The Mysterious Key and What it Opened is written by L. M. Alcott. The strange passing of Sir Richard Trevlyn sets the story in the beginning. The only thing the reader is aware of is that Richard's wife, Alice, who is expecting their first child, is listening to a discussion Richard is having with a visitor via a keyhole in the library door. She faints after being horrified by what she hears, and a servant named Hester discovers her and puts her to bed. Hester rushes to the library to inform Richard that his wife is ill despite Alice's insistence that he not be disturbed. She discovers him dead, slouched over his desk. A sixteen-year-old kid named Paul who is applying for work on the estate runs into the young child, Lillian, twelve years later. He performs his duties successfully, rising in rank and winning the love of both his family and his employees. Some of the servants are confused and sad when he goes without saying goodbye since they have a suspicion that he may be more than just the gardener or groom. When everything is revealed in the final chapters, the riddles of why Richard died, who Paul is, and how those things are connected are still unsolved.
Louisa May Alcott, an American novelist and poet, was born in 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Alcott was the daughter of the famous visionary Bronson Alcott and was friend of Emerson and Thoreau. Her education was under the direction of her father, for a time at his old Temple School in Boston and, later, at home. She turned to writing in order to increase the family income and had many short stories printed in magazines and newspapers. In addition to writing, she worked as a teacher, governess, and Civil War nurse, as well as being an advocate of abolition, women's rights, and prohibition. After her experiences she wrote Hospital Sketches (1864) which won wide praise, followed by an adult novel, Moods. She is best known as the author of the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women is generally based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters. Alcott was writing of her own incense experiences with fame. She expired in 1888 and is buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord Massachusetts.
