The Amethyst Box, by Anna Katharine Green, was a short mystery that kept me guessing until the end.

Two young women, their fiances,  and a group of friends were gathered for the wedding of one of the young women, Gilbertine. Both she and her cousin, Dorothy, were accompanied by their Aunt, who is their tyrannical and cruel guardian. Gilbertine and Sinclair’s  wedding was to be held the next day, but that night, just after everyone had retired for the evening, a piercing scream was heard and the Aunt lay dead. Natural causes? Nope, although it looked that way at first.

Sinclair had brought with him from his collection of oddities, a tiny amethyst box, a beautiful and rare trinket containing a tiny vial with one drop of the world’s most potent poison. It went missing in the early evening, so Sinclair and Worthington (Dorothy’s fiance) began to search. With the Aunt’s death, they realized that they were too late in finding the poison. Who had stolen the vial and administered the poison?  It seemed the two most likely suspects are Gilbertine and her cousin, Dorothy!

Anna Katharine Green wrote many mystery/detective stories in the early 1900s. She was actually a poet, but couldn’t make a living with her poetry, so turned to mystery writing, instead. She was wonderful at creating enjoyable plots, so her mysteries are compelling and she became an influential author in this genre.

Anna Katharine Green (photo by Hulton Deutshc)

I read this book for the Readers Imbibing Peril XVI challenge. It was also a book chosen to read for my The Classics Club, Round 2.