"Let Us Find Him, Parker—the Murderer of My Sister—the Secreter of Her Body"

IS THERE a better way to welcome spring to the Northern Hemisphere than highlighting a story of madness and murder? Of course there is, but that's not going to stop us from offer-ing for your delectation . . .

"The Case of Euphemia Raphash."
By M. P. Shiel (1865-1947).
First appearance: Chapman's Magazine of Fiction, December 1895.
Collected in The Pale Ape and Other Happenings/Pulses (1911; re-printed in 2006).

Reprints page (HERE).
Short story.
Online at Roy Glashan's Library (HERE: HTML; EPUB; 27 pages as a PDF), Prof. David Stewart's Historical Texts (HERE: PDF; 10 pages), and eBooks@Adelaide (HERE: HTML; 17 pages as a PDF).

    "I had gradually arrived at the conviction that each of these two lives was as necessary to the other as the air it breathed."

Stupid criminals are a dime a dozen, but (let us give thanks) the insane, murderous genius is a rarity . . .

Comment: A Gothic thriller which Shiel manages to raise to an even higher than usual pitch.

Resources:
- The first time we encountered Matthew Phipps Shiell (note the extra "l") was over five years ago; see ONTOS (HERE).
- Other sources of info about Shiel are FictionMags (HERE), Wikipedia (HERE), and the SFE (HERE).

The bottom line:
  Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
    — Polonius
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