The Case of Jennie Brice by Mary Roberts Rinehart

"It had been a long hard winter, with ice gorges in all the upper valley. Then, in early March, there came a thaw. The gorges broke up and began to come down, filling the rivers with crushing, grinding ice."

Elizabeth Pitman was the keeper of a cheap boarding house in the flood district of Pittsburgh. At the time of the flood, her boarders were Mr. Ladley and his wife, Jennie Brice, who was an actress in a local theater company. Mr. Ladley was supposed to be writing a play, but it is questionable whether he was doing anything at all. Also there was Mr. Zachariah Reynolds who worked in the silk department of a large department store.

When Mrs. Pitman got the news of the coming flood, she started moving the furniture to the second floor. While she was doing this, the Ladley's were having a big argument, and his wife would later say that he was a "fiend, a devil". The day went on and by evening the waters in the boarding house had risen half way up the stairs to the second floor. Mrs. Pitman even had a boat tied up to the stair case railing.

The next morning, Jennie Brice had disappeared, and her husband said that he had rowed her to Federal Street. A man came by in a boat and floated it into her house. He, Mr. Holcombe, had been feeding  dogs and cats who were being neglected because of the rising waters. While he was in the kitchen cooking liver for the dog, Mr. Ladley took his boat and left.

Mrs. Pitman and Mr. Holcombe took a look at the room which the Ladley's were using and found that Jenny Brice's clothes were missing, and they also found blood stains. Later they would find a broken knife from the kitchen in the flood waters.  Also Mrs. Pitman's onyx clock was discovered to be missing. It would definitely appear that Jennie Brice had been murdered, but later it was the testimony of a young newpaper reporter, Ellis Howell, that he had seen Jenny Brice very much alive on the day after she was supposed to have been murdered. A headless dead body was found as the flood waters receded, but another witness swore that she had seen Jennie Brice on two days after the murder was supposed to have taken place. This book presents the dilemma of whether or not Jennie Brice was alive, and a jury trial of Mr. Ladley was held even though this question was not answered when the trial began.

Mary Roberts Rinehart was born in and grew up in Pittsburgh in the section of the city described in this book. She wrote her first novel, The Circular Staircase, in 1907. There was a major flood in Pittsburgh in 1907 which she would have witnessed. The Case of Jennie Brice was written in 1913.