A long driveway led from the street to the main entrance and wound beneath the intertwining branches of two enormous oak trees. The mansion's rear was surrounded by lovely gardens that slowly fell to the edge of a small lake. The Hudson River, which was not far away, as well as the gardens and surrounding countryside, were all clearly seen from the main gate. With a revolver in his hand and an unsightly wound just above the right eye and close to the temple, Hugh Mainwaring was discovered dead in his Fair Oaks office. Less than three months before, they had been introduced at the New York Country Club, where Ralph Mainwaring and Mr. Whitney had first met. Richard Hobson, the uncooperative witness in the previous day's hearings, had fled without leaving even the tiniest trace of his whereabouts. Following Mrs. LaGrange's suicide, there were reports that legal action had been taken to challenge the previous will, but in the names of Ralph Mainwarry and his brother Harold W. Mainwary, since his son had completely withdrawn from the proceedings. On the eve of the contest, each side awaited the start of the battle after the intervening weeks filled with planning for the upcoming litigation had passed.
Best-selling fiction writer Anna Maynard Barbour was an American who passed away on May 10, 1941. She was described as "usually acclaimed as the most successful of American mystery authors" in a 1903 feature in The Atlantic Monthly. Fayette Barbour and Jane E. Cutler gave birth to Anna Barbour in Mansfield, New York, in the nineteenth century. When she was young, her parents died. She worked for the American government while residing in Helena, Montana, in the late 19th century. She wed an Englishman in 1893, and it is said that he supported her writing career. She worked in Tennessee and Boston before being ordained as an Episcopal deaconess at the House of Mercy in Boston in 1907. Some of her most well-known books are The Award of Justice; Or, Told in the Rockies: A Pen Picture of the West (1897), That Mainwaring Affair (1900), The award of justice (1901), At the Time Appointed (1903) and Breakers Ahead (1906).
