Mary Roberts Rinehart - The Greatest Works of Mary Roberts Rinehart

Mary Roberts Rinehart

Murder Mysteries, Thrillers, Travel Books, Essays & Autobiography: The Circular Staircase, The Bat…

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2018 OK Publishing

ISBN 978-80-272-4309-9

Miss Cornelia Van Gorder Series Miss Cornelia Van Gorder Series Table of Contents

The Circular Staircase The Circular Staircase Table of Contents

The Bat The Bat Table of Contents

Tish Carberry Series Tish Carberry Series Table of Contents

The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry Table of Contents

Tish: The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions Tish: The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions Table of Contents

More Tish More Tish Table of Contents

Novels Novels Table of Contents

The Man in Lower Ten The Man in Lower Ten Table of Contents

The Window at the White Cat

When a Man Marries

Where There's a Will

The Case of Jennie Brice

The Street of Seven Stars

The After House

K.

Bab, a Sub-Deb

Long Live the King!

The Amazing Interlude

The Breaking Point

Dangerous Days

A Poor Wise Man

Short Stories

Love Stories

Affinities and Other Stories

Locked Doors

Sight Unseen

The Confession

The Truce of God

The Valley of Oblivion

Travelogues

Through Glacier Park in 1915

Tenting Tonight

Essays

Oh Well You Know How Women Are – Isn't That Just Like a Man!

Why I Believe in Scouting for Girls

Kings, Queens, and Pawns – Autobiography

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

I Take a Country House

A Link Cuff-Button

Mr. John Bailey Appears

Where is Halsey?

Gertrude's Engagement

In the East Corridor

A Sprained Ankle

The Other Half of the Line

Just Like a Girl

The Traders' Bank

Halsey Makes a Capture

One Mystery for Another

Louise

An Egg-Nog and a Telegram

Liddy Gives the Alarm

In the Early Morning

A Hint of Scandal

A Hole in the Wall

Concerning Thomas

Doctor Walker's Warning

Fourteen Elm Street

A Ladder Out of Place

While the Stables Burned

Flinders

A Visit from Louise

Halsey's Disappearance

Who is Nina Carrington?

A Tramp and the Toothache

A Scrap of Paper

When Churchyards Yawn

Between Two Fireplaces

Anne Watson's Story

At the Foot of the Stairs

The Odds and Ends

Table of Contents

This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous. For twenty years I had been perfectly comfortable; for twenty years I had had the window-boxes filled in the spring, the carpets lifted, the awnings put up and the furniture covered with brown linen; for as many summers I had said good-by to my friends, and, after watching their perspiring hegira, had settled down to a delicious quiet in town, where the mail comes three times a day, and the water supply does not depend on a tank on the roof.

And then—the madness seized me. When I look back over the months I spent at Sunnyside, I wonder that I survived at all. As it is, I show the wear and tear of my harrowing experiences. I have turned very gray—Liddy reminded me of it, only yesterday, by saying that a little bluing in the rinse-water would make my hair silvery, instead of a yellowish white. I hate to be reminded of unpleasant things and I snapped her off.

"No," I said sharply, "I'm not going to use bluing at my time of life, or starch, either."

Liddy's nerves are gone, she says, since that awful summer, but she has enough left, goodness knows! And when she begins to go around with a lump in her throat, all I have to do is to threaten to return to Sunnyside, and she is frightened into a semblance of cheerfulness,—from which you may judge that the summer there was anything but a success.

The newspaper accounts have been so garbled and incomplete—one of them mentioned me but once, and then only as the tenant at the time the thing happened—that I feel it my due to tell what I know. Mr. Jamieson, the detective, said himself he could never have done without me, although he gave me little enough credit, in print.

I shall have to go back several years—thirteen, to be exact—to start my story. At that time my brother died, leaving me his two children. Halsey was eleven then, and Gertrude was seven. All the responsibilities of maternity were thrust upon me suddenly; to perfect the profession of motherhood requires precisely as many years as the child has lived, like the man who started to carry the calf and ended by walking along with the bull on his shoulders. However, I did the best I could. When Gertrude got past the hair-ribbon age, and Halsey asked for a scarf-pin and put on long trousers—and a wonderful help that was to the darning!—I sent them away to good schools. After that, my responsibility was chiefly postal, with three months every summer in which to replenish their wardrobes, look over their lists of acquaintances, and generally to take my foster-motherhood out of its nine months' retirement in camphor.

I missed the summers with them when, somewhat later, at boarding-school and college, the children spent much of their vacations with friends. Gradually I found that my name signed to a check was even more welcome than when signed to a letter, though I wrote them at stated intervals. But when Halsey had finished his electrical course and Gertrude her boarding-school, and both came home to stay, things were suddenly changed. The winter Gertrude came out was nothing but a succession of sitting up late at night to bring her home from things, taking her to the dressmakers between naps the next day, and discouraging ineligible youths with either more money than brains, or more brains than money. Also, I acquired a great many things: to say lingerie for under-garments, "frocks" and "gowns" instead of dresses, and that beardless sophomores are not college boys, but college men. Halsey required less personal supervision, and as they both got their mother's fortune that winter, my responsibility became purely moral. Halsey bought a car, of course, and I learned how to tie over my bonnet a gray baize veil, and, after a time, never to stop to look at the dogs one has run down. People are apt to be so unpleasant about their dogs.

The additions to my education made me a properly equipped maiden aunt, and by spring I was quite tractable. So when Halsey suggested camping in the Adirondacks and Gertrude wanted Bar Harbor, we compromised on a good country house with links near, within motor distance of town and telephone distance of the doctor. That was how we went to Sunnyside.