The Paliser Case

The Paliser Case by Edgar Saltus

Edgar Saltus's The Paliser Case opens with the murder of Monty Paliser splashed across the New York morning papers, an event narrated in flashback from the weeks preceding it. Monty is the son of the enormously wealthy, dissipated Montagu Paliser (M. P.), last male heir apart from his sister Sally Balaguine, exiled in revolutionary Petrograd with her small son. Returning from Havana, Monty is pressed by his ailing father to marry before the looming war draft can claim him, since the elder Paliser insists on keeping the family line and fortune intact. At a dinner given by the ambitious, scheming Mrs. Austen, Monty meets her daughter Margaret, a devout theosophist engaged to the honest young broker Keith Lennox. Mrs. Austen privately resents that Margaret's fiancé lacks the fortune she covets for her daughter. That evening the party attends a Belgian relief benefit at the Splendor, where a medium ominously tells Margaret her engagement will break, and Lennox is warned he will be "up for murder." There Margaret and Lennox also encounter Cassy Cara, a poor but proud aspiring singer, and her injured violinist father, Angelo Cara, a self-styled Portuguese marquis whom Lennox once rescued from an assault. Paliser, drawn to Cassy's beauty and indifference, takes her and her disreputable singing coach, Carlotta Tamburini, to supper. The next day Cassy visits Lennox's apartment to pawn her father's violin for money, refusing it as a gift. Margaret and her mother arrive moments later; Mrs. Austen maneuvers to prevent Margaret from ringing the bell, letting suspicion fester. That night, alone with Lennox, Mrs. Austen falsely claims Margaret wants the engagement broken, then separately poisons Margaret's mind by inventing a sordid liaison between Lennox and Cassy. Devastated and proud, Margaret writes Lennox a letter breaking things off; he cannot get an audience with her to learn the truth, and both suffer through mutual, mistaken hatred while Mrs. Austen contentedly manipulates the situation to angle Margaret toward the far wealthier Paliser. Meanwhile Paliser courts Cassy, funding a fictitious patroness ("Mrs. Beamish") through Tamburini to give Cassy money without appearing to buy her, and gradually working on her practical fears for her impoverished father. After a chance meeting rescues her from a traffic accident, Paliser proposes marriage, dishonestly claiming to be nearly penniless himself so Cassy won't feel she's marrying for money. Torn between anarchic pride and desperate love for her father, Cassy consents and is secretly married to Paliser that same evening by a Dr. Grantly at Paliser Place, telling her father only by letter afterward. Days later, Paliser's father again threatens to disinherit him in favor of Sally's son unless he marries at once, and casually reveals Benny, a one-thumbed servant, will be sent to Newport. Paliser agrees to marry, not disclosing he already has, and heads to dine at the Austens', letting his father believe he means to court Margaret. There, Mrs. Austen falsely tells Paliser that Lennox admitted improper conduct with Cassy and that Margaret is entirely free of feeling for him. During the dinner Margaret faints upon hearing Kate Schermerhorn mention Paliser's outing with an unnamed "damsel" in the Park. As Paliser comforts her and continues his courtship of Margaret under Mrs. Austen's encouragement — while still secretly married to Cassy — the narrative leaves him weighing which woman serves his ambitions best, and Mrs. Austen still working to land him for her daughter.

By Edgar Saltus · First published 1894 · Genre: Mystery, Crime, Detective Fiction · 37 chapters · 102,918 words

First lines

The murder of Monty Paliser, headlined that morning in the papers, shook the metropolis at breakfast, buttered the toast, improved the taste of the coffee.

Murdered! It seemed too bad to be false. Moreover, there was his picture, the portrait of a young man obviously high-bred and insolently good-looking. In addition to war news and the financial page, what more could you decently ask for a penny? Nothing, perhaps, except the address of the murderer. But that detail, which the morning papers omitted, extras shortly supplied. Meanwhile in the minds of imaginative New Yorkers, visions of the infernal feminine surged. The murdered man's name was evocative.

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mystery · crime · investigation · suspense · drama · psychological · intrigue · society · morality · justice · betrayal · secrets

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