The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock
By Anna Katharine Green
When I reached Lafayette Place sometime after midnight, I found the block lighted from end to end. Groups of excited men and women peered from the open doorways and mingled their shadows with the enormous pillars that adorn the front of this picturesque block of dwellings.
The house in which the crime had been committed was near the centre of the row, and long before I reached it, I had learned from more than one source that the alarm was first given to the street by a woman’s shriek, and secondly by the shouts of an old man-servant who had appeared, in a half-dressed condition, at the window of Mr Hasbrouck’s room, crying “Murder! murder!”
But when I crossed the threshold, I was astonished at the lack of facts gleaned from the inmates themselves. The old servitor, who was the first to talk, had only this account of the crime.
The family, which consisted of Mr. Hasbrouck, his wife, and three servants, had retired for the night at the usual hour and under the usual auspices. At eleven o’clock, the lights were all extinguished, and the whole household was asleep, except Mr. Hasbrouck himself, who was frequently troubled with insomnia as a man of considerable business responsibilities.
Suddenly, Mrs. Hasbrouck woke with a start. Had she dreamed the words ringing in her ears, or had they been uttered in her hearing? They were short, sharp words, full of terror and menace. She had nearly satisfied herself that she had imagined them when there came, from somewhere near the door, a sound she neither understood nor could interpret but which filled her with inexplicable terror and made her afraid to breathe or even to stretch forth her hand towards her husband, whom she supposed to be sleeping at her side. At length, another strange sound, which she was sure was not due to her imagination, drove her to attempt to rouse him when she was horrified to find that she was alone in the bed and her husband nowhere within reach.
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Anna Katharine Green
Anna Katharine Green (November 11, 1846 – April 11, 1935) was an American poet and novelist.
Biography.
She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well-plotted, legally accurate stories. Green has been called “the mother of the detective novel”.
Life and work
Green was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 11, 1846. She was initially ambitious about writing romantic verses, so she corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson. When her poetry failed to gain recognition, she produced her first and best-known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878), praised by Wilkie Collins and the hit of the year. She became a bestselling author, eventually publishing 37 books over 40 years.
On November 25, 1884, Green married the actor and stove designer and later noted furniture maker Charles Rohlfs (1853 – 1936). Rohlfs toured in a dramatization of Green’s The Leavenworth Case. After his theatre career faltered, he became a furniture maker in 1897, and Green collaborated with him on some of his designs. They had one daughter and two sons: Rosamund Rohlfs, Roland Rohlfs, and Sterling Rohlfs. Her daughter Rosamund married Robert Twitty Palmer. Green died on April 11, 1935, in Buffalo, New York, at 88. Her husband died the following year.
Critical response
Though Green’s book The Leavenworth Case is frequently cited as the first mystery written by an American woman, The Dead Letter by Seeley Regester was published earlier (1866). In a discussion of women writers of detective fiction, scholar Ellen Higgins in 1994 chronicled the work of Green as popularizing the genre a decade before Arthur Conan Doyle brought out his first Sherlock Holmes story. “I only found out afterwards that some people were a little upset with it because they don’t want to hear about women competing with the master”, Higgins said. Green is credited with shaping detective fiction into its classic form and developing the detective series. Her main character is Detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force. Still, in three novels, he is assisted by the nosy society spinster Amelia Butterworth, the prototype for Miss Marple, Miss Silver, and other creations. She also invented the ‘girl detective’ in the character of Violet Strange, a debutante with a secret life as a detective. Indeed, as journalist Kathy Hickman writes, Green “stamped the mystery genre with the distinctive features that would influence writers from Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle to contemporary authors of suspenseful “whodunits”. In addition to creating elderly spinster and young female sleuths, Green’s innovative plot devices included dead bodies in libraries, newspaper clippings as “clews”, the coroner’s inquest, and expert witnesses. Yale Law School once used her books to demonstrate how damaging it can be to rely on circumstantial evidence. Written in 1878, her first book, The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer’s Story, sparked a debate in the Pennsylvania State Senate over whether the book could “really have been written by a woman”. Green was in some ways a progressive woman for her time—succeeding in a genre dominated by male writers—but she did not approve of many of her feminist contemporaries, and she was opposed to women’s suffrage.
Legacy
In 2002, Buffalo Literary Walking Tours began an annual series of weekend walking tours highlighting authors with local connections. Along with Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Herman Melville, Taylor Caldwell, and others, green is included. Green’s short story “The Intangible Clue” featuring Violet Strange was adapted by Chris Harrald for the second series of BBC Radio 4’s drama series The Rivals and starred Jeany Spark as Violet Strange.
Anna Katharine Green
