft, would be enough to save him from t he hangman."
"That is true," assented Mr. Lord, "unless all the other persons who had been seen to go into the yard were not only reputable men, but were willing to testify to having seen the woman alive up to the time he invaded he r premises."
But the hump-backed stranger had already l ounged away.
"What do you think about this, Mr. Byrd?" inquired the District Attorney, turning to the young man before alluded to. "You are an expert in these matters, or o ught to be. What would you give for the tramp's chances if the detectives took h im in hand?"
"I, sir?" was the response. "I am so comparatively young and inexperienced in such affairs, that I scarcely dare presume to express an opinion. But I have heard it said by Mr. Gryce, who you know stands foremost among the detectives of New York, that the only case of murder in which he utterly failed to get any clue to work upon, was that of a Jew who was knocked down in his own shop in broad daylight. But this will not appear so stra