Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - Couverture souple

Summary The main character of the story, Lord Arthur Savile, is presented at a party given by Lady Windermere to a pirromanist, Septimus R. Podgers. The latter read in the palm of Lord Arthur's hand and told him that he would be the perpetrator of a crime. Lord Arthur wanted to marry, but decided that he had no right to do so until he had committed the murder. His first attempt involves an aged aunt, Clementina, who suffers from heartburn. Arthur gives him a poisoned capsule, which he presents as a remedy to be taken in case of crisis. Reading the newspaper a few weeks later, he learns of his death and returns victoriously to London, to learn that she bequeathed to him a property. In sorting the affairs of his aunt, he finds the poison pill, intact; So his aunt died naturally and he finds himself in need of a new victim. After reflection, he contacts an anarchist friend, who gives him a bomb concealed in a pendulum. Arthur sends him anonymously to a distant relative, the Dean of Chichester. Unfortunately the craft will prove defective, rejoicing the daughter of the Dean who will spend his afternoons producing tiny and harmless explosions with the clock. Desperate, Lord Arthur believes his plans for marriage condemned when he meets Septimus R. Podgers in the middle of the night on the banks of the Thames. It then precipitates the chiromancer in the river from the top of a parapet. A few days later a newspaper announces the suicide, since this was the result of the investigation, of its victim. Now assured of the success of his business, Lord Arthur can finally get married!

Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories is a collection of short semi-comic mystery stories. *Lord Arthur Savile's Crime *The Canterville Ghost *The Sphinx Without a Secret *The Model Millionaire