A Double Barrelled Detective Story
Mark Twain |
The setting is the Virginia countryside, circa 1880. An “intense, high-strung, romantic” nineteen year-old woman, against her widowed and significantly wealthy father’s wishes, is set to marry Jacob Fuller, a twenty-six year-old of “slender means.” The very morning after the nuptials, the bride discovers a sobering fact. Jacob is extremely anathematic toward her father because of things her father had previously said of his character. Jacob’s cruel intention is, “to put him to shame; to break his heart; to kill him by inches. How to do it? Through my treatment of you, his idol!” The psycho begins to do everything thing he can imagine against his bride—save bodily harm—but the proud and strong-willed woman (who is never identified with a first name), doesn’t run to her daddy and instead lives with the disgrace that she made the poorest of choices in men.
