When a woman breaks her engagement and her former fiance is found shot with a gun in his hand, suicide is assumed. But Celia Sommerville knows that he would never have done anything so tasteless. The key seems to be held by a former professor of literature. Celia goes to Vermont to act as the professor's secretary, meets his strange family, and is made privy to its secrets. But are they telling the truth? Smooth reading in this conventional mystery with traditional characters. .