The Strange Story of Our Villa

"The Strange Story of Our Villa" by M. E. Penn presents a domestic mystery set in Nice. Three single women—Mrs. Brandon, Miss Lucy Lester, and the narrator—rent a villa for winter, accompanied by Mrs. Brandon's thirteen-year-old daughter Georgie and her fox-terrier Chum. The elegantly furnished house, decorated with Eastern artifacts and paintings by its owner M. de Valeyre, soon reveals an unsettling presence. Georgie hears nocturnal sounds from the supposedly empty upper floors: a woman pacing, muttering, and sobbing. The house-agent reveals these sounds likely belong to Madame de Valeyre, M. de Valeyre's estranged Arab wife from Algeria, whom he married years earlier against family disapproval. They separated a year ago under a contractual condition that she not return. The mysterious woman haunts the villa in her white wrapper, silent and solitary. One evening, the narrator encounters her directly—a pale shadow of the striking portrait on the wall—as Madame de Valeyre mysteriously traverses the rental apartments.