The Dead Secret

A Cornish House and the Letter in the Myrtle Room

Wilkie Collins

• Publisher: Aeneas Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9785486741104
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

A dying woman dictates a confession, and her maid hides it in an unused room of a Cornish house rather than deliver it — where it waits fifteen years for the daughter it concerns. Collins wrote "The Dead Secret" in 1857, three years before "The Woman in White", and it is his first full use of the buried document. The blind husband's scenes are the best thing in it. Fifty-three plates, from Bonington's beach scenes to Hammershøi's quiet interiors, trace the coastal light and shuttered rooms that haunt this Cornish story of a hidden letter.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Chapter I. The Twenty-Third of August, 1829
• Chapter II. The Child
• Chapter III. The Hiding of the Secret
• Chapter I. Fifteen Years After
• Chapter II. The Sale of Porthgenna Tower
• Chapter III. The Bride and Bridegroom
• Chapter I. Timon of London
• Chapter II. Will They Come?
• Chapter III. Mrs. Jazeph
• Chapter IV. The New Nurse
• Chapter V. A Council of Three
• Chapter VI. Another Surprise
• Chapter I. A Plot Against the Secret
• Chapter II. Outside the House
• Chapter III. Inside the House
• Chapter IV. Mr. Munder on the Seat of Judgment
• Chapter V. Mozart Plays Farewell
• Chapter I. An Old Friend and a New Scheme
• Chapter II. The Beginning of the End
• Chapter III. Approaching the Precipice
• Chapter IV. Standing on the Brink
• Chapter V. The Myrtle Room
• Chapter VI. The Telling of the Secret
• Chapter I. Uncle Joseph
• Chapter II. Waiting and Hoping
• Chapter III. The Story of the Past
• Chapter IV. The Close of Day
• Chapter V. Forty Thousand Pounds
• Chapter VI. The Dawn of a New Life
• About the Author