The Case of Jennie Brice

The Case of Jennie Brice

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Title: The Case of Jennie Brice
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Release Date: February 17, 2004 [EBook #11127] [Date last updated:
April 24, 2005]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE CASE of JENNIE BRICE
By MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

Author of THE MAN IN LOWER TEN, WHEN A MAN MARRIES
WHERE THERE'S A WILL, ETC.
Illustrated by M. LEONE BRACKER

1913

CHAPTER I
We have just had another flood, bad enough, but only a foot or two of
water on the first floor. Yesterday we got the mud shoveled out of the
cellar and found Peter, the spaniel that Mr. Ladley left when he "went
away". The flood, and the fact that it was Mr. Ladley's dog whose body
was found half buried in the basement fruit closet, brought back to me
the strange events of the other flood five years ago, when the water
reached more than half-way to the second story, and brought with it, to
some, mystery and sudden death, and to me the worst case of
"shingles" I have ever seen.
My name is Pitman--in this narrative. It is not really Pitman, but that
does well enough. I belong to an old Pittsburgh family. I was born on
Penn Avenue, when that was the best part of town, and I lived, until I
was fifteen, very close to what is now the Pittsburgh Club. It was a
dwelling then; I have forgotten who lived there.
I was a girl in seventy-seven, during the railroad riots, and I recall our
driving in the family carriage over to one of the Allegheny hills, and
seeing the yards burning, and a great noise of shooting from across the
river. It was the next year that I ran away from school to marry Mr.
Pitman, and I have not known my family since. We were never
reconciled, although I came back to Pittsburgh after twenty years of
wandering. Mr. Pitman was dead; the old city called me, and I came. I
had a hundred dollars or so, and I took a house in lower Allegheny,
where, because they are partly inundated every spring, rents are cheap,

and I kept boarders. My house was always orderly and clean, and
although the neighborhood had a bad name, a good many theatrical
people stopped with me. Five minutes across the bridge, and they were
in the theater district. Allegheny at that time, I believe, was still an
independent city. But since then it has allied itself with Pittsburgh; it is
now the North Side.
I was glad to get back. I worked hard, but I made my rent and my living,
and a little over. Now and then on summer evenings I went to one of
the parks, and sitting on a bench, watched the children playing around,
and looked at my sister's house, closed for the summer. It is a very
large house: her butler once had his wife boarding with me--a nice little
woman.
It is curious to recall that, at that time, five years ago, I had never seen
my niece, Lida Harvey, and then to think that only the day before
yesterday she came in her automobile as far as she dared, and then sat
there, waving to me, while the police patrol brought across in a skiff a
basket of provisions she had sent me.
I wonder what she would have thought had she known that the elderly
woman in a calico wrapper with an old overcoat over it, and a pair of
rubber boots, was her full aunt!
The flood and the sight of Lida both brought back the case of Jennie
Brice. For even then, Lida and Mr. Howell were interested in each
other.
This is April. The flood of 1907 was earlier, in March. It had been a
long hard winter, with ice gorges in all the upper valley. Then, in early
March, there came a thaw. The gorges broke up and began to come
down, filling the rivers with crushing grinding ice.
There are three rivers at Pittsburgh, the Allegheny and the
Monongahela uniting there at the Point to form the Ohio. And all three
were covered with broken ice, logs, and all sorts of debris from the
upper valleys.

A warning was sent out from the weather bureau, and I