Murder, Country Style — Mary Forker Ford

Ellen Bowen, described herself as having “mousy-brown, half-curly hair and cocker spaniel eyes.” But to eighty-year-old Miss Ardelia Woodward, at whose home in Albany -- population 1,234 -- Ellen was cataloging Miss Dell's extremely valuable collection of antiques, to serious, brown-eyed Ward Jason, Miss Dell's lawyer who was drawing up her will, Ellen was the girl he had been looking for all his life.

It was a harmonious and satisfying situation for Ellen…until the night Miss Dell was almost strangled to death and a valuable Jackson jug was discovered to be missing.

Miss Dell had no known enemies, but several people had looked with covetuous eyes upon her antiques. The most likely ones that came to mind were the Phelpses, John and Thelma, who had always shown an exaggerated interest in Miss Dell's possessions and whose past, before they came to Albany, was slightly veiled in mystery. It would be utterly ridiculous to think that Beck Saylor, Miss Dell's hired woman for many years, could have tried to murder her employer; nor Beck's daughter, the curvaceous, auburn-haired Dorothy, college-bred and in love with Larry Woodward. Larry was Miss Dell's doctor brother's son, and Larry, had always been like a son to Miss Dell. Of course, Larry's wife wasn't quite Miss Dell's idea of the right girl for Larry, but no one could deny that Louise was a raving beauty with a flawless taste in clothes, a Dresden figurine of a girl. Ezra Granger, the hired man, twenty-eight now, and as solid and dependable a man as you could find anywhere, had worked for Miss Dell eleven years.

Then Ez failed to come home from town one night…and a baffling and terrifying situation became even more sinister.