Legacy of Fear — Frances Dean Hancock

Something was wrong a Blithe House - Hester had sensed it all along. Could she escape whatever hid in the menacing shadows, or had she waited too long.?

Nightmare.

The Spanish moss, trailing from the trees was so many ghostly, clutching arms reaching for her. Or so it seemed to Hester Maxon that gloomy, rainy day she first saw Blithe House. But if the old Mississippi mansion was rather forbidding, the members of the household seemed ordinary enough - a widow, who had hired Hester to help her write a biography of her late husband; her amiable daughter and her attractive son and jovial Uncle Dan and his not-so-jovial wife, Lizzie. Ordinary people, yet Hester could not shake off that first uneasy impression - a premonition that was to come true. Her second night in the house she awoke in darkness, aware of someone prowling outside her room. Whoever it was was frightened away or perhaps she had imagined it all, dreamed it. But it was no dream. The prowler returned the next night, and the next! Hester knew she must confide in someone, but who? Who in that house suddenly filled with sinister strangers could she trust?