The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Read online

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  The Anna Katherine Green Megapack is copyright © 2013 by Wildside Press LLC.

  * * * *

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  Over the last year, our “Megapack” series of ebook anthologies has proved to be one of our most popular endeavors. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

  The Megapacks (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt, Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Bonner Menking, Colin Azariah-Kribbs, A.E. Warren, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!).

  A NOTE FOR KINDLE READERS

  The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your reader.)

  RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

  Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

  Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

  TYPOS

  Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

  If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.

  —John Betancourt

  Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  THE MEGAPACK SERIES

  MYSTERY

  The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

  The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack

  The Detective Megapack

  The Father Brown Megapack

  The Jacques Futrelle Megapack

  The Mystery Megapack

  The Penny Parker Megapack

  The Pulp Fiction Megapack

  The Victorian Mystery Megapack

  The Wilkie Collins Megapack

  GENERAL INTEREST

  The Adventure Megapack

  The Baseball Megapack

  The Christmas Megapack

  The Second Christmas Megapack

  The Classic Humor Megapack

  The Military Megapack

  SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, HORROR

  The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

  The Edward Bellamy Megapack

  The E.F. Benson Megapack

  The Second E.F. Benson Megapack

  The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

  The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack

  The Philip K. Dick Megapack

  The Ghost Story Megapack

  The Second Ghost Story Megapack

  The Third Ghost Story Megapack

  The Horror Megapack

  The M.R. James Megapack

  The Murray Leinster Megapack

  The Second Murray Leinster Megapack

  The Macabre Megapack

  The Second Macabre Megapack

  The Martian Megapack

  The Mummy Megapack

  The Andre Norton Megapack

  The Pinocchio Megapack

  The H. Beam Piper Megapack

  The Pulp Fiction Megapack

  The Randall Garrett Megapack

  The Second Randall Garrett Megapack

  The First Science Fiction Megapack

  The Second Science Fiction Megapack

  The Third Science Fiction Megapack

  The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

  The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack

  The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack

  The Steampunk Megapack

  The Vampire Megapack

  The Werewolf Megapack

  The Wizard of Oz Megapack

  WESTERNS

  The B.M. Bower Megapack

  The Max Brand Megapack

  The Buffalo Bill Megapack

  The Cowboy Megapack

  The Zane Grey Megapack

  The Western Megapack

  The Second Western Megapack

  The Wizard of Oz Megapack

  YOUNG ADULT

  The Boys’ Adventure Megapack

  The Dan Carter, Cub Scout Megapack

  The G.A. Henty Megapack

  The Rover Boys Megapack

  The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack

  The Tom Swift Megapack

  AUTHOR MEGAPACKS

  The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

  The Edward Bellamy Megapack

  The B.M. Bower Megapack

  The E.F. Benson Megapack

  The Second E.F. Benson Megapack

  The Max Brand Megapack

  The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

  The Wilkie Collins Megapack

  The Philip K. Dick Megapack

  The Jacques Futrelle Megapack

  The Randall Garrett Megapack

  The Zane Grey Megapack

  The Second Randall Garrett Megapack

  The M.R. James Megapack

  The Murray Leinster Megapack

  The Second Murray Leinster Megapack

  The Andre Norton Megapack

  The H. Beam Piper Megapack

  The Rafael Sabatini Megapack

  THAT AFFAIR NEXT DOOR [Part 1]

  THE FIRST EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF AMELIA BUTTERWORTH

  BOOK I: MISS BUTTERWORTH’S WINDOW

  CHAPTER I

  A DISCOVERY

  I am not an inquisitive woman, but when, in the middle of a certain warm night in September, I heard a carriage draw up at the adjoining house and stop, I could not resist the temptation of leaving my bed and taking a peep through the curtains of my window.

  First: because the house was empty, or supposed to be so, the family still being, as I had every reason to believe, in Europe; and secondly: because, not being inquisitive, I often miss in my lonely and single life much that it would be both interesting and profitable for me to know.

  Luckily I made no such mistake this evening. I rose and looked out, and though I was far from realizing it at the time, took, by so doing, my first step in a course of inquiry which has ended—

  But it is too soon to speak of the end. Rather let me tell you what I saw when I parted the curtains of my window in Gramercy Park, on the night of September 17, 1895.

  Not much at first glance, only a common hack drawn up at the neighboring curb-stone. The lamp which is supposed to light our part of the block is some rods away on the opposite side of the street, so that I obtained but a shadowy glimpse of a young man and woman standing below me on the pavement. I could see, however, that the woman—and not the man—was putting money into the driver’s hand. The next moment they were on the stoop of this long-closed house, and the coach rolled off.

