世界名作推理小説集のあらすじ

The story in 10 parts

1. Key idea 1 · free to read

   A borrowed necklace costs a poor couple everything

   In The Necklace, the pretty Mathilde Loisel is married to a minor official. She feels she was born for luxury and suffers over her shabby walls, worn chairs and ugly curtains. Her husband is happy with a plain pot of stew.

   One evening he brings home an invitation to a ball at the Ministry. She weeps over having nothing to wear, so he gives her four hundred francs, the sum he was saving for a hunting gun. Then she needs jewels, and she borrows a diamond necklace from her rich friend Madame Forestier. At the ball she is prettier than every other woman, and she dances until four in the morning.

   At home she looks in the mirror and the necklace is gone. Her husband searches the streets and finds nothing. They buy a matching necklace for thirty-six thousand francs and borrow half the price from lenders. One night of vanity becomes a debt that will rule their lives. The wish to look rich can cost far more than being poor.

2. 2

   Suspicion can fool a clever mind

   In The Man with the Pale Eyes, the examining magistrate de Vargnes embodies dignity and propriety.

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3. 3

   Fear works best on what we cannot see

   In Ghosts, a young man tells the chief of police that his father plans to leave everything to the Jesuits.

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4. 4

   A last night can hold a heavy secret

   The Confession is one scene at a deathbed.

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5. 5

   A diary records a mind losing its footing

   The Horla by Maupassant is told as a diary that begins on May 8.

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6. 6

   Strange tales that mock belief and wonder

   Pierre Mille's The Miracle of Zobéide is a comic piece set in Damascus.

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7. 7

   Two German tales about watching and waiting

   The Invisible Eye is told by Christian, a painter so poor that he lives in an attic in Nuremberg.

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8. 8

   Bargains with power and a mother's long wait

   Balzac's Melmoth Reconciled follows Castanier, a former dragoon who holds the keys of a Paris bank.

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9. 9

   A wise man is punished for reading clues

   Hawthorne's preface says that Voltaire wrote the first detective story in modern literature, though he meant it as a satire.

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10. 10

    Courts, crimes and ghosts from Spain to Rome

    Alarcon's The Nail is told by a traveler named Philip.

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