Short Stories About Secrets: 10 Classics Explained
Quick answer: Ten classic short stories about secrets, from The Purloined Letter and A Scandal in Bohemia to Roman Fever and The Minister's Black Veil, summarised and compared.
A secret is a story's most reliable engine because the reader wants it kept just long enough. The writers here range from Poe, who hid a letter in plain sight, to Wharton, who kept one for forty years and then spent it in a sentence.
The collection begins with the detectives, moves through the veils and the terraces, and ends with a woman who had no secret at all. Each title links to a page that summarises the story and explains its ending.
The stories
The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe. A minister has stolen a compromising letter from a royal lady and the Paris police, having searched his rooms to the depth of a needle, cannot find it. Dupin pays a call wearing green spectacles.
A Scandal in Bohemia by Arthur Conan Doyle. A king wants a photograph back from a woman named Irene Adler before his wedding, and Holmes stages a street brawl and a fire to make her show where she keeps it. The next morning there is a letter in its place.
The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne. A young parson appears one Sunday with a black veil over his face and will not remove it for anyone, including the woman he was to marry. The congregation invents his sin for him.
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton. Two widows knit on a Roman terrace while their daughters are out, and edge toward a night twenty-five years ago when one sent the other a letter in a man's handwriting. The last line answers a question that was never asked.
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad. A young captain hides a fugitive in his cabin for days, feeding him from his own plate while the steward comes and goes. The whole ship senses something wrong with the captain and cannot name it.
The Musgrave Ritual by Arthur Conan Doyle. A butler is dismissed for reading a family document, an old catechism nobody has understood for generations, and then vanishes; so does the maid he jilted. Holmes measures the shadow of an elm.
Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin. Desiree's origins are unknown, and when her baby's features begin to show what the household sees, her husband sends her away. The secret that ends the story is not hers.
The False Gems by Guy de Maupassant. Monsieur Lantin's wife kept one small vice, a taste for theatre and imitation jewellery, and he teased her about it. After her death the jeweller tells him what her imitation necklace is worth.
The Sphinx Without a Secret by Oscar Wilde. Lord Murchison falls in love with a widow who moves through London as if pursued, and follows her to a rented room in Cumnor Street where she sits alone. Her secret, when he learns it, is the story's joke and its sadness.
The Man with the Twisted Lip by Arthur Conan Doyle. A respectable Kent businessman vanishes from an opium den where a beggar with a twisted lip has his room, and his wife receives a letter in his hand days later. Holmes solves it with a sponge.
Reading them together
The collection's argument is that a secret is defined by where it is kept, and the great secret stories are about hiding places: a card rack, a cabin, a woman's face, a rented room, a shadow's length. Poe and Doyle treat the hiding place as a puzzle with a solution. Hawthorne, Wharton and Wilde treat it as a character, and refuse to open it fully even at the end.
Set The False Gems beside Roman Fever. In each a woman's secret outlives her and is delivered to someone who would rather not have it, and in each the writer ends a sentence after the delivery.
If you want to write about secrets
What writers can take from this
- Read The Purloined Letter and A Scandal in Bohemia together; Doyle borrowed Poe's engine and gave it a better opponent.
- Roman Fever and The Sphinx Without a Secret both end on one sentence in the open air; compare how each earns it.
- The Musgrave Ritual is Holmes at his most geometric; keep a pencil handy.
- The Minister's Black Veil rewards a reading in which you never decide what the sin was.
- Desiree's Baby is best read without knowing the ending, so read it first.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which two old friends spend an afternoon together and one of them has decided, before it began, to reveal a secret, and does so only in the final sentence.
Questions
What is the best short story about a secret?
Roman Fever is the most perfectly built, and The Purloined Letter the most influential. The Minister's Black Veil is the most written about.
Which short stories about secrets are good for students?
A Scandal in Bohemia, The Purloined Letter, Desiree's Baby and The Sphinx Without a Secret are short and clear. Roman Fever suits students who can handle indirection.
Which classic story about secrets is the shortest?
The Sphinx Without a Secret, at about fifteen hundred words, then Desiree's Baby at roughly two thousand.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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