We often read in novels how a seemingly respectable person or family has some terrible secret

which has been concealed from strangers for years. The English language possesses a vivid saying to

describe this sort of situation. The terrible secret is called "a skeleton in the cupboard". At some

dramatic moment in the story, the terrible secret becomes known and a reputation is ruined. The reader

’s hair stands on end when he reads in the final pages of the novel that the heroine, a

dear old lady who had always been so kind to everybody, had, in her youth, poisoned every one of

her five husbands.