Blood on the Dining-Room Floor

By Gertrude Stein

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781504061506

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American novelist and poet. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Stein was raised in an upper-middle-class Jewish family alongside four siblings. After a brief move to Vienna and Paris, the Steins settled in Oakland, California in 1878, where Stein would spend her formative years. In 1892, following the loss of her mother and father, Stein moved with her sister to live with family in Baltimore, where she was exposed to salon culture. From 1893 to 1897 she attended Radcliffe College, studying psychology under William James. Conducting experiments on the phenomenon of normal motor automatism, Stein produced early examples of steam of consciousness or automatic writing, a hallmark of the Modernist style later practiced by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. In 1897, she enrolled at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine on the recommendation of James, but ultimately left before completing her degree. She moved to Paris with her brother Leo, an artist, in 1903. In the French capital, the Steins gained a reputation as art collectors, purchasing works by Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Renoir. At 27 rue de Fleurus, Stein hosted an influential salon for such artists and intellectuals as Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who recognized her as a leading Modernist and central figure of the so-called Lost Generation. Her influential works include Three Lives (1909), Tender Buttons (1912), and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), all of which exemplify her control over vastly different styles of poetry and prose. Capable of producing experimental, hermetic works that draw attention to the constructed nature of language, Stein also excelled with straightforward narratives, essays, and biographical descriptions. From 1907 until her death, Stein and her life partner Alice B. Toklas gained a reputation as leaders in the international avant-garde, and remain essential to our understanding of the development of twentieth century art and culture.

Book preview

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