“The Mystery of the Semi-Detached” is a short story by the English writer and poet Edith Nesbit (1858–1924), first published in her Grim Tales
Collection of short stories by Edith Nesbit, first published in 1893. (1893) collection of short stories.[1]
Told as a third-person narrative, the story concerns a young man perplexed when his fiancé fails to show up for a half-clandestine meeting, and passes her house on the way home, where he has an unnerving vision.
Synopsis
The story’s unnamed protagonist’s engagement to his fiancé has been been met with complete disapproval by her family, and he is only grudgingly allowed a sanctioned weekly meeting with her. On this particular evening a rich uncle is visiting her family home, and so the couple have arranged a “semi-clandestine” meeting in a nearby lane. But after an hour and a half she has failed to appear, and so the protagonist decides to walk back home to his lodgings.
His route home takes him past his fiancé’s house, which is in complete darkness. He notices that the front door is wide open, and feeling a sense of unease he enters the house. On finding all the downstairs rooms empty he ventures upstairs, and in the first bedroom he looks into he finds his fiancé lying dead, her throat cut from ear to ear. A policeman finds him in a fit, under a lamp post at the corner of the street, unable to speak. Supposing that he is drunk, the policeman takes him to spend the night in the police cells.
The following morning he gives his account to the magistrate, and a couple of constables are sent with him to his fiancé’s house. As he stands in front of the door it opens, and out comes his fiancé. On hearing his story she explains that they were all out at the Crystal Palace, and that he must have been dreaming, or had some kind of vision. But being a sensible young man he doesn’t believe in visions, and adds the detail that the almanac on the mantelpiece was at 21 October, which seemed odd as this is May.
He and his sweetheart get married, and move to a distant suburb, along with her mother. But he is always inquiring if anyone has taken the semi-detached house, and on learning that an old stockbroker and his family had moved in, decides to call on them. He implores the old gentleman not to live in that “fatal house”, but is unable to convince him.
On the morning of the 22nd of October his wife finds him sitting at the breakfast table, “looking like death”. He catches her hand and points to the morning paper in his hand. There she reads that on the night of the 21st, the stockbroker’s daughter had been discovered dead in the same bedroom he had seen in his vision, with her throat cut from ear to ear.
External links
- Full text of “The Mystery of the Semi-Detached” at Project Gutenberg