  It was dark, as I have said, and I did not recognize the young people—at least their figures were not familiar to me; but when, in another instant, I heard the click of a night-key, and saw them, after a rather tedious fumbling at the lock, disappear from the stoop, I took it for granted that the gentleman was Mr. Van Burnam’s eldest son Franklin, and the lady some relative of the family; though why this, its most punctilious member, should bring a guest at so late an hour into a house devoid of everything necess
ary to make the least exacting visitor comfortable, was a mystery that I retired to bed to meditate upon.

  I did not succeed in solving it, however, and after some ten minutes had elapsed, I was settling myself again to sleep when I was re-aroused by a fresh sound from the quarter mentioned. The door I had so lately heard shut, opened again, and though I had to rush for it, I succeeded in getting to my window in time to catch a glimpse of the departing figure of the young man hurrying away towards Broadway. The young woman was not with him, and as I realized that he had left her behind him in the great, empty house, without apparent light and certainly without any companion, I began to question if this was like Franklin Van Burnam. Was it not more in keeping with the recklessness of his more easy-natured and less reliable brother, Howard, who, some two or three years back, had married a young wife of no very satisfactory antecedents, and who, as I had heard, had been ostracized by the family in consequence?

  Whichever of the two it was, he had certainly shown but little consideration for his companion, and thus thinking, I fell off to sleep just as the clock struck the half hour after midnight.

  Next morning as soon as modesty would permit me to approach the window, I surveyed the neighboring house minutely. Not a blind was open, nor a shutter displaced. As I am an early riser, this did not disturb me at the time, but when after breakfast I looked again and still failed to detect any evidences of life in the great barren front beside me, I began to feel uneasy. But I did nothing till noon, when going into my rear garden and observing that the back windows of the Van Burnam house were as closely shuttered as the front, I became so anxious that I stopped the next policeman I saw going by, and telling him my suspicions, urged him to ring the bell.

  No answer followed the summons.

  “There is no one here,” said he.

  “Ring again!” I begged.

  And he rang again but with no better result.

  “Don’t you see that the house is shut up?” he grumbled. “We have had orders to watch the place, but none to take the watch off.”

  “There is a young woman inside,” I insisted. “The more I think over last night’s occurrence, the more I am convinced that the matter should be looked into.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and was moving away when we both observed a common-looking woman standing in front looking at us. She had a bundle in her hand, and her face, unnaturally ruddy though it was, had a scared look which was all the more remarkable from the fact that it was one of those wooden-like countenances which under ordinary circumstances are capable of but little expression. She was not a stranger to me; that is, I had seen her before in or about the house in which we were at that moment so interested; and not stopping to put any curb on my excitement, I rushed down to the pavement and accosted her.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “Do you work for the Van Burnams, and do you know who the lady was who came here last night?”

  The poor woman, either startled by my sudden address or by my manner which may have been a little sharp, gave a quick bound backward, and was only deterred by the near presence of the policeman from attempting flight. As it was, she stood her ground, though the fiery flush, which made her face so noticeable, deepened till her cheeks and brow were scarlet.

  “I am the scrub-woman,” she protested. “I have come to open the windows and air the house,”—ignoring my last question.

  “Is the family coming home?” the policeman asked.

  “I don’t know; I think so,” was her weak reply.

  “Have you the keys?” I now demanded, seeing her fumbling in her pocket.

  She did not answer; a sly look displaced the anxious one she had hitherto displayed, and she turned away.

  “I don’t see what business it is of the neighbors,” she muttered, throwing me a dissatisfied scowl over her shoulder.

  “If you’ve got the keys, we will go in and see that things are all right,” said the policeman, stopping her with a light touch.

  She trembled; I saw that she trembled, and naturally became excited. Something was wrong in the Van Burnam mansion, and I was going to be present at its discovery. But her next words cut my hopes short.

  “I have no objection to your going in,” she said to the policeman, “but I will not give up my keys to her. What right has she in our house any way.” And I thought I heard her murmur something about a meddlesome old maid.

  The look which I received from the policeman convinced me that my ears had not played me false.

  “The lady’s right,” he declared; and pushing by me quite disrespectfully, he led the way to the basement door, into which he and the so-called cleaner presently disappeared.

