The agony column by Earl Derr Biggers

This was nice :-) A bit old-fashioned, since it takes place in 1914, but nonetheless nice at the end. At first I couldn't decide if it was a murder case with a love story as its background, or if it was a romantic novel hiding behind a mystery.. now it's all clear :-) It starts with an American in London, Geoffrey West, seeing a girl with her father, and it was love at first sight. This pretty American girl shared with him an idle passion: each morning both of them liked to read a special column in the Daily Mail: the Personal Notices, "popularly known as the Agony Column", full of personal, cryptic messages, and thus West had the idea to approach the girl through that column. When she read the column of personal notices she found his words to her, and she replied the same way, stating she was fond of "mystery and romance" and demanding that he would write to her "one letter a day for seven days" to prove how interesting and worthy he is. For sure the letters arrive, one each day. He writes about how he met an English man in America who gave him a letter for his cousin in London. Upon meeting this captain, he was told he had no cousin by that name! Then the poor captain was killed, and he was questioned by the police. A strange woman threatened him "advising" him to change his deposition, then the captain's younger brother asked for the same thing but with a different 'motive': although innocent, he wanted to confess the murder to save the honor of the family name. Was his brother a traitor of his Country? West strongly confided in Colonel Hugh's help and advice. The moment came when both the brother and the woman confessed to the murder, but she only did it to get inside Scotland Yard. The Colonel had West arrested, but also released the next day, with the startling revelation that the spy was actually the chief inspector of Scotland Yard himself!

This the girl learned in the sixth letter, which ended with the surprising confession that West did, indeed, kill the captain! In the seventh letter the explanation: he's a writer of plays, and he invented the story to provide her with the "mystery and romance" she was so fond about :lol:

I admit I had wondered at the beginning, but totally forgot while reading further :-p

Seven letters, now he can only wait for her move. Due to the worrying news of war, many people including the girl Marian and her father have to flee the Country. She sends him a telegram saying what boat she'll be on, and he goes too: even without a ticket. There he meets her, and eventually her father. Needless to say she'll accept him, of course, and her dad will approve too :-) but it's nice how these last pages are written. Sweet and rather funny, at least pleasant :-)

So nothing regarding the murder actually happened. The captain is alive and quite amused by the story, and everything he wrote was just fiction :lol: So that's what it was: a love story masked as a mystery novel :-)