Description

Nurse Miriam Ward arrives at Abbott's Lodge on a snowy winter night to care for the ailing Paul Abbott. But when she returns from admitting midnight visitors, she finds a stranger in her patient's bed- and Paul Abbott murdered. Chloroformed before she can raise the alarm, Miriam awakens to find herself the chief suspect in a baffling crime.

As Sheriff Guy Trenholm investigates, the mystery deepens. Betty Carter denies her midnight marriage to the victim. A clergyman lies about his presence at the deathbed. Thirteen letters from Canada bear a cryptic stamp code. And somewhere in the sprawling Lodge lies hidden the legendary Paltoff diamond-a Russian imperial jewel that men would kill to possess.

From the elegant drawing rooms of Washington society to the snow-covered fields of Maryland, Trenholm and Miriam must untangle a conspiracy that reaches from the aftermath of the Russian Revolution to a isolated country estate. With each decoded message, they draw closer to a killer who will stop at nothing to claim the lost jewel. But time is running out, and the thirteenth letter holds the key to a suicide's grave-and a hidden fortune.