Death in Lilac Time

When Pat and Jean Abbott boarded a plane in New York for a holiday in the Bluegrass country, they could hardly think of anything except the impending Kentucky Derby and of once more having the opportunity to visit Dr. Seth Godwin, a friend of Pat’s from World War II.

But there was a woman who intrigued them on the plane—she was beautiful and she was very upset. They could scarcely have guessed, however, that a couple of hours after landing in Lexington, their help would be asked because this lovely woman had been accused of committing a minder.

It was Seth who told them about the murdered man, a patient of his named Dick Mallory. Dick’s estranged wife, Jane Mallory, the very woman the Abbotts had seen on the plane, gave him the capsule that killed him. For what Jane thought was a sleeping pill turned out to have contained cyanide. To the Mallory family, who loathed Jane, it seemed quite obvious that she was the murderess.

But when the dead man’s will was read, it became all too clear that each of the Mallorys had had a very legitimate motive for murder.