A Female Detective

by the Lady Herself

In the summer of 1864, my health being delicate, I was ordered by my physician to spend three or four months by the seaside; my means were limited, and I was glad to take what I could get. After considerable difficulty I found such a place as would suit both my taste and my purse, in a small fishing village called Sandybar, which no one save myself and an eccentric old Frenchman, familiarly known as Monsieur Jacques, had found out. Monsieur Jacques was an old resident. We met generally in our walks about the sea shore, and often he called on me in the quiet little abode where I was boarded, but I could not visit him, because his household consisted exclusively of males: his valet, who came to see him now and then, his nephew, himself, and a sick friend, who had been confined to his room for three years, and long since pronounced incurable. An old woman, called Betty, was glad to spend two or three hours daily in Monsieur Jacques kitchen.

Monsieur Jacques was rich and eccentric. He had made it known that in his will he had left all his property to his nephew, Alphonse Lefebre, and in case Alphonse should die without issue, then it was to go to Martin, the sick man.

Great was the horror of the villagers when they heard, one morning, that Monsieur Jacques had been murdered the night before—his throat having been cut.

Who could be the murderer of so good a man? was the question every one asked of his neighbor. Suspicion fell upon Monsieur Alphonse Lefebre. The young man was arrested and placed in the county jail, a distance of five miles from Sandybar; and his trial for the murder of his uncle followed his imprisonment in a very short time. From the first word of suspicion against him, my sympathies had been entirely with the prisoner; but when I learned that his counsel was my lover and promised husband, Harvey Mellish, I need not… Read More