  I waited in front. I felt it to be my duty to do so. The various passers-by stopped an instant to stare at me before proceeding on their way, but I did not flinch from my post. Not till I had heard that the young woman whom I had seen enter these doors at midnight was well, and that her delay in opening the windows was entirely due to fashionable laziness, would I feel justified in returning to my own home and its affairs. But it took patience and some courage to remain there. Several minutes elapsed before I perceived the shutters in the third story open, and a still longer time before a window on the second floor flew up and the policeman looked out, only to meet my inquiring gaze and rapidly disappear again.

  Meantime three or four persons had stopped on the walk near me, the nucleus of a crowd which would not be long in collecting, and I was beginning to feel I was paying dearly for my virtuous resolution, when the front door burst violently open and we caught sight of the trembling form and shocked face of the scrub-woman.

  “She’s dead!” she cried, “she’s dead! Murder!” and would have said more had not the policeman pulled her back, with a growl which sounded very much like a suppressed oath.

  He would have shut the door upon me had I not been quicker than lightning. As it was, I got in before it slammed, and happily too; for just at that moment the house-cleaner, who had grown paler every instant, fell in a heap in the entry, and the policeman, who was not the man I would want about me in any trouble, seemed somewhat embarrassed by this new emergency, and let me lift the poor thing up and drag her farther into the hall.

  She had fainted, and should have had something done for her, but anxious though I always am to be of help where help is needed, I had no sooner got within range of the parlor door with my burden, than I beheld a sight so terrifying that I involuntarily let the poor woman slip from my arms to the floor.

  In the darkness of a dim corner (for the room had no light save that which came through the doorway where I stood) lay the form of a woman under a fallen piece of furniture. Her skirts and distended arms alone were visible; but no one who saw the rigid outlines of her limbs could doubt for a moment that she was dead.

  At a sight so dreadful, and, in spite of all my apprehensions, so unexpected, I felt a sensation of sickness which in another moment might have ended in my fainting also, if I had not realized that it would never do for me to lose my wits in the presence of a man who had none too many of his own. So I shook off my momentary weakness, and turning to the policeman, who was hesitating between the unconscious figure of the woman outside the door and the dead form of the one within I cried sharply:

  “Come, man, to business! The woman inside there is dead, but this one is living. Fetch me a pitcher of water from below if you can, and then go for whatever assistance you need. I’ll wait here and bring this woman to. She is a strong one, and it won’t take long.”

  “You’ll stay here alone with that—” he began.

  But I stopped him with a look of disdain.

  “Of course I will stay here; why not? Is there anything in the dead to be afraid of? Save me from the living, and I undertake to save myself from the dead.”

  But his face had grown very suspicious.

  “You go for the water,” he cried. “And see here! Just call out for someone to telephone to Police Headquarters for the Coroner and a detective. I
don’t quit this room till one or the other of them comes.”

  Smiling at a caution so very ill-timed, but abiding by my invariable rule of never arguing with a man unless I see some way of getting the better of him, I did what he bade me, though I hated dreadfully to leave the spot and its woful mystery, even for so short a time as was required.

  “Run up to the second story,” he called out, as I passed by the prostrate figure of the cleaner. “Tell them what you want from the window, or we will have the whole street in here.”

  So I ran upstairs—I had always wished to visit this house, but had never been encouraged to do so by the Misses Van Burnam—and making my way into the front room, the door of which stood wide open, I rushed to the window and hailed the crowd, which by this time extended far out beyond the curb-stone.

  “An officer!” I called out, “a police officer! An accident has occurred and the man in charge here wants the Coroner and a detective from Police Headquarters.”

  “Who’s hurt?” “Is it a man?” “Is it a woman?” shouted up one or two; and “Let us in!” shouted others; but the sight of a boy rushing off to meet an advancing policeman satisfied me that help would soon be forthcoming, so I drew in my head and looked about me for the next necessity—water.

  I was in a lady’s bed-chamber, probably that of the eldest Miss Van Burnam; but it was a bed-chamber which had not been occupied for some months, and naturally it lacked the very articles which would have been of assistance to me in the present emergency. No eau de Cologne on the bureau, no camphor on the mantel-shelf. But there was water in the pipes (something I had hardly hoped for), and a mug on the wash-stand; so I filled the mug and ran with it to the door, stumbling, as I did so, over some small object which I presently perceived to be a little round pin-cushion. Picking it up, for I hate anything like disorder, I placed it on a table near by, and continued on my way.

  The woman was still lying at the foot of the stairs. I dashed the water in her face and she immediately came to.

  Sitting up, she was about to open her lips when she checked herself; a fact which struck me as odd, though I did not allow my surprise to become apparent.

  Meantime I stole a glance into the parlor. The officer was standing where I had left him, looking down on the prostrate figure before him.