Murder Most Civil — Karen Frisch

In 1860 Boston, Henrietta Newell Cobb is stunned when an abolitionist's wife claims to be the target of whoever just murdered her husband. Myrth McLaren asks Henrietta not to notify the police before she disappears. Henrietta agrees at her brother Freddy's request, even though the decision jeopardizes her own future. Discovering Angus McLaren has been murdered by someone using a bust of Caesar, Henrietta wonders if a woman could heave a bust with force enough to kill--until it becomes clear the seductive widow is capable of heaving her own bust at Freddy, a Harvard professor, with scandalously effective results.