SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE SECOND BULLET

 "The Second Bullet" by Anna Katharine Green  (first published in the author's collection The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange, 1915)

Violet Strange is a young socialite.  Most of her friends do not realize that she is a crackerjack detective for the firm of ------- & -------.   Her unnamed employer has a high regard for her genius and kis trying to convince her of taking an "impossible" case of proving a man's suicide was murder; if she is able to that, the insurance company will have to make a hefty payment, resulting in a hefty payment for herself.  For unstated reasons, Violet badly needs money and relunctantly agrees to take on the case.

The facts are simple.  George Hammond had argued with his wife, saying that she was not giving their baby enough attention because the infant was constantly crying.  His wife stormed out and spent the night in a spare bedroom on the other side of their townhouse; Hammond locked the door to his room so his wife could not return.  The infant was in his or her (the child's sex was never revealed) crib locked in the room with Hammond.  Hammond had recently suffered a huge financial loss which may have accounted for his attitude.  Hammond's neighbors in the same building, the Saunders, had given up all thoughts of sleeping that night because of the incessant crying of the baby.  They were standing by their window smoking when they heard a sharp, and somewhat unusual, pistol shot.  Unusual, because it sounded as if there had been two shots almost simultaneously.  The time was a little after two in the  morning.

They alerted a local policeman passing by and the three of them went to the Hammond apartment.  After consistent knocking, Mrs. Hammond opened the door, clearly frightened.  She had herd the shot but was afraid to enter the bedroom.  The door, they discovered was locked.  Breaking the lock they found Hammond dead on the floor, shot in the chest.  Beneath him was the body of the infant, evidently sufficated when the man's body fell on it.  The window was open, so this was not a locked room mystery.  The mystery was that Hammond had a gun by him that had only one bullet fired from it; the bullet in Hammond's body matched those in his gun, but there was also what seemed to be a bullet hole in a mirror on the nearby wall, indicating that two shots may have been fired.  After an intense search of the room and the grounds outside, the second bullet could not be found.  With no second bullet, Hammond's large insurance policy would not pay off, claiming his death to be a suicide and nullifying any payout.  This, despite the lack of powder burns on the body, which would indicate that Hammond had been shot from a distance.  Suicide it was and suicide it would remain unless the mysterious second bullet was found.

The murder left Mrs. Hammond bereft.  She had lost her husband, who had left her virtually penniless, and she had lost her baby.  Soon she would lose her home.  She insisted that her husband would never kill himself because he was a rank coward who was (deadly - ha-ha) afraid of death.  The marriage was not a pleasant on and the dead man was also not pleasant, but the widow genuinely mourned for her child.

Enter Violet Strange.  If a bullet had hit the mirror it could have rebound and be anywhere in the room or, highly unlikely because of the angle, could have bounced out of the open window.  As the police had done, Violet makes a thorough search of the room.  No bullet.  How could it have vanished -- that is, if it ever existed?  Violet comes up with a solution and leves without telling the widow anything.  The truth is revealed several days later in the daily paper, giving credit to the ------ & ------ agency, making no mention of Violet's part in the case.

And the actual murderer of Hammond?  That wasn't Violet's concern:  she was tasked merely with finding the second bullet.  We'll let the regular police track that villain down.

An interesting story, well told, with a believable yet unexpected solution.

Anna Katherine Green (1846-1935) was the first important woman mystery writer in the United States (not to throw shade on dime novelist Metta Victoria Fuller Victor who, as "Seeley Regester," published the first full-length American detective novel by a woman, The Dead Letter, 1866) .  Green's first novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878) introduced her series detective Ebenezer Grice, who appeared in twelve more novels from 1880 to 1915; the book was the first best-selling mystery novel in the United States.  In total, Green published thirty-three novels and six collections of short stories.  Often deemed the "mother of the detective novel," Green popularized the form a decade before Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance, stting the groundwork for the genre for years to come.  Along with devloping the series character, she created the spinster detective (shades of Miss Marple and Miss Silver!), as well as the girl detective (shades of Nancy Drew!) with Violet Strange, who was only seventeen when she took her first case.  Among her other innovations were "dead bodies in libraries, newspaper clippings as 'clews,' the coroner's inquest, and expert witnesses."  

Born in Brooklyn, Green was already a successful author when hse married actor and stove designer (yes, you read that right) Charles Rohlfs in 1884.  They had three children.  Later in life Rohlfs went into furniture making and Anna helped him with some designs.  Although a pioneer in many ways, Green was staunchly opposed to women's suffrage.

I, and many others, find Violet Strange to be a compelling and interesting character, despite one critic (I'm looking at you, Howard Haycraft!) who believed she should be "best forgotten."

The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange contains the nine stories about the young detective, only one of which had received prior publication.  It can be read for free at many of the usual internet sites.