[PW] Stumper

[Holly Campbell-Polivka]

I had a stumper of a question yesterday and was hoping somebody on the list may be able to help. A patron is looking for a specific book of which he cannot remember the title. He gave a really good description, though, so here goes:

He read it in about 1950, and it wasn't new then, so he suspects it may have been published around the 1930's. It is a mystery that takes place in the United States, maybe New York. It is about an old, somewhat wealthy family that lives in an old house, and all of the adult children are living together in the house. One of the sisters is attacked in the middle of the night in the house, but survives. After the initial attack, her brothers and sisters start being murdered one by one. One of the brothers and one of the sisters discover a door in the wall that may be to a laundry chute, and begin exchanging letters in it to each other. They refer to it as their "private mailbox." It turns out that the guilty party is the original sister who was attacked.

He wonders if the author may be Mary Roberts Rinehart or somebody like her, but from what I could find, she is not the author. I tried Novelist and couldn't find much in that.

Any ideas???

Holly Campbell-Polivka
On-Call Librarian
Tigard Public Library
Tigard, Oregon