Wyllard's Weird

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 Wyllard's Weird, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was the Victorian sensationalist author of Lady Audley's Secret.  She was hugely prolific, and lived a rather sensational life herself -- she lived with the publisher John Maxwell as his wife and had six children with him, but Maxwell was already married and had five children with his actual wife, who was still alive.  No wonder her most famous novels were about bigamy!  I've always wanted to read Wyllard's Weird for no other reason than its title, and it became my book to read on my phone for a couple of weeks.

We start in a train going to Cornwall -- as the train is on a bridge over a deep gully, a young woman falls to her death.  Mr. Wyllard, a wealthy man, is the first to reach her, but she is dead, and there is no identification at all.  She has no luggage, nothing but a basket containing a little food for the journey.  She seems French in her dress, but that's the only clue.  Did she jump, or was she pushed?  Is this suicide or murder?

Mr. Wyllard proclaims his conviction that it was murder, and hires a London lawyer to look into the mystery.  Meanwhile he goes home to his adoring wife and her semi-useless cousin, and we dive into their home life.  The cousin, Bothwell, falls under suspicion for no other reason than that he was also on the train, and refuses to say what he was doing in Plymouth that day.  Well, he refused to say because there was a Lady in the Case, and Bothwell, formerly a soldier of great promise, has been getting himself into coils of intrigue that have blighted his life.  Now he's in love with a nice Cornish girl and needs to extricate himself, but how?

Wyllard spends most of the story doing nothing at all, which is confusing; how can he dree his weird when he doesn't do anything?  A family friend instead takes up the mystery and heads to France to track down the nameless girl (a clue has been found). Where will it all end up?

This was a very fun novel, with lots of intrigue and mystery to puzzle out.  It was intensely Victorian and included long sections of prose that nobody could possibly write today.  And I'm glad to have finally found out what Wyllard's weird was!

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