The Mill Mystery

Constance Sterling has almost nothing left but her pride and seventy-five cents when a stranger's kindness pulls her briefly out of despair. Her new lodger, the gentle schoolteacher Ada, reveals a secret engagement and offers Constance a place in her future—until a cry in the street shatters that fragile hope: the beloved young clergyman Mr. Barrows has been found dead. Soon Constance is drawn into a dark mystery centered on the ruined old mill, where Barrows's body lies in a disused vat, marked by strange blue discoloration and surrounded by signs that his death may be something far more sinister than drowning or suicide. As grief-stricken Ada defends Barrows's honor, she recounts a tragic love story of duty, delayed happiness, and a final promise to protect his name. But her own deathbed testimony only deepens the sorrow and suspicion. When Dr. Farnham summons the narrator to the Pollard house, a second crisis erupts: Mrs. Pollard, shocked by the news, has fallen dangerously ill. In the shadowed mansion, the narrator encounters the cold, secretive Pollard brothers and is drawn ever deeper into a web of fear, concealment, and deadly accusation at the mill. The truth seems close—until a devastating contradiction in the testimony suggests that Barrows's death is even more tangled, and more chilling, than anyone imagined. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.