The Black-Banded Envelope

Before there were birth announcements there were death announcements, delivered on special mourning stationery — paper and envelopes, edged in black. From autumn 1870 to autumn 1871, M. Warner received nearly a dozen such notices, recounting the deaths of the same men: Secret Service agents Argent and Merritt, men who were little more than strangers to her. Though seemingly written by different people, Warner suspects otherwise, and launches an oblique investigation to discover the true culprit. Her investigation, however, draws in the very men reported dead — from drowning to burning to murder, on trains and steamboats, in flood and fire. The agents’ own separate investigation — into a shadowy criminal mastermind — may hold the answer to Warner’s search. The death announcements always corresponded to the men’s travels and work, but she could never be certain which black-banded envelope held the truth. True Secret Service investigations intertwine with historical disasters in this latest installment of the M. Warner Annals.