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This ingeniously constructed mystery is one of American author Anna Katharine Green's most acclaimed tales. A distraught woman solicits the assistance of a private investigator, telling him that her husband has gone missing and has been reported as dead. But she also received a note from him — two days after he supposedly met his maker. Can this vexing case be cracked?
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A Difficult Problem
Anna Katharine Green
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"A LADY to see you, sir."
I looked up and was at once impressed by the grace and beauty of the person thus introduced to me.
"Is there anything I can do to serve you?" I asked, rising.
She cast me a child-like look full of trust and candor as she seated herself in the chair I pointed out to her.
"I believe so, I hope so," she earnestly assured me. "I--I am in great trouble. I have just lost my husband--but it is not that. It is the slip of paper I found on my dresser, and which--which----"
She was trembling violently and her words were fast becoming incoherent. I calmed her and asked her to relate her story just as it had happened; and after a few minutes of silent struggle she succeeded in collecting herself sufficiently to respond with some degree of connection and self-possession.
"I have been married six months. My name is Lucy Holmes. For the last few weeks my husband and myself have been living in an apartment house on Fifty-ninth Street, and as we had not a care in the world, we were very happy till Mr. Holmes was called away on business to Philadelphia. This was two weeks ago. Five days later I received an affectionate letter from him, in which he promised to come back the next day; and the news so delighted me that I accepted an invitation to the theater from some intimate friends of ours. The next morning I naturally felt fatigued and rose late; but I was very cheerful, for I expected my husband at noon. And now comes the perplexing mystery. In the course of dressing myself I stepped to my bureau, and seeing a small newspaper-slip attached to the cushion by a pin, I drew it off and read it. It was a death notice, and my hair rose and my limbs failed me as I took in its fatal and incredible words.
"'Died this day at the Colonnade, James Forsythe De Witt Holmes. New York papers please copy.'
"James Forsythe De Witt Holmes was my husband, and his last letter, which was at that very moment lying beside the cushion, had been dated from the Colonnade. Was I dreaming or under the spell of some frightful hallucination which led me to misread the name on the slip of paper before me? I could not determine. My head, throat and chest seemed bound about with iron, so that I could neither speaknor breathe with freedom, and, suffering thus, I stood staring at this demoniacal bit of paper which in an instant had brought the shadow of death upon my happy life. Nor was I at all relieved when a little later I flew with the notice into a neighbor's apartment, and praying her to read it for me, found that my eyes had not deceived me and that the name was indeed my husband's and the notice one of death.
"Not from my own mind but from hers came the first suggestion of comfort.
"'It cannot be your husband who is meant,' said she; 'but some one of the same name. Your husband wrote to you yesterday, and this person must have been dead at least two days for the printed notice of his decease to have reached New York. Some one has remarked the striking similarity of names, and wishing to startle you, cut the slip out and pinned it on your cushion.'
"I certainly knew of no one inconsiderate enough to do this, but the explanation was so plausible, I at once embraced it and sobbed aloud in my relief. But in the midst of my rejoicing I heard the bell ring in my apartment, and running thither, encountered a telegraph boy holding in his outstretched hand the yellow envelope which so often bespeaks death or disaster. The sight took my breath away. Summoning my maid, whom I saw hastening towards me from an inner room, I begged her to open the telegram for me. Sir, I saw in her face, before she had read the first line, a confirmation of my very worst fears. My husband was----"
The young widow, choked with her emotions, paused, recovered herself for the second time, and then went on.
"I had better show you the telegram." Taking it from her pocket-book, she held it towards me. I read it at a glance. It was short, simple and direct.
"Come at once. Your husband found dead in his room this morning. Doctors say heart disease. Please telegraph."
"You see it says this morning," she explained, placing her delicate finger on the word she so eagerly quoted. "That means a week ago Wednesday, the same day on which the printed slip recording his death was found on my cushion. Do you not see something very strange in this?"
I did; but, before I ventured to express myself on this subject, I desired her to tell me what she had learned in her visit to Philadelphia.
Her answer was simple and straightforward.
"But little more than you find in this telegram. He died in his room. He was found lying on the floor near the bell button, which he had evidently risen to touch. One hand was clenched on his chest, but his face wore a peaceful look as if death had come too suddenly to cause him much suffering. His bed was undisturbed; he had died before retiring, possibly in the act of packing his trunk, for it was found nearly ready for the expressman. Indeed, there was every evidence of his intention to leave on an early morning train. He had even desired to be awakened at six o'clock; and it was his failure to respond to the summons of the bell-boy, which led to so early a discovery of his death. He had never complained of any distress in breathing, and we had always considered him a perfectly healthy man; but there was no reason for assigning any other cause than heart-failure to his sudden death, and so the burial certificate was made out to that effect, and I was allowed to bring him home and bury him in our vault at Wood-lawn. But--" and here her earnestness dried up the tears which had been flowing freely during this recital of her husband's lonely death and sad burial,--"do you not think an investigation should be made into a death preceded by a false obituary notice? For I found when I was in Philadelphia that no paragraph such as I had found pinned to my cushion had been inserted in any paper there, nor had any other man of the same name ever registered at the Colonnade, much less died there."
"Have you this notice with you?" I asked.
She immediately produced it, and while I was glancing it over remarked:
