The Greene Murder Case

Nothing was stolen from the Greene mansion the night Julia Greene died in her bedroom and her sister Ada was shot across the hall. The police found only galosh prints in the new snow, in and out again, and called it a burglar who lost his nerve. Philo Vance disagrees.

Behind a high stone wall at the end of 53rd Street, the gray Gothic house hangs over the East River, and old Tobias Greene's will holds his family inside it: twenty-five years under that roof, or nothing. A paralyzed mother rules from her bed, five heirs who cannot stand each other wait out the clause, and the shooting does not stop. The coldest of Vance's cases, and the most rigorously built, a house emptying itself room by room.