A Difficult Problem

A Difficult Problem by Anna Katharine Gree, 1900. Lucy Holmes walks into the office of a detective, looking beautiful and distressed. Quickly she unfolds her tale of woe: her husband went away on a business trip. After a week, he sent her a note saying he would be back the next day. But the morning he was to return, Lucy woke to find a newspaper article saying her husband had died--two days before he sent her the note! A difficult problem indeed. The beginning it feels like a hard-boiled detective novel à la Dashiell Hammett: the seemingly-innocent woman in distress; the detective (who is never identified), slightly skeptical but drawn in despite his own reservations. It turns out Lucy is keeping pertinent information from him, but not because she's up to no good--it's because she's a TOTAL AIRHEAD. She's like, "Oh my poor husband, I--squirrel!" Once the detective talks her through things the solution to the mystery is pretty obvious. The problem the detective has then is how to prove it.