Phoebe Atwood Taylor: Death Lights a Candle (1989)

From the Publisher:
It promised to be a cozy weekend house party on the Cape, but none of the guests had foreseen such a snowfall. None was prepared to be completely cut off, without heat, light or telephone. And certainly none had expected to find the host, Albert Stires, dead in his bedroom.

Fortunately, Asey Mayo happens to be on the scene. At first, Stires seems to be the victim of arsenic, and suddenly there are too many suspects with far too easy access to the poison. But then Asey discovers a most ingenious murder weapon, virtually unknown in the twentieth century, which destroys its evidence as it works on its victim. Just as it nearly succeeds in working upon Asey himself!

PHOEBE ATWOOD TAYLOR (1909-1976) lived most of her life in Boston and Cape Cod. In addition to the Asey Mayo series, she wrote a number of Leonidas Witherall mysteries as Alice Tilton, and Murder at the New York World's Fair as Freeman Dana.

Phoebe Atwood Taylor: Death Lights a Candle. An Asey Mayo Cape Cod Mystery. Woodstock, Vt.: Countryman Press / Foul Play Press, 1989, ISBN: 088150145X, 304 p., $6.95.