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    Blood on the Dining-Room Floor
    Blood on the Dining-Room Floor
    Blood on the Dining-Room Floor
    Ebook88 pages1 hour

    Blood on the Dining-Room Floor

    By Gertrude Stein

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    About this ebook

    A quirky literary mystery from the iconic modernist writer known for her Jazz-Age Paris salon and bestselling book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
     
    Gertrude Stein was a distinctly unique talent who penned many novels, essays, and poems. And on one occasion, during a bout of writer’s block, she decided to play with the popular genre of mystery fiction.
     
    The book that resulted, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, is not your typical whodunit, just as Stein was not your typical author. With elements of her trademark avant-garde style, the story revolves around the mysterious passing of Madame Pernollet, who is found dead in the courtyard of a hotel owned by her husband.
     
    Incorporating some autobiographical details from events at her own French country house, Stein invites the reader to play detective—and offers a glimpse into one of the early twentieth century’s most interesting and challenging literary minds.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateMar 10, 2020
    ISBN9781504061506
    Blood on the Dining-Room Floor
    Author

    Gertrude Stein

    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was an American novelist and poet. Born in Pennsylvania, in 1903 she immigrated to France, where she would live for the rest of her life. The home on the Left Bank of Paris that she shared with her partner, Alice B. Toklas, became a cultural hub as young artists and writers began to gather there. As her salon rose to prominence, Stein befriended several expatriate authors living in Paris, including Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. Stein has been credited with coining the term the lost generation to describe this group of writers. She died in France in 1946. 

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      Book preview

      Blood on the Dining-Room Floor - Gertrude Stein

      Blood on the Dining-Room Floor

      Gertrude Stein

      Chapter One

      They had a country house. A house in the country is not the same as a country house. This was a country house. They had had one servant, a woman. They had changed to two servants, a man and woman that is to say husband and wife.

      The first husband and wife were Italian. They had a queer way of walking, she had a queer way of walking and she made noodles with spinach which made them green. He in his way of walking stooped and picked up sticks instead of chopping them and he dried the sticks on the stove and the fires did not burn.

      The next ones were found on the side of a mountain. She had a queer way of walking, he didn’t. She had been married before but perhaps not only then, at any rate she was soon very sick and is still in a hospital lying on a chair and will not live long. He was like a sheep. He was not at all silly. He was like a sailor. He had been a waiter. He cried when he was disappointed and fell down when he was angry.

      The third pair came by train from a long distance and most unexpectedly they had a little child with them. She was a pretty child and went up stairs gracefully. He had been an accountant and loved automobiles and poetry. He was very quickly certain that a mistake had been made. She had lost one kidney and was soon to lose another. They wished all three to sleep under a tree but that is unbecoming and dangerous. There was fear and indignation everywhere until there was nothing any longer to fear. There never had been.

      The next ones were immigrants. That is immigrants exist no longer because no nation accepts them. These however had been immigrants years ago when everybody wanted them. This is a pity. Not that they had been wanted but that they had been married after they had been wanted. At any rate she was wonderful with horses and he loved automobiles only he would never take a job where he would have to lie down under an automobile with his legs sticking out. This was distasteful to him. However that had nothing to do with it because he was to have nothing to do with automobiles. It must not be forgotten that it was a country house and so naturally there were visitors.

      There were two visitors, not young, both women. What happened, nobody saw, but everybody knew. That is everybody knew except the two visitors. They only saw the result, that is they were only aware of a result.

      Why should blood on the floor make anyone mad against automobiles and telephones and desks. Why.

      This is what happened. There were dogs in the house but they were no bother. Listen carefully.

      The next morning on coming to the desk to write a letter it was noticed that hair and dust had been scattered all over. This was not an accident and it was mentioned. Then some one went out to start a car. The owner of it naturally. It did not start. Then some one else went out to start another car. Once more naturally the owner of that one. The car did not start. Telephone to the garage in the town, they called out to some one else, the telephone is not working, was the answer. The telephone was not working that was a fact. There was another telephone nearby, of this fact as it happened no one in the house was aware except the person who telephoned to the garage. Soon two mechanics with two cars came. They found that one gasoline tank was filled with water and that the spark plugs of the other had been broken. The telephone man came and he found that a little wire had been detached and the piece of cotton that is wound around the wire had been screwed in instead. The mechanic spoke to the man servant at the request of the owner of the car, and said this could hardly happen by itself, and the man servant answered nothing. Just then more guests came and just then in the middle of everything there in the dining-room was a very sweet young man giving someone a very lovely painting. How had he come there, but that was not surprising, everybody knew him, but everybody thought everybody had quarrelled with him. Well anyway everybody kissed him and he left. The man servant served the lunch very well and then he and his wife were sent away. The garage man said send them away and forget them and this was done.

      Lizzie do you understand.

      After a while everybody went away that is to

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