Posing as another guest is the dapper young detective Lance O'Leary. At his recommendation Matil has engaged Nurse Sarah Keate to care for Aunt Lucy Kingery at Hunting's End—not a pleasant assignment, as it turns out. Gathered at the lodge, Matil's guests are shut off from the outside by a November snowstorm. A collie named Jericho mopes around, and a stray cat seems to herald new, clearly unnatural deaths. What a trap to spring on people used to good wine and fresh-cut flowers at dinner!
Nurse Keate is the same sharp-eyed, stiletto-tongued, strong-stomached Nightingale and sleuth who was introduced in The Patient in Room 18 and While the Patient Slept. She helped establish Mignon G. Eberhart as a mainstay of the golden age of detective fiction.
