Legacy of Death

In “Legacy of Death,” Doreen Holliston grows up believing her late mother’s warning: that she may have inherited a murderous impulse that strikes young adults in her father’s bloodline. Her stepfather, Henry Mitchell, enforces strict control over her life to “protect” her until she turns thirty. But after Doreen falls in love—first with the earnest overseer Irving, then with Henry’s charismatic brother Clyde—Henry panics, insisting that emotional stress could trigger her supposed hereditary urge to kill. When Clyde suddenly announces he’s leaving to marry another woman, Doreen is devastated, and by morning Clyde is found murdered with a sickle. Suspicion turns first to Doreen, then to Irving, until Doreen’s midnight memories and a few telling inconsistencies expose the truth: Henry himself killed Clyde, just as he had secretly poisoned Doreen’s mother, all to keep control of the estate. His invented “family curse” was nothing but a cover for murder.