‘Killingly’ is brilliant historical mystery by Katharine Beutner

Just before Thanksgiving in 1897, a student named Bertha Mellish disappeared from her Mount Holyoke College campus in Massachusetts. “Killingly,” a brilliant historical mystery by College of Wooster professor Katharine Beutner, is conjecture about what happened to her.

Bertha was a real person; her best friend, Agnes, was not. Bertha is called “the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl at the College,” but Agnes also fits the description. They keep apart from their frivolous classmates by immersing themselves in their schoolwork, with Agnes planning to become a surgeon and Bertha a philologist — one who studies language.

Bertha’s disappearance becomes grist for the gossip mill. Agnes, a scholarship student who grew up in a tenement, is badgered by a creepy family doctor with an obsessive desire to find Bertha and by a private detective with his own secrets. Fortunately, Agnes is an accomplished liar.

Bertha’s sister, Florence, does everything she can while trapped caring for an emotionally fragile mother and a father with declining faculties.

Beutner is masterful at depicting the intrigue and innuendo of a women’s college. With perfect pacing, she drops casual revelations that grow increasingly shocking as the pages turn.