The Footsteps That Stopped

A. Fielding was the pseudonym of a British mystery writer who wrote a long list of books in the Golden Age (1920s and 30s). Speculation continues about the identity of this writer.

The night Mrs.Tangye committed suicide with her service-revolver, the maid heard footsteps in the garden which suddenly stopped when she switched on the light! Whose footsteps were they? Did Mrs.Tangye actually commit suicide or, was she murdered? Excerpt: "They were talking of the death of Mrs.Tangye who had been found, yesterday afternoon, sitting dead beside her tea-table, with a service-revolver lying on the floor beside her, and a bullet from it through her heart. The Webley was a souvenir of her days as an officer in the Waacs during the last year of the war, and was kept on a bracket in the room. Her husband had explained to the Coroner that his wife had recently spoken of having her initials engraved on it. He suggested that she must have been looking it over with that in her mind when she had met with her fatal accident."

When the body of Mrs. Tangye was found sitting beside her tea-table with her service revolver, a souvenir of her days as an officer in the Waacs during the war, lying on the floor next to her and a bullet wound to the heart the initial assumption was that it was a case of an accident or suicide. There were no signs of a struggle or foul-play. Mrs. Tangye had been a strong willed woman more than capable of defending herself. And the fact was, she had acted in the days leading up to her death in a manner consistent with someone straightening up her affairs. But Chief Inspector Pointer was not so sure that Mrs. Tangye had died by her own hand, whether intentionally or by accident. There were several aspects of the case that troubled him, not least of which were the footsteps in the garden heard through the pantry window by the maid, footsteps that stopped when a light was turned on.

The visitor's companion to the palaces, castles & houses associated with Henry VIII's infamous wife.

The night Mrs.Tangye committed suicide with her service-revolver, the maid heard footsteps in the garden which suddenly stopped when she switched on the light! Whose footsteps were they? Did Mrs.Tangye actually commit suicide or, was she murdered? Excerpt: "They were talking of the death of Mrs.Tangye who had been found, yesterday afternoon, sitting dead beside her tea-table, with a service-revolver lying on the floor beside her, and a bullet from it through her heart. The Webley was a souvenir of her days as an officer in the Waacs during the last year of the war, and was kept on a bracket in the room. Her husband had explained to the Coroner that his wife had recently spoken of having her initials engraved on it. He suggested that she must have been looking it over with that in her mind when she had met with her fatal accident."

Richard Holmes knew he had become a true biographer the day his bank bounced a check that he had inadvertently dated 1772. Because for the acclaimed chronicler of Shelley and Coleridge, biography is a physical pursuit, an ardent and arduous retracing of footsteps that may have vanished centuries before. In this gripping book, Holmes takes us from France’s Massif Central, where he followed the route taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and a sweet-natured donkey, to Mary Wollstonecraft’s Revolutionary Paris, to the Italian villages where Percy Shelley tried to cast off the strictures of English morality and marriage. Footsteps is a wonderful exploration of the ties between biographers and their subjects, filled with passion and revelations. “Deeply impressive . . . Footsteps is a singular event in the modern history of biography, and in itself a delightful reading experience.”—Alfred Kazin “This exhilarating book, part biography, part autobiography, shows the biographer as sleuth and huntsman, tracking his subjects through space and time.”—The Observer “A modern masterpiece . . . [Holmes is] the most romantic of contemporary biographers and probably the most revolutionary in spirit and form.”—Michael Holroyd, author of Bernard Shaw

Jimmy McClean is a Lakota boy—though you wouldn’t guess it by his name: his father is part white and part Lakota, and his mother is Lakota. When he embarks on a journey with his grandfather, Nyles High Eagle, he learns more and more about his Lakota heritage—in particular, the story of Crazy Horse, one of the most important figures in Lakota and American history. Drawing references and inspiration from the oral stories of the Lakota tradition, celebrated author Joseph Marshall III juxtaposes the contemporary story of Jimmy with an insider’s perspective on the life of Tasunke Witko, better known as Crazy Horse (c. 1840–1877). The book follows the heroic deeds of the Lakota leader who took up arms against the US federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people, including leading a war party to victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Along with Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse was the last of the Lakota to surrender his people to the US army. Through his grandfather’s tales about the famous warrior, Jimmy learns more about his Lakota heritage and, ultimately, himself. American Indian Youth Literature Award