AN OBSCURE GRAVE

Lawyer-sleuth Anthony Mailtand, Woods' indefatigable two-mysteries-a-year man, faces yet another seemingly impossible puzzle--when Aunt Vera asks Anthony to look into the child-murder case, in the village of Chedcombe, against Oliver Linwood. (Vera's friend Lisa Traherne is the defending counsel.) Did ascetic, reclusive Oliver really suffocate his little boy-cousin? After all, according to archaic English law, Oliver now stands to inherit the fortune of the boy's deceased father Walter. On the other hand, young villager Henrietta Vaughan is a suspect in two other similar cases of baby suffocation. So: isn't she the more likely culprit? Well, Anthony finds that both Henrietta and Oliver (who seems uninterested in money) are unconvincing suspects. And, after lots of talk with acquaintances of all concerned, he begins to smell something fishy about cousin Walter's ""natural"" death and comes up with an inspired idea out of left field--though the mysteries get unraveled in a limp restaurant confrontation instead of (as most readers will anticipate) courtroom fireworks. Middle-range Woods, slightly enlivened by the stately Vera's personality.