The Room with the Tassels

A Sunday gathering in a New York parlour turns into an argument about ghosts, spirit messages and the possibility of testing them honestly. Eve Carnforth takes spiritualism seriously, while Wynne Landon challenges its claims and Milly Landon mixes curiosity with nervous laughter. Carolyn Wells gives these exchanges a social ease that makes the later mystery feel like an intrusion into familiar company.

The debate becomes more urgent when unexplained deaths bring a coroner into the discussion. Family inheritance supplies possible motives, and the guests revisit who stood where during a gathering over tea. Some insist on a supernatural explanation; others weigh the possibility of a human crime. The Room with the Tassels combines a detective story with competing ideas about belief and evidence. Readers interested in mysteries built around conversations, disputed accounts and apparently impossible events will find those elements closely connected here.