The Law and the Lady
The book was published in 1875, by Wilkie Collins, although still in print, is largely forgotten now. Not quite as sensational in style as The Moonstone and The Woman in White, it is still a detective story.Valeria Brinton marries Eustace Woodville despite objections from Woodville's family leading to disquiet for Valeria's own family and friends.Just a few days after the wedding, various incidents lead Valeria to suspect her husband is hiding a dark secret in his past and she discovers that he has been using a false name. He refuses to discuss it leading them to curtail their honeymoon and return to London where Valeria learns that he was on trial for his first wife's murder by arsenic. He was tried in a Scottish court and the verdict was 'not proven' rather than 'not guilty' implying his guilt but without enough proof for a jury to convict him.Valeria sets out to save their happiness by proving her husband innocent of the crime. In her quest, she comes across the disabled character Miserrimus Dexter, a fascinating but mentally unstable genius, and his devoted female cousin, Ariel. Dexter will prove crucial to uncovering the disturbing truth behind the mysterious death.
Contents
- Chapter 1 - The Bride's Mistake
- Chapter 2 - The Bride's Thoughts
- Chapter 3 - Ramsgate Sands
- Chapter 4 - On The Way Home
- Chapter 5 - The Landlady's Discovery
- Chapter 6 - My Own Discovery
- Chapter 7 - On The Way To The Major
- Chapter 8 - The Friend Of The Women
- Chapter 9 - The Defeat Of The Major
- Chapter 10 - The Search
Related Books
Author other works
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The Haunted Hotel
Wilkie Collins
'Have you ever heard of the fascination of terror?' This is a unique collection of strange stories from the cunning pen of Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The Star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo coverted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterise and distinguish this powerful tale. The other stories present equally disturbing scenarios, which include ghosts, corpses that move, family curses and perhaps the most unusual of all, the Devil's spectacles, which bring a clarity of vision that can lead to madness.
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The Two Destinies
Wilkie Collins
George and Mary are childhood sweethearts in Suffolk's Greenwater Broad. Despite a prediction from Mary's grandmother, old Mrs Dermody, that their two destinies are inextricably linked, George's father disapproves. He separates them by taking his family to America where he subsequently dies. George and his mother return to England where she marries Mr Germaine, a rich suitor she had known before her first marriage.George has no way of tracing Mary and leads a dissolute existence which prematurely ages his appearance. He reforms, trains to become a surgeon, and takes up an appointment in India. After being wounded in the shoulder, George returns to England where he inherits his step-father's fortune and estate in Perthshire. There is a condition that he must change his name to Germaine.Mary, meanwhile has suffered a serious illness which has totally changed her looks. She has married a Dutchman called Van Brandt and is also living in the same part of Scotland. When Mary discovers that her marriage is bigamous, she throws herself into the river but is saved by George.They fail to recognise each other but develop an almost telepathic attraction. George sees an apparition of Mary calling him to Edinburgh. They meet and he learns that Mary had dreamed of him at exactly the same time. She declines his help and he next sees her in London, still in company with Van Brandt. George proposes marriage but Mary, who has a baby daughter, refuses, for fear of spoiling his life.George goes away to the Shetlands to forget but injures his wounded shoulder. He is nursed back to health by the mysteriously disfigured Miss Dunross to whom he confides his story. On his recovery, he sees another apparition which leads him to Mary and her child, starving in lodgings near St Paul's. Van Brandt is in a debtors prison and George helps by paying off the debts. He again proposes but Mary goes abroad with Van Brandt.George's mother dies shortly after. Alone and in despair, he returns to Suffolk where he contemplates suicide. He is saved by a third apparition which takes him to the ghost town of Enkhuizen on the coast of Holland. Van Brandt has embezzled money from his old company and abandoned Mary and her child. When she refuses marriage for a third time, George resolves to drown himself and take Mary with him. At the last moment she sees a childhood memento which she once made for him. They finally recognise each other and their two destinies are reunited. Newly married, they are ostracized from society because of malicious scandal. They leave England to start a new life in Naples.
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A Rogue's Life
Wilkie Collins
Frank Softly is a poor young gentleman whose snobbish father sends him to boarding school to make useful connections, but without success. He tries a variety of professions to earn his living but by the time he is twenty-five has failed at medicine, caricaturing, portrait painting, forging Old Masters and administering a scientific institution. Frank then falls in love with Dr Dulcifer's daughter, Alicia, but discovers that her father is a counterfeit coin maker. Our likeable hero is unwillingly recruited into forging to compromise him as a felon. At this point the doctor considers him unsuitable as a son-in-law and sends Alicia away to Wales. The counterfeiters are betrayed to the Bow Street Runners but Frank escapes, finds Alicia and elopes with her to Scotland. Immediately after their wedding, Frank is arrested, tried and transported to Australia. As a model prisoner he becomes servant to his own wife who has travelled to the New World in the person of a widow. By the time Frank is officially released, their speculations have proved so successful that he is a rich man and a rogue no longer.
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I Say No
Wilkie Collins
Emily Brown is an orphan girl that almost no one can help but love when they meet her. She is pursued by two worthy men: Mr. Alban Morris, the drawing master at her school; and Rev. Miles Mirabel, a clergyman. However, one of them is lying to her after she discovers that her father's death wasn't natural, as she was led to believe.
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The Frozen Deep
Wilkie Collins
The Frozen Deep was a play, originally staged as an amateur theatrical, written by Wilkie Collins along with the substantial guidance of Charles Dickens in 1856. Dickens's hand was so prominent – beside acting in the play for several performances, he added a preface, altered lines, and attended to most of the props and sets – that the principal edition of the play is entitled "Under the Management of Charles Dickens". John C. Eckel wrote: "As usual with a play which passed into rehearsal under Dickens' auspices it came out improved. This was the case with The Frozen Deep. The changes were so numerous that the drama almost may be ascribed to Dickens". Dickens himself took the part of Richard Wardour and was stage-manager during its modest original staging in Dickens' home Tavistock House. The play, however, grew in influence through a series of outside performances, including one before Queen Victoria at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, and a three-performance run at the Manchester Free Trade Hall for the benefit of the Douglas Jerrold Fund to benefit the widow of Dickens's old friend Douglas Jerrold. There, night after night, everyone – including, by some accounts, the carpenters and the stage-hands – was moved to tears by the play. It also brought Dickens together with Ellen Ternan, an actress he hired to play one of the parts, and for whom he would leave his wife Catherine. The play remained unpublished until a private printing appeared sometime in 1866.