The Curved Blades by Caroline Wells

Miss Lucy Carrington was the matriarch of the family, and she was not a very nice woman. She was wealthy and possessed a fortune in jewels yet she had been unhappy all of her life because she was unattractive. She had never married, and she still at age 50 was hoping to find a man. She had two relatives, her niece Pauline Stuart who lived with her, and her nephew, Carrington Loria who was an amateur archaeologist who was currently in Egypt excavating. These two relatives would each receive half of her estate upon her death. Miss Lucy had a secretary, Anita Fayne, whom she treated very poorly, and a business manager, Gray Haviland. Pauline and Anita were both attractive which made Miss Lucy very jealous and which drew constant criticism from her.   Miss Lucy was hoping that she could attract the attention of Count Charlier and lure him to marry her.

Then one evening she had dinner with all the people named above. They played bridge. Miss Lucy was a very temperament bridge played and would get angry and throw her cards around the room when she was losing. Later Pauline and Anita came to her room, and Miss Lucy got angry and told both of them to leave the house the next morning.

The next morning, Miss Lucy was found dead in her rooms. She was sitting facing her mirror with a smile on her face, and she was wearing the most valuable of her jewels. She had a paper snake wrapped around her neck which was very odd because she was terrified of snakes, and she had one of Count Charier's gloves in her hand. She had been hit over the head which appeared to be the way that she was killed. An autopsy revealed, however, that she had been poisoned with aconitine; she had been hit over the head after she was dead from the poison. The local police interviewed everyone and it seemed that several of the people in Miss Lucy's life were in the hall that evening. Anita admitted listening outside of Miss Carington's door and hearing her speaking to someone, but she could not hear the other person's voice.

The police failed to come up with a satisfactory suspect, so it was decided to call in Fleming Stone, a professional investigator. He interviewed the occupants of the house, and examined Miss Lucy's room in detail, and fell in love with one of the suspects which rather clouded his view of the investigation. He did find the murderer, but it must be admitted that the most important clue that he found should have been found by the police but they were rather careless by modern standards.

This book was written in 1915 by Caroline Wells. I found it to be an interesting read. I did guess the identity of the murderer before Fleming Stone did, but I could not have proved it until Stone found the crucial piece of evidence. You may wonder, as I did,  about the title of the book and what curved blades have to do with the story since blades are never mentioned. They will be explained at the very end of the book. This book is currently available in paperback and as an e-book.