of detective fiction remember her work today, Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844–1914), whose nom de plume was L. T. Meade, wrote several volumes of detective fiction that are historically important.
Stories from the Diary of a Doctor (1894; second series 1896), written in collaboration with Dr. Edgar Beaumont (using the pseudonym Clifford Halifax), is the first series of medical mysteries published in England. Other memorable books by Meade include A Master of Mysteries (1898), The Gold Star Line (1899), and The Sanctuary Club (1900), which features an unusual health club in which a series of murders is committed by apparently supernatural means, all written in collaboration with Dr. Eustace Robert Barton (1868–1943), writing as Robert Eustace. The Sorceress of the Strand (1903) portrays Madame Sara, an utterly sinister villainess who specializes in murder.
The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899), also a collaborative effort with Barton, is the first series of stories about a female crook. The thoroughly evil leader of an Italian criminal organization, the dazzlingly beautiful and brilliant Madame Koluchy, matches wits with Norman Head, a reclusive philosopher who had once joined her gang. The volume was selected by Ellery Queen for Queen’s Quorum as one of the 106 most important collections of mystery short stories. Curiously, only Meade’s name appears on the front cover and spine of the book, though Eustace is given credit as the cowriter on the title page.
Eustace is known mainly for his collaborations with other writers. In addition to working with Meade, he cowrote several stories with Edgar Jepson; a novel with the once-popular mystery writer Gertrude Warden, The Stolen Pearl: A Romance of London (1903); and, most famously, a novel with Dorothy L. Sayers, The Documents in the Case (1930).
“The Winged Assassin” was first published in the February 1898 issue of The Strand Magazine; it was first collected in The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (London, Ward, Lock, 1899).