Foggy, foggy death

the long version

ON SUCH a foggy afternoon it was easy for a child to disappear. They all went to look for him in the grounds surrounding the Victorian monstrosity of a house where the ill-mated Marta and Scott Bromwell lived with Lucretia, Scott's mother, and where the fog seemed to cover the strains of family relationships as completely as the bushes and trees. Before they found the straying child, Karen Mason, Lucretia's secretary, found instead the beautiful dark-haired Marta lying face down in a brook—where she had quite evidently been pushed down and held under. The story is told from the viewpoint of Karen, who—without quite knowing it-is in love with Scott. Present also are Stephen Nickel, a gentleman of faintly dubious associations, an odd-job man named Higgins and Rudolph Haas, an orchestra leader who was apparently Marta's boy friend. Naturally the redoubtable Captain Heimrich of the State Police comes on the scene, but there is to be a second death before he and Karen with an assist from the heavy fog bring the murderer to book in a tense and breathless finish.