The trouble at Pinelands : $b A detective story

How it begins

I could not sleep. I am an old man now and of settled habit; a “confirmed bachelor,” the young folks call me. Even the smallest change of routine irks me; and so, on this night, I found it very hard to be comfortable in a strange bed. Peter McGregor had gone north. He was in Baltimore to order flowers, consult the caterer, and make the final arrangements for the wedding breakfast. Only women were left in the old stone mansion; the McGregors called it “Fort House,” because it had something of the grim, forbidding look of an old fort. Dorothy, Peter’s sister, her invalid aunt, and the nurse, Miss Christie, were all here.