Roylston Markham, The Tortoise Shell Comb (1923)
“ Captain Bott went over and felt of the mattress and patted the pillows—the pillows on which they had said the bride's head, nestled in its mass of copper-colored hair, had rested when she died. Captain Bott was hard-boiled, like I just said. He didn't believe in ghosts. ”
Roylston Markham, The Tortoise Shell Comb (1923)
“ I particularly remember that they said her hair was long, very long, and red, like copper is red in candle light. After a year, she died, suddenly, of heart disease—'killed by love itself,' one of the frogs said; that's romance, and he, her husband, the owner of that chateau there in the woods at Is-Sur-Tille, left that part of the country on the very day of her funeral. ”
Roylston Markham, The Tortoise Shell Comb (1923)
“ Oui, mais certainement! as the frogs have it. If that chateau isn't haunted, it ought to be. There's a story in the village of the bride's death there. And Captain Bott died there all right enough. But that thing they found twined around his neck 'like the braid of a woman's copper-red hair' was, in fact, real copper—copper wire stolen from a lineman's kit. It might look like hair to a crazy man. ”
