Anna Katharine Green was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories.
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Anna Katharine Green was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories.
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My first Anna Katharine Green book. I would call it a short story. It was only 67 pages. A stranger traveling on cold and misty night comes upon a light and discovers a house with an open door (we are never given his name). He ventures over hoping for an Inn or Tavern to come in out of the night and get a bite to eat. The house seems empty, but as he approaches the door a man comes hurrying out and rushes past him. The stranger calls to him if there is a meal and shelter available and the man calls back "Just go in, the meal is at 9" . He enters the house and soon after people begin coming in. He discovers he is at a gathering for a will to be read. The lawyer says that a stipulation is that they must not have anything untoward in their lives, a sin, or evil deed. If they do they are exempt and will not inherit and can leave now. In this rough, greedy bunch the one kind, soft looking woman in the group stands and says she cannot be included then and opens her coat and shows an infant in her arms. She is unmarried. She leaves. The stranger is finally called upon to identify himself and then asked to remove himself from the room. He goes up a set of dark stairs and discovers he can hear the proceedings clearly thru the door so stays to listen in. I thought oh we know how this ends, the honest girl who left will be the one to get the inheritance because she was honest. This is a pretty predictable tale here. Boy was I wrong! I never would have guessed the ending in a million years! And that's all I'm gonna say :=) The whole tale is told by the stranger as a bystander.