A QUESTION OF INHERITANCE

Away from her familiar hospital/nursing settings, Bell tries her hand at some romantic nonsense. Struggling actress Maisie Atkins marries miserly, sarcastic Percy Bennet--a relatively elderly man who wants an heir to his fortune and his stately home of Garwood. But when their infant son Philip does a crib death, Maisie (now renamed Florence) buries the body in the garden and flees to Italy, where she hears of Percy's death in a car crash. And then a wildly improbable encounter with an Italian woman sends Maisie/Florence back to England--with a fake baby Philip--to claim the estate. Flash-forward: it's 22 years later, Florence is found murdered at Garwood, the buried baby surfaces--and now-grownup ""Philip"" tries to find his identity (melodrama in Italy) while the police catch the unlikely murderer and assorted Bennet relatives squabble over the estate. Totally illogical and unpersuasive--but readers willing to suspend all their reasoning powers will find this an old-fashioned, fast-moving romp of a romance/suspense fairy-tale.