'I love the old way best, the simple way
Of poison, where we too are strong as men.
The Media of Euripides,
GILBERT MURRAY'S TRANSLATION'

That's from what is usually the dedication page. Yes, poison is used here -- with more than one victim, the first offending the chief suspect, beautiful second wife Iris Nash, the most. I'm afraid that Iris hasn't had much luck with men. Her father died of alcoholism. She spent years loving a man her head told her was a gold-digger just using her for a doormat until his meal ticket came along, but her heart refused to believe until he did dump her to marry for money. Her husband, Randall, was quite decent at first. Iris was finally happy -- but things have changed. Randall has turned suspicious and drinks too much. In chapter 3 he tells a story about his great-great grandfather who built his house that's absolutely chilling, especially the part Randall calls a refinement of cruelty one has to have been, or be, deeply in love to understand. Also chilling is the reason why Iris won't leave her husband, not that the stepdaughter who hates her knows it.

Randall Nash has never been a knight in shining armor. He dumped the girl he was going to marry after her father lost all his money to a con man cloaked in religion. Randall married his best friend's rich girlfriend. They're still friends. From what we learn about the first Mrs. Nash, perhaps A.J. McClean has remained a bachelor -- and Randall's friend -- because of his narrow escape. The way Randall treats his only son because the boy chose to stay with his mother after the divorce is shameful. The nicest thing about Randall is what he did for his daughter when her mother took away Lowell's dog because of an incident that took place when Lowell, now 18, was only four years old.

Grace Latham, who lives next-door to the Nashes, knows all about that incident because her elder son, who was three at the time, was the other culprit. What Randall did for his daughter is the reason Grace has always been a little fond of him. It was Grace that Lowell ran to when her beloved father remarried, but Grace doesn't hate Iris Nash. She's friends with Iris, which makes her (and through her, us) privy to a number of interesting confidences. It's also why Grace is present for the finding of the second body. So is Colonel Primrose, luckily for the innocent.

I love the stories about Georgetown history and the descriptions of places -- except for that gruesome tale about Randall Nash's monstrous ancestor. If this were a ghost story instead of a murder mystery, it would be sufficient reason for a haunting. The discovery made during Mr. Nash's father's time would make a good climax. Barbara Michaels could have written it, except it would have been more frightening if she had.

The racism and sexism of the time are hard to take, but it helps a little that the only bad apple among the servants is white. It also helps that Grace really means it about Colonel Primrose being safe from matrimonial designs where she's concerned, and Colonel Primrose wishes she weren't. I loved the 51 year-old Colonel's reaction to being innocently mistaken for 38 year-old Grace's father! The scene where Grace gets back at Primrose at the photographer's studio and Primrose gets back at Sergeant Buck, is fun.

We readers can use the humor when there are so many grim or emotionally wrought scenes, such as poor Lavinia Fawcett's past and present. Sadly, there was no Social Services program to step in after the way her mother and older sister died. I wouldn't blame her brother for running away except that he wasn't around to help when Lavinia really needed him. Her back story is in chapter nine and makes a good reminder of why the notion that a man has the right to treat his family as he sees fit is wrong.

In this book we learn that Colonel Primrose's yellow brick house is at 2491 P street. Grace's house is also on P street, across the street and a block away. She can see a corner of Primrose's house from a downstairs window in hers. The Primrose who built the Colonel's house was on General Washington's staff.

The two sons we learned that Grace has are in this book briefly. We know the older one is either 17 or close to it because that incident with Lowell Nash took place 14 years ago. Both boys have dates, so the younger one probably isn't much younger. The author doesn't bother to tell us their names. It's Christmas Eve when the book opens, so it wouldn't have reflected well on Grace if her boys weren't around, I suppose. It's a pity that Grace wasn't around during the first murder, but she was on an errand of mercy. One of her friends can't get home from California in time to chaperone young Mary's house party in Virginia because her plane's delayed, so she asks Grace to take her kids there and be the chaperone. Interesting how long it took the 'friend' to get back...

I like Grace. I like the fact that she nods in agreement when her African-American cook, Lilac, repeats a conversation she had with her husband, Julius, where Lilac said something didn't make sense and Julius replied that a lot of what Mis' Grace does doesn't make sense -- more doesn't than does. In chapter 18 I chuckled over what Grace got caught doing to the Bishop's cake when she was a child and how she was punished. Grace gets attacked twice in this book. I liked the way she reacted to the frontal attack. The attack from behind wouldn't have happened if she weren't a caring person.

An earlier owner of my copy pasted part of a newspaper article about the author inside the front cover. The headline is 'Professor's Wife, Leslie Ford, Top Mystery Writer'. The author was Eleanor Griesemer. It opens with 'Annapolis, Md., July 17. -- (AP) -- . I'm sure you've seen those assurances that the characters are imaginary and no resemblance to any person, living or dead, is intended in many books. According to this newspaper article, Mrs. Ford K. Brown once used a name from a 150 year-old English record in a book she wrote under her 'David Frome' pen name. A living solicitor with the same name collected damages for that.

According to this site, http://connection.ebscohost.com/tag/FORD%252C%2BLeslie , this story was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post : 11/13/1937, v.210, #20 ; 11/27/1937, v.210, #22 ; 12/4/1937, v.210, #23 ; 12/11/1937, v.210, #24 ; 12/18/1937, v.210, #25 ; 12/25/1937, v.210, #26 ; 1/1/1938, v.210, #27.

This is a good cozy for fans of old mysteries, and a good reminder of what our culture was like before some things became unacceptable -- though not universally unacceptable, unfortunately.

Given the number of books that offer a preview of the next book in a series, I find it interesting that my old hardcover has a preview of the book before. I'd describe its dustjacket, but it's missing. ( )