Explore "The Hampstead Mystery" by Arthur J. Rees on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There was unpleasant news for Inspector Chippenfield when Miss Fewbanks arrived at Riversbrook accompanied by the housekeeper, Mrs. Hewson. In the first place, he learnt with considerable astonishment that it was Miss Fewbanks's intention to stay at the house until after the funeral, and for that purpose she had brought the housekeeper to keep her company in the lonely old place. Although they had taken up their quarters in the opposite wing of the rambling mansion to that in which the dead body lay, it seemed to Inspector Chippenfield -- whose mind was very impressionable where the fair sex was concerned -- that Miss Fewbanks must be a very peculiar girl to contemplate staying in the same house with the body of her murdered father for nearly a week. He was convinced that she must be a strong-minded young woman, and he did not like strong-minded young women. He preferred the weak and clinging type of the sex as more of a compliment to his own sturdy manliness.
His unfavourable impression of Miss Fewbanks was deepened when he saw her and heard what she had to tell him. The girl had come up from the country filled with horror at the crime which had deprived her of a father, and firmly determined to leave no stone unturned to bring the murderer to justice. It was true that she and her father had lived on terms of partial estrangement for some time past because of his manner of life, but all the girl's feelings of resentment against him had been swept away by the news of his dreadful death, and all she remembered now was that he was her father, and had been brutally murdered